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• Seperation of project responsibilities in new project

  - by dreza

  We have very recently started a new project (MVC 3.0) and some of our early discussion has been around how the work and development will be split amongst the team members to ensure we get the least amount of overlap of work and so help make it a bit easier for each developer to get on and do their work. The project is expected to take about 6 months - 1 year (although not all developers are likely to be on and might filter off towards the end), Our team is going to be small so this will help out a bit I believe. The team will essentially consist of: 3 x developers (1 a slightly more experienced and will be the lead) 1 x project manager / product owner / tester An external company responsbile for doing our design work General project/development decisions so far have included: Develop in an Agile way using SCRUM techniques (We are still very much learning this approach as a company) Use MVVM archectecture Use Ninject and DI where possible Attempt to use as TDD as much as possible to drive development. Keep our controllers as skinny as possible Keep our views as simple as possible During our discussions two approaches have been broached as too how to seperate the workload given our objectives outlined above. OPTION 1: A framework seperation where each person is responsible for conceptual areas with overlap and discussion primarily in the integration areas. The integration areas would the responsibily of both developers as required. View prototypes (**Graphic designer**) | - Mockups | Views (Razor and view helpers etc) & Javascript (**Developer 1**) | - View models (Integration point) | Controllers and Application logic (**Developer 2**) | - Models (Integration point) | Domain model and persistence (**Developer 3**) PROS: Integration points are quite clear and so developers can work without dependencies on others fairly easily Code practices such as naming conventions and style is more easily managed in regards to consistancy as primarily only one developer will be handling an area CONS: Completion of an entire feature becomes a bit grey as no single person is responsible for an entire feature (story?) A person might not have a full appreciation for all areas of the project and so code overlap might be lacking if suddenly that person left. OPTION 2: A more task orientated approach where each person is responsible for the completion of the entire task from view - controller - model. PROS: A person is responsible for one entire feature so it's "complete" state can be clearly defined Code overlap into different areas will occur so each individual has good coverage over the entire application CONS: Overlap of development will occur in all the modules and developers can develop/extend without a true understanding of what the original code owner was intending. This could potentially lead more easily to code bloat? Following a convention might be harder as developers are adding to all areas of the project If a developer sets up a way of doing things would it be harder to enforce the other developers to follow that convention or even build on it (or even discuss it?). Dunno.. Bugs could more easily be introduced into areas not thought about by the developer It's easier to possibly to carry a team member in so far as one member just hacks code together to complete a task whilst another takes time to build a foundation that could be used by others and so help make future tasks easier i.e. starts building a framework? QUESTION: As it might appear I'm more in favor of option 1, however I'm interested to see how others might have approached this or what is the standard or best or preferred way of undertaking a project. Or indeed any different approach to handling this?

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• How to safely copy an object?

  - by Prog

  This question is going to be a little long. Please bear with me. Something that happened in a project of mine made me think about how to safely copy objects. I'll present the situation I had and then ask a question. There was a class SomeClass: class SomeClass{ Thing[] things; public SomeClass(Thing[] things){ this.things = things; } // irrelevant stuff omitted public SomeClass copy(){ return new SomeClass(things); } } There was another class Processor that takes SomeClass objects, copies them (via someClassInstance.copy()), manipulates the copy's state, and returns the copy. Here it is: class Processor{ public SomeClass processObject(SomeClass object){ SomeClass copy = object.copy(); manipulateTheCopy(copy); return copy; } // irrelevant stuff omitted } I ran this, and it had bugs. I looked into these bugs, and it turned out that the manipulations Processor does on copy actually affect not only the copy, but also the original SomeClass object that was passed into processObject. I found out that it was because the original and the copy shared state - because the original passed it's field things into the copy when creating it. This made me realize that copying objects is harder than simply instantiating them with the same fields as the original. For the two objects to be completely disconnected, without any shared state, each of the fields passed to the copy also has to be copied. And if that object contains other objects - they have to be copied too. And so on. So basically, in order to be able to actually copy an object, each class in the system must have a copy() method, that also invokes copy() on all of it's fields, and so on. So for example, for copy() in SomeClass to work, it needs to look like this: public SomeClass copy(){ Thing[] copyThings = new Thing[things.length]; for(int i=0; i<things.length; i++) copyThings[i] = things[i].copy(); return new SomeClass(copyThings); } And if Thing has object fields of it's own, than it's own copy() method must be appropriate: class Thing{ Apple apple; Pencil pencil; int number; public Thing(Apple apple, Pencil pencil, int number){ this.apple = apple; this.pencil = pencil; this.number = number; } public Thing copy(){ // 'number' is a primitve. return new Thing(apple.getCopy(), pencil.getCopy(), number); } } And so on. Of course, instead of all classes having a copy() method, the copying mechanism can happen in all of the getters and the constructors of classes (unless places where it isn't suitable, for example when the field points to an external object, not to an object that 'is part' of this object). Still, that means that in order to be able to safely copy an object - most classes would have to have copying mechanisms in their getters. My question is divided into two parts: How frequently do you need to get a copy of an object? Is this a regular issue? Is the technique described common and/or reasonable? Or is there a better way to make safe copies of objects? Or is there an easier way to safely copy objects, without them sharing any state?

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• ARTS Reference Model for Retail

  - by Sanjeev Sharma

  Consider a hypothetical scenario where you have been tasked to set up retail operations for a electronic goods or daily consumables or a luxury brand etc. It is very likely you will be faced with the following questions: What are the essential business capabilities that you must have in place?  What are the essential business activities under-pinning each of the business capabilities, identified in Step 1? What are the set of steps that you need to perform to execute each of the business activities, identified in Step 2? Answers to the above will drive your investments in software and hardware to enable the core retail operations. More importantly, the choices you make in responding to the above questions will several implications in the short-run and in the long-run. In the short-term, you will incur the time and cost of defining your technology requirements, procuring the software/hardware components and getting them up and running. In the long-term, as you grow in operations organically or through M&A, partnerships and franchiser business models  you will invariably need to make more technology investments to manage the greater complexity (scale and scope) of business operations.  "As new software applications, such as time & attendance, labor scheduling, and POS transactions, just to mention a few, are introduced into the store environment, it takes a disproportionate amount of time and effort to integrate them with existing store applications. These integration projects can add up to 50 percent to the time needed to implement a new software application and contribute significantly to the cost of the overall project, particularly if a systems integrator is called in. This has been the reality that all retailers have had to live with over the last two decades. The effect of the environment has not only been to increase costs, but also to limit retailers' ability to implement change and the speed with which they can do so." (excerpt taken from here) Now, one would think a lot of retailers would have already gone through the pain of finding answers to these questions, so why re-invent the wheel? Precisely so, a major effort began almost 17 years ago in the retail industry to make it less expensive and less difficult to deploy new technology in stores and at the retail enterprise level. This effort is called the Association for Retail Technology Standards (ARTS). Without standards such as those defined by ARTS, you would very likely end up experiencing the following: Increased Time and Cost due to resource wastage arising from re-inventing the wheel i.e. re-creating vanilla processes from scratch, and incurring, otherwise avoidable, mistakes and errors by ignoring experience of others Sub-optimal Process Efficiency due to narrow, isolated view of processes thereby ignoring process inter-dependencies i.e. optimizing parts but not the whole, and resulting in lack of transparency and inter-departmental finger-pointing Embracing ARTS standards as a blue-print for establishing or managing or streamlining your retail operations can benefit you in the following ways: Improved Time-to-Market from parity with industry best-practice processes e.g. ARTS, thus avoiding “reinventing the wheel” for common retail processes and focusing more on customizing processes for differentiations, and lowering integration complexity and risk with a standardized vocabulary for exchange between internal and external i.e. partner systems Lower Operating Costs by embracing the ARTS enterprise-wide process reference model for developing and streamlining retail operations holistically instead of a narrow, silo-ed view, and  procuring IT systems in compliance with ARTS thus avoiding IT budget marginalization While parity with industry standards such as ARTS business process model by itself does not create a differentiation, it does however provide a higher starting point for bridging the strategy-execution gap in setting up and improving retail operations.

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• Hyper-V for Developers Part 1 Internal Networks

  Over the last year, weve been working with Microsoft to build training and demo content for the next version of Office Communications Server code-named Microsoft Communications Server 14.  This involved building multi-server demo environments in Hyper-V, getting them running on demo servers which we took to TechEd, PDC, and other training events, and sometimes connecting the demo servers to the show networks at those events.  ITPro stuff that should scare the hell out of a developer! It can get ugly when I occasionally have to venture into ITPro land.  Lets leave it at that. Having gone through this process about 10 to 15 times in the last year, I finally have it down.  This blog series is my attempt to put all that knowledge in one place if anything, so I can find it somewhere when I need it again.  Ill start with the most simple scenario and then build on top of it in future blog posts. If youre an ITPro, please resist the urge to laugh at how trivial this is. Internal Hyper-V Networks Lets start simple.  An internal network is one that intended only for the virtual machines that are going to be on that network it enables them to communicate with each other. Create an Internal Network On your host machine, fire up the Hyper-V Manager and click the Virtual Network Manager in the Actions panel. Select Internal and leave all the other default values. Give the virtual network a name, and leave all the other default values. After the virtual network is created, open the Network and Sharing Center and click Change Adapter Settings to see the list of network connections. The only thing I recommend that you do is to give this connection a friendly label, e.g. Hyper-V Internal.  When you have multiple networks and virtual networks on the host machines, this helps group the networks so you can easily differentiate them from each other.  Otherwise, dont touch it, only bad things can happen. Connect the Virtual Machines to the Internal Network Im assuming that you have more than 1 virtual machine already configured in Hyper-V, for example a Domain Controller, and Exchange Server, and a SharePoint Server. What you need to do is basically plug in the network to the virtual machine.  In order to do this, the machine needs to have a virtual network adapter.  If the VM doesnt have a network adapter, open the VMs Settings and click Add Hardware in the left pane.  Choose the virtual network to which to bind the adapter to. If you already have a virtual network adapter on the VM, simply connect it to the virtual network. Assign IP Addresses to the Virtual Machines on the Internal Network Open the Network and Sharing Center on your VM, there should only be 1 network at this time.  Open the Properties of the connection, select Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) and hit Properties. In this environment, Im assigning IP addresses as 192.168.0.xxx.  This particular VM has an IP address of 192.168.0.40 with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0, and a DNS Server of 192.168.0.18.  DNS is running on the Domain Controller VM which has an IP address of 192.168.0.18. Repeat this process on every VM in your environment, obviously assigning a unique IP address to each.  In an environment with a domain controller, you should now be able to ping the machines from each other. What Next? After completing this process, heres what you still cannot do: Access the internet from any of the VMs Remote desktop to a VM from the host Remote desktop to a VM over the network In the next post, well take a look configuring an External network adapter on the virtual machines.  Well then build on top of that so that you can RDP into the VMs from the host machine and over the network.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Creating a Corporate Data Hub

  - by BuckWoody

  The Windows Azure Marketplace has a rich assortment of data and software offerings for you to use – a type of Software as a Service (SaaS) for IT workers, not necessarily for end-users. Among those offerings is the “Data Hub” – a  codename for a project that ironically actually does what the codename says. In many of our organizations, we have multiple data quality issues. Finding data is one problem, but finding it just once is often a bigger problem. Lots of departments and even individuals have stored the same data more than once, and in some cases, made changes to one of the copies. It’s difficult to know which location or version of the data is authoritative. Then there’s the problem of accessing the data. It’s fairly straightforward to publish a database, share or other location internally to store the data. But then you have to figure out who owns it, how it is controlled, and pass out the various connection strings to those who want to use it. And then you need to figure out how to let folks access the internal data externally – bringing up all kinds of security issues. Finally, in many cases our user community wants us to combine data from the internally sources with external data, bringing up the security, strings, and exploration features up all over again. Enter the Data Hub. This is an online offering, where you assign an administrator and data stewards. You import the data into the service, and it’s available to you - and only you and your organization if you wish. The basic steps for this service are to set up the portal for your company, assign administrators and permissions, and then you assign data areas and import data into them. From there you make them discoverable, and then you have multiple options that you or your users can access that data. You’re then able, if you wish, to combine that data with other data in one location. So how does all that work? What about security? Is it really that easy? And can you really move the data definition off to the Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) that know the particular data stack better than the IT team does? Well, nothing good is easy – but using the Data Hub is actually pretty simple. I’ll give you a link in a moment where you can sign up and try this yourself. Once you sign up, you assign an administrator. From there you’ll create data areas, and then use a simple interface to bring the data in. All of this is done in a portal interface – nothing to install, configure, update or manage. After the data is entered in, and you’ve assigned meta-data to describe it, your users have multiple options to access it. They can simply use the portal – which actually has powerful visualizations you can use on any platform, even mobile phones or tablets.     Your users can also hit the data with Excel – which gives them ultimate flexibility for display, all while using an authoritative, single reference for the data. Since the service is online, they can do this wherever they are – given the proper authentication and permissions. You can also hit the service with simple API calls, like this one from C#: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh921924  You can make HTTP calls instead of code, and the data can even be exposed as an OData Feed. As you can see, there are a lot of options. You can check out the offering here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlazurelabs/labs/data-hub.aspx and you can read the documentation here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh921938

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• CI tests to enforce specific development rules - good practice?

  - by KeithS

  The following is all purely hypothetical and any particular portion of it may or may not accurately describe real persons or situations, whether living, dead or just pretending. Let's say I'm a senior dev or architect in charge of a dev team working on a project. This project includes a security library for user authentication/authorization of the application under development. The library must be available for developers to edit; however, I wish to "trust but verify" that coders are not doing things that could compromise the security of the finished system, and because this isn't my only responsibility I want it to be done in an automated way. As one example, let's say I have an interface that represents a user which has been authenticated by the system's security library. The interface exposes basic user info and a list of things the user is authorized to do (so that the client app doesn't have to keep asking the server "can I do this?"), all in an immutable fashion of course. There is only one implementation of this interface in production code, and for the purposes of this post we can say that all appropriate measures have been taken to ensure that this implementation can only be used by the one part of our code that needs to be able to create concretions of the interface. The coders have been instructed that this interface and its implementation are sacrosanct and any changes must go through me. However, those are just words; the security library's source is open for editing by necessity. Any of my devs could decide that this secured, private, hash-checked implementation needs to be public so that they could do X, or alternately they could create their own implementation of this public interface in a different library, exposing the hashing algorithm that provides the secure checksum, in order to do Y. I may not be made aware of these changes so that I can beat the developer over the head for it. An attacker could then find these little nuggets in an unobfuscated library of the compiled product, and exploit it to provide fake users and/or falsely-elevated administrative permissions, bypassing the entire security system. This possibility keeps me awake for a couple of nights, and then I create an automated test that reflectively checks the codebase for types deriving from the interface, and fails if it finds any that are not exactly what and where I expect them to be. I compile this test into a project under a separate folder of the VCS that only I have rights to commit to, have CI compile it as an external library of the main project, and set it up to run as part of the CI test suite for user commits. Now, I have an automated test under my complete control that will tell me (and everyone else) if the number of implementations increases without my involvement, or an implementation that I did know about has anything new added or has its modifiers or those of its members changed. I can then investigate further, and regain the opportunity to beat developers over the head as necessary. Is this considered "reasonable" to want to do in situations like this? Am I going to be seen in a negative light for going behind my devs' backs to ensure they aren't doing something they shouldn't?

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• Moving StarterSTS to the (Azure) Cloud

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  Quite some people asked me about an Azure version of StarterSTS. While I kinda knew what I had to do to make the move, I couldn’t find the time. Until recently. This blog post briefly documents the necessary changes and design decisions for the next version of StarterSTS which will work both on-premise and on Azure. Provider Fortunately StarterSTS is already based on the idea of “providers”. Authentication, roles and claims generation is based on the standard ASP.NET provider infrastructure. This makes the migration to different data stores less painful. In my case I simply moved the ASP.NET provider database to SQL Azure and still use the standard SQL Server based membership, roles and profile provider. In addition StarterSTS has its own providers to abstract resource access for certificates, relying party registration, client certificate registration and delegation. So I only had to provide new implementations. Signing and SSL keys now go in the Azure certificate store and user mappings (client certificates and delegation settings) have been moved to Azure table storage. The one thing I didn’t anticipate when I originally wrote StarterSTS was the need to also encapsulate configuration. Currently configuration is “locked” to the standard .NET configuration system. The new version will have a pluggable SettingsProvider with versions for .NET configuration as well as Azure service configuration. If you want to externalize these settings into e.g. a database, it is now just a matter of supplying a corresponding provider. Moving between the on-premise and Azure version will be just a matter of using different providers. URL Handling Another thing that’s substantially different on Azure (and load balanced scenarios in general) is the handling of URLs. In farm scenarios, the standard APIs like ASP.NET’s Request.Url return the current (internal) machine name, but you typically need the address of the external facing load balancer. There’s a hotfix for WCF 3.5 (included in v4) that fixes this for WCF metadata. This was accomplished by using the HTTP Host header to generate URLs instead of the local machine name. I now use the same approach for generating WS-Federation metadata as well as information card files. New Features I introduced a cache provider. Since we now have slightly more expensive lookups (e.g. relying party data from table storage), it makes sense to cache certain data in the front end. The default implementation uses the ASP.NET web cache and can be easily extended to use products like memcached or AppFabric Caching. Starting with the relying party provider, I now also provide a read/write interface. This allows building management interfaces on top of this provider. I also include a (very) simple web page that allows working with the relying party provider data. I guess I will use the same approach for other providers in the future as well. I am also doing some work on the tracing and health monitoring area. Especially important for the Azure version. Stay tuned.

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• Creating a Corporate Data Hub

  - by BuckWoody

  The Windows Azure Marketplace has a rich assortment of data and software offerings for you to use – a type of Software as a Service (SaaS) for IT workers, not necessarily for end-users. Among those offerings is the “Data Hub” – a  codename for a project that ironically actually does what the codename says. In many of our organizations, we have multiple data quality issues. Finding data is one problem, but finding it just once is often a bigger problem. Lots of departments and even individuals have stored the same data more than once, and in some cases, made changes to one of the copies. It’s difficult to know which location or version of the data is authoritative. Then there’s the problem of accessing the data. It’s fairly straightforward to publish a database, share or other location internally to store the data. But then you have to figure out who owns it, how it is controlled, and pass out the various connection strings to those who want to use it. And then you need to figure out how to let folks access the internal data externally – bringing up all kinds of security issues. Finally, in many cases our user community wants us to combine data from the internally sources with external data, bringing up the security, strings, and exploration features up all over again. Enter the Data Hub. This is an online offering, where you assign an administrator and data stewards. You import the data into the service, and it’s available to you - and only you and your organization if you wish. The basic steps for this service are to set up the portal for your company, assign administrators and permissions, and then you assign data areas and import data into them. From there you make them discoverable, and then you have multiple options that you or your users can access that data. You’re then able, if you wish, to combine that data with other data in one location. So how does all that work? What about security? Is it really that easy? And can you really move the data definition off to the Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) that know the particular data stack better than the IT team does? Well, nothing good is easy – but using the Data Hub is actually pretty simple. I’ll give you a link in a moment where you can sign up and try this yourself. Once you sign up, you assign an administrator. From there you’ll create data areas, and then use a simple interface to bring the data in. All of this is done in a portal interface – nothing to install, configure, update or manage. After the data is entered in, and you’ve assigned meta-data to describe it, your users have multiple options to access it. They can simply use the portal – which actually has powerful visualizations you can use on any platform, even mobile phones or tablets.     Your users can also hit the data with Excel – which gives them ultimate flexibility for display, all while using an authoritative, single reference for the data. Since the service is online, they can do this wherever they are – given the proper authentication and permissions. You can also hit the service with simple API calls, like this one from C#: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh921924  You can make HTTP calls instead of code, and the data can even be exposed as an OData Feed. As you can see, there are a lot of options. You can check out the offering here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlazurelabs/labs/data-hub.aspx and you can read the documentation here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh921938

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• Where should instantiated classes be stored?

  - by Eric C.

  I'm having a bit of a design dilemma here. I'm writing a library that consists of a bunch of template classes that are designed to be used as a base for creating content. For example: public class Template { public string Name {get; set;} public string Description {get; set;} public string Attribute1 {get; set;} public string Attribute2 {get; set;} public Template() { //constructor } public void DoSomething() { //does something } ... } The problem is, not only is the library providing the templates, it will also supply quite a few predefined templates which are instances of these template classes. The question is, where do I put these instances of the templates? The three solutions I've come up with so far are: 1) Provide serialized instances of the templates as files. On the one hand, this solution would keep the instances separated from the library itself, which is nice, but it would also potentially add complexity for the user. Even if we provided methods for loading/deserializing the files, they'd still have to deal with a bunch of files, and some kind of config file so the app knows where to look for those files. Plus, creating the template files would probably require a separate app, so if the user wanted to stick with the files method of storing templates, we'd have to provide some kind of app for creating the template files. Also, this requires external dependencies for testing the templates in the user's code. 2) Add readonly instances to the template class Example: public class Template { public string Name {get; set;} public string Description {get; set;} public string Attribute1 {get; set;} public string Attribute2 {get; set;} public Template PredefinedTemplate { get { Template templateInstance = new Template(); templateInstance.Name = "Some Name"; templateInstance.Description = "A description"; ... return templateInstance; } } public Template() { //constructor } public void DoSomething() { //does something } ... } This method would be convenient for users, as they would be able to access the predefined templates in code directly, and would be able to unit test code that used them. The drawback here is that the predefined templates pollute the Template type namespace with a bunch of extra stuff. I suppose I could put the predefined templates in a different namespace to get around this drawback. The only other problem with this approach is that I'd have to basically duplicate all the namespaces in the library in the predefined namespace (e.g. Templates.SubTemplates and Predefined.Templates.SubTemplates) which would be a pain, and would also make refactoring more difficult. 3) Make the templates abstract classes and make the predefined templates inherit from those classes. For example: public abstract class Template { public string Name {get; set;} public string Description {get; set;} public string Attribute1 {get; set;} public string Attribute2 {get; set;} public Template() { //constructor } public void DoSomething() { //does something } ... } and public class PredefinedTemplate : Template { public PredefinedTemplate() { this.Name = "Some Name"; this.Description = "A description"; this.Attribute1 = "Some Value"; ... } } This solution is pretty similar to #2, but it ends up creating a lot of classes that don't really do anything (none of our predefined templates are currently overriding behavior), and don't have any methods, so I'm not sure how good a practice this is. Has anyone else had any experience with something like this? Is there a best practice of some kind, or a different/better approach that I haven't thought of? I'm kind of banging my head against a wall trying to figure out the best way to go. Thanks!

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• The five steps of business intelligence adoption: where are you?

  - by Red Gate Software BI Tools Team

  When I was in Orlando and New York last month, I spoke to a lot of business intelligence users. What they told me suggested a path of BI adoption. The user’s place on the path depends on the size and sophistication of their organisation. Step 1: A company with a database of customer transactions will often want to examine particular data, like revenue and unit sales over the last period for each product and territory. To do this, they probably use simple SQL queries or stored procedures to produce data on demand. Step 2: The results from step one are saved in an Excel document, so business users can analyse them with filters or pivot tables. Alternatively, SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) might be used to generate a report of the SQL query for display on an intranet page. Step 3: If these queries are run frequently, or business users want to explore data from multiple sources more freely, it may become necessary to create a new database structured for analysis rather than CRUD (create, retrieve, update, and delete). For example, data from more than one system — plus external information — may be incorporated into a data warehouse. This can become ‘one source of truth’ for the business’s operational activities. The warehouse will probably have a simple ‘star’ schema, with fact tables representing the measures to be analysed (e.g. unit sales, revenue) and dimension tables defining how this data is aggregated (e.g. by time, region or product). Reports can be generated from the warehouse with Excel, SSRS or other tools. Step 4: Not too long ago, Microsoft introduced an Excel plug-in, PowerPivot, which allows users to bring larger volumes of data into Excel documents and create links between multiple tables.  These BISM Tabular documents can be created by the database owners or other expert Excel users and viewed by anyone with Excel PowerPivot. Sometimes, business users may use PowerPivot to create reports directly from the primary database, bypassing the need for a data warehouse. This can introduce problems when there are misunderstandings of the database structure or no single ‘source of truth’ for key data. Step 5: Steps three or four are often enough to satisfy business intelligence needs, especially if users are sophisticated enough to work with the warehouse in Excel or SSRS. However, sometimes the relationships between data are too complex or the queries which aggregate across periods, regions etc are too slow. In these cases, it can be necessary to formalise how the data is analysed and pre-build some of the aggregations. To do this, a business intelligence professional will typically use SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) to create a multidimensional model — or “cube” — that more simply represents key measures and aggregates them across specified dimensions. Step five is where our tool, SSAS Compare, becomes useful, as it helps review and deploy changes from development to production. For us at Red Gate, the primary value of SSAS Compare is to establish a dialog with BI users, so we can develop a portfolio of products that support creation and deployment across a range of report and model types. For example, PowerPivot and the new BISM Tabular model create a potential customer base for tools that extend beyond BI professionals. We’re interested in learning where people are in this story, so we’ve created a six-question survey to find out. Whether you’re at step one or step five, we’d love to know how you use BI so we can decide how to build tools that solve your problems. So if you have a sixty seconds to spare, tell us on the survey!

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• Try the Oracle Database Appliance Manager Configurator - For Fun!

  - by pwstephe-Oracle

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 If you would like to get a first hand glimpse of how easy it is to configure an ODA, even if you don’t have access to one, it’s possible to download the Appliance Manager Configurator from the Oracle Technology Network, and run it standalone on your PC or Linux/Unix  workstation. The configurator is packaged in a zip file that contains the complete Java environment to run standalone. Once the package is downloaded and unzipped it’s simply a matter of launching it using the config command or shell depending on your runtime environment. Oracle Appliance Manager Configurator is a Java-based tool that enables you to input your deployment plan and validate your network settings before an actual deployment, or you can just preview and experiment with it. Simply download and run the configurator on a local client system which can be a Windows, Linux, or UNIX system. (For Windows launch the batch file config.bat for Linux/Unix environments, run  ./ config.sh). You will be presented with the very same dialogs and options used to configure a production ODA but on your workstation. At the end of a configurator session, you may save your deployment plan in a configuration file. If you were actually ready to deploy, you could copy this configuration file to a real ODA where the online Oracle Appliance Manager Configurator would use the contents to deploy your plan in production. You may also print the file’s content and use the printout as a checklist for setting up your production external network configuration. Be sure to use the actual production network addresses you intend to use it as this will only work correctly if your client system is connected to same network that will be used for the ODA. (This step is not necessary if you are just previewing the Configurator). This is a great way to get an introductory look at the simple and intuitive Database Appliance configuration interface and the steps to configure a system. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• Does *every* project benefit from written specifications?

