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• Countdown timer using NSTimer in "0:00" format

  - by Joey Pennacchio

  I have been researching for days on how to do this and nobody has an answer. I am creating an app with 5 timers on the same view. I need to create a timer that counts down from "15:00" (minutes and seconds), and, another that counts down from "2:58" (minutes and seconds). The 15 minute timer should not repeat, but it should stop all other timers when it reaches "00:00." The "2:58" timer should repeat until the "15:00" or "Game Clock" reaches 0. Right now, I have scrapped almost all of my code and I'm working on the "2:58" repeating timer, or "rocketTimer." Does anyone know how to do this? Here is my code: #import <UIKit/UIKit.h> @interface FirstViewController : UIViewController { //Rocket Timer int totalSeconds; bool timerActive; NSTimer *rocketTimer; IBOutlet UILabel *rocketCount; int newTotalSeconds; int totalRocketSeconds; int minutes; int seconds; } - (IBAction)Start; @end and my .m #import "FirstViewController.h" @implementation FirstViewController - (NSString *)timeFormatted:(int)newTotalSeconds { int seconds = totalSeconds % 60; int minutes = (totalSeconds / 60) % 60; return [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%i:%02d"], minutes, seconds; } -(IBAction)Start { newTotalSeconds = 178; //for 2:58 newTotalSeconds = newTotalSeconds-1; rocketCount.text = [self timeFormatted:newTotalSeconds]; if(timerActive == NO){ timerActive = YES; newTotalSeconds = 178; [rocketTimer scheduledTimerWithTimeInterval:1.0 target:self selector:@selector(timerLoop) userInfo:nil repeats:YES]; } else{ timerActive = NO; [rocketTimer invalidate]; rocketTimer = nil; } } -(void)timerLoop:(id)sender { totalSeconds = totalSeconds-1; rocketCount.text = [self timeFormatted:totalSeconds]; } - (void)dealloc { [super dealloc]; [rocketTimer release]; } - (void)didReceiveMemoryWarning { // Releases the view if it doesn't have a superview. [super didReceiveMemoryWarning]; // Release any cached data, images, etc that aren't in use. } - (void)viewDidLoad { [super viewDidLoad]; // Do any additional setup after loading the view from its nib. timerActive = NO; } - (void)viewDidUnload { [super viewDidUnload]; // Release any retained subviews of the main view. // e.g. self.myOutlet = nil; } - (BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)interfaceOrientation { // Return YES for supported orientations return (interfaceOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait); } @end

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• sendmail and MX records when mail server is not on web host

  - by Jim Nelson

  This is a problem I'm sure is easy to fix, but I've been banging my head on it all day. I'm developing a new web site for a client. The web site resides at (this is an example) website.com. I have a PHP form script to email visitors' requests to [email protected]. When I coded this on a staging server on a different domain, all worked fine. When I moved it to website.com, the mail messages never arrived. The web server is on a virtual host with a major ISP. Here's what I've learned since then: My client's mail server is Microsoft Exchange on a box physically in their office. Whenever someone on the outside world emails [email protected], the mail arrives. But if the web server sends to the same email address, it fails every time. This is not a PHP problem. I secure shell in to the web server and have tested this both with sendmail and the UNIX mail application. I've also tested it by emailing various email accounts from the shell. I can email myself, for example, just nobody at the website.com domain. In short, when I'm logged in to website.com, mail to [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] all fail. All other addresses work fine. What I've discovered is those dropped emails are routed to the web server's "catchall" account where they sit in its inbox. I've done an MX lookup on website.com. The MX record points to mailsec.website.com. I can telnet to mailsec.website.com port 25 and see the SMTP server. It appears to me that website.com isn't doing an MX lookup when it's sending mail to [email protected]. My theory is that it recognizes the domain as local, sees that there's no "requests" user account to deliver it to, and drops the mail into the catchall account. What I want is to force sendmail to do the MX lookup and send the message on to the Exchange server. I'm at wit's end here. I can't figure out how to do this. For that matter, I may be way off base here and have misdiagnosed this entirely. Internet mail and MX has always seemed a black art to me, and my ignorance is certainly showing in this question.

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• usercontrol hosted in IE renders as a textbox

  - by coxymla

  On my ongoing saga to mirror the hosting of a legacy app on a clean box, I've hit my next snag. One page relies on a big .NET UserControl that on the new machine renders only as a big, greyed out textarea (greyed out vertical scrollbar on the right hand edge. Inspecting the source shows the expected object tag.) This is particularly tricky because nobody seems to know much about hosted UserControls and all the discussions data back to 2002-2004. The page is quite simple: <%@ Page language="c#" Codebehind="DataExport.aspx.cs" AutoEventWireup="false" Inherits="yyyyy.Web.DataExport" %> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" > <html> <head> <title>DataExport</title> <link rel="Configuration" href="/xxxxx/yyyyy/DataExport.config"> </head> <body style="margin:0px;padding:0px;overflow:hidden"> <OBJECT id="DataExport" style="WIDTH: 100%; HEIGHT: 100%; position:absolute; left: 0px; top:0px" classid="yyyyy.Common.dll#yyyyy.Controls.DataExport" VIEWASTEXT> </OBJECT> </body> </html> The config file referenced: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <configuration> <configSections> <sectionGroup name="yyyyy"> <section name="dataExport" type="yyyyy.Controls.DataExportSectionHandler,yyyyy.Common" /> </sectionGroup> </configSections> <yyyyy> <dataExport> <layoutFile>http://vm2/xxxxx/yyyyy/layout.xml</layoutFile> <webServiceUrl>http://vm2/xxxxx/yyyyy/services/yyyyy.asmx</webServiceUrl> </dataExport> </yyyyy> </configuration> What I've checked: Security permissions should be OK, the site is trusted and adding a URL exception to grant FullTrust doesn't change anything. Config file is acessible over the web, layout.xml is accessible, ASMX shows the expected command list Machine.config grants GET permission for the usercontrol.config file. What perhaps looks fishy to me: The DataExport UserControl references Aspose.Excel to generate the spreadsheets it exports. When I navigate to the page and get a blank textbox, then run gacutil /ldl, nothing is in the local download cache. On the working machine, running the same command after viewing the page shows a laundry list of DLLs including the control DLL and the Aspose DLL.

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• Php plugin to replace '->' with '.' as the member access operator ? Or even better: alternative synt

  - by Gigi

  Present day usable solution: Note that if you use an ide or an advanced editor, you could make a code template, or record a macro that inserts '->' when you press Ctrl and '.' or something. Netbeans has macros, and I have recorded a macro for this, and I like it a lot :) (just click the red circle toolbar button (start record macro),then type -> into the editor (thats all the macro will do, insert the arrow into the editor), then click the gray square (stop record macro) and assign the 'Ctrl dot' shortcut to it, or whatever shortcut you like) The php plugin: The php plugin, would also have to have a different string concatenation operator than the dot. Maybe a double dot ? Yea... why not. All it has to do is set an activation tag so that it doesnt replace / interpreter '.' as '->' for old scripts and scripts that dont intent do use this. Something like this: <php+ $obj.i = 5 ?> (notice the modified '<?php' tag to '<?php+' ) This way it wouldnt break old code. (and you can just add the '<?php+' code template to your editor and then type 'php tab' (for netbeans) and it would insert '<?php+' ) With the alternative syntax method you could even have old and new syntax cohabitating on the same page like this (I am illustrating this to show the great compatibility of this method, not because you would want to do this): <?php+ $obj.i = 5; ?> <?php $obj->str = 'a' . 'b'; ?> You could change the tag to something more explanatory, in case somebody who doesnt know about the plugin reads the script and thinks its a syntax error <?php-dot.com $obj.i = 5; ?> This is easy because most editors have code templates, so its easy to assign a shortcut to it. And whoever doesnt want the dot replacement, doesnt have to use it. These are NOT ultimate solutions, they are ONLY examples to show that solutions exist, and that arguments against replacing '->' with '.' are only excuses. (Just admit you like the arrow, its ok : ) With this potential method, nobody who doesnt want to use it would have to use it, and it wouldnt break old code. And if other problems (ahem... excuses) arise, they could be fixed too. So who can, and who will do such a thing ?

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• Database Schema Versioning Strategies

  - by Jack Ryan

  I work on a project that uses a reasonably large database, the live version weighing in at somewhere around 60-80GB. The live database is the only real definitive source of our schema, and because of its size duplicating this database is too slow to be done often. This means we have ended up developing our database schema in a pretty ad hoc way, using sql compare to migrate changes from dev dbs to the live system, and only wiping our dev dbs every month or two. I am hoping to get some pointers on how to improve our database development work flow so that we have a little more control. Some things to think about: Currently nobody is really in charge of the database schema, all developers can change it if they need to, though generally these decisions are talked about before they are done. There are stored procedures, functions, and views in the database. These should probably be dumped to files so they can be reloaded on every build. Schema changes should probably be checked in as scripts. We have started to do this recently. However all our scripts must then be numbered (because there may be dependencies between them), and must be re runnable (because our build script currently runs them all in order). This makes them hard to read because they are full of conditionals that check whether tables or columns already exist. This is a step that is often forgotten by developers. Getting a new database should be quick and easy. This is currently a big problem, it takes several hours to get a copy of last nights backup and restore it onto a dev machine. Some mechanism needs to be in place to allow developers to update static data. We have tables that contain data that is never updated through the application, but does potentially need to be changed when we do a new release (often this drives dropdowns). The whole thing needs to be runnable as part of a build script. Are there any tools that can be used to help to do this? Eventually I would like to be at a point where a new DB can be built from scratch without copying any data from the live system. I don't mind writing some scripts to glue all the steps together but each part should be easily editable so that we continue to use it rather than make changes directly on DBs.

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• Should the argument be passed by reference in this .net example?

  - by Hamish Grubijan

  I have used Java, C++, .Net. (in that order). When asked about by-value vs. by-ref on interviews, I have always done well on that question ... perhaps because nobody went in-depth on it. Now I know that I do not see the whole picture. I was looking at this section of code written by someone else: XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument(); AppendX(doc); // Real name of the function is different AppendY(doc); // ditto When I saw this code, I thought: wait a minute, should not I use a ref in front of doc variable (and modify AppendX/Y accordingly? it works as written, but made me question whether I actually understand the ref keyword in C#. As I thought about this more, I recalled early Java days (college intro language). A friend of mine looked at some code I have written and he had a mental block - he kept asking me which things are passed in by reference and when by value. My ignorant response was something like: Dude, there is only one kind of arg passing in Java and I forgot which one it is :). Chill, do not over-think and just code. Java still does not have a ref does it? Yet, Java hackers seem to be productive. Anyhow, coding in C++ exposed me to this whole by reference business, and now I am confused. Should ref be used in the example above? I am guessing that when ref is applied to value types: primitives, enums, structures (is there anything else in this list?) it makes a big difference. And ... when applied to objects it does not because it is all by reference. If things were so simple, then why would not the compiler restrict the usage of ref keyword to a subset of types. When it comes to objects, does ref serve as a comment sort of? Well, I do remember that there can be problems with null and ref is also useful for initializing multiple elements within a method (since you cannot return multiple things with the same easy as you would do in Python). Thanks.

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• [c#] SoundPlayer.PlaySync stopping prematurely

  - by JeffE

  I want to play a wav file synchronously on the gui thread, but my call to PlaySync is returning early (and prematurely stopping playback). The wav file is 2-3 minutes. Here's what my code looks like: //in gui code (event handler) //play first audio file JE_SP.playSound("example1.wav"); //do a few other statements doSomethingUnrelated(); //play another audio file JE_SP.playSound("example2.wav"); //library method written by me, called in gui code, but located in another assembly public static int playSound(string wavFile, bool synchronous = true, bool debug = true, string logFile = "", int loadTimeout = FIVE_MINUTES_IN_MS) { SoundPlayer sp = new SoundPlayer(); sp.LoadTimeout = loadTimeout; sp.SoundLocation = wavFile; sp.Load(); switch (synchronous) { case true: sp.PlaySync(); break; case false: sp.Play(); break; } if (debug) { string writeMe = "JE_SP: \r\n\tSoundLocation = " + sp.SoundLocation + "\r\n\t" + "Synchronous = " + synchronous.ToString(); JE_Log.logMessage(writeMe); } sp.Dispose(); sp = null; return 0; } Some things I've thought of are the load timeout, and playing the audio on another thread and then manually 'freeze' the gui by forcing the gui thread to wait for the duration of the sound file. I tried lengthening the load timeout, but that did nothing. I'm not quite sure what the best way to get the duration of a wav file is without using code written by somebody who isn't me/Microsoft. I suppose this can be calculated since I know the file size, and all of the encoding properties (bitrate, sample rate, sample size, etc) are consistent across all files I intend to play. Can somebody elaborate on how to calculate the duration of a wav file using this info? That is, if nobody has an idea about why PlaySync is returning early. Of Note: I encountered a similar problem in VB 6 a while ago, but that was caused by a timeout, which I don't suspect to be a problem here. Shorter (< 1min) files seem to play fine, so I might decide to manually edit the longer files down, then play them separately with multiple calls.

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• DropDownList and SelectListItem Array Item Updates in MVC

  - by Rick Strahl

  So I ran into an interesting behavior today as I deployed my first MVC 4 app tonight. I have a list form that has a filter drop down that allows selection of categories. This list is static and rarely changes so rather than loading these items from the database each time I load the items once and then cache the actual SelectListItem[] array in a static property. However, when we put the site online tonight we immediately noticed that the drop down list was coming up with pre-set values that randomly changed. Didn't take me long to trace this back to the cached list of SelectListItem[]. Clearly the list was getting updated - apparently through the model binding process in the selection postback. To clarify the scenario here's the drop down list definition in the Razor View:@Html.DropDownListFor(mod => mod.QueryParameters.Category, Model.CategoryList, "All Categories") where Model.CategoryList gets set with:[HttpPost] [CompressContent] public ActionResult List(MessageListViewModel model) { InitializeViewModel(model); busEntry entryBus = new busEntry(); var entries = entryBus.GetEntryList(model.QueryParameters); model.Entries = entries; model.DisplayMode = ApplicationDisplayModes.Standard; model.CategoryList = AppUtils.GetCachedCategoryList(); return View(model); } The AppUtils.GetCachedCategoryList() method gets the cached list or loads the list on the first access. The code to load up the list is housed in a Web utility class. The method looks like this:/// <summary> /// Returns a static category list that is cached /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public static SelectListItem[] GetCachedCategoryList() { if (_CategoryList != null) return _CategoryList; lock (_SyncLock) { if (_CategoryList != null) return _CategoryList; var catBus = new busCategory(); var categories = catBus.GetCategories().ToList(); // Turn list into a SelectItem list var catList= categories .Select(cat => new SelectListItem() { Text = cat.Name, Value = cat.Id.ToString() }) .ToList(); catList.Insert(0, new SelectListItem() { Value = ((int)SpecialCategories.AllCategoriesButRealEstate).ToString(), Text = "All Categories except Real Estate" }); catList.Insert(1, new SelectListItem() { Value = "-1", Text = "--------------------------------" }); _CategoryList = catList.ToArray(); } return _CategoryList; } private static SelectListItem[] _CategoryList ; This seemed normal enough to me - I've been doing stuff like this forever caching smallish lists in memory to avoid an extra trip to the database. This list is used in various places throughout the application - for the list display and also when adding new items and setting up for notifications etc.. Watch that ModelBinder! However, it turns out that this code is clearly causing a problem. It appears that the model binder on the [HttpPost] method is actually updating the list that's bound to and changing the actual entry item in the list and setting its selected value. If you look at the code above I'm not setting the SelectListItem.Selected value anywhere - the only place this value can get set is through ModelBinding. Sure enough when stepping through the code I see that when an item is selected the actual model - model.CategoryList[x].Selected - reflects that. This is bad on several levels: First it's obviously affecting the application behavior - nobody wants to see their drop down list values jump all over the place randomly. But it's also a problem because the array is getting updated by multiple ASP.NET threads which likely would lead to odd crashes from time to time. Not good! In retrospect the modelbinding behavior makes perfect sense. The actual items and the Selected property is the ModelBinder's way of keeping track of one or more selected values. So while I assumed the list to be read-only, the ModelBinder is actually updating it on a post back producing the rather surprising results. Totally missed this during testing and is another one of those little - "Did you know?" moments. So, is there a way around this? Yes but it's maybe not quite obvious. I can't change the behavior of the ModelBinder, but I can certainly change the way that the list is generated. Rather than returning the cached list, I can return a brand new cloned list from the cached items like this:/// <summary> /// Returns a static category list that is cached /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public static SelectListItem[] GetCachedCategoryList() { if (_CategoryList != null) { // Have to create new instances via projection // to avoid ModelBinding updates to affect this // globally return _CategoryList .Select(cat => new SelectListItem() { Value = cat.Value, Text = cat.Text }) .ToArray(); } …}  The key is that newly created instances of SelectListItems are returned not just filtered instances of the original list. The key here is 'new instances' so that the ModelBinding updates do not update the actual static instance. The code above uses LINQ and a projection into new SelectListItem instances to create this array of fresh instances. And this code works correctly - no more cross-talk between users. Unfortunately this code is also less efficient - it has to reselect the items and uses extra memory for the new array. Knowing what I know now I probably would have not cached the list and just take the hit to read from the database. If there is even a possibility of thread clashes I'm very wary of creating code like this. But since the method already exists and handles this load in one place this fix was easy enough to put in. Live and learn. It's little things like this that can cause some interesting head scratchers sometimes…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in MVC  ASP.NET  .NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• postfix with mailman

  - by Thufir

  What should happen is that [email protected] should be delivered to that users inbox on localhost, user@localhost. Thunderbird works fine at reading user@localhost. I'm just using a small portion of postfix-dovecot with Ubuntu mailman. How can I get postfix to recognize the FQDN and deliver them to a localhost inbox? root@dur:~# root@dur:~# tail /var/log/mail.err;tail /var/log/mailman/subscribe;postconf -n Aug 27 18:59:16 dur dovecot: lda(root): Error: chdir(/root) failed: Permission denied Aug 27 18:59:16 dur dovecot: lda(root): Error: user root: Initialization failed: Initializing mail storage from mail_location setting failed: stat(/root/Maildir) failed: Permission denied (euid=65534(nobody) egid=65534(nogroup) missing +x perm: /root, dir owned by 0:0 mode=0700) Aug 27 18:59:16 dur dovecot: lda(root): Fatal: Invalid user settings. Refer to server log for more information. Aug 27 20:09:16 dur postfix/trivial-rewrite[15896]: error: open database /etc/postfix/transport.db: No such file or directory Aug 27 21:19:17 dur postfix/trivial-rewrite[16569]: error: open database /etc/postfix/transport.db: No such file or directory Aug 27 22:27:00 dur postfix[17042]: fatal: usage: postfix [-c config_dir] [-Dv] command Aug 27 22:29:19 dur postfix/trivial-rewrite[17062]: error: open database /etc/postfix/transport.db: No such file or directory Aug 27 22:59:07 dur postfix/postfix-script[17459]: error: unknown command: 'restart' Aug 27 22:59:07 dur postfix/postfix-script[17460]: fatal: usage: postfix start (or stop, reload, abort, flush, check, status, set-permissions, upgrade-configuration) Aug 27 23:39:17 dur postfix/trivial-rewrite[17794]: error: open database /etc/postfix/transport.db: No such file or directory Aug 27 21:39:03 2012 (16734) cola: pending "[email protected]" <[email protected]> 127.0.0.1 Aug 27 21:40:37 2012 (16749) cola: pending "[email protected]" <[email protected]> 127.0.0.1 Aug 27 22:45:31 2012 (17288) gmane.mail.mailman.user.1: pending [email protected] 127.0.0.1 Aug 27 22:45:46 2012 (17293) gmane.mail.mailman.user.1: pending [email protected] 127.0.0.1 Aug 27 23:02:01 2012 (17588) test3: pending [email protected] 127.0.0.1 Aug 27 23:05:41 2012 (17652) test4: pending [email protected] 127.0.0.1 Aug 27 23:56:20 2012 (17985) test5: pending [email protected] 127.0.0.1 alias_database = hash:/etc/aliases alias_maps = hash:/etc/aliases, hash:/var/lib/mailman/data/aliases append_dot_mydomain = no biff = no broken_sasl_auth_clients = yes config_directory = /etc/postfix default_transport = smtp home_mailbox = Maildir/ inet_interfaces = loopback-only mailbox_command = /usr/lib/dovecot/deliver -c /etc/dovecot/conf.d/01-mail-stack-delivery.conf -m "${EXTENSION}" mailbox_size_limit = 0 mailman_destination_recipient_limit = 1 mydestination = dur, dur.bounceme.net, localhost.bounceme.net, localhost myhostname = dur.bounceme.net mynetworks = 127.0.0.0/8 [::ffff:127.0.0.0]/104 [::1]/128 readme_directory = no recipient_delimiter = + relay_domains = lists.dur.bounceme.net relay_transport = relay relayhost = smtp_tls_session_cache_database = btree:${data_directory}/smtp_scache smtp_use_tls = yes smtpd_banner = $myhostname ESMTP $mail_name (Ubuntu) smtpd_recipient_restrictions = reject_unknown_sender_domain, reject_unknown_recipient_domain, reject_unauth_pipelining, permit_mynetworks, permit_sasl_authenticated, reject_unauth_destination smtpd_sasl_auth_enable = yes smtpd_sasl_authenticated_header = yes smtpd_sasl_local_domain = $myhostname smtpd_sasl_path = private/dovecot-auth smtpd_sasl_security_options = noanonymous smtpd_sasl_type = dovecot smtpd_tls_auth_only = yes smtpd_tls_cert_file = /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-mail.pem smtpd_tls_key_file = /etc/ssl/private/ssl-mail.key smtpd_tls_mandatory_ciphers = medium smtpd_tls_mandatory_protocols = SSLv3, TLSv1 smtpd_tls_received_header = yes smtpd_tls_session_cache_database = btree:${data_directory}/smtpd_scache smtpd_use_tls = yes tls_random_source = dev:/dev/urandom transport_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/transport root@dur:~# there's definitely a transport problem: root@dur:~# root@dur:~# root@dur:~# grep transport /var/log/mail.log | tail Aug 27 22:29:19 dur postfix/trivial-rewrite[17062]: warning: hash:/etc/postfix/transport lookup error for "[email protected]" Aug 27 22:29:19 dur postfix/trivial-rewrite[17062]: warning: transport_maps lookup failure Aug 27 23:39:17 dur postfix/trivial-rewrite[17794]: error: open database /etc/postfix/transport.db: No such file or directory Aug 27 23:39:17 dur postfix/trivial-rewrite[17794]: warning: hash:/etc/postfix/transport is unavailable. open database /etc/postfix/transport.db: No such file or directory Aug 27 23:39:17 dur postfix/trivial-rewrite[17794]: warning: hash:/etc/postfix/transport lookup error for "*" Aug 27 23:39:17 dur postfix/trivial-rewrite[17794]: warning: hash:/etc/postfix/transport is unavailable. open database /etc/postfix/transport.db: No such file or directory Aug 27 23:39:17 dur postfix/trivial-rewrite[17794]: warning: hash:/etc/postfix/transport lookup error for "*" Aug 27 23:39:17 dur postfix/trivial-rewrite[17794]: warning: hash:/etc/postfix/transport is unavailable. open database /etc/postfix/transport.db: No such file or directory Aug 27 23:39:17 dur postfix/trivial-rewrite[17794]: warning: hash:/etc/postfix/transport lookup error for "[email protected]" Aug 27 23:39:17 dur postfix/trivial-rewrite[17794]: warning: transport_maps lookup failure root@dur:~# trying to add the transport file: EDIT root@dur:~# root@dur:~# touch /etc/postfix/transport root@dur:~# ll /etc/postfix/transport -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Aug 28 00:16 /etc/postfix/transport root@dur:~# root@dur:~# cd /etc/postfix/ root@dur:/etc/postfix# root@dur:/etc/postfix# postmap transport root@dur:/etc/postfix# root@dur:/etc/postfix# cat transport

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• TFS, G.I. Joe and Under-doing

  If I were to rank the most consistently irritating parts of my work day, using TFS would come in first by a wide margin. Even repeated network outages this week seem like a pleasant reprieve from this monolithic beast. This is not a reflexive anti-Microsoft feeling, that attitude just wouldnt work for a consultant who does .NET development. It is also not an utter dismissal of TFS as worthless; Ive seen people use it effectively on several projects. So why? Ill start with a laundry list of shortcomings. An out of the box UI for work items that is insultingly bad, a source control system that is confoundingly fragile when handling merges, folder renames and long file names, the arcane XML wizardry necessary to customize a template and a build system that adds an extra layer of oddness on top of msbuild. Im sure my legion of readers will soon point out to me how I can work around all these issues, how this is fixed in TFS 2010 or with this add-in, and how once you have everything set up, youre fine. And theyd be right, any one of these problems could be worked around. If not dirty laundry, what else? I thought about it for a while, and came to the conclusion that TFS is so irritating to me because it represents a vision of software development that I find unappealing. To expand upon this, lets start with some wisdom from those great PSAs at the end of the G.I. Joe cartoons of the 80s: Now you know, and knowing is half the battle. In software development, Id go further and say knowing is more than half the battle. Understanding the dimensions of the problem you are trying to solve, the needs of the users, the value that your software can provide are more than half the battle. Implementation of this understanding is not easy, but it is not even possible without this knowledge. Assuming we have a fixed amount of time and mental energy for any project, why does this spell trouble for TFS? If you think about what TFS is doing, its offering you a huge array of options to track the day to day implementation of your project. From tasks, to code churn, to test coverage. All valuable metrics, but only in exchange for valuable time to get it all working. In addition, when you have a shiny toy like TFS, the temptation is to feel obligated to use it. So the push from TFS is to encourage a project manager and team to focus on process and metrics around process. You can get great visibility, and graphs to show your project stakeholders, but none of that is important if you are not implementing the right product. Not just unimportant, these activities can be harmful as they drain your time and sap your creativity away from the rest of the project. To be more concrete, lets suppose your organization has invested the time to create a template for your projects and trained people in how to use it, so there is no longer a big investment of time for each project to get up and running. First, Id challenge if that template could be specific enough to be full featured and still applicable for any project. Second, the very existence of this template would be a indication to a project manager that the success of their project was somehow directly related to fitting management of that project into this format. Again, while the capabilities are wonderful, the mirage is there; just get everything into TFS and your project will run smoothly. Ill close the loop on this first topic by proposing a thought experiment. Think of the projects youve worked on. How many times have you been chagrined to discover youve implemented the wrong feature, misunderstood how a feature should work or just plain spent too much time on a screen that nobody uses? That sounds like a really worthwhile area to invest time in improving. How about going back to these projects and thinking about how many times you wished you had optimized the state change flow of your tasks or been embarrassed to not have a code churn report linked back to the latest changeset? With thanks to the Real American Heroes, Ill move on to a more current influence, that of the developers at 37signals, and their philosophy towards software development. This philosophy, fully detailed in the books Getting Real and Rework, is a vision of software that under does the competition. This is software that is deliberately limited in functionality in order to concentrate fully on making sure ever feature that is there is awesome and needed. Why is this relevant? Well, in one of those fun seeming paradoxes in life, constraints can be a spark for creativity. Think Twitter, the small screen of an iPhone, the limitations of HTML for applications, the low memory limits of older or embedded system. As long as there is some freedom within those constraints, amazing things emerge. For project management, some of the most respected people in the industry recommend using just index cards, pens and tape. They argue that with change the constant in software development, your process should be as limited (yet rigorous) as possible. Looking at TFS, this is not a system designed to under do anybody. It is a big jumble of components and options, with every feature you could think of. Predictably this means many basic functions are hard to use. For task management, many people just use an Excel spreadsheet linked up to TFS. Not a stirring endorsement of the tooling there. TFS as a whole would be far more appealing to me if there was less of it, but better. Id cut 50% of the features to make the other half really amaze and inspire me. And thats really the heart of the matter. TFS has great promise and I want to believe it can work better. But ultimately it focuses your attention on a lot of stuff that doesnt really matter and then clamps down your creativity in a mess of forms and dialogs obscuring what does.   --- Relevant Links --- All those great G.I. Joe PSAs are on YouTube, including lots of mashed up versions. A simple Google search will get you on the right track.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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• Hundreds of unknown entries in Linux logwatch

  - by Saif Bechan

  I have a dedicated server which runs centos. Today i got an email from loginwatch on my server with hundreds of lines of 'errors'. I don't really know what they are becasue i am fairly new at this. The lines are in a few sections, I will display the first 10 of all of them, i hope someone can help me fix these problems. --------------------- Named Begin ------------------------ **Unmatched Entries** client 216.146.46.136 notify question section contains no SOA: 8 Time(s) client 92.114.98.10 query (cache) 'adobe.com/A/IN' denied: 4 Time(s) network unreachable resolving '11.254.75.75.in-addr.arpa/PTR/IN': 2001:7fd::1#53: 1 Time(s) network unreachable resolving '136.176.97.93.in-addr.arpa/PTR/IN': 2001:13c7:7002:3000::11#53: 1 Time(s) network unreachable resolving '136.176.97.93.in-addr.arpa/PTR/IN': 2001:500:13::c7d4:35#53: 1 Time(s) network unreachable resolving '136.176.97.93.in-addr.arpa/PTR/IN': 2001:500:2e::1#53: 2 Time(s) network unreachable resolving '136.176.97.93.in-addr.arpa/PTR/IN': 2001:610:240:0:53::193#53: 1 Time(s) network unreachable resolving '136.176.97.93.in-addr.arpa/PTR/IN': 2001:610:240:0:53::3#53: 1 Time(s) network unreachable resolving '136.176.97.93.in-addr.arpa/PTR/IN': 2001:660:3006:1::1:1#53: 1 Time(s) network unreachable resolving '136.176.97.93.in-addr.arpa/PTR/IN': 2001:6b0:7::2#53: 1 Time(s) network unreachable resolving '136.176.97.93.in-addr.arpa/PTR/IN': 2001:dc0:1:0:4777::140#53: 1 Time(s) network unreachable resolving '136.176.97.93.in-addr.arpa/PTR/IN': 2001:dc0:2001:a:4608::59#53: 1 Time(s) network unreachable resolving '146.250.19.67.in-addr.arpa/PTR/IN': 2001:5a0:10::2#53: 1 Time(s) network unreachable resolving '149.207.106.87.in-addr.arpa/PTR/IN': 2001:7fd::1#53: 1 Time(s) network unreachable resolving '178.62.24.195.in-addr.arpa/PTR/IN': 2001:7fd::1#53: 1 Time(s) this goes on for hundreds of lines with all different domain names. --------------------- pam_unix Begin ------------------------ Failed logins from: 78.86.126.211 (78-86-126-211.zone2.bethere.co.uk): 111 times 93.97.176.136 (93-97-176-136.dsl.cnl.uk.net): 113 times 121.14.145.32: 136 times 190.152.69.5: 248 times 209.160.72.15: 572 times 210.26.48.35: 2 times 212.235.111.224 (DSL212-235-111-224.bb.netvision.net.il): 140 times 218.206.25.29: 140 times Illegal users from: 78.86.126.211 (78-86-126-211.zone2.bethere.co.uk): 2665 times 93.97.176.136 (93-97-176-136.dsl.cnl.uk.net): 2539 times 121.14.145.32: 116 times 190.152.69.5: 34 times 209.160.72.15: 324 times 218.206.25.29: 8051 times proftpd: Unknown Entries: session opened for user cent_ftp by (uid=0): 15 Time(s) session closed for user cent_ftp: 14 Time(s) sshd: Authentication Failures: unknown (218.206.25.29): 8051 Time(s) unknown (78-86-126-211.zone2.bethere.co.uk): 2665 Time(s) unknown (93.97.176.136): 2539 Time(s) root (209.160.72.15): 558 Time(s) unknown (209.160.72.15): 324 Time(s) root (190.152.69.5): 246 Time(s) unknown (121.14.145.32): 116 Time(s) root (121.14.145.32): 106 Time(s) root (dsl212-235-111-224.bb.netvision.net.il): 70 Time(s) root (93.97.176.136): 44 Time(s) root (78-86-126-211.zone2.bethere.co.uk): 37 Time(s) unknown (190.152.69.5): 34 Time(s) mysql (121.14.145.32): 30 Time(s) nobody (218.206.25.29): 26 Time(s) mail (218.206.25.29): 24 Time(s) news (218.206.25.29): 24 Time(s) root (218.206.25.29): 24 Time(s) --------------------- SSHD Begin ------------------------ **Unmatched Entries** pam_succeed_if(sshd:auth): error retrieving information about user tavi : 2 time(s) pam_succeed_if(sshd:auth): error retrieving information about user pam : 2 time(s) pam_succeed_if(sshd:auth): error retrieving information about user konchog : 1 time(s) pam_succeed_if(sshd:auth): error retrieving information about user stavrum : 2 time(s) pam_succeed_if(sshd:auth): error retrieving information about user rachel : 1 time(s) pam_succeed_if(sshd:auth): error retrieving information about user affiliates : 24 time(s) pam_succeed_if(sshd:auth): error retrieving information about user nen : 1 time(s) pam_succeed_if(sshd:auth): error retrieving information about user cobra : 1 time(s) pam_succeed_if(sshd:auth): error retrieving information about user pass : 7 time(s) pam_succeed_if(sshd:auth): error retrieving information about user hacer : 1 time(s) pam_succeed_if(sshd:auth): error retrieving information about user chung : 1 time(s) pam_succeed_if(sshd:auth): error retrieving information about user zainee : 1 time(s) pam_succeed_if(sshd:auth): error retrieving information about user radu : 2 time(s) pam_succeed_if(sshd:auth): error retrieving information about user alka : 4 time(s) pam_succeed_if(sshd:auth): error retrieving information about user albert : 5 time(s) pam_succeed_if(sshd:auth): error retrieving information about user turcia : 2 time(s) pam_succeed_if(sshd:auth): error retrieving information about user cordell : 2 time(s) pam_succeed_if(sshd:auth): error retrieving information about user silver : 2 time(s) pam_succeed_if(sshd:auth): error retrieving information about user dragon : 3 time(s) If someone wants to see the whole log i can upload it somewhere. Am i being hacked, what is this all?? I hope someone can help me, this does not look good at all.

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• Dealing with HTTP w00tw00t attacks

  - by Saif Bechan

  I have a server with apache and I recently installed mod_security2 because I get attacked a lot by this: My apache version is apache v2.2.3 and I use mod_security2.c This were the entries from the error log: [Wed Mar 24 02:35:41 2010] [error] [client 88.191.109.38] client sent HTTP/1.1 request without hostname (see RFC2616 section 14.23): /w00tw00t.at.ISC.SANS.DFind:) [Wed Mar 24 02:47:31 2010] [error] [client 202.75.211.90] client sent HTTP/1.1 request without hostname (see RFC2616 section 14.23): /w00tw00t.at.ISC.SANS.DFind:) [Wed Mar 24 02:47:49 2010] [error] [client 95.228.153.177] client sent HTTP/1.1 request without hostname (see RFC2616 section 14.23): /w00tw00t.at.ISC.SANS.DFind:) [Wed Mar 24 02:48:03 2010] [error] [client 88.191.109.38] client sent HTTP/1.1 request without hostname (see RFC2616 section 14.23): /w00tw00t.at.ISC.SANS.DFind:) Here are the errors from the access_log: 202.75.211.90 - - [29/Mar/2010:10:43:15 +0200] "GET /w00tw00t.at.ISC.SANS.DFind:) HTTP/1.1" 400 392 "-" "-" 211.155.228.169 - - [29/Mar/2010:11:40:41 +0200] "GET /w00tw00t.at.ISC.SANS.DFind:) HTTP/1.1" 400 392 "-" "-" 211.155.228.169 - - [29/Mar/2010:12:37:19 +0200] "GET /w00tw00t.at.ISC.SANS.DFind:) HTTP/1.1" 400 392 "-" "-" I tried configuring mod_security2 like this: SecFilterSelective REQUEST_URI "w00tw00t\.at\.ISC\.SANS\.DFind" SecFilterSelective REQUEST_URI "\w00tw00t\.at\.ISC\.SANS" SecFilterSelective REQUEST_URI "w00tw00t\.at\.ISC\.SANS" SecFilterSelective REQUEST_URI "w00tw00t\.at\.ISC\.SANS\.DFind:" SecFilterSelective REQUEST_URI "w00tw00t\.at\.ISC\.SANS\.DFind:\)" The thing in mod_security2 is that SecFilterSelective can not be used, it gives me errors. Instead I use a rule like this: SecRule REQUEST_URI "w00tw00t\.at\.ISC\.SANS\.DFind" SecRule REQUEST_URI "\w00tw00t\.at\.ISC\.SANS" SecRule REQUEST_URI "w00tw00t\.at\.ISC\.SANS" SecRule REQUEST_URI "w00tw00t\.at\.ISC\.SANS\.DFind:" SecRule REQUEST_URI "w00tw00t\.at\.ISC\.SANS\.DFind:\)" Even this does not work. I don't know what to do anymore. Anyone have any advice? Update 1 I see that nobody can solve this problem using mod_security. So far using ip-tables seems like the best option to do this but I think the file will become extremely large because the ip changes serveral times a day. I came up with 2 other solutions, can someone comment on them on being good or not. The first solution that comes to my mind is excluding these attacks from my apache error logs. This will make is easier for me to spot other urgent errors as they occur and don't have to spit trough a long log. The second option is better i think, and that is blocking hosts that are not sent in the correct way. In this example the w00tw00t attack is send without hostname, so i think i can block the hosts that are not in the correct form. Update 2 After going trough the answers I came to the following conclusions. To have custom logging for apache will consume some unnecessary recourses, and if there really is a problem you probably will want to look at the full log without anything missing. It is better to just ignore the hits and concentrate on a better way of analyzing your error logs. Using filters for your logs a good approach for this. Final thoughts on the subject The attack mentioned above will not reach your machine if you at least have an up to date system so there are basically no worries. It can be hard to filter out all the bogus attacks from the real ones after a while, because both the error logs and access logs get extremely large. Preventing this from happening in any way will cost you resources and they it is a good practice not to waste your resources on unimportant stuff. The solution i use now is Linux logwatch. It sends me summaries of the logs and they are filtered and grouped. This way you can easily separate the important from the unimportant. Thank you all for the help, and I hope this post can be helpful to someone else too.

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• dns queries not using nscd for caching

  - by xenoterracide

  I'm trying to use nscd (Nameservices Cache Daemon) to cache dns locally so I can stop using bind to do it. I've gotten it started and ntpd seems to attempt to use it. But everything else for hosts seems to ignore it. e.g if I do dig apache.org 3 times none of them will hit the cache. I'm viewing the cache stats using nscd -g to determine whether it's been used. I've also turned the debug log level up to see if I can see it hitting and the queries don't even hit nscd. nsswitch.conf # Begin /etc/nsswitch.conf passwd: files group: files shadow: files publickey: files hosts: cache files dns networks: files protocols: files services: files ethers: files rpc: files netgroup: files # End /etc/nsswitch.confenter code here nscd.conf # # /etc/nscd.conf # # An example Name Service Cache config file. This file is needed by nscd. # # Legal entries are: # # logfile <file> # debug-level <level> # threads <initial #threads to use> # max-threads <maximum #threads to use> # server-user <user to run server as instead of root> # server-user is ignored if nscd is started with -S parameters # stat-user <user who is allowed to request statistics> # reload-count unlimited|<number> # paranoia <yes|no> # restart-interval <time in seconds> # # enable-cache <service> <yes|no> # positive-time-to-live <service> <time in seconds> # negative-time-to-live <service> <time in seconds> # suggested-size <service> <prime number> # check-files <service> <yes|no> # persistent <service> <yes|no> # shared <service> <yes|no> # max-db-size <service> <number bytes> # auto-propagate <service> <yes|no> # # Currently supported cache names (services): passwd, group, hosts, services # logfile /var/log/nscd.log threads 4 max-threads 32 server-user nobody # stat-user somebody debug-level 9 # reload-count 5 paranoia no # restart-interval 3600 enable-cache passwd yes positive-time-to-live passwd 600 negative-time-to-live passwd 20 suggested-size passwd 211 check-files passwd yes persistent passwd yes shared passwd yes max-db-size passwd 33554432 auto-propagate passwd yes enable-cache group yes positive-time-to-live group 3600 negative-time-to-live group 60 suggested-size group 211 check-files group yes persistent group yes shared group yes max-db-size group 33554432 auto-propagate group yes enable-cache hosts yes positive-time-to-live hosts 3600 negative-time-to-live hosts 20 suggested-size hosts 211 check-files hosts yes persistent hosts yes shared hosts yes max-db-size hosts 33554432 enable-cache services yes positive-time-to-live services 28800 negative-time-to-live services 20 suggested-size services 211 check-files services yes persistent services yes shared services yes max-db-size services 33554432 resolv.conf # Generated by dhcpcd from eth0 nameserver 127.0.0.1 domain westell.com nameserver 192.168.1.1 nameserver 208.67.222.222 nameserver 208.67.220.220 as kind of a side note I'm using archlinux.

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• Weird networking problem ( Linksys, Windows 7 )

  - by Rohit Nair

  Okay it's a bit tough to figure out where to start from, but here is the basic summary of the issue: During general internet usage, there are times when any attempt to visit a website stalls at "Waiting for somedomain.com". This problem occurs in Firefox, IE and Chrome. No website will load, INCLUDING the router configuration page at 192.168.1.1. Curiously, ping works fine, and other network apps such as MSN Messenger continue to work and I can send and receive messages. Disconnecting and reconnecting to the wireless network seems to fix the problem for a bit, but there are times when it relapses into not loading after every 2-3 http requests. Restarting the router seems to fix the issue, but it can crop up hours or days later. I have a CCNA cert and I know my way around the Windows family of operating systems, so I'm going to list all the things I've tried here. Other computers on the network seem to suffer the same problem, which makes me think it might be a specific problem with something in Win7. The random nature of this issue makes it a bit difficult to confirm, but I can definitely say that I have experienced this on the following systems: Windows 7 64-bit on my desktop Windows Vista 32-bit on my desktop ( the desktop has 2 wireless NICs and the problem existed on both ) Windows Vista 32-bit on my laptop ( both with wireless and wired ) Windows XP SP3 on another laptop ( both wireless and wired ) Using Wireshark to sniff packets seemed to indicate that although HTTP requests were being SENT out, no packets were coming in to respond to the HTTP request. However, other network apps continued to work i.e I would still receive IMs on Windows Live Messenger. Disabling IPV6 had no effect. Updating router firmware to the latest stock firmware by Linksys had no effect. Switching to dd-wrt firmware had no effect. By "no effect" I mean that although the restart required by firmware updates fixed the problem at the time, it still came back. A couple of weeks back, after a LOT of googling and flipping of various options, I figured it might be a case of router slowdown ( http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Router%5FSlowdown ) caused by the fact that I occasionally run a torrent client. I tried changing the configuration as suggested in that router slowdown link, and restarted the router. However I have not run the torrent client for 12 days now, and yet I still randomly experience this problem. Currently the computer I am using is running Windows 7 64-bit. I would just like to reiterate some of the reasons that I was confused by the issue. Even the router config page at 192.168.1.1 would not load, indicating that it's not a problem with the WAN link, but probably a router issue or a local computer issue. For some reason, disconnecting and reconnecting to the wireless network immediately seems to fix the problem. Updating the router firmware, even switching to open source firmware did nothing. So it seemed to be a computer issue. On the other hand, I have not seen any mass outrage of people having networking problems with Windows 7 and Linksys routers, especially a problem of this sort, and I have tweaked every network setting I could think of. Although HTTP seems to have trouble, ping works fine, DNS lookups work fine, other networking apps work fine. However if I disconnect from Windows Live Messenger and try to reconnect, it fails to reconnect. So although it could receive data over the existing TCP/IP connection, trying to start a new one failed? Does anyone have any further ideas on debugging or fixing this issue? I am reasonably certain there are no viruses or other malicious apps on my network, and I am also reasonably certain that nobody is accessing my router without my consent. Router: Linksys WRT54G2 1.0 running dd-wrt firmware Wireless Card: Alfa AWUS036H OS: Windows 7 64-bit EDIT: I tried switching to a clean wireless channel free from interference, but the problem still persisted. I tried connecting directly with a cable, but the problem still persisted. Signed A very confused and bewildered geek whose knowledge seems to be useless in the face of this frustrating network issue.

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• Magento installation problem on Nginx in Windows

  - by Nithin

  I am trying to install magento locally using nginx as the web server instead of Apache. I copied the magento folder to the html directory. When i try to call the magento folder, I get the 404 not found error. I am able to access other php files setup in the html folder and have PHP installed. Here is my config file: #user nobody; worker_processes 1; #error_log logs/error.log; #error_log logs/error.log notice; #error_log logs/error.log info; #pid logs/nginx.pid; events { worker_connections 1024; } http { include mime.types; default_type application/octet-stream; #log_format main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" ' # '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" ' # '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"'; #access_log logs/access.log main; sendfile on; #tcp_nopush on; #keepalive_timeout 0; keepalive_timeout 65; #gzip on; server { listen 8080; server_name localhost; #charset koi8-r; #access_log logs/host.access.log main; location / { root html; index index.html index.htm index.php; } #error_page 404 /404.html; # redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html # error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html; location = /50x.html { root html; allow all; } # proxy the PHP scripts to Apache listening on 127.0.0.1:80 # #location ~ \.php$ { # proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1; #} # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000 # location ~ \.php$ { root html; fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; fastcgi_index index.php; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME c:/nginx/html/$fastcgi_script_name; include fastcgi_params; } # deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root # concurs with nginx's one # #location ~ /\.ht { # deny all; #} } # another virtual host using mix of IP-, name-, and port-based configuration # #server { # listen 8000; # listen somename:8080; # server_name somename alias another.alias; # location / { # root html; # index index.html index.htm; # } #} # HTTPS server # #server { # listen 443; # server_name localhost; # ssl on; # ssl_certificate cert.pem; # ssl_certificate_key cert.key; # ssl_session_timeout 5m; # ssl_protocols SSLv2 SSLv3 TLSv1; # ssl_ciphers ALL:!ADH:!EXPORT56:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:+LOW:+SSLv2:+EXP; # ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on; # location / { # root html; # index index.html index.htm; # } #} } How do I fix this? This is what I found in the error.log file : 2011/09/06 12:22:35 [error] 5632#0: *1 "/cygdrive/c/nginx/html/magento/index.php/install/index.html" is not found (20: Not a directory), client: 127.0.0.1, server: localhost, request: "GET /magento/index.php/install/ HTTP/1.1", host: "localhost:8080"

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• Is there really a need for encryption to have true wireless security? [closed]

  - by Cawas

  I welcome better key-wording here, both on tags and title. I'm trying to conceive a free, open and secure network environment that would work anywhere, from big enterprises to small home networks of just 1 machine. I think since wireless Access Points are the most, if not only, true weak point of a Local Area Network (let's not consider every other security aspect of having internet) there would be basically two points to consider here: Having an open AP for anyone to use the internet through Leaving the whole LAN also open for guests to be able to easily read (only) files on it, and even a place to drop files on Considering these two aspects, once everything is done properly... What's the most secure option between having that, or having just an encrypted password-protected wifi? Of course "both" would seem "more secure". But it shouldn't actually be anything substantial. That's the question, but I think it may need more elaborating on. If you don't think so, please feel free to skip the next (long) part. Elaborating more on the two aspects ... I've always had the feeling using any kind of the so called "wireless security" methods is actually a bad design. I'm talking mostly about encrypting and pass-phrasing (which are actually two different concepts), since I won't even consider hiding SSID and mac filtering. I understand it's a natural way of thinking. With cable networking nobody can access the network unless they have access to the physical cable, so you're "secure" in the physical way. In a way, encrypting is for wireless what building walls is for the cables. And giving pass-phrases would be adding a door with a key. But the cabling without encryption is also insecure. If someone plugin all the data is right there. So, while I can see the use for encrypting data, I don't think it's a security measure in wireless networks. It's wasting resources for too little gain. I believe we should encrypt only sensitive data regardless of wires. That's already done with HTTPS, so I don't really need to encrypt my torrents, for instance. They're torrents, they are meant to be freely shared! As for using passwords, they should be added to the users, always. Not to wifi. For securing files, truly, best solution is backup. Sure all that doesn't happen that often, but I won't consider the most situations where people just don't care. I think there are enough situations where we actually use passwords on our OS users, so let's go with that in mind. I keep promoting the Fonera concept as an instance. It opens up a free wifi port, if you choose so, and anyone can connect to the internet through that, without having any access to your LAN. It also uses a QoS which will never let your bandwidth drop from that public usage. That's security, and it's open. But it's lacking the second aspect. I'll probably be bashed for promoting the non-usage of WPA 2 with AES or whatever, but I wanted to know from more experienced (super) users out there: what do you think?

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• Squid w/ SquidGuard fails w/ "Too few redirector processes are running"

  - by DKNUCKLES

  I'm trying to implement a Squid proxy in a quick and easy fashion and I'm receiving some errors I have been unable to resolve. The box is a pre-made appliance, however it seems to fail on launch.The following is the cache.log file when I attempt to launch the squid service. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Starting Squid Cache version 3.0.STABLE20-20091201 for i686 -pc-linux-gnu... 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Process ID 12647 2012/11/18 22:14:29| With 1024 file descriptors available 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Performing DNS Tests... 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Successful DNS name lookup tests... 2012/11/18 22:14:29| DNS Socket created at 0.0.0.0, port 40513, FD 8 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Adding nameserver 192.168.0.78 from /etc/resolv.conf 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Adding nameserver 8.8.8.8 from /etc/resolv.conf 2012/11/18 22:14:29| helperOpenServers: Starting 5/5 'bin' processes 2012/11/18 22:14:29| ipcCreate: /opt/squidguard/bin: (13) Permission denied 2012/11/18 22:14:29| ipcCreate: /opt/squidguard/bin: (13) Permission denied 2012/11/18 22:14:29| ipcCreate: /opt/squidguard/bin: (13) Permission denied 2012/11/18 22:14:29| ipcCreate: /opt/squidguard/bin: (13) Permission denied 2012/11/18 22:14:29| ipcCreate: /opt/squidguard/bin: (13) Permission denied 2012/11/18 22:14:29| helperOpenServers: Starting 5/5 'squid-auth.pl' processes 2012/11/18 22:14:29| User-Agent logging is disabled. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Referer logging is disabled. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Unlinkd pipe opened on FD 23 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Swap maxSize 10240000 + 8192 KB, estimated 788322 objects 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Target number of buckets: 39416 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Using 65536 Store buckets 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Max Mem size: 8192 KB 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Max Swap size: 10240000 KB 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Version 1 of swap file with LFS support detected... 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Rebuilding storage in /opt/squid3/var/cache (DIRTY) 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Using Least Load store dir selection 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Set Current Directory to /opt/squid3/var/cache 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Loaded Icons. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Accepting HTTP connections at 10.0.0.6, port 3128, FD 25. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Accepting ICP messages at 0.0.0.0, port 3130, FD 26. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| HTCP Disabled. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Ready to serve requests. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Done reading /opt/squid3/var/cache swaplog (0 entries) 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Finished rebuilding storage from disk. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| 0 Entries scanned 2012/11/18 22:14:29| 0 Invalid entries. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| 0 With invalid flags. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| 0 Objects loaded. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| 0 Objects expired. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| 0 Objects cancelled. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| 0 Duplicate URLs purged. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| 0 Swapfile clashes avoided. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Took 0.02 seconds ( 0.00 objects/sec). 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Beginning Validation Procedure 2012/11/18 22:14:29| WARNING: redirector #1 (FD 9) exited 2012/11/18 22:14:29| WARNING: redirector #2 (FD 10) exited 2012/11/18 22:14:29| WARNING: redirector #3 (FD 11) exited 2012/11/18 22:14:29| WARNING: redirector #4 (FD 12) exited 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Too few redirector processes are running FATAL: The redirector helpers are crashing too rapidly, need help! Squid Cache (Version 3.0.STABLE20-20091201): Terminated abnormally. CPU Usage: 0.112 seconds = 0.032 user + 0.080 sys Maximum Resident Size: 0 KB Page faults with physical i/o: 0 Memory usage for squid via mallinfo(): total space in arena: 2944 KB Ordinary blocks: 2857 KB 6 blks Small blocks: 0 KB 0 blks Holding blocks: 1772 KB 8 blks Free Small blocks: 0 KB Free Ordinary blocks: 86 KB Total in use: 4629 KB 157% Total free: 86 KB 3% The "permission denied" area is where I have been focusing my attention with no luck. The following is what I've tried. Chmod'ing the /opt/squidguard/bin folder to 777 Changing the user that squidguard runs under to root / nobody / www-data / squid3 Tried changing ownership of the /opt/squidguard/bin folder to all names listed above after assigning that user to run with squid. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

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• Oracle performance problem

  - by jreid42

  We are using an Oracle 11G machine that is very powerful; has redundant storage etc. It's a beast from what I have been told. We just got this DB for a tool that when I first came on as a coop had like 20 people using, now its upwards of 150 people. I am the only one working on it :( We currently have a system in place that distributes PERL scripts across our entire data center essentially giving us a sort of "grid" computing power. The Perl scripts run a sort of simulation and report back the results to the database. They do selects / inserts. The load is not very high for each script but it could be happening across 20-50 systems at the same time. We then have multiple data centers and users all hitting the same database with this same approach. Our main problem with this is that our database is getting overloaded with connections and having to drop some. We sometimes have upwards of 500 connections. These are old perl scripts and they do not handle this well. Essentially they fail and the results are lost. I would rather avoid having to rewrite a lot of these as they are poorly written, and are a headache to even look at. The database itself is not overloaded, just the connection overhead is too high. We open a connection, make a quick query and then drop the connection. Very short connections but many of them. The database team has basically said we need to lower the number of connections or they are going to ignore us. Because this is distributed across our farm we cant implement persistent connections. I do this with our webserver; but its on a fixed system. The other ones are perl scripts that get opened and closed by the distribution tool and thus arent always running. What would be my best approach to resolving this issue? The scripts themselves can wait for a connection to be open. They do not need to act immediately. Some sort of queing system? I've been suggested to set up a few instances of a tool called "SQL Relay". Maybe one in each data center. How reliable is this tool? How good is this approach? Would it work for what we need? We could have one for each data center and relay requests through it to our main database, keeping a pipeline of open persistent connections? Does this make sense? Is there any other suggestions you can make? Any ideas? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Sadly I am just a coop student working for a very big company and somehow all of this has landed all on my shoulders (there is literally nobody to ask for help; its a hardware company, everybody is hardware engineers, and the database team is useless and in India) and I am quite lost as what the best approach would be? I am extremely overworked and this problem is interfering with on going progress and basically needs to be resolved as quickly as possible; preferably without rewriting the whole system, purchasing hardware (not gonna happen), or shooting myself in the foot. HELP LOL!

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• Beyond Chatting: What ‘Social’ Means for CRM

  - by Natalia Rachelson

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} A guest post by Steve Diamond, Senior Director, Outbound Product Management, Oracle In a recent post on this blog, my colleague Steve Boese asked three questions related to the widespread popularity and incredibly rapid growth of Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. Steve then addressed the many applications for collaborative solutions in the area of Human Capital Management. So, in turning to a conversation about Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Sales Force Automation (SFA), let me ask you one simple question. How many sales people, particularly at business-to-business companies, consistently meet or beat their quotas in their roles by working alone, with no collaboration among fellow sales people, sales executives, employees in product groups, in service, in Legal, third-party partners, etc.? Hello? Is anybody out there? What’s that cricket noise I hear? That’s correct. Nobody! When it comes to Sales, introverts arguably have a distinct disadvantage. While it’s certainly a truism that “success” in most professional endeavors requires working with people, it’s a mandatory success factor in Sales. This fact became abundantly clear to me one early morning in the late 1990s when I joined the former Hyperion Solutions (now part of Oracle) and attended a Sales Award Ceremony. The Head of Sales at that time gave out dozens of awards – none of them to individuals and all of them to TEAMS of individuals. That’s how it works in Sales. Your colleagues help provide you with product intelligence and competitive intelligence. They help you build the best presentations, pitches, and proposals. They help you develop the most killer RFPs. They align you with the best product people to ensure you’re matching the best products for the opportunity and join you in critical meetings. They help knock the socks of your prospects in “bake off” demo’s. They bring in the best partners to either add complementary products to your opportunity or help you implement a solution. They work with you as a collective team. And so how is all this collaboration STILL typically done today? Through email. And yet we all silently or not so silently grimace about email. It’s relatively siloed. It’s painful to search. It’s difficult to align by topic. And it’s nearly impossible to re-trace meaningful and helpful conversations that occurred among a group or a team at some point in history. This is where social networking for Sales comes into play. It’s about PURPOSEFUL social networking versus chattering. What is purposeful social networking? It’s collaboration that’s built around opportunities, accounts, and contacts. It’s collaboration that delivers valuable context – on the target company, and on key competitors – just to name two examples. It’s collaboration that can scale to provide coaching for larger numbers of sales representatives, both for general purposes, and as we’ve largely discussed here, for specific ‘deals.’ And it’s collaboration that allows a team of people to collectively edit and iterate on a document like an RFP or a soon-to-be killer presentation that is maintained in a central repository, with no time wasted searching for it or worrying about version control. But lest we get carried away, let’s remember that collaboration “happens” among sales people whether there is specialized software to support it or not. The human practice of sales has not changed much in the last 80 to 90 years. Collaboration has been a mainstay during this entire time. But what social networking in general, and Oracle Social Networking in particular delivers, is the opportunity for sales teams to dramatically increase their effectiveness and efficiency – to identify and close more high quality and lucrative opportunities more quickly. For most sales organizations, this is how the game is won. To learn more please visit Oracle Social Network and Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management on oracle.com Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• RHEL - NFS4: Mounted/Exported as rw, user write permission denied

  - by brendanmac

  Hello, I have nfs4 configured between a RHEL 5.3 server (charlie) and a RHEL 5.4 client (simcom1). The machines are configured to authenticate users via kerberos by a Windows Server 2008 active directory machine called "alpha." Alpha also serves as a dns and dhcp machine for the local network. I notice that when a user logs in to a RHEL machine for the first time they are issued a unique uid to that machine; The first user to log on gets 10001. So, what I see is that users between simcom1 and charlie have different UIDs. When a user does an 'ls -la' command from within an nfs4 mount I would have thought that the usernames in the owner column would indicate 'nobody' or at least the wrong user name - since UIDs are different between the machines for each user, and not all users have logged into each machine. However, the simcom1 is able to resolve usernames in an 'ls -la' executed on files residing on charlie via nfs4 correctly. Most troubling is that users are unable to write to files across the nfs mount. The server, charlie, has the root directory exported as rw. The client, simcom1, mounts the export as rw. My configurations are shown below. My question is, how do I configure the RHEL machines to allow users to write files across nfs4 that is already mounted as read/write? [root@charlie ~]# more /etc/exports / 10.100.0.0/16(rw,no_root_squash,fsid=0) [root@charlie ~]#cat /etc/sysconfig/nfs # # Define which protocol versions mountd # will advertise. The values are "no" or "yes" # with yes being the default #MOUNTD_NFS_V1="no" #MOUNTD_NFS_V2="no" #MOUNTD_NFS_V3="no" # # # Path to remote quota server. See rquotad(8) #RQUOTAD="/usr/sbin/rpc.rquotad" # Port rquotad should listen on. #RQUOTAD_PORT=875 # Optinal options passed to rquotad #RPCRQUOTADOPTS="" # # # TCP port rpc.lockd should listen on. #LOCKD_TCPPORT=32803 # UDP port rpc.lockd should listen on. #LOCKD_UDPPORT=32769 # # # Optional arguments passed to rpc.nfsd. See rpc.nfsd(8) # Turn off v2 and v3 protocol support #RPCNFSDARGS="-N 2 -N 3" # Turn off v4 protocol support #RPCNFSDARGS="-N 4" # Number of nfs server processes to be started. # The default is 8. RPCNFSDCOUNT=8 # Stop the nfsd module from being pre-loaded #NFSD_MODULE="noload" # # # Optional arguments passed to rpc.mountd. See rpc.mountd(8) #STATDARG="" #RPCMOUNTDOPTS="" # Port rpc.mountd should listen on. #MOUNTD_PORT=892 # # # Optional arguments passed to rpc.statd. See rpc.statd(8) #RPCIDMAPDARGS="" # # Set to turn on Secure NFS mounts. SECURE_NFS="no" # Optional arguments passed to rpc.gssd. See rpc.gssd(8) #RPCGSSDARGS="-vvv" # Optional arguments passed to rpc.svcgssd. See rpc.svcgssd(8) #RPCSVCGSSDARGS="-vvv" # Don't load security modules in to the kernel #SECURE_NFS_MODS="noload" # # Don't load sunrpc module. #RPCMTAB="noload" # [root@simcom1 ~]# cat /etc/fstab --start snip-- charlie:/home /usr/local/dev/charlie nfs4 rw,nosuid, 0 0 --end snip-- [brendanmac@simcom1 /usr/local/dev/charlie/brendanmac]# touch file touch: cannot touch 'file': Permission denied [brendanmac@simcom1 /usr/local/dev/charlie/brendanmac]# su Password: [root@simcom1 /usr/local/dev/charlie/brendanmac]# touch file [root@simcom1 /usr/local/dev/charlie/brendanmac]# ls -la file -rw------- 1 root root 0 May 26 10:43 file Thank you for your assistance, Brendan

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• SATA drive problems with two SIL RAID cards

  - by Jon Topper

  I've just put a second SiI 3114 SATARaid card in my home server so that I could add another pair of SATA drives and increase my storage space. Annoyingly, it doesn't seem to work: [ 32.816030] ata5: lost interrupt (Status 0x0) [ 32.816072] ata5.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen [ 32.816091] ata5.00: cmd c8/00:08:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 4096 in [ 32.816094] res 40/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout) [ 32.816101] ata5.00: status: { DRDY } [ 32.816117] ata5: hard resetting link [ 33.136082] ata5: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 0) [ 36.060940] irq 18: nobody cared (try booting with the "irqpoll" option) [ 36.060949] Pid: 0, comm: swapper Not tainted 2.6.31-20-generic #58-Ubuntu [ 36.060954] Call Trace: [ 36.060977] [] ? printk+0x18/0x1c [ 36.060997] [] __report_bad_irq+0x27/0x90 [ 36.061005] [] note_interrupt+0x150/0x190 [ 36.061011] [] handle_fasteoi_irq+0xac/0xd0 [ 36.061023] [] handle_irq+0x18/0x30 [ 36.061029] [] do_IRQ+0x47/0xc0 [ 36.061042] [] ? irq_exit+0x50/0x70 [ 36.061058] [] ? smp_apic_timer_interrupt+0x57/0x90 [ 36.061065] [] common_interrupt+0x30/0x40 [ 36.061075] [] ? native_safe_halt+0x5/0x10 [ 36.061082] [] default_idle+0x46/0xd0 [ 36.061088] [] cpu_idle+0x8c/0xd0 [ 36.061103] [] rest_init+0x55/0x60 [ 36.061111] [] start_kernel+0x2e6/0x2ec [ 36.061117] [] ? unknown_bootoption+0x0/0x19e [ 36.061133] [] i386_start_kernel+0x7c/0x83 [ 36.061137] handlers: [ 36.061139] [] (sil_interrupt+0x0/0xb0) [ 36.061151] Disabling IRQ #18 [ 38.136014] ata5: hard resetting link [ 38.456022] ata5: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 0) [ 43.456013] ata5: hard resetting link [ 43.776022] ata5: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 0) [ 43.776035] ata5.00: disabled [ 43.776055] ata5.00: device reported invalid CHS sector 0 [ 43.776074] sd 4:0:0:0: [sde] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE [ 43.776082] sd 4:0:0:0: [sde] Sense Key : Aborted Command [current] [descriptor] [ 43.776092] Descriptor sense data with sense descriptors (in hex): [ 43.776097] 72 0b 00 00 00 00 00 0c 00 0a 80 00 00 00 00 00 [ 43.776112] 00 00 00 00 [ 43.776118] sd 4:0:0:0: [sde] Add. Sense: No additional sense information [ 43.776127] end_request: I/O error, dev sde, sector 0 [ 43.776136] Buffer I/O error on device sde, logical block 0 [ 43.776170] ata5: EH complete [ 43.776187] ata5.00: detaching (SCSI 4:0:0:0) root@core:~# cat /proc/interrupts CPU0 0: 47 IO-APIC-edge timer 1: 8 IO-APIC-edge i8042 6: 3 IO-APIC-edge floppy 7: 0 IO-APIC-edge parport0 8: 0 IO-APIC-edge rtc0 9: 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi acpi 14: 53069 IO-APIC-edge pata_sis 15: 53004 IO-APIC-edge pata_sis 17: 112265 IO-APIC-fasteoi sata_sil 18: 200002 IO-APIC-fasteoi sata_sil, SiS SI7012 19: 111140 IO-APIC-fasteoi eth0 20: 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi ohci_hcd:usb2 21: 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi ohci_hcd:usb3 23: 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi ehci_hcd:usb1 NMI: 0 Non-maskable interrupts LOC: 6650492 Local timer interrupts SPU: 0 Spurious interrupts CNT: 0 Performance counter interrupts PND: 0 Performance pending work RES: 0 Rescheduling interrupts CAL: 0 Function call interrupts TLB: 0 TLB shootdowns TRM: 0 Thermal event interrupts THR: 0 Threshold APIC interrupts MCE: 0 Machine check exceptions MCP: 160 Machine check polls ERR: 0 MIS: 0 root@core:~# lspci | grep Raid 00:09.0 RAID bus controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3114 [SATALink/SATARaid] Serial ATA Controller (rev 02) 00:0a.0 RAID bus controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3114 [SATALink/SATARaid] Serial ATA Controller (rev 02) root@core:~# lsb_release -a No LSB modules are available. Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 9.10 Release: 9.10 Codename: karmic root@core:~# uname -a Linux core.topper.me.uk 2.6.31-20-generic #58-Ubuntu SMP Fri Mar 12 05:23:09 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux I've tried a combination of different kernel options (irqpoll, noapic, noacpi, pci=noapic) all to no avail. Does anyone have any bright ideas about how I can go about making this work? Swapping PCI cards around isn't an option as there are only two slots in this motherboard (an ASRock K7S41GX). The BIOS doesn't look to have too much in the way of configuration options regarding IRQ usage. Plan B is to ditch this server completely and buy a new QNAP for these drives to go in, but I was hoping to avoid doing this right now.

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• My Thoughts On the Xbox 180

  - by Chris Gardner

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/freestylecoding/archive/2013/06/21/my-thoughts-on-the-xbox-180.aspx Everyone seems to be putting their 0.00237 cents into the wishing well over Microsoft's recent decision to reverse the DRM policy on the Xbox One. However, there have been a few issues that nobody has touched. As such, I have decided to dig 0.00237 cents out of my pocket. First, let me be clear about this point. I do not support the decision to reverse the DRM policy on the Xbox One. I wanted that point to be expressed first and unambiguously. I will say it again. I do not support the decision to reverse the DRM policy on the Xbox One. Now that I have that out of the way, let me go into my rationale. This decision removes most of the cool features that enticed me to pre-order the console. No, I didn't cancel my pre-order. There is still five months before the release of the console, and there is still a plethora of information that we, as consumers, do not have. With that, it should be noted that much of the talk in this post is speculation and rhetoric. I do not have any insider information that you do not possess. The persistent connection would have allowed the console to do many of the functions for which we have been begging. That demo where someone was playing Ryse, seamlessly accepted a multiplayer challenge in Killer Instinct, played the match (and a rematch,) and then jumped back into Ryse. That's gone, if you bought the game on disc. The new, DRM free system will require the disc in the system to play a game. That bullet point where one Xbox Live account could have up to 10 slave accounts so families could play together, no matter where they were located. That's gone as well. The promise of huge, expansive, dynamically changing worlds that was brought to us with the power of cloud computing. Well, "the people" didn't want there to be a forced, persistent connection. As such, developers can't rely on a connection and, as such, that feature is gone. This is akin to the removal of the hard drive on the Xbox 360. The list continues, but the enthusiast press has enumerated the list far better than I wish. All of this is because the Xbox team saw the HUGE success of Steam and decided to borrow a few ideas. Yes, Steam. The service that everyone hated for the first six months (for the same reasons the Xbox One is getting flack.) There was an initial growing pain. However, it is now lauded as the way games distribution should be handled. Unless you are Microsoft. I do find it curious that many of the features were originally announced for the PS4 during its unveiling. However, much of that was left strangely absent for Sony's E3 press conference. Instead, we received a single, static slide that basically said the exact opposite of Microsoft's plans. It is not farfetched to believe that slide came into existence during the approximately seven hours between the two media briefings. The thing that majorly annoys me over this whole kerfuffle is that the single thing that caused the call to arms is, really, not an issue. Microsoft never said they were going to block used sales. They said it was up to the publisher to make that decision. This would have allowed publishers to reclaim some of the costs of development in subsequent sales of the product. If you sell your game to GameStop for 7 USD, GameStop is going to sell it for 55 USD. That is 48 USD pure profit for them. Some publishers asked GameStop for a small cut. Was this a huge, money grubbing scheme? Well, yes, but the idea was that they have to handle server infrastructure for dormant accounts, etc. Of course, GameStop flatly refused, and the Online Pass was born. Fortunately, this trend didn’t last, and most publishers have stopped the practice. The ability to sell "licenses" has already begun to be challenged. Are you living in the EU? If so, companies must allow you to sell digital property. With this precedent in place, it's only a matter of time before other areas follow suit. If GameStop were smart, they should have immediately contacted every publisher out there to get the rights to become a clearing house for these licenses. Then, they keep their business model and could reduce their brick and mortar footprint. The digital landscape is changing. We need to not block this process. As Seth MacFarlane best said "Some issues are so important that you should drag people kicking and screaming." I believe this was said on an episode of Real Time with Bill Maher about the issue of Gay Marriages. Much like the original source, this is an issue that we need to drag people to the correct, progressive position. Microsoft, as a company, actually has the resources to weather the transition period. They have a great pool of first and second party developers that can leverage this new framework to prove the validity. Over time, the third party developers will get excited to use these tools. As an old C++ guy, I resisted C# for years. Now, I think it's one of the best languages I've ever used. I have a server room and a Co-Lo full of servers, so I originally didn't see the value in Azure. Now, I wish I could move every one of my projects into the cloud. I still LOVE getting physical packaging, which my music and games collection will proudly attest. However, I have started to see the value in pure digital, and have found ways to integrate this into the ways I consume those products. I can, honestly, understand how some parts of the population would be very apprehensive about this new landscape. There were valid arguments about people with no internet access. There are ways to combat these problems. These methods do not require us to throw the baby out with the bathwater. However, the number of people in the computer industry that I have seen cry foul is truly appalling. We are the forward looking people that help show how technology can improve people's lives. If we can't see the value of the brief pain involved with an exciting new ecosystem, than who will?

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• Windows Azure Myths

  - by BuckWoody

  Windows Azure is part of the Microsoft "stack" - the suite of software and services we offer. Because we have so many products in almost every part of technology, it's hard to know everything about all parts of what we do - even for those of us who work here. So it's no surprise that some folks are not as familiar with Windows and SQL Azure as they are, say Windows Server or XBox. As I chat with folks about a solution for a business or organization need, I put Windows Azure into the mix. I always start off with "What do you already know about Windows Azure?" so that I don't bore folks with information they already have. I some cases they've checked out the product ahead of time and have specific questions, in others they aren't as familiar, and in still others there is a fair amount of mis-information. Sometimes that's because of a marketing failure, sometimes it's hearsay, and somtetimes it's active misinformation. I thought I might lay out a few of these misconceptions. As always - do your fact-checking! Never take anyone's word alone (including mine) as gospel. Make sure you educate yourself on your options. Your company or your clients depend on you to have the right information on IT, so make sure you live up to that. Myth 1: Nobody uses Windows Azure It's true that we don't give out numbers on the amount of clients on Windows and SQL Azure. But lots of folks are here - companies you may have heard of like Boeing, NASA, Fujitsu, The City of London, Nuedesic, and many others. I deal with firms small and large that use Windows Azure for mission-critical applications, sometimes totally on Windows and/or SQL Azure, sometimes in conjunction with an on-premises system, sometimes for only a specific component in Windows Azure like storage. The interesting thing is that many sites you visit have a Windows Azure component, or are running on Windows Azure. They just don't announce it. Just like the other cloud providers, the companies have asked to be completely branded themselves - they don't want you to be aware or care that they are on Windows Azure. Sometimes that's for security, other times it's for different reasons. It's just like the web sites you visit. For the most part, they don't advertise which OS or Web Server they use. It really just shouldn't matter. The point is that they just use what works to solve a given problem. Check out a few public case studies here: https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/home/case-studies/ Myth 2: It's only for Microsoft stuff - can't use Open Source This is the one I face the most, and am the most dismayed by. We work just fine with many open source products, including Java, NodeJS, PHP, Ruby, Python, Hadoop, and many other languages and applications. You can quickly deploy a Wordpress, Umbraco and other "kits". We have software development kits (SDK's) for iPhones, iPads, Android, Windows phones and more. We have an SDK to work with FaceBook and other social networks. In short, we play well with others. More on the languages and runtimes we support here: https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/overview/ More on the SDK's here: http://www.wadewegner.com/2011/05/windows-azure-toolkit-for-ios/, http://www.wadewegner.com/2011/08/windows-azure-toolkits-for-devices-now-with-android/, http://azuretoolkit.codeplex.com/ Myth 3: Microsoft expects me to switch everything to "the cloud" No, we don't. That would be disasterous, unless the only things you run in your company uses works perfectly in Azure. Use Windows Azure  - or any cloud for that matter - where it works. Whenever I talk to companies, I focus on two things: Something that is broken and needs to be re-architected Something you want to do that is new If something is broken, and you need new tools to scale, extend, add capacity dynamically and so on, then you can consider using Windows or SQL Azure. It can help solve problems that you have, or it may include a component you don't want to write or architect yourself. Sometimes you want to do something new, like extend your company's offerings to mobile phones, to the web, or to a social network. More info on where it works here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/01/18/windows-azure-and-sql-azure-use-cases.aspx Myth 4: I have to write code to use Windows and SQL Azure If Windows Azure is a PaaS - a Platform as a Service - then don't you have to write code to use it? Nope. Windows and SQL Azure are made up of various components. Some of those components allow you to write and deploy code (like Compute) and others don't. We have lots of customers using Windows Azure storage as a backup, to securely share files instead of using DropBox, to distribute videos or code or firmware, and more. Others use our High Performance Computing (HPC) offering to rent a supercomputer when they need one. You can even throw workloads at that using Excel! In addition there are lots of other components in Windows Azure you can use, from the Windows Azure Media Services to others. More here: https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/home/scenarios/saas/ Myth 5: Windows Azure is just another form of "vendor lock-in" Windows Azure uses .NET, OSS languages and standard interfaces for the code. Sure, you're not going to take the code line-for-line and run it on a mainframe, but it's standard code that you write, and can port to something else. And the data is yours - you can bring it back whever you want. It's either in text or binary form, that you have complete control over. There are no licenses - you can "pay as you go", and when you're done, you can leave the service and take all your code, data and IP with you.   So go out there, read up, try it. Use it where it works. And don't believe everything you hear - sometimes the Internet doesn't get it all correct. :)

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• Feedback Filtration&ndash;Processing Negative Comments for Positive Gains

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  After doing 7 conferences, 5 code camps, and countless user group events, I feel that this is a post I need to write. I actually toyed with other names for this post, however those names would just lend itself to the type of behaviour I want people to avoid – the reactionary, emotional response that speaks to some deeper issue beyond immediate facts and context. Humans are incredibly complex creatures. We’re also emotional, which serves us well in certain situations but can hinder us in others. Those of us in leadership build up a thick skin because we tend to encounter those reactionary, emotional responses more often, and we’re held to a higher standard because of our positions. While we could react with emotion ourselves, as the saying goes – fighting fire with fire just makes a bigger fire. So in this post I’ll share my thought process for dealing with negative feedback/comments and how you can still get value from them. The Thought Process Let’s take a real-world example. This week I held the Prairie IT Pro & Dev Con event. We’ve gotten a lot of session feedback already, most of it overwhelmingly positive. But some not so much – and some to an extreme I rarely see but isn’t entirely surprising to me. So here’s the example from a person we’ll refer to as Mr. Horrible: How was the speaker? Horrible! Worst speaker ever! Did the session meet your expectations? Hard to tell, speaker ruined it. Other Comments: DO NOT bring this speaker back! He was at this conference last year and I hoped enough negative feedback would have taught you to not bring him back...obviously not...I will not return to this conference next year if this speaker is brought back. Now those are very strong words. “Worst speaker ever!” “Speaker ruined it” “I will not return to this conference next year if the speaker is brought back”. The speakers I invite to speak at my conference are not just presenters but friends and colleagues. When I see this, my initial reaction is of course very emotional: I get defensive, I get angry, I get offended. So that’s where the process kicks in. Step 1 – Take a Deep Breath Take a deep breath, calm down, and walk away from the keyboard. I didn’t do that recently during an email convo between some colleagues and it ended up in my reacting emotionally on Twitter – did I mention those colleagues follow my Twitter feed? Yes, I ate some crow. Ok, now that we’re calm, let’s move on to step 2. Step 2 – Strip off the Emotion We need to take off the emotion that people wrap their words in and identify the root issues. For instance, if I see: “I hated this session, the presenter was horrible! He spoke so fast I couldn’t make out what he was saying!” then I drop off the personal emoting (“I hated…”) and the personal attack (“the presenter was horrible”) and focus on the real issue this person had – that the speaker was talking too fast. Now we have a root cause of the displeasure. However, we’re also dealing with humans who are all very different. Before I call up the speaker to talk about his speaking pace, I need to do some other things first. Back to our Mr. Horrible example, I don’t really have much to go on. There’s no details of how the speaker “ruined” the session or why he’s the “worst speaker ever”. In this case, the next step is crucial. Step 3 – Validate the Feedback When I tell people that we really like getting feedback for the sessions, I really really mean it. Not just because we want to hear what individuals have to say but also because we want to know what the group thought. When a piece of negative feedback comes in, I validate it against the group. So with the speaker Mr. Horrible commented on, I go to the feedback and look at other people’s responses: 2 x Excellent 1 x Alright 1 x Not Great 1 x Horrible (our feedback guy) That’s interesting, it’s a bit all over the board. If we look at the comments more we find that the people who rated the speaker excellent liked the presentation style and found the content valuable. The one guy who said “Not Great” even commented that there wasn’t anything really wrong with the presentation, he just wasn’t excited about it. In that light, I can try to make a few assumptions: - Mr. Horrible didn’t like the speakers presentation style - Mr. Horrible was expecting something else that wasn’t communicated properly in the session description - Mr. Horrible, for whatever reason, just didn’t like this presenter Now if the feedback was overwhelmingly negative, there’s a different pattern – one that validates the negative feedback. Regardless, I never take something at face value. Even if I see really good feedback, I never get too happy until I see that there’s a group trend towards the positive. Step 4 – Action Plan Once I’ve validated the feedback, then I need to come up with an action plan around it. Let’s go back to the other example I gave – the one with the speaker going too fast. I went and looked at the feedback and sure enough, other people commented that the speaker had spoken too quickly. Now I can go back to the speaker and let him know so he can get better. But what if nobody else complained about it? I’d still mention it to the speaker, but obviously one person’s opinion needs to be weighed as such. When we did PrDC Winnipeg in 2011, I surveyed the attendees about the food. Everyone raved about it…except one person. Am I going to change the menu next time for that one person while everyone else loved it? Of course not. There’s a saying – A sure way to fail is to try to please everyone. Let’s look at the Mr. Horrible example. What can I communicate to the speaker with such limited information provided in the feedback from Mr. Horrible? Well looking at the groups feedback, I can make a few suggestions: - Ensure that people understand in the session description the style of the talk - Ensure that people understand the level of detail/complexity of the talk and what prerequisite knowledge they should have I’m looking at it as possibly Mr. Horrible assumed a much more advanced talk and was disappointed, while the positive feedback by people who – from their comments – suggested this was all new to them, were thrilled with the session level. Step 5 – Follow Up For some feedback, I follow up personally. Especially with negative or constructive feedback, its important to let the person know you heard them and are making changes because of their comments. Even if their comments were emotionally charged and overtly negative, it’s still important to reach out personally and professionally. When you remove the emotion, negative comments can be the best feedback you get. Also, people have bad days. We’ve all had one of “those days” where we talked more sternly than normal to someone, or got angry at something we’d normally shrug off. We have various stresses in our lives and sometimes they seep out in odd ways. I always try to give some benefit of the doubt, and re-evaluate my view of the person after they’ve responded to my communication. But, there is such a thing as garbage feedback. What Mr. Horrible wrote is garbage. It’s mean spirited. It’s hateful. It provides nothing constructive at all. And a tell-tale sign that feedback is garbage – the person didn’t leave their name even though there was a field for it. Step 6 – Delete It Feedback must be processed in its raw form, and the end products should drive improvements. But once you’ve figured out what those things are, you shouldn’t leave raw feedback lying around. They are snapshots in time that taken alone can be damaging. Also, you should never rest on past praise. In a future blog post, I’m going to talk about how we can provide great feedback that, even when its critical, can still be constructive.

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• Unmountable boot volume blue screen, what should I do?

  - by Josh

  I was trying to install an update from NVIDIA for my GTX 560, but while it was installing, my computer shut off. After a few minutes, I turned it back on. It got to the Windows boot screen and then had a blue screen error and if left on it would just keep doing that. A few details about my PC: I haven't added any new hardware or software, I'm running Windows XP Professional 32 bit and Windows XP Professional 64 bit on the same hard drive for about 2 years now. I have 2 other hard drives also, but I don't have one large enough to hold everything from my main hard drive, so formatting isn't an option. Now, as for what I've done so far: I've scanned the RAM with "memtest - 86 v3.4" and it said that it was good. I scanned the hard drive in question with chkdsk /r and it gets to 50% and tells me something along the lines of "the drive has one or more unrepairable problems". I also tried to use chkdsk on the drive I installed the new copy of Windows XP on and it got to 75% then jumped back down to 50% and stayed there (I had to reboot the pc). So, after that, I turned off auto reboot and got to read the blue screen error code and I looked it up only to find that nobody seems to have this problem, just problems close to it. The error code is 0x000000ed and I've seen a lot of these online but none that matched the detailed part of the code UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME 0x000000ed (0xfffffadf513c19a0, 0xffffffffc0000006, 0, 0) So, I have installed another copy of Windows XP Professional 32 bit on one of my other hard drives in hopes of accessing the data on the drive in question and when it booted it asked if I wanted chkdsk to scan the drive in question and this is what it found: file record segments 12740, 12741, 12742 and 12743 were reported unreadable. Then it says "recovering lost files" but it sits there for a few seconds and then just boots to Windows. I can't access the drive in question from Windows as far as I can tell, it just says "drive not accessible" and when I go to properties it says that the drive has 100% free space. So, after that failed I didn't give up, I looked for another way to access the drive in question. I used a Ubuntu bootable disk and was able to access the drive in question without any problems. However, I can't access the registry editor because it's a .exe file and that won't load from Ubuntu. I made a copy of the "Windows" folder and put it on one of my other drives and that's where I'm stuck at now. I'm sure my drive works fine, I know chkdsk can't fix the problem with it and I know what caused the problem in the first place for the most part, but I don't know what to do about it. I have a laptop that I can use to download and burn disks if needed and I also have the other copy of Windows XP Professional 32 bit that I can use that's installed on the computer in question (so I know it's not a hardware issue). I'm pretty sure it's a driver issue or the update was editing the registry when it shut off and left me when a broken registry. I've tried accessing C:\Windows\System32\CONFIG only to find that the Windows XP disk repair option can't even access the files on the drive in question. It seems I'll need to be able to do everything from Ubuntu unless there is something I haven't tried with the Windows XP disk. I didn't install the update on Windows XP 64 bit but yet it also has the same blue screen error (that's where the error code above came from but I haven't checked to see if they are the same). They both stopped working at the same time, so I assume it's one problem causing both to not work.

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