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• Issues configuring Exchange 2010 as well as SSL problems.

  - by Eric Smith

  Possibly-Relevant Background Info: I've recently moved up from icky shared hosting to a glorious, Remote Desktop-administrated VPS server running Windows Server 2008 R2. Even though I'm only 21 now and a computer science major, I've tried to play with every Windows Server release since '03, just to learn new things. What usually happens is inevitably I'll do something wrong and pretty much ruin the install. You're dealing with an amateur here :) Through the past few months of working with my new server, I've mastered DNS, IIS, got Team Foundation Server running (yay!), and can install all of the other basics like SQL Server and Active Directory. The Problem: Now, these last few weeks I've been trying to install Exchange Server 2010 (SP1). To make a long story short, it took me several attempts, and I even had to get my server wiped just so I could start fresh since Exchange decided uninstalling properly was for sissies (cost me $20, bah). Today, at long last, I got Exchange mostly working. There were two main problems left, however, that left me unsatisfied: Exchange installed itself and all of its child sites into Default Web Site. I wanted to access Exchange via mail.domain.com, but instead everything was configured to domain.com. My limited server admin knowledge was not enough to configure IIS or Exchange to move itself over to the website I had set up for it, appropriately titled 'mail.domain.com', which I had bound to a dedicated IP address (I was told this was necessary, but he may have been wrong). I have two SSL certificates: one for my main domain and one for my mail subdomain. For whatever reason, I had issues geting Exchange to use my mail certificate, even though I had assigned the proper roles in the MMC. I did, at one point, get it to work (or mostly work, anyways. Frankly, my memory of today is clouded by intense frustration). Additionally, I was confused which type of SSL certificate I should be using for Exchange. My SSL provider, GoDaddy, allows me to request a new certificate whenever, so I can use either the certificate request provided by IIS or the more complicated and specific request you can create with Exchange. Which type should I be using, the IIS or Exchange certificate? If I must use the Exchange certificate, will that 1) cause issues when I bind that certificate to my mail.domain.com subdomain or 2) is that an unnecessary step? The SSL Certificate Strikes Back When I thought I had the proper SSL certificate assigned for those brief, sweet moments, Google Chrome reported the correct mail.domain.com certificate when browsing https://mail.domain.com. However, Outlook 2010 threw up an error when trying to configure my email account claiming that the certificate didn't match the domain of "mail.domain.com". Is this an issue that will be resolved by problem #2 or is it a separate one entirely? Apologies for the massive wall of text, but I wanted to provide as much info as I possibly could. Exchange is the last thing I'd like installed on my server, and naturally it's turning out to be the hardest. Thanks for any info at all. Even a point in a vague direction would be a huge help at this point. Thanks! -Eric P.S.: The reason I keep ruining my install is that when I attempt to uninstall Exchange, something invariably goes wrong. The last time the uninstaller complained that there was still a mailbox active and it couldn't proceed until I deleted it. ... The only mailbox left was the Administrator account, the built-in one I couldn't delete. So I attempted to manually uninstall it following several guides online only to now be stuck unable to launch the installer and have to get my system wiped AGAIN for the second time today ($40 down the drain, bah!). I do not understand at all why "uninstall" just can't mean "hey, you, delete everything and go away". There's not even a force uninstall option, only a "recover system" option that just fails to fix anything and makes it so I can't even use the GUI uninstaller. </rant>

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• "Possible SYN flooding" in log despite low number of SYN_RECV connections

  - by al4

  Recently we had an apache server which was responding very slowly due to SYN flooding. The workaround for this was to enable tcp_syncookies (net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies=1 in /etc/sysctl.conf). I posted a question about this here if you want more background. After enabling syncookies we started seeing the following message in /var/log/messages approximately every 60 seconds: [84440.731929] possible SYN flooding on port 80. Sending cookies. Vinko Vrsalovic informed me that this means the syn backlog is getting full, so I raised tcp_max_syn_backlog to 4096. At some point I also lowered tcp_synack_retries to 3 (down from the default of 5) by issuing sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_synack_retries=3. After doing this, the frequency seemed to drop, with the interval of the messages varying between roughly 60 and 180 seconds. Next I issued sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_max_syn_backlog=65536, but am still getting the message in the log. Throughout all this I've been watching the number of connections in SYN_RECV state (by running watch --interval=5 'netstat -tuna |grep "SYN_RECV"|wc -l'), and it never goes higher than about 240, much much lower than the size of the backlog. Yet I have a Red Hat server which hovers around 512 (limit on this server is the default of 1024). Are there any other tcp settings which would limit the size of the backlog or am I barking up the wrong tree? Should the number of SYN_RECV connections in netstat -tuna correlate to the size of the backlog? Update As best I can tell I'm dealing with legitimate connections here, netstat -tuna|wc -l hovers around 5000. I've been researching this today and found this post from a last.fm employee, which has been rather useful. I've also discovered that the tcp_max_syn_backlog has no effect when syncookies are enabled (as per this link) So as a next step I set the following in sysctl.conf: net.ipv4.tcp_syn_retries = 3 # default=5 net.ipv4.tcp_synack_retries = 3 # default=5 net.ipv4.tcp_max_syn_backlog = 65536 # default=1024 net.core.wmem_max = 8388608 # default=124928 net.core.rmem_max = 8388608 # default=131071 net.core.somaxconn = 512 # default = 128 net.core.optmem_max = 81920 # default = 20480 I then setup my response time test, ran sysctl -p and disabled syncookies by sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies=0. After doing this the number of connections in the SYN_RECV state still remained around 220-250, but connections were starting to delay again. Once I noticed these delays I re-enabled syncookies and the delays stopped. I believe what I was seeing was still an improvement from the initial state, however some requests were still delayed which is much worse than having syncookies enabled. So it looks like I'm stuck with them enabled until we can get some more servers online to cope with the load. Even then, I'm not sure I see a valid reason to disable them again as they're only sent (apparently) when the server's buffers get full. But the syn backlog doesn't appear to be full with only ~250 connections in the SYN_RECV state! Is it possible that the SYN flooding message is a red herring and it's something other than the syn_backlog that's filling up? If anyone has any other tuning options I haven't tried yet I'd be more than happy to try them out, but I'm starting to wonder if the syn_backlog setting isn't being applied properly for some reason.