  - by nikie

  I know this is holy war territory, so please read the question to the end before answering. There are many cases where written specifications make a lot of sense. For example, if you're a contractor and you want to get paid, you need written specs. If you're working in a team with 20 persons, you need written specs. If you're writing a programming language compiler or interpreter (and it's not perl), you'll usually write a formal specification. I don't doubt that there are many more cases where written specifications are a really good idea. I just think that there are cases where there's so little benefit in written specs, that it doesn't outweigh the costs of writing and maintaining them. EDIT: The close votes say that "it is difficult to say what is asked here", so let me clarify: The usefulness of written, detailed specifications is often claimed like a dogma. (If you want examples, look at the comments.) But I don't see the use of them for the kind of development I'm doing. So what is asked here is: How would written specifications help me? Background information: I work for a small company that's developing vertical market software. If our product is easier to use and has better performance than the competition, it sells. If it's harder to use, even if it behaves 100% as the specification says, it doesn't sell. So there are no "external forces" for having written specs. The advantage would have to be somewhere in the development process. Now, I can see how frozen specifications would make a developer's life easier. But we'll never have frozen specs. If we see in the middle of development that feature X is not intuitive to use the way it's specified, then we can only choose between changing the specification or developing a product that won't sell. You'll probably ask by now: How do you know when you're done? Well, we're continually improving our product. The competition does the same. So (hopefully) we're never done. We keep improving the software, and when we reach a point when the benefits of the improvements we've added since the last release outweigh the costs of an update, we create a new release that is then tested, localized, documented and deployed. This also means that there's rarely any schedule pressure. Nobody has to do overtime to make a deadline. If the feature isn't done by the time we want to release the next version, it'll simply go into the next version. The next question might be: How do your developers know what they're supposed to implement? The answer is: They have a lot of domain knowledge. They know the customers business well enough, so a high-level description of the feature (or even just the problem that the customer needs solved) is enough to implement it. If it's not clear, the developer creates a few fake screens to get feedback from marketing/management or customers, but this is nowhere near the level of detail of actual specifications. This might be inefficient for larger teams, but for a small team with low turnover it works quite well. It has the additional benefit that the developer in question often comes up with a better solution than the person writing the specs might have. This question is already getting very long, but let me address one last point: Testing. Like I said in the beginning, if our software behaves 100% like the spec says, it still can be crap. In fact, if it's so unintuitive that you need a spec to know how to test it, it probably is crap. It makes sense to have fixed, written tests for some core functionality and for regression bugs, but again, this is nowhere near a full written spec of how the software should behave when. The main test is: hand the software to a user who doesn't know it yet and tell him to use the new feature X. If she can figure out how to use it and it works, it works.

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• Why is the framerate (fps) capped at 60?

  - by dennmat

  ISSUE I recently moved a project from my laptop to my desktop(machine info below). On my laptop the exact same code displays the fps(and ms/f) correctly. On my desktop it does not. What I mean by this is on the laptop it will display 300 fps(for example) where on my desktop it will show only up to 60. If I add 100 objects to the game on the laptop I'll see my frame rate drop accordingly; the same test on the desktop results in no change and the frames stay at 60. It takes a lot(~300) entities before I'll see a frame drop on the desktop, then it will descend. It seems as though its "theoretical" frames would be 400 or 500 but will never actually get to that and only do 60 until there's too much to handle at 60. This 60 frame cap is coming from no where. I'm not doing any frame limiting myself. It seems like something external is limiting my loop iterations on the desktop, but for the last couple days I've been scratching my head trying to figure out how to debug this. SETUPS Desktop: Visual Studio Express 2012 Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit Laptop: Visual Studio Express 2010 Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit The libraries(allegro, box2d) are the same versions on both setups. CODE Main Loop: while(!abort) { frameTime = al_get_time(); if (frameTime - lastTime >= 1.0) { lastFps = fps/(frameTime - lastTime); lastTime = frameTime; avgMspf = cumMspf/fps; cumMspf = 0.0; fps = 0; } /** DRAWING/UPDATE CODE **/ fps++; cumMspf += al_get_time() - frameTime; } Note: There is no blocking code in the loop at any point. Where I'm at My understanding of al_get_time() is that it can return different resolutions depending on the system. However the resolution is never worse than seconds, and the double is represented as [seconds].[finer-resolution] and seeing as I'm only checking for a whole second al_get_time() shouldn't be responsible. My project settings and compiler options are the same. And I promise its the same code on both machines. My googling really didn't help me much, and although technically it's not that big of a deal. I'd really like to figure this out or perhaps have it explained, whichever comes first. Even just an idea of how to go about figuring out possible causes, because I'm out of ideas. Any help at all is greatly appreciated. EDIT: Thanks All. For any others that find this to disable vSync(windows only) in opengl: First get "wglext.h". It's all over the web. Then you can use a tool like GLee or just write your own quick extensions manager like: bool WGLExtensionSupported(const char *extension_name) { PFNWGLGETEXTENSIONSSTRINGEXTPROC _wglGetExtensionsStringEXT = NULL; _wglGetExtensionsStringEXT = (PFNWGLGETEXTENSIONSSTRINGEXTPROC) wglGetProcAddress("wglGetExtensionsStringEXT"); if (strstr(_wglGetExtensionsStringEXT(), extension_name) == NULL) { return false; } return true; } and then create and setup your function pointers: PFNWGLSWAPINTERVALEXTPROC wglSwapIntervalEXT = NULL; PFNWGLGETSWAPINTERVALEXTPROC wglGetSwapIntervalEXT = NULL; if (WGLExtensionSupported("WGL_EXT_swap_control")) { // Extension is supported, init pointers. wglSwapIntervalEXT = (PFNWGLSWAPINTERVALEXTPROC) wglGetProcAddress("wglSwapIntervalEXT"); // this is another function from WGL_EXT_swap_control extension wglGetSwapIntervalEXT = (PFNWGLGETSWAPINTERVALEXTPROC) wglGetProcAddress("wglGetSwapIntervalEXT"); } Then just call wglSwapIntervalEXT(0) to disable vSync and 1 to enable vSync. I found the reason this is windows only is that openGl actually doesn't deal with anything other than rendering it leaves the rest up to the OS and Hardware. Thanks everyone saved me a lot of time!

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• Understanding the Value of SOA

  - by Mala Narasimharajan

  Written By: Debra Lilley, ACE Director, Fusion Applications Again I want to talk from my area of expertise of Fusion Applications and talk about their design fundamentals. If you look at the table below and start at the bottom Oracle have defined all of the business objects e.g. accounts, people, customers, invoices etc. used by Fusion Applications; each of these objects contain all of the information required and can be expanded if necessary.  That Oracle have created for each of these business objects every action that is needed for the applications e.g. all the actions to create a new customer, checking to see if it exists, credit checking with D&B (Dun & Bradstreet < http://www.dnb.co.uk/> ) , creating the record, notifying those required etc. Each of these actions is a stand-alone web service. Again you can create a new actions or subscribe to an external provided web service e.g. the D&B check. The diagram also shows that all of development of Fusion Applications is from their Fusion Middleware offerings. Then the Intelligent Business Process is the order in which you run these actions, this is Service Orientated Architecture, SOA. Not only is SOA used to orchestrate actions within Fusion Applications it is also used in the integration of Fusion Applications with the rest of the Oracle stable of applications such as EBS, PeopleSoft, JDE and Siebel. The other applications are written with propriety development tools so how do they work with SOA? It’s a very simple answer, with the introduction of the Oracle SOA platform each process within these applications was made available to be called as a web service. I won’t go into technically how that is done but what’s known as a wrapper to allow each of them to act in this way was added. Finally at the top of the diagram are the questions that each Fusion Application process must answer, and this is the ‘special’ sauce that makes them so good, the User Experience, but that is a topic for another day, or you can read about it in my blog http://debrasoracle.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/going-on-record-about-fusion-apps-cloud.html or Oracle’s own UX blog https://blogs.oracle.com/usableapps/ The concept behind AppAdvantage is not new the idea that Oracle technology can add value to your Oracle applications investments is pretty fundamental. Nishit Rao who is in AppAdvantage team provided myself and other ACE Directors with demo kits so that we could demonstrate SOA running with the applications. The example I learnt to build was that of the EBS inventory open interface. The simple concept is that request records can be added to a table and an import run that creates these as transactions in inventory. What’s SOA allows you to do is to add to the table from any source and then run this process automatically whereas traditionally you had to run the process at regular intervals because you didn’t know if the table was empty or not. This may just sound like a different way of doing the same thing but if the process is critical for your business then the interval was very small and the process run potentially many times unnecessarily. Using SOA it only happened when necessary without any delay. So in my post today I’ve talked about how SOA is used with Fusion Applications and in the linking with more traditional applications but that is only the tip of the iceberg of potential, your applications are just part of your IT systems and SOA can orchestrate your data across all of them; the beauty of open standards.  Debra Lilley, Fusion Champion, UKOUG Board Member, Fusion User Experience Advocate and ACE Director.  Lilley has 18 years experience with Oracle Applications, with E Business Suite since 9.4.1, moving to Business Intelligence Team Lead and Oracle Alliance Director. She has spoken at over 100 conferences worldwide and posts at debrasoraclethoughts

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• pfsense peer-to-peer OpenVPN not connecting

  - by John P

  I'm trying to setup a peer-to-peer OpenVPN between two pfsense servers running 2.0.1-RELEASE, but the client keeps getting the connection dropped, with a status of "reconnecting; ping-restart" and nothing appears to be routing between them. Both these firewalls are also doing PPTP VPNs that are working correctly. FW01 ("server") ======================= LAN: 10.1.1.2/24 WAN: xx.xx.126.34/27 ServerMode: Peer to Peer (Shared Key) Protocol: UDP DeviceMode: tun Interface: WAN Port 1194 Tunnel: 10.0.8.1/30 Local Network: 10.1.1.0/24 Remote Network: 192.168.1.0/24 Firewall Rule in OpenVPN tab: UDP * * * * * none FW03 (client) LAN: 192.168.1.2/24 WAN: xx.xx.9.66/27 ServerMode: Peer to Peer (Shared Key) Protocol: UDP DeviceMode: tun Interface: WAN Server Host: xx.xx.126.34 Tunnel: -- also tried 10.1.8.0/24 Remote Network: 10.1.1.0/24 Client Logs: System Log Apr 6 18:00:08 kernel: ... Restarting packages. Apr 6 18:00:13 check_reload_status: Starting packages Apr 6 18:00:19 php: : Restarting/Starting all packages. Apr 6 18:00:56 kernel: ovpnc1: link state changed to DOWN Apr 6 18:00:56 check_reload_status: Reloading filter Apr 6 18:00:57 check_reload_status: Reloading filter Apr 6 18:00:57 kernel: ovpnc1: link state changed to UP Apr 6 18:00:57 check_reload_status: rc.newwanip starting ovpnc1 Apr 6 18:00:57 check_reload_status: Syncing firewall Apr 6 18:01:02 php: : rc.newwanip: Informational is starting ovpnc1. Apr 6 18:01:02 php: : rc.newwanip: on (IP address: ) (interface: ) (real interface: ovpnc1). Apr 6 18:01:02 php: : rc.newwanip: Failed to update IP, restarting... Apr 6 18:01:02 php: : send_event: sent interface reconfigure got ERROR: incomplete command. all reload reconfigure restart newip linkup sync Client OpenVPN log Apr 6 18:39:14 openvpn[12177]: Inactivity timeout (--ping-restart), restarting Apr 6 18:39:14 openvpn[12177]: SIGUSR1[soft,ping-restart] received, process restarting Apr 6 18:39:16 openvpn[12177]: NOTE: the current --script-security setting may allow this configuration to call user-defined scripts Apr 6 18:39:16 openvpn[12177]: Re-using pre-shared static key Apr 6 18:39:16 openvpn[12177]: Preserving previous TUN/TAP instance: ovpnc1 Apr 6 18:39:16 openvpn[12177]: UDPv4 link local (bound): [AF_INET]64.94.9.66 Apr 6 18:39:16 openvpn[12177]: UDPv4 link remote: [AF_INET]64.74.126.34:1194 Server OpenVPN log Apr 6 14:40:36 openvpn[22117]: UDPv4 link remote: [undef] Apr 6 14:40:36 openvpn[22117]: UDPv4 link local (bound): [AF_INET]xx.xx.126.34:1194 Apr 6 14:40:36 openvpn[21006]: /usr/local/sbin/ovpn-linkup ovpns1 1500 1557 10.1.8.1 10.1.8.2 init Apr 6 14:40:36 openvpn[21006]: /sbin/ifconfig ovpns1 10.1.8.1 10.1.8.2 mtu 1500 netmask 255.255.255.255 up Apr 6 14:40:36 openvpn[21006]: do_ifconfig, tt-ipv6=0, tt-did_ifconfig_ipv6_setup=0 Apr 6 14:40:36 openvpn[21006]: TUN/TAP device /dev/tun1 opened Apr 6 14:40:36 openvpn[21006]: Control Channel Authentication: using '/var/etc/openvpn/server1.tls-auth' as a OpenVPN static key file Apr 6 14:40:36 openvpn[21006]: NOTE: the current --script-security setting may allow this configuration to call user-defined scripts Apr 6 14:40:36 openvpn[21006]: OpenVPN 2.2.0 amd64-portbld-freebsd8.1 [SSL] [LZO2] [eurephia] [MH] [PF_INET6] [IPv6 payload 20110424-2 (2.2RC2)] built on Aug 11 2011 Apr 6 14:40:36 openvpn[17171]: SIGTERM[hard,] received, process exiting Apr 6 14:40:36 openvpn[17171]: /usr/local/sbin/ovpn-linkdown ovpns1 1500 1557 10.1.8.1 10.1.8.2 init Apr 6 14:40:36 openvpn[17171]: ERROR: FreeBSD route delete command failed: external program exited with error status: 1 Apr 6 14:40:36 openvpn[17171]: event_wait : Interrupted system call (code=4) Apr 6 14:06:32 openvpn[17171]: Initialization Sequence Completed Apr 6 14:06:32 openvpn[17171]: UDPv4 link remote: [undef] Apr 6 14:06:32 openvpn[17171]: UDPv4 link local (bound): [AF_INET]xx.xx.126.34:1194

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• Encouter error "Linux ip -6 addr add failed" while setting up OpenVPN client

  - by Mickel

  I am trying to set up my router to use OpenVPN and have gotten quite far (I think), but something seems to be missing and I am not sure what. Here is my configuration for the client: client dev tun proto udp remote ovpn.azirevpn.net 1194 remote-random resolv-retry infinite auth-user-pass /tmp/password.txt nobind persist-key persist-tun ca /tmp/AzireVPN.ca.crt remote-cert-tls server reneg-sec 0 verb 3 OpenVPN client log: Nov 8 15:45:13 rc_service: httpd 15776:notify_rc start_vpnclient1 Nov 8 15:45:14 openvpn[27196]: OpenVPN 2.3.2 arm-unknown-linux-gnu [SSL (OpenSSL)] [LZO] [EPOLL] [MH] [IPv6] built on Nov 1 2013 Nov 8 15:45:14 openvpn[27196]: NOTE: the current --script-security setting may allow this configuration to call user-defined scripts Nov 8 15:45:14 openvpn[27196]: Socket Buffers: R=[116736->131072] S=[116736->131072] Nov 8 15:45:14 openvpn[27202]: UDPv4 link local: [undef] Nov 8 15:45:14 openvpn[27202]: UDPv4 link remote: [AF_INET]178.132.75.14:1194 Nov 8 15:45:14 openvpn[27202]: TLS: Initial packet from [AF_INET]178.132.75.14:1194, sid=44d80db5 8b36adf9 Nov 8 15:45:14 openvpn[27202]: WARNING: this configuration may cache passwords in memory -- use the auth-nocache option to prevent this Nov 8 15:45:14 openvpn[27202]: VERIFY OK: depth=1, C=RU, ST=Moscow, L=Moscow, O=Azire Networks, OU=VPN, CN=Azire Networks, name=Azire Networks, [email protected] Nov 8 15:45:14 openvpn[27202]: Validating certificate key usage Nov 8 15:45:14 openvpn[27202]: ++ Certificate has key usage 00a0, expects 00a0 Nov 8 15:45:14 openvpn[27202]: VERIFY KU OK Nov 8 15:45:14 openvpn[27202]: Validating certificate extended key usage Nov 8 15:45:14 openvpn[27202]: ++ Certificate has EKU (str) TLS Web Server Authentication, expects TLS Web Server Authentication Nov 8 15:45:14 openvpn[27202]: VERIFY EKU OK Nov 8 15:45:14 openvpn[27202]: VERIFY OK: depth=0, C=RU, ST=Moscow, L=Moscow, O=AzireVPN, OU=VPN, CN=ovpn, name=ovpn, [email protected] Nov 8 15:45:15 openvpn[27202]: Data Channel Encrypt: Cipher 'BF-CBC' initialized with 128 bit key Nov 8 15:45:15 openvpn[27202]: Data Channel Encrypt: Using 160 bit message hash 'SHA1' for HMAC authentication Nov 8 15:45:15 openvpn[27202]: Data Channel Decrypt: Cipher 'BF-CBC' initialized with 128 bit key Nov 8 15:45:15 openvpn[27202]: Data Channel Decrypt: Using 160 bit message hash 'SHA1' for HMAC authentication Nov 8 15:45:15 openvpn[27202]: Control Channel: TLSv1, cipher TLSv1/SSLv3 DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA, 2048 bit RSA Nov 8 15:45:15 openvpn[27202]: [ovpn] Peer Connection Initiated with [AF_INET]178.132.75.14:1194 Nov 8 15:45:17 openvpn[27202]: SENT CONTROL [ovpn]: 'PUSH_REQUEST' (status=1) Nov 8 15:45:17 openvpn[27202]: PUSH: Received control message: 'PUSH_REPLY,ifconfig-ipv6 2a03:8600:1001:4010::101f/64 2a03:8600:1001:4010::1,route-ipv6 2000::/3 2A03:8600:1001:4010::1,redirect-gateway def1 bypass-dhcp,dhcp-option DNS 194.1.247.30,tun-ipv6,route-gateway 178.132.77.1,topology subnet,ping 3,ping-restart 15,ifconfig 178.132.77.33 255.255.255.192' Nov 8 15:45:17 openvpn[27202]: OPTIONS IMPORT: timers and/or timeouts modified Nov 8 15:45:17 openvpn[27202]: OPTIONS IMPORT: --ifconfig/up options modified Nov 8 15:45:17 openvpn[27202]: OPTIONS IMPORT: route options modified Nov 8 15:45:17 openvpn[27202]: OPTIONS IMPORT: route-related options modified Nov 8 15:45:17 openvpn[27202]: OPTIONS IMPORT: --ip-win32 and/or --dhcp-option options modified Nov 8 15:45:17 openvpn[27202]: TUN/TAP device tun0 opened Nov 8 15:45:17 openvpn[27202]: TUN/TAP TX queue length set to 100 Nov 8 15:45:17 openvpn[27202]: do_ifconfig, tt->ipv6=1, tt->did_ifconfig_ipv6_setup=1 Nov 8 15:45:17 openvpn[27202]: /usr/sbin/ip link set dev tun0 up mtu 1500 Nov 8 15:45:18 openvpn[27202]: /usr/sbin/ip addr add dev tun0 178.132.77.33/26 broadcast 178.132.77.63 Nov 8 15:45:18 openvpn[27202]: /usr/sbin/ip -6 addr add 2a03:8600:1001:4010::101f/64 dev tun0 Nov 8 15:45:18 openvpn[27202]: Linux ip -6 addr add failed: external program exited with error status: 254 Nov 8 15:45:18 openvpn[27202]: Exiting due to fatal error Any ideas are most welcome!

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• Double Layer DVD+R burning problem - I/O Error

  - by Mehper C. Palavuzlar

  I have a modern PC (Quad Core CPU, 4 GB RAM, Win7 Home Premium 64-bit) but I have a problem with burning .dvd images to Double Layer (8.5 GB) DVDs. I wasted too many DVD+R DL discs but to no avail. Here is a short explanation of what I did: I'm using ImgBurn v2.5.0.0 (latest version). I'm trying to burn an image file (.dvd) which is together with the related .iso file in the same folder. In ImgBurn, I select the file with .dvd extension, and set writing speed to 2.4x. Burning process starts normally, but around 7% of the process, it gives a I/O Write Error, which is as follows: I wasted 3 discs (Magic, Made in Taiwan, DVD+R DL, 8.5 GB) trying the same thing. My DVD writer is LG GH22NP20 with IDE connection type. I updated its firmware from 1.04 to 2.00 but no success in burning again. Then my cousin brought his LG (an older model) which, he claims, was successful in writing DL discs with the same brand (Magic). I plugged off my LG and plugged the older one in, and tried to burn the image again. It also gave an I/O Error even without standing till 7%. I tried another burning program (CloneCD), but failed again. Then I bought other brands (TDK and VERBATIM) and tried to burn the image. Burning process started successfully, but around 14% (for Verbatim) and 25% (for TDK) failed again. Here is a screeny from ImgBurn: I've burned lots of 4.7 GB DVD+Rs and DVD-Rs successfully, even without a single error, with this LG DVD writer, but this case is very bothering for me. What should I do? Should I buy a new DVD writer other than LG? Could this be related to Windows or my hardware configuration? Thanks for your help. Edit: My burner works on my cousin's machine. So the problem must be related to my system. What could be the reason? Latest news: I borrowed an external USB DVD writer from a friend, which is PHILIPS SPD3000CC (an old model). Guess what! It's burning DVD+R DLs successfully! How come an internal DVD writer of a brand new computer system cannot burn DL DVDs? Now I'm considering buying a new internal DVD writer with not IDE, but SATA connection...

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• Excel 2007 VBA macros don't work in Parallels

  - by MindModel

  I've got a complex Excel spreadsheet I need to use at work. My colleagues use the spreadsheet on Windows PC's, with no special configuration required. I want to run it on a MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard. The spreadsheet contains VBA macros which connect to external Oracle db's over the Internet. If I understand correctly, Excel on the Mac doesn't run VBA macros, so I have to use Parallels. I installed Parallels on the Mac and it's running correctly, as far as I can tell. I installed Excel 2007 under Parallels. I can open the Excel spreadsheet in Parallels and click buttons in the spreadsheet to run macros, but the macros fail with compiler errors. I don't have the password to the source code for the VBA macros, and if possible, I don't want to dig in to the code at that level. I know that there are quite a few things that could go wrong, and examining the VBA code might help, but I'm hoping to solve the problem without going down that road. The spreadsheet runs without any special configuration on Windows, so I'm wondering if anyone out there knows of any limitations of Excel VBA macros under Parallels, or anything else I could do to get this spreadsheet working. It's the only thing that's keeping me from using this MacBook Pro at work. Here is the error message: Compile error in hidden module: clsXXXXx0020Toolx0020Ser. This error commonly occurs when code is incompatible with the version, platform, or architecture of this application. Click Help for more info. Compile error in hidden module: A protected module contains a compilation error. Because the error is in a protected module it cannot be displayed. This error commonly occurs when code is incompatible with the version or architecture of this application (for example, code in a document targets 32-bit Microsoft Office applications but it is attempting to run on 64-bit Office). This error has the following cause and solution: Cause of the error: The error is raised when a compilation error exists in the VBA code inside a protected (hidden) module. The specific compilation error is not exposed because the module is protected. Possible solutions: If you have access to the VBA code in the document or project, unprotect the module, and then run the code again to view the specific error. If you do not have access to the VBA code in the document, then contact the document author to have the code in the hidden module updated.

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• Can't ssh tunnel to access a remote mysql server

  - by hobbes3

  I can't seem to figure out why I can't use ssh tunnel to connect to my remote MySQL server. I do ssh tunnel with [hobbes3@hobbes3] ~ $ ssh linode -L 3307:localhost:3306 Then on another terminal, I try [hobbes3@hobbes3] ~ $ mysql -h localhost -P 3307 -u root --protocol=tcp -p Enter password: ERROR 2013 (HY000): Lost connection to MySQL server at 'reading initial communication packet', system error: 2 On the server, it shows this: root@li534-120 ~ # channel 4: open failed: connect failed: Connection refused Here is my my.cnf on the server: [mysqld] # Settings user and group are ignored when systemd is used (fedora >= 15). # If you need to run mysqld under different user or group, # customize your systemd unit file for mysqld according to the # instructions in http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Systemd user=mysql datadir=/var/lib/mysql socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock # Disabling symbolic-links is recommended to prevent assorted security risks symbolic-links=0 # Semisynchronous Replication # http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/replication-semisync.html # uncomment next line on MASTER ;plugin-load=rpl_semi_sync_master=semisync_master.so # uncomment next line on SLAVE ;plugin-load=rpl_semi_sync_slave=semisync_slave.so # Others options for Semisynchronous Replication ;rpl_semi_sync_master_enabled=1 ;rpl_semi_sync_master_timeout=10 ;rpl_semi_sync_slave_enabled=1 # http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/performance-schema.html ;performance_schema [mysqld_safe] log-error=/var/log/mysqld.log pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid [mysqld] port = 3306 socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock skip-external-locking key_buffer_size = 64M max_allowed_packet = 128M sort_buffer_size = 512K net_buffer_length = 8K read_buffer_size = 256K read_rnd_buffer_size = 512K myisam_sort_buffer_size = 8M thread_cache = 8 max_connections = 25 query_cache_size = 16M table_open_cache = 1024 table_definition_cache = 1024 tmp_table_size = 32M max_heap_table_size = 32M bind-address = 0.0.0.0 Now sure if this helps but here is the MySQL user list: mysql> select * from mysql.user; +-----------+------+-------------------------------------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-----------+-------------+---------------+--------------+-----------+------------+-----------------+------------+------------+--------------+------------+-----------------------+------------------+--------------+-----------------+------------------+------------------+----------------+---------------------+--------------------+------------------+------------+--------------+------------------------+----------+------------+-------------+--------------+---------------+-------------+-----------------+----------------------+--------+-----------------------+ | Host | User | Password | Select_priv | Insert_priv | Update_priv | Delete_priv | Create_priv | Drop_priv | Reload_priv | Shutdown_priv | Process_priv | File_priv | Grant_priv | References_priv | Index_priv | Alter_priv | Show_db_priv | Super_priv | Create_tmp_table_priv | Lock_tables_priv | Execute_priv | Repl_slave_priv | Repl_client_priv | Create_view_priv | Show_view_priv | Create_routine_priv | Alter_routine_priv | Create_user_priv | Event_priv | Trigger_priv | Create_tablespace_priv | ssl_type | ssl_cipher | x509_issuer | x509_subject | max_questions | max_updates | max_connections | max_user_connections | plugin | authentication_string | +-----------+------+-------------------------------------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-----------+-------------+---------------+--------------+-----------+------------+-----------------+------------+------------+--------------+------------+-----------------------+------------------+--------------+-----------------+------------------+------------------+----------------+---------------------+--------------------+------------------+------------+--------------+------------------------+----------+------------+-------------+--------------+---------------+-------------+-----------------+----------------------+--------+-----------------------+ | localhost | root | *664328D3C5E263F4FB25185681AAE7E92B01B2B0 | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | | | | | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | | | | 127.0.0.1 | root | *664328D3C5E263F4FB25185681AAE7E92B01B2B0 | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | | | | | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | | | | ::1 | root | *664328D3C5E263F4FB25185681AAE7E92B01B2B0 | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | | | | | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | | | +-----------+------+-------------------------------------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-----------+-------------+---------------+--------------+-----------+------------+-----------------+------------+------------+--------------+------------+-----------------------+------------------+--------------+-----------------+------------------+------------------+----------------+---------------------+--------------------+------------------+------------+--------------+------------------------+----------+------------+-------------+--------------+---------------+-------------+-----------------+----------------------+--------+-----------------------+ 3 rows in set (0.00 sec) I read about how MySQL treats localhost vs 127.0.0.1 as connecting via a socket or TCP, respectively. But I'm starting to get confused on what's really going on or if socket vs TCP is even the issue. Thanks in advance and I'm open for any tips and suggestions! Some more info: My MySQL client, running OS X 10.8.4, is mysql Ver 14.14 Distrib 5.6.10, for osx10.8 (x86_64) using EditLine wrapper My MySQL server, running on CentOS 6.4 32-bit, is mysql> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE "%version%"; +-------------------------+--------------------------------------+ | Variable_name | Value | +-------------------------+--------------------------------------+ | innodb_version | 1.1.8 | | protocol_version | 10 | | slave_type_conversions | | | version | 5.5.28 | | version_comment | MySQL Community Server (GPL) by Remi | | version_compile_machine | i686 | | version_compile_os | Linux | +-------------------------+--------------------------------------+ 7 rows in set (0.00 sec)

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• Dynamic DNS with Comcast

  - by colithium

  I've just recently moved across town. Previously, I had Dynamic DNS set up so I could remotely connect to my desktop (primarily to use TightVNC). My ISP was Comcast and I'm in the Denver, Colorado area. Currently, I'm still with Comcast and still in Denver. My router connects to the internet just fine and my Dynamic DNS record over at DynDNS did get updated with my router's current external IP address. So my router, DynDNS, and public DNS records all agree what my IP address is. However, I can't actually connect to anything from the outside world. My trace route to Google looks something like: Tracing route to google.com [74.125.19.147] 1 3 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.1.1 (this is the internal IP address of my router) 2 * * * Request timed out. 3 9 ms 8 ms 10 ms te-8-2-ur02.wheatridge.co.denver.comcast.net [68.85.221.177] 4 12 ms 12 ms 19 ms te-0-8-0-2-ar02.aurora.co.denver.comcast.net [68.86.103.97] 5 16 ms 13 ms 11 ms pos-0-3-0-0-cr01.denver.co.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.91.1] 6 28 ms 28 ms 27 ms pos-0-9-0-0-cr01.dallas.tx.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.85.174] 7 29 ms 27 ms 28 ms pos-0-1-0-0-pe01.1950stemmons.tx.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.86.94] 8 66 ms 108 ms * 75.149.231.70 9 65 ms 68 ms 93 ms 72.14.233.77 10 67 ms 66 ms 66 ms 72.14.233.111 11 67 ms 67 ms 69 ms 216.239.43.144 12 68 ms 71 ms 73 ms 209.85.249.30 13 66 ms 66 ms 68 ms nuq04s01-in-f147.1e100.net [74.125.19.147] This is what the trace route looks like from an outside source to my DynDNS domain name: traceroute to 98.245.67.65 (98.245.67.65) 1 illuminati-130 138.67.130.61 2 138.67.63.253 138.67.63.253 3 vermiculite 138.67.253.20 4 csm-ct-gw 138.67.253.244 5 138.67.253.2 138.67.253.2 6 ge-7-24-ar01.denver.co.denver.comcast.net 68.86.128.17 7 te-0-4-0-0-ar02.denver.co.denver.comcast.net 68.86.179.21 8 te-9-3-ur01.wheatridge.co.denver.comcast.net 68.86.103.18 9 * * * {Times Out} Now my guess is, whatever is sitting just beyond my router (what the modem connects to) is gumming things up. Even though the routes aren't EXACTLY the same, that appears to be the spot that the trace route either stops or doesn't get a response. My question is, for Comcast networks (particularly in Denver), what would be the device that typically sits there? Is there anything I can do about it? That device seems to not respond to PING but does forward it along when I'm going outwards. But it looks like it eats it when the request is coming in. It's hard to prove that from these logs but I'm assuming that's the case because my router used to accept connections from the outside and I haven't changed anything on it.

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• APC UPS replace battery light and apcupsd reporting "replace battery"

  - by mgjk

  We have an APC Smart UPS 1500. The "Replace Battery" light is on, and apcupsd reports: Emergency! Batteries have failed on UPS xxxx. Change them NOW However, from this article, http://sturgeon.apcc.com/kbasewb2.nsf/for+external/f39c4312fcaf7b948525679a005ebb78?OpenDocument it seems that it's not so clear that the UPS battery needs to be replaced. Stranger, according to the information on the UPS, an 11 minute runtime at 42.9% load running at 27.7V isn't so bad. Any thoughts about what to try next? We're a non-profit, money is an object. It would be a shame to replace a battery with a year or so left in it. # apcaccess status APC : 001,041,1017 DATE : Thu Mar 29 13:01:41 EDT 2012 HOSTNAME : oreilly2 VERSION : 3.14.6 (16 May 2009) debian UPSNAME : xxxx CABLE : Custom Cable Smart MODEL : Smart-UPS 1500 UPSMODE : Stand Alone STARTTIME: Thu Mar 29 12:57:30 EDT 2012 STATUS : ONLINE LINEV : 112.3 Volts LOADPCT : 42.9 Percent Load Capacity BCHARGE : 100.0 Percent TIMELEFT : 11.0 Minutes MBATTCHG : 5 Percent MINTIMEL : 3 Minutes MAXTIME : 0 Seconds OUTPUTV : 112.3 Volts SENSE : High DWAKE : -01 Seconds DSHUTD : 090 Seconds LOTRANS : 106.0 Volts HITRANS : 127.0 Volts RETPCT : 000.0 Percent ITEMP : 23.8 C Internal ALARMDEL : Always BATTV : 27.7 Volts LINEFREQ : 60.0 Hz LASTXFER : No transfers since turnon NUMXFERS : 0 TONBATT : 0 seconds CUMONBATT: 0 seconds XOFFBATT : N/A SELFTEST : NO STATFLAG : 0x07000008 Status Flag SERIALNO : AS0603298896 BATTDATE : 2006-01-14 NOMOUTV : 120 Volts NOMBATTV : 24.0 Volts FIRMWARE : 601.3.D USB FW:1.5 APCMODEL : Smart-UPS 1500 END APC : Thu Mar 29 13:02:12 EDT 2012 Error when running upstest You are using a SMART cable type, so I'm entering SMART test mode mode.type = USB_UPS Setting up the port ... Hello, this is the apcupsd Cable Test program. This part of apctest is for testing Smart UPSes. Please select the function you want to perform. 1) Query the UPS for all known values 2) Perform a Battery Runtime Calibration 3) Abort Battery Calibration 4) Monitor Battery Calibration progress 5) Program EEPROM 6) Enter TTY mode communicating with UPS 7) Quit Select function number: 2 First ensure that we have a good link and that the UPS is functionning normally. Simulating UPSlinkCheck ... YWrote: Y Got: getline failed. Apparently the link is not up. Giving up.

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• PSTN Trunk TDM400P Install on Asterisk / Trixbox

  - by Jona

  Hey All, I'm trying to get a TDM400P card with FXO module to connect to our PSTN line. The card is correctly detected by Linux: [trixbox1.localdomain asterisk]# lspci 00:09.0 Communication controller: Tiger Jet Network Inc. Tiger3XX Modem/ISDN interface And asterisk can see the channel: > trixbox1*CLI> dahdi show channel 1 > Channel: 1LI> File Descriptor: 14 > Span: 11*CLI> Extension: I> Dialing: > noI> Context: from-pstn Caller ID: I> > Calling TON: 0 Caller ID name: > Mailbox: none Destroy: 0LI> InAlarm: > 1LI> Signalling Type: FXS Kewlstart > Radio: 0*CLI> Owner: <None> Real: > <None>> Callwait: <None> Threeway: > <None> Confno: -1LI> Propagated > Conference: -1 Real in conference: 0 > DSP: no1*CLI> Busy Detection: no TDD: > no1*CLI> Relax DTMF: no > Dialing/CallwaitCAS: 0/0 Default law: > ulaw Fax Handled: no Pulse phone: no > DND: no1*CLI> Echo Cancellation: > trixbox1128 taps trixbox1(unless TDM > bridged) currently OFF Actual > Confinfo: Num/0, Mode/0x0000 Actual > Confmute: No > Hookstate (FXS only): Onhook I have configured a "ZAP Trunk (DAHDI compatibility Mode)" with the ZAP identifier 1 and an outbound route, but when ever I try to make an external call via it I get the "All Circuits are busy now, please try your call again later message". The FXO module is directly connected to our phone line from BT via a BT-RJ11 cable. I'm guessing I've missed a configuration step somewhere but no idea where, any help greatly appreciated.

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• Real server, Multiple IP Addresses, HyperV Virtual Server, How to partition IPs across real and Virtual NICs

  - by Steven_W

  This is a slightly difficult problem to explain without same basic background information - I'll try and refine the question later as necessary Originally, I have a single hosted server (Win 2008R2) with the following range of 8 IP addresses. - Single NIC - IP: x.x.128.72 -> x.x.128.79 - Subnet: x.x.255.192 - GW: x.x.128.65 After installing Hyper-V and setting up a single virtual server on the same box, I then wanted to assign one of the IP addresses to the virtual server, leaving everything else running normally. -- Firstly, I tried using the "External" network, but (even after setting IPs on the "Virtual Adapter" similar to Here but struggled to get networking running at all. I needed to keep the server running (otherwise I would have spent more time pursuing this approach) Q1 ... Was this a sensible thing to do ? Should I have carried on down this route ? -- I then decided to try different approach - Set the HyperV network to "Internal" (visible to Management OS) - Physical NIC - IP: x.x.128.72 -> x.x.128.75 - Subnet: x.x.255.192 - GW: x.x.128.65 - Virtual NIC - IP: x.x.128.78 - Subnet: x.x.255.252 - GW: x.x.128.72 ... { The same as the IP of the physical NIC ) - Virtual OS-NIC - IP: x.x.128.77 - Subnet: x.x.255.252 - GW: x.x.128.78 ... { The same as the IP of the host virtual-NIC ) -- Surprisingly enough, this approach actually worked, and I was able to connect from all the following: - Internet to/from physical NIC (x.x.128.72) - physical NIC (x.x.128.72) to virtual-OS-NIC (x.x.128.77) e.g. testing via ping + FTP - Internet to/from virtual-OS-NIC (x.x.128.72) -- The problem I have is that this approach seems to only last for a short while (a few hours). After this time, it seems that I lose the ability to connect from Virtual-OS-NIC to/from the internet (but I can still connect from the host-OS to the virtual-OS and from the host-OS to the internet) I have re-tested this a couple of times with the same results ... I leave the server on for a few hours (e.g. overnight), and when I come back in the morning, the Virtual-OS loses the ability to route to the internet -- I'm not quite sure what to look at next (or whether I'm going about this completely the wrong way ) One "possible relevant item" is that the host-OS is also running RRAS (Routing and Remote Access), but this is only to run a simple VPN -- Q2 - Wheat should I be looking at next ? (Any good references / recommendations of what to try) Would appreciate any thoughts or comments (even if you tell me I'm going about this the wrong way)

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• VirtualBox guest responds to ping but all ports closed in nmap

  - by jeremyjjbrown

  I want to setup a test database on a vm for development purposes but I cannot connect to the server via the network. I've got Ubuntu 12.04vm installed on 12.04 host in Virtualbox 4.2.4 set to - Bridged network mode - Promiscuous Allow All When I try to ping the virtual guest from any network client I get the expected result. PING 192.168.1.209 (192.168.1.209) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 192.168.1.209: icmp_req=1 ttl=64 time=0.427 ms ... Internet access inside the vm is normal But when I nmap it I get nothin! jeremy@bangkok:~$ nmap -sV -p 1-65535 192.168.1.209 Starting Nmap 5.21 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2012-11-15 18:39 CST Nmap scan report for jeremy (192.168.1.209) Host is up (0.0032s latency). All 65535 scanned ports on jeremy (192.168.1.209) are closed Service detection performed. Please report any incorrect results at http://nmap.org/submit/ Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0.88 seconds ufw and iptables on VM... jeremy@jeremy:~$ sudo service ufw stop [sudo] password for jeremy: ufw stop/waiting jeremy@jeremy:~$ sudo iptables -L Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT) target prot opt source destination Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT) target prot opt source destination Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT) target prot opt source destination I have scanned around and have no reason to believe that my router is blocking internal ports. jeremy@bangkok:~$ nmap -v 192.168.1.2 Starting Nmap 5.21 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2012-11-15 18:44 CST Initiating Ping Scan at 18:44 Scanning 192.168.1.2 [2 ports] Completed Ping Scan at 18:44, 0.00s elapsed (1 total hosts) Initiating Parallel DNS resolution of 1 host. at 18:44 Completed Parallel DNS resolution of 1 host. at 18:44, 0.03s elapsed Initiating Connect Scan at 18:44 Scanning 192.168.1.2 [1000 ports] Discovered open port 445/tcp on 192.168.1.2 Discovered open port 139/tcp on 192.168.1.2 Discovered open port 3306/tcp on 192.168.1.2 Discovered open port 80/tcp on 192.168.1.2 Discovered open port 111/tcp on 192.168.1.2 Discovered open port 53/tcp on 192.168.1.2 Discovered open port 5902/tcp on 192.168.1.2 Discovered open port 8090/tcp on 192.168.1.2 Discovered open port 6881/tcp on 192.168.1.2 Completed Connect Scan at 18:44, 0.02s elapsed (1000 total ports) Nmap scan report for 192.168.1.2 Host is up (0.0017s latency). Not shown: 991 closed ports PORT STATE SERVICE 53/tcp open domain 80/tcp open http 111/tcp open rpcbind 139/tcp open netbios-ssn 445/tcp open microsoft-ds 3306/tcp open mysql 5902/tcp open vnc-2 6881/tcp open bittorrent-tracker 8090/tcp open unknown Read data files from: /usr/share/nmap Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0.08 seconds Answer... Turns out all of the ports were open to the network. I installed open ssh and confirmed it. Then I edited my db conf to listen to external IP's and all was well.

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• Install Ubuntu 12.04 in UEFI mode on a HP Pavilion dv6-6c40ca

  - by Marlen T. B.

  I have recently (as of July 2012) bought a HP Pavilion dv6-6c40ca laptop. It came pre-installed with Windows 7 on an MBR. I installed Ubuntu 12.04 on it on a GPT partition in what I think is BIOS emulation mode. I made a BIOS-Grub partition so the install didn't fail. That is what it is for .. right? Now I want to upgrade to UEFI mode. How would I Install Ubuntu 12.04 in UEFI mode on a HP Pavilion dv6-6c40ca. Or is it impossible? My laptop, despite its new age may not be UEFI 2.0+ capable. If it isn't how can I install a software UEFI (i.e. a DUET such as the one by tianocore). Or is this too impossible? A link to my laptop's specs is: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c03137924&tmp_task=prodinfoCategory&cc=ca&dlc=en&lang=en&lc=en&product=5218530 My laptop should have a UEFI given this link from HP http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?cc=us&lc=en&docname=c01442956#N218. And from the link I draw a quote: That means most notebooks distributed with Windows Vista, and all notebooks distributed with Windows 7, have the UEFI environment. My laptop had Windows 7 Home Premium pre-installed. OK. Following the comments so far -- NOTE: I am trying to do this on an external drive so I can see if it works. I have partitioned the drive using GParted as a GPT drive. Created a 200MB partition at the beginning of the drive with a FAT32 file system. Given the 200MB partition a label of "EFI". Set the boot flag on the 200MB partition. What should a do next to install Ubuntu 12.04? Given the link: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFIBooting#Selecting_the_.28U.29EFI_Graphic_Protocol In my first read through (just to see if I will understand everything before I start) I get to step 2.3 Install GRUB2 in (U)EFI systems The first line is Boot into Linux (any live ISO) preferably in UEFI mode. Um .. how do you tell what mode your live CD is in?! And how do you change it if the mode is wrong?

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