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• unattended-upgrades does not reboot

  - by Cheiron

  I am running Debian 7 stable with unattended-upgrades (every morning at 6 AM) to make sure I am always fully updated. I have the following config: $ cat /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades // Automatically upgrade packages from these origin patterns Unattended-Upgrade::Origins-Pattern { // Archive or Suite based matching: // Note that this will silently match a different release after // migration to the specified archive (e.g. testing becomes the // new stable). "o=Debian,a=stable"; "o=Debian,a=stable-updates"; // "o=Debian,a=proposed-updates"; "origin=Debian,archive=stable,label=Debian-Security"; }; // List of packages to not update Unattended-Upgrade::Package-Blacklist { // "vim"; // "libc6"; // "libc6-dev"; // "libc6-i686"; }; // This option allows you to control if on a unclean dpkg exit // unattended-upgrades will automatically run // dpkg --force-confold --configure -a // The default is true, to ensure updates keep getting installed //Unattended-Upgrade::AutoFixInterruptedDpkg "false"; // Split the upgrade into the smallest possible chunks so that // they can be interrupted with SIGUSR1. This makes the upgrade // a bit slower but it has the benefit that shutdown while a upgrade // is running is possible (with a small delay) //Unattended-Upgrade::MinimalSteps "true"; // Install all unattended-upgrades when the machine is shuting down // instead of doing it in the background while the machine is running // This will (obviously) make shutdown slower //Unattended-Upgrade::InstallOnShutdown "true"; // Send email to this address for problems or packages upgrades // If empty or unset then no email is sent, make sure that you // have a working mail setup on your system. A package that provides // 'mailx' must be installed. E.g. "[email protected]" Unattended-Upgrade::Mail "root"; // Set this value to "true" to get emails only on errors. Default // is to always send a mail if Unattended-Upgrade::Mail is set Unattended-Upgrade::MailOnlyOnError "true"; // Do automatic removal of new unused dependencies after the upgrade // (equivalent to apt-get autoremove) //Unattended-Upgrade::Remove-Unused-Dependencies "false"; // Automatically reboot *WITHOUT CONFIRMATION* if a // the file /var/run/reboot-required is found after the upgrade Unattended-Upgrade::Automatic-Reboot "true"; // Use apt bandwidth limit feature, this example limits the download // speed to 70kb/sec //Acquire::http::Dl-Limit "70"; As you can see Automatic-Reboot is true and thus the server should automaticly reboot. Last time I checked the server was online for over 100 days, which means that the update from Debian 7.1 to Debian 7.2 has happened while the server was up (and indeed, all updates were installed), but this involves kernel updates, which means that the server should reboot. It did not. The server was running very slow, so I rebooted which fixed that. I did some research and found out that unattended-upgrades responds to the reboot-required file in /var/run/. I touched this file and waited one week, the file still exists and the server did not reboot. So I think that unattended-uppgrades ignores the auto-reboot part. So, am I doing somthing wrong here? Why did the server not restart? The upgrade part works perfect by the way, its just the reboot part that does not seem to work as it should.

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• Supermicro IPMI on MBD-X8DAH+-F-O motherboard. Keyboard and mouse do not work after booting Windows Server 2008 R2

  - by LDelgado

  Hell Everyone, I built a server with the mentioned motherboard. I installed Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise on this server. IPMI is integrated on the motherboard with its own dedicated NIC. I've got that NIC configured with its own IP address. I can remote into it using IPMI, and I can remotely control the server settings before booting the OS ( BIOS, RAID configuration, etc). When the OS boots, I lose the mouse and keyboard. I cannot use the keyboard or mouse when installing the OS either. So the Keyboard and Mouse only work when no OS is loaded. Once the OS loads I lose it - that is my problem. I've been doing some research and trying a few things, but I have not been successful in fixing this issue. I may be wrong, but based on the things I've found online, it seems that the problem could be caused by the way the OS handles USB. The server is headless. There is no keyboard, mouse, or monitor plugged into it. When I boot up the OS and remote into it, I cannot see a mouse or keyboard listed in the Device Manager. Based on what I've read, it seems that the OS should detect a mouse and a keyboard when connecting remotely via IPMI. The following are the solutions I've tried. Nothing has worked so far: I've updated the firmware of the IPMI component to the latest firmware - 1.33. I made sure that the mouse mode was set to Absolute (Windows OS). I've loaded the factory defaults several times. I've enabled Port64h/60h Emulation under the USB settings in the BIOS. I've disabled USB legacy support in the BIOS. I made sure the firewall wasn't blocking IPMI (disabled the firewall). And that's about it. I've found threads in some forums from people having the same issue as me, but they were not running the same OS. They were either running Linux or FreeBSD. Most of them fixed their problem by selecting the right mouse mode (Linux in their case). There was one other that solved the problem by disabling USB Mass Storage mode. He stated "When I set it to disable USB Mass Storage when no image is loaded, the ukbd came alive, and I'm typing this on the IPMI Console. " source: http://freebsd.1045724.n5.nabble.com/IPMI-Console-No-luck-once-OS-is-booted-td3967868.html I suspect the solution described in the previous paragraph is somehow related to my problem. I've found several threads on the internet with issues describing the same problem, but none of them were with Windows Server 2008 R2. Again, I may be wrong, but it seems like that could be the issue. I just don't know how I go about applying a solution in Windows Server 2008 R2. In any case, I could use your expertise. Maybe I am missing something, or maybe I'm on the right track. Your help is much appreciated. Thank you in advance,

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• How do I reset/update my BIOS for Optiplex GX280?

  - by Sam Langlhey

  So far this has been a nightmare for me, which has been frustrating me constantly. I am using Dell Optiplex GX280 with Windows XP home edition, which is running a BIOS version A04. Recently, i've rebooted the pc to find out that its not booting. It will get to the Windows boot up screen with the progress bar but only to restart to the same process again, over and over. Frustrated that I am, i've inserted the Windows recovery CD to at least either repair of reinstall the operating system to find out that was not possible. I hit F8 to have the boot options, each of the boot option that I've selected gave me an error saying: "Selected boot device is not available." Right after that, I went to the BIOS setting and did a diagnostic test, which recognized all the Boot devices onboard. Now, I cannot even repair of reinstall Windows XP, because the system is not booting from none of the boot devices. The surprise is when I removed the hard-drive from the computer and loaded it on into another computer successfully; that's right, there is nothing wrong with the hard drive. After that I was totally puzzled. I found a few pointers online saying that the BIOS start-up block might be corrupted itself and I might need to flash/update the BIOS. I found the detailed instruction on how to create a Boot up disk by downloading the BIOS firmware from the manufacture's website. I did exactly as instructed below: Download the latest version or your choose version of BIOS file for your computer or motherboard from the manufacturer’s support site. Rename the downloaded file to AMIBOOT.ROM. Copy the file to a floppy disk. Insert the floppy disk to the floppy drive. Turn on the system. After I did that and powered on the PC to boot from the floppy drive, it gave me this error message: "Non-System Disk or Disk Error. Replace and Strike any key when ready." I did all that, and I kept on pressing [Ctrl]+[Home] to force it, but it did not did any satisfying result. Desperate as I am, my next attempt is to try the instruction below. Since I want to be ready, in the event it does not work, do you have any solution that you can provide? Please keep in mind that I cannot boot from any of the devices at this moment. My only hope now is to come on with a solution that will work through the Floppy drive, since that's the only drive that affected. Thank you very much for your advice and support in advance. To create a Windows startup disk, insert a floppy disk into the drive of a similarly configured, working Windows XP system, launch My Computer, right-click the floppy disk icon, and select the Format command from the context menu. When you see the Format dialog box, leave all the default settings as they are and click the Start button. Once the format operation is complete, close the Format dialog box to return to My Computer, double-click the drive C icon to access the root directory, and copy the following three files to the floppy disk: Boot.ini NTLDR Ntdetect.com

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• How can I check if PHP was compiled with the UNICODE version of the Win32 API?

  - by Wesley Murch

  This is related to this Stack Overflow post: glob() can't find file names with multibyte characters on Windows? I'm having issues with PHP and files that have multibyte characters on Windows. Here's my test case: print_r(scandir('./uploads/')); print_r(glob('./uploads/*')); Correct Output on remote UNIX server: Array ( [0] => . [1] => .. [2] => filename-äöü.jpg [3] => filename.jpg [4] => test?test.jpg [5] => ??? ?????.jpg [6] => ?????????.jpg [7] => ???.jpg ) Array ( [0] => ./uploads/filename-äöü.jpg [1] => ./uploads/filename.jpg [2] => ./uploads/test?test.jpg [3] => ./uploads/??? ?????.jpg [4] => ./uploads/?????????.jpg [5] => ./uploads/???.jpg ) Incorrect Output locally on Windows: Array ( [0] => . [1] => .. [2] => ??? ?????.jpg [3] => ???.jpg [4] => ?????????.jpg [5] => filename-äöü.jpg [6] => filename.jpg [7] => test?test.jpg ) Array ( [0] => ./uploads/filename-äöü.jpg [1] => ./uploads/filename.jpg ) Here's a relevant excerpt from the answer I chose to accept (which actually is a quote from an article that was posted online over 2 years ago): From the comments on this article: http://www.rooftopsolutions.nl/blog/filesystem-encoding-and-php The output from your PHP installation on Windows is easy to explain : you installed the wrong version of PHP, and used a version not compiled to use the Unicode version of the Win32 API. For this reason, the filesystem calls used by PHP will use the legacy "ANSI" API and so the C/C++ libraries linked with this version of PHP will first try to convert yout UTF-8-encoded PHP string into the local "ANSI" codepage selected in the running environment (see the CHCP command before starting PHP from a command line window) Your version of Windows is MOST PROBABLY NOT responsible of this weird thing. Actually, this is YOUR version of PHP which is not compiled correctly, and that uses the legacy ANSI version of the Win32 API (for compatibility with the legacy 16-bit versions of Windows 95/98 whose filesystem support in the kernel actually had no direct support for Unicode, but used an internal conversion layer to convert Unicode to the local ANSI codepage before using the actual ANSI version of the API). Recompile PHP using the compiler option to use the UNICODE version of the Win32 API (which should be the default today, and anyway always the default for PHP installed on a server that will NEVER be Windows 95 or Windows 98...) I can't confirm whether this is my problem or not. I used phpinfo() and did not find anything interesting, but I wasn't sure what to look for. I've been using XAMPP for easy installations, so I'm really not sure exactly how it was installed. I'm using Windows 7, 64 bit - so forgive my ignorance, but I'm not even sure if "Win32" is relevant here. How can I check if my current version of PHP was compiled with the configuration mentioned above? PHP Version: 5.3.8 System: Windows NT WES-PC 6.1 build 7601 (Windows 7 Home Premium Edition Service Pack 1) i586 Build Date: Aug 23 2011 11:47:20 Compiler: MSVC9 (Visual C++ 2008) Architecture: x86 Configure Command: cscript /nologo configure.js "--enable-snapshot-build" "--disable-isapi" "--enable-debug-pack" "--disable-isapi" "--without-mssql" "--without-pdo-mssql" "--without-pi3web" "--with-pdo-oci=D:\php-sdk\oracle\instantclient10\sdk,shared" "--with-oci8=D:\php-sdk\oracle\instantclient10\sdk,shared" "--with-oci8-11g=D:\php-sdk\oracle\instantclient11\sdk,shared" "--enable-object-out-dir=../obj/" "--enable-com-dotnet" "--with-mcrypt=static" "--disable-static-analyze"

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• VMware vSphere cluster design for site redundancy

  - by Stefan Radovanovici

  I have a question about the best design for site redudancy when using vSphere clusters. A bit of background info about our situation first though. We are a medium-sized company with two main offices, located in different countries. Our networks are linked by a Layer2 150Mbps leased line which is currently underused. We have a variety of services running for internal use within the company, some on physycal servers and some on existing vSphere clusters. In our department we also run several services (almost all running under various forms of Linux) like NTP, Syslog, jump servers, monitoring servers and so on. We have now the requirement that those servers need to be redundant within each location (which they are not at the moment) and also site redudant (which they are to some extent, the servers are duplicated in the 2nd location with configurations kept in sync via various methods at the application layer). There is no SAN available for us, at least not something that we can use at the moment. Cost is also an issue. While we do have some budget available for this, we can't afford to buy SANs for both locations for example. I looked at the VSA feature and it seems that this could be something for us but I am unsure how to solve the site-redudancy requirement. At the moment for testing purposes I am setting up in a lab a vSphere 5 with VSA on two ESXi hosts. I am currently using the Essentials Plus kit with VSA license, which allows me to build a VSA cluster on up to 3 hosts, together with a vCenter license to manage them. The hosts each have two dual-port network cards and two 600GB drives, running in Raid1. Hardware-wise this will be enough for us to run the all the services we need as VMs and will provide redundandcy within the site. At the moment I see only two option to have site redundancy: build an identical VSA cluter in the second location and keep the various services sync'ed at application layer (database sync, rsync and so on). simply move one of the hosts from the existing cluster to the second location, basically having the VSA cluster span the 150Mbps link between the sites. I would very much prefer the second option but I am unsure how well it'll work, if it can work at all. Technically it should, we can span the needed VLANs across the leased line and have them available in the second location. The advantage would be that we don't need to worry at all about sync'ing databases and the like. But I have the feeling that the bandwidth will not be enough, I have no way of knowing how much traffic will the VSA cluster generate between the hosts. I realize that this will most likely depend on the individual usage of the VMs but still, I have no idea how VSA replicates data between the ESXi hosts. Are these my only options or can my goals be achieved in some other way ? Is there perhaps a way to have some sort of "cold stand by" cluster in the second location where the VMs would be sync'ed once per night from the main location ? The idea is that in case the first site becomes unavailable, we would be able to bring all those VMs online there. We would be ok with the data being 1 day old. Any answers are appreciated. Best regards, Stefan

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• Do hard drive enclosures fail/is it the HDD or enclosure?

  - by x0a

  I'm having a whole host of problems with an external hard drive that was working just fine a couple of hours ago. I've had this problem before once, and that was about 3 months ago, here's what I documented: So a couple of hours ago I turned off all my computers and shut off the power to all my devices in my room, then went and turned the power off at the main switch so I could change an outlet. A couple hours later, after I've already slowly turned everything back on, I go to my xbox to try and watch a movie and it can't seem to list any of the movies I've got. So I go to my desktop to find that my external hard drive isn't there.. even though it's on and connected. It's also stationary and hidden behind something so there's not a whole lot of tampering/physical wear to that external. I plug it into my laptop to try and see what's going on. It starts making this endless loud screeching noise. None of that clicking that's usually associated with hd damage. It's not listed in my computers, and it shows up in Disk Management as "uninitialized" asking me to choose between two different partition types. After carefully disconnecting it and connecting it back, it asks me to format it, which I cancel. I start googling about my issue, starting to accept the situation, torn as hell and helpless and just about ready to toss the thing. Suddenly the screeching stops, after almost 45 minutes of it going, and Disk Management lists the drive as "Online" and "Healthy". Explorer pops up with all my files! I'm still being really careful with it and weary and treating it as though it's in fragile shape. I've downloaded some S.M.A.R.T. software to read the values and everything is listed as "OK" . No reallocated sectors, no read errors, no seek errors. I also ran a quick self-test, which completed without error. Everything seems fine. It looks to be a perfectly healthy external hard drive. So what the hell was that about? Was it doing some sort of maintenance or self-test? How am I supposed to tell the difference? I would've undoubtedly killed the drive for sure if had it gone on a bit longer. I've got the same problem now, with one exception: it doesn't magically reappear after the screeching stops. Occasionally I manage to get some S.M.A.R.T. diagnostics information, which basically reads everything as fine. The only problem is that my HD isn't initializing (so I can't access anything in it). I'm able to successfully run a quick smart test but not an extended one (I've only tried it once but got conflicting indications as to whether it was actually making any progress or not (was stuck on Random read test). So, final question (if all else fails): Could the hard drive enclosure be failing rather than the HDD? Is this a likely possibility at all? How would I know?

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• Computer not POSTing "randomly"?

  - by smoth190

  I have a custom built PC that is exhibiting some...odd... behavior, something I've never seen before. It was working fine one day, and the next day, it wouldn't start. Seeing as I wanted an upgrade anyway, I purchased a new motherboard that was compatible with all my parts. While replacing the motherboard, I accidentally damaged the CPU. Well, I wanted a new one anyway... so I got a new one. Seeing as I was replacing a ton of parts already, I bought a new PSU because the old one was super loud. When I slapped it all together, it starts up, lights, fans, drives, they all start. But I get no display from the monitor. No beeps, which I believe means it doesn't POST. I figured it was the RAM, because after removing the sound card and graphics card, there was nothing else that I hadn't replaced. When I remove both sticks of RAM, I get a continuous beeping, and according to the mobo handbook, means no RAM. So I think the mobo is functional, or atleast partly. I bought new RAM, but it still didn't work. I tried 3 monitors, with both VGA and DIV. So it's probably not the monitor, either. Now, let me get to the random part. Every 20 or so boots (I should also mention, for about 3 out of 5 boots I have to unplug the PC because it won't powerdown via the button), it will POST and I'll get display. Then, after about 2 or 3 resets, it won't work again. This confuses me so much, because even when I change nothing, it will/will not work. My thought is that maybe it has something to do with the RAM not clearing or something. I also reset the CMOS battery, incase that had anything to do with it, but no eval. I found some weird suggestion online about holding the power button for 30 seconds while it was unplugged. That did nothing, but I didn't expect it would... I've replaced just about the entire computer, and all the parts are compatible. Done about everything I can think of, but nothing has worked. Hopefully someone can help me here. And as I side note: When I do get my computer to boot, it says my hardware has changed and I have to re-activate windows. But it says I have to call Microsoft to do it. So I get this fancy automated voice that asks me to enter in a code into windows, then it asks me "How many computers have you activated with this copy of Windows?". Well, I had it on my computer before I replaced everything, so I said 1. Then he yelled at me for violating my 1-use license. I dunno what's going on there, do I have to re-purchase Windows 7? And they wonder why people pirate software... That's just a bonus question, though. Specs: 8GB of DDR2 RAM (Corsair) AMD CPU (I don't know what GHz or model because I can't find the box... (I think its 4 cores of 2.8Ghz) ASRock A785GM-LE Motherboard

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• BSOD Code 16, artifacts all over the place (gtx 260)

  - by belinea

  I have a following, quite dated rig E8400 Core 2 Duo cpu Intel Dragontail Peak DP35DP motherboard on Intel Bearlake P35 chipset 4GB ram Geforce 260gtx Corsair 650W PSU Windows 7 64 bit The following things has happened in the last few days. I first decided to update my Nvidia drivers to the latest version. That was 4 days ago. PC worked fine for 2 days and I was able to play few games as well without any problems. Then 2 days ago a first crash happened while playing the new XCOM game. BSOD code 16. Just the blue screen, no artifacts. PC rebooted and worked well again, I continued playing this game for another 2 hours and went to sleep. Next evening I tried to play some BF3 multiplayer (use to play on LOW settings). Approx. 10 minutes into the game red/pink-ish artifacts appeared on the screen and game quit to desktop. Restarted the game and another 3-4 minutes afterwards another crash to desktop but this time followed shortly by BSOD Code 16. From that moment I started to seeing artifacts on random startups, including Windows loading screen and the BIOS itself. Windows would still load but soon enough it would BSOD on a simple task like opening a Internet browser. Today I get tons of artifacts (little small red dashes all over the screen) on BIOS, loading screen, normal Windows mode as well as safe mode. I suspect it wouldn't be drivers but I tried removing and sweeping them entirely in the safe mode. PC would still start with artifacts all over the place but would load the normal mode, just without the driver, in the default lowest resolution. As soon as proper Nvidia drivers are installed though and PC rebooted, Windows doesn't load at all as BSOD now appears on loading screen. However, again, if I go to safe mode and remove drivers, normal mode launches fine. So obviously crash happens only on high resolution. I opened my machine this morning and gave it a proper cleaning even though it wasn't heavily dusted. It didn't help and number of artifacts seems to increase with every PC restart. I write these words in safe mode, which works, but I have to look through all the red dots and dashes. I don't have built in GPU chipset so I can't try removing my Geforce card nor can I borrow A GPU from anyone else. What are my options? I was looking into getting a completely new rig around Christmas so I'm not freaking out about this. If everything points to hardware issue I may simply decide to get the new machine earlier and don't bother with fixing this one. However it would be great to learn more if this is indeed situation that has slim chances of getting sorted. I realize BSOD Code 16 is rather popular topic online but every story seems a bit different and there can be number of issues with it. Hence a new thread.

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• What's the difference between find and findstr commands in Windows?

  - by Prashant Bhate

  In Windows, what are the differences between find and findstr commands? Both seems to search text in files: find c:\>find /? Searches for a text string in a file or files. FIND [/V] [/C] [/N] [/I] [/OFF[LINE]] "string" [[drive:][path]filename[ ...]] /V Displays all lines NOT containing the specified string. /C Displays only the count of lines containing the string. /N Displays line numbers with the displayed lines. /I Ignores the case of characters when searching for the string. /OFF[LINE] Do not skip files with offline attribute set. "string" Specifies the text string to find. [drive:][path]filename Specifies a file or files to search. If a path is not specified, FIND searches the text typed at the prompt or piped from another command. findstr c:\>findstr /? Searches for strings in files. FINDSTR [/B] [/E] [/L] [/R] [/S] [/I] [/X] [/V] [/N] [/M] [/O] [/P] [/F:file] [/C:string] [/G:file] [/D:dir list] [/A:color attributes] [/OFF[LINE]] strings [[drive:][path]filename[ ...]] /B Matches pattern if at the beginning of a line. /E Matches pattern if at the end of a line. /L Uses search strings literally. /R Uses search strings as regular expressions. /S Searches for matching files in the current directory and all subdirectories. /I Specifies that the search is not to be case-sensitive. /X Prints lines that match exactly. /V Prints only lines that do not contain a match. /N Prints the line number before each line that matches. /M Prints only the filename if a file contains a match. /O Prints character offset before each matching line. /P Skip files with non-printable characters. /OFF[LINE] Do not skip files with offline attribute set. /A:attr Specifies color attribute with two hex digits. See "color /?" /F:file Reads file list from the specified file(/ stands for console). /C:string Uses specified string as a literal search string. /G:file Gets search strings from the specified file(/ stands for console). /D:dir Search a semicolon delimited list of directories strings Text to be searched for. [drive:][path]filename Specifies a file or files to search. Use spaces to separate multiple search strings unless the argument is prefixed with /C. For example, 'FINDSTR "hello there" x.y' searches for "hello" or "there" in file x.y. 'FINDSTR /C:"hello there" x.y' searches for "hello there" in file x.y. Regular expression quick reference: . Wildcard: any character * Repeat: zero or more occurances of previous character or class ^ Line position: beginning of line $ Line position: end of line [class] Character class: any one character in set [^class] Inverse class: any one character not in set [x-y] Range: any characters within the specified range \x Escape: literal use of metacharacter x \<xyz Word position: beginning of word xyz\> Word position: end of word For full information on FINDSTR regular expressions refer to the online Command Reference.

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• Capistrano + Nginx + Passenger = 403

  - by slimchrisp

  I asked this over at stackoverflow as well, but still haven't received any answers that have helped me to solve this problem. I have spent almost a week at this point trying to solve the issue, and I'm just not making any headway. It seems that this issue is pretty common, but none of the solutions I found online work for me. A buddy of mine is actually creating the same setup, and he is having the same issue. After a few days stuck with the 403 error I started over using this tutorial: http://blog.ninjahideout.com/posts/a-guide-to-a-nginx-passenger-and-rvm-server I had hoped starting from scratch using this tutorial would work, but no dice. Either way, if you view the tutorial you can see what steps I have taken. Here is essentially what I have going on. I have a VPS account on linode.com Server OS is Ubuntu 10.04 Local OS (shouldn't matter, but just so you know) used to deploy with Capistrano is Snow Leopard 10.6.6 I use RVM on the server. Version is 1.2.2 I was previously on ruby-1.9.2-p0 [ i386 ], but per the tutorial listed above I switched to ree-1.8.7-2010.02 [ i386 ]. Running 'which ruby' from the command line verifies that I am using 1.8.7 with the following output: /usr/local/rvm/rubies/ree-1.8.7-2010.02/bin/ruby passenger -v prints the following: Phusion Passenger version 3.0.2 Running 'nginx -v' gives me a message that the command nginx could not be found. The server is definitely there and running as I can use nginx to serve static files, but this could have something to do with my problem. I have two users dealing with the install. root which I used to install everything, and deployer which is a user I created specifically to for deploying my applications My web app directory is in the deployer user's home directory as follows: /home/deployer/webapps/mysite.com/public Per Capistrano default deploy, a symbolic link called current is created in the public folder, and points to /home/deployer/webapps/mysite.com/public/releases/most_current_release I have chmodded the deployer directory recursively to 777 /opt/nginx permissions: rwxr-xr-x /usr/local/rvm/gems/ree-1.8.7-2010.02/gems/passenger-3.0.2 permissions: rwxrwsrwx My nginx config file has gone through just short of eternity variations, but currently looks like this: ================================================================================== worker_processes 1; events { worker_connections 1024; } http { passenger_root /usr/local/rvm/gems/ree-1.8.7-2010.02/gems/passenger-3.0.2; passenger_ruby /usr/local/rvm/bin/passenger_ruby; include mime.types; default_type application/octet-stream; sendfile on; keepalive_timeout 65; server { # listen *:80; server_name mysite.com www.mysite.com; root /home/deployer/webapps/mysite.com/public/current; passenger_enabled on; passenger_friendly_error_pages on; access_log logs/mysite.com/server.log; error_log logs/mysite.com/error.log info; error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html; location = /50x.html { root html; } } } ================================================================================== I bounce nginx, hit the site, and boom. 403, and logs say directory index of /home/deployer... is forbidden As others with a similar problem have said, you can drop an index.html into the public/releases/current_release and it will render. But rails no worky. That's basically it. At this point I have just about completely exhausted every possible solution attempt I can think of. I am a programmer and definitely not a sysadmin, so I am 99% sure this has something to do with permissions that I have hosed, but for the life of me I just can't figure out where. If anyone can help I would really really appreciate it. If there's any specific permission things you want me to check (ie groups/permissions), can you please include the commands to do so as well. Hopefully this will help others in the future who read this post. Let me know if there is any other information I can provide, and thanks in advance!!!

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• How can I recover an ext4 filesystem corrupted after a fsck?

  - by Regan

  I have an ext4 filesystem on luks over software raid5. The filesystem was operating "just fine" for several years when I was beginning to run out of space. I had a 9T volume on 6x2T drives. I began upgrading to 3T drives by doing the mdadm fail, remove, add, rebuild, repeat process until I had a larger array. I then grew the luks container, and then when I unmounted and tried to resize2fs I was given the message the filesystem was dirty and needed e2fsck. Without thinking I just did e2fsck -y /dev/mapper/candybox and it began spewing all kinds of inode being removed type messages (can't remember exactly) I killed e2fsck and tried to remount the filesystem to backup data I was concerned about. When trying to mount at this point I get: # mount /dev/mapper/candybox /candybox mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/mapper/candybox, missing codepage or helper program, or other error In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so Looking back at my older logs I noticed the filesystem was giving this error each time the machine booted: kernel: [79137.275531] EXT4-fs (dm-2): warning: mounting fs with errors, running e2fsck is recommended So shame on me for not paying attention :( I then tried to mount using every backup superblock (one after another) and each attempt left this in my log: EXT4-fs (dm-2): ext4_check_descriptors: Checksum for group 0 failed (26534!=65440) EXT4-fs (dm-2): ext4_check_descriptors: Checksum for group 1 failed (38021!=36729) EXT4-fs (dm-2): ext4_check_descriptors: Checksum for group 2 failed (18336!=39845) ... EXT4-fs (dm-2): ext4_check_descriptors: Checksum for group 11911 failed (28743!=44098) BUG: soft lockup - CPU#0 stuck for 23s! [mount:2939] Attempts to restart e2fsck results in: # e2fsck /dev/mapper/candybox e2fsck 1.41.14 (22-Dec-2010) e2fsck: Group descriptors look bad... trying backup blocks... candy: recovering journal e2fsck: unable to set superblock flags on candy At this point, I decided it best to order some more drives and make an image using ddrescue Now two weeks later I have an image of the luks partition in a .img file. # ls -lh total 14T -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 14T Oct 25 01:57 candybox.img -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 271 Oct 20 14:32 candybox.logfile After numerous attempts using everything I could find online I could not coerce e2fsck to do anything on the image, so I used mkfs.ext4 -L candy candybox.img -m 0 -S and I was able to mount the dirty filesystem readonly without the journal and recover 960G of data. It gave all kinds of errors of various directories not existing and so forth but I was able to get some stuff. Which gave me some hope! I then ran e2fsck again and it had to recreate the root inode and gave a massive list of correcting group counts, I accepted the root inode creation and said no to everything else, leaving a completely empty filesystem. Re-ran again and said yes to all questions with the same result but now a "clean" but empty filesystem. extundelete gives me 0 recoverable inodes found. And now I'm stuck again, I can't come up with any other methods other than dropping to something like photorec which will give me an absolute mess with how large the filesystem was. I'm willing to re-copy the image from the original array and start over, if I can get any suggestions or ideas on a way to get more of my files back. I wish I could give more detailed logs of the commands that have run, but the output is long scrolled passed except for what gets logged to syslog and my memory is not as detailed due to the timeframe this has occurred over. Any help is greatly appreciated!

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• Debian dependency problems / partially installed

  - by Michael

  I tried to install curl support for php 5 on my debian squeeze machine and since I'm having problems. After trying to install curl I got dependency issues which I tried to solve by removing what started the issues. From one thing came another and I'm currently looking at ~29 issues when I try to do an apt-get upgrade. These issues vary from unable to config, dependency and unable to remove errors. I tried apt-get upgrade -f and installing packages using dpkg command. I tried removing using purge and force. I manually removed stuff to try and fix it. I tried running dpkg --configure -a. I've to say I'm still pretty new to linux so I'm out of idea's and cant seem to find an answer online that matches my problems. Here's a part of the apt-get upgrade command output: Reading package lists... Building dependency tree... Reading state information... 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. 29 not fully installed or removed. After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used. Setting up libgeoip1 (1.4.7~beta6+dfsg-1) ... Bus error dpkg: error processing libgeoip1 (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 135 Setting up libisc62 (1:9.7.3.dfsg-1~squeeze3) ... Bus error dpkg: error processing libisc62 (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 135 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of libdns69: libdns69 depends on libgeoip1 (>= 1.4.7~beta6+dfsg); however: Package libgeoip1 is not configured yet. libdns69 depends on libisc62; however: Package libisc62 is not configured yet. dpkg: error processing libdns69 (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of libisccc60: libisccc60 depends on libisc62; however: Package libisc62 is not configured yet. dpkg: error processing libisccc60 (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of libisccfg62: libisccfg62 depends on libdns69; however: Package libdns69 is not configured yet. .. continues Errors were encountered while processing: libgeoip1 libisc62 libdns69 libisccc60 libisccfg62 libbind9-60 liblwres60 bind9-host libavahi-core7 libdaemon0 avahi-daemon libexif12 libffi5 libgomp1 libgphoto2-port0 libgphoto2-2 libperl5.10 libsensors4 libsnmp15 libhpmud0 libieee1284-3 libnss-mdns libossp-uuid16 libpq5 libv4l-0 libsane libsane-hpaio libssh2-1 python-gobject dpkg --configure -a Setting up libpq5 (8.4.8-0squeeze2) ... Bus error dpkg: error processing libpq5 (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 135 Setting up libperl5.10 (5.10.1-17squeeze2) ... Bus error dpkg: error processing libperl5.10 (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 135 Setting up libffi5 (3.0.9-3) ... Bus error dpkg: error processing libffi5 (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 135 Setting up libexif12 (0.6.19-1) ... .. continues Suggestions are really welcome I really don't know what to do. Michael.

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• Hosed Windows 7 permissons

  - by Anthony

  Here is the most interesting thing I've noticed since the problems started: If I go into a control panel/system module (in this case the Resource Monitor) that has a "Check Online" type option, Firefox (my default browser) opens right up without a problem. But if I just start Firefox from any shortcuts (start menu, desktop, etc), the Firefox process starts up (and the start menu icon starts glowing) only to end without notice a few seconds later. Possibly related: If I start up in Safe-Mode (w/o Networking, but haven't tried with yet), I can start up FF or Chrome just fine, but if I attempt to open Chrome normally, I get a permissions error. Opera and Safari seem to be okay (mostly). Safari crashes when I try to download any files. All of the above leads me to believe that some (but clearly not all) core files have messed up permissions. Or rather, that I no longer have permission. System still does, based on Firefox opening without fail when the system initiates it. I've run MS Forefront once in normal mode, Malwarebytes twice in normal mode and once in safe-mode. One trojan found and deleted, but the problem persists. Two other things worth mentioning: I accidentally duplicated my library... I thought I'd try to add the "Internet" folder to my start menu, next to music and downloads. The first advanced thing I tried was "create new library". I clearly misunderstood what this means. I thought it was a way to add virtual folders to the library (which I thought, in turn, would allow me to choose it as a link on the start menu), but instead it recreated my already existing user folder, AppData and all. I didn't notice this until today. Then I tried setting permissions for my User folder to full control, recursively... Confused but not giving up,I thought I could maybe create a shortcut to the NetHood folder manually, but instead got hit with an access denied error. So I tried to change the permission levels for all sub-folders to my user folder so that I had full control. I got several access denied errors along the way. At this point I gave up, went out, ended up caught in the rain and stuck on a friend's couch and showing up late for work the next day. Thanks for nothing, Microsoft. When I finally got home today (20 hours later), I noticed that Firefox was acting really strange. I tried opening Chrome to see if the problem was client side or server side, and instead got the above-mentioned "you don't have permission to open this program" alert. And I think that's the whole story. Oh, I also did a system restore, but not chose a point from this morning (an auto update), and it worked but the problem wasn't fixed. And then all the earlier restore points were gone. So the questions are: a) is there a way to set the admin and user privs back to "default"? b) would this, in anyone's expert opinion, fix the problems I'm having? c) how come being logged in as an admin isn't the same as being logged in with admin privs? It seems that half the time I have to do run as admin for fairy standard things because i'm being treated as me-theuser and not me-theadmin. Thanks for reading.

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• Convert from apache rewrite to nginx

  - by Linux Intel

  I want to convert from apache rewrite modules to nginx RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} mosConfig_[a-zA-Z_]{1,21}(=|\%3D) [OR] RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} base64_encode.*\(.*\) [OR] RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (\<|%3C).*script.*(\>|%3E) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} GLOBALS(=|\[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2}) [OR] RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} _REQUEST(=|\[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2}) RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} SELECT(=|\[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2}) [OR] RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} UNION(=|\[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2}) [OR] RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} UPDATE(=|\[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2}) [OR] RewriteRule ^([^.]*)/?$ index.php [L] RewriteRule ^domain/trial/cms$ index/index.php?%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteCond %{HTTP:Range} ([a-z]+) [NC] RewriteRule ([0-9_\-]+)flv$ http://www.domain.com [R,L] RewriteCond %{ENV:byte-ranges-specifier} !^$ RewriteRule ([0-9_\-]+)flv$ http://www.domain.com [R,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^Mozilla/5 [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^Mozilla/4 [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^Opera [NC] RewriteRule ([0-9_\-]+)flv$ http://www.domain.com [R,L] RewriteRule ^$ index/index.php?%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !sss.php [NC] RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !m-administrator [NC] RewriteRule ^([^/^.]*)$ sss.php?encrypted=$1&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !sss.php [NC] RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !m-administrator [NC] RewriteRule ^([^/^.]*)/([^/^.]*)$ sss.php?tab=$1&page=$2&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !sss.php [NC] RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !m-administrator [NC] RewriteRule ^([^/^.]*)/([^/^.]*)/([^.]*)$ sss.php?tab=$1&page=$2&queryString=$3&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !sss.php [NC] RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !security.php [NC] RewriteRule ^([^/]*)$ index/$1?%{QUERY_STRING} [L] I tried to convert it by online tools such as : http://www.anilcetin.com/convert-apache-htaccess-to-nginx/ but it didn't convert it correctly. The conversion output is : if ($args ~ "mosConfig_[a-zA-Z_]{1,21}(=|%3D)"){ set $rule_0 1; } if ($args ~ "base64_encode.*(.*)"){ set $rule_0 1; } if ($args ~* "(<|%3C).*script.*(>|%3E)"){ set $rule_0 1; } if ($args ~ "GLOBALS(=|[|%[0-9A-Z]{0,2})"){ set $rule_0 1; } if ($args ~ "_REQUEST(=|[|%[0-9A-Z]{0,2})"){ set $rule_0 1; } if ($args ~ "SELECT(=|[|%[0-9A-Z]{0,2})"){ set $rule_0 1; } if ($args ~ "UNION(=|[|%[0-9A-Z]{0,2})"){ set $rule_0 1; } if ($args ~ "UPDATE(=|[|%[0-9A-Z]{0,2})"){ set $rule_0 1; } if ($rule_0 = "1"){ rewrite ^/([^.]*)/?$ /index.php last; } if ($rule_1 = ""){ rewrite ^/domain/trial/cms$ /index/index.php?$args last; } if ($http_range ~* "([a-z]+)"){ set $rule_2 1$rule_2; } if ($rule_2 = "1"){ rewrite /([0-9_-]+)flv$ http://www.domain.com redirect; } #ignored: condition 0 if ($rule_3 = "1"){ rewrite /([0-9_-]+)flv$ http://www.domain.com redirect; } if ($http_user_agent !~* "^Mozilla/5"){ set $rule_4 1$rule_4; } if ($http_user_agent !~* "^Mozilla/4"){ set $rule_4 2$rule_4; } if ($http_user_agent !~* "^Opera"){ set $rule_4 3$rule_4; } if ($rule_4 = "321"){ rewrite /([0-9_-]+)flv$ http://www.domain.com redirect; } if ($rule_5 = ""){ rewrite ^/$ /index/index.php?$args last; } if ($uri !~* "sss.php"){ set $rule_6 1$rule_6; } if ($uri !~* "m-administrator"){ set $rule_6 2$rule_6; } if ($rule_6 = "21"){ rewrite ^/([^/^.]*)$ /sss.php?encrypted=$1&$args last; } if ($uri !~* "sss.php"){ set $rule_7 1$rule_7; } if ($uri !~* "m-administrator"){ set $rule_7 2$rule_7; } if ($rule_7 = "21"){ rewrite ^/([^/^.]*)/([^/^.]*)$ /sss.php?tab=$1&page=$2&$args last; } if ($uri !~* "sss.php"){ set $rule_8 1$rule_8; } if ($uri !~* "m-administrator"){ set $rule_8 2$rule_8; } if ($rule_8 = "21"){ rewrite ^/([^/^.]*)/([^/^.]*)/([^.]*)$ /sss.php?tab=$1&page=$2&queryString=$3&$args last; } if ($uri !~* "sss.php"){ set $rule_9 1$rule_9; } if ($uri !~* "security.php"){ set $rule_9 2$rule_9; } if ($rule_9 = "21"){ rewrite ^/([^/]*)$ /index/$1?$args last; } Please help me with the proper conversion result for nginx in order to work perfectly.

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• How do I connect my Windows XP laptop to the internet?

  - by rubysiddhi

  Hello fellow super users, The Past I have a Acer Travelmate 2300 laptop running Windows XP. 6 months ago I moved into a new apartment and got a new internet connection set up. After getting an internet connection installed in my apartment I reinstalled Windows XP and at the same time wiped my drive clean losing all the original Acer software and drivers. Once XP was reinstalled I had to find all the drivers again to get the Travelmate laptop connected to the internet. So, using my Vista laptop which was connected fine, I went to the Acer Travelmate Series drivers download page to download the necessary drivers. I transferred them to my Acer XP machine and installed them the best I could (there were no easy instructions so I just had to find all the executables and run them). I eventually got connected to the internet but not exactly in the way I had hoped for. The Present To be connected to the internet I need to have an Ethernet cord connecting my computer (via the Ethernet port) to my router. This is a problem since it defeats the purpose of having a Wireless LAN card in my Acer laptop. One of the programs I downloaded from the Acer Travelmate Series page was the Acer Wireless LAN Configuration Utility. This program allows me to see the current network I am connected to and all the available networks I could potentially connect to. It reminds me of XP's Wireless Network Connection window/utility where you can see all available wireless networks, refresh the network list and connect to one of the networks. I should mention that my ISP set up a security enabled wireless network with WPA. This network requires a network key if you want to connect to it. I guess my Vista computer has the network key entered into it already. The problem is that I do not know what the network key is. Now obviously you would say just contact my ISP to get the key. And I will but there is just one extra weird issue. I am able to connect to another unsecured wireless network in the Wireless Network Connection window/utility. I can be on it as long as my Ethernet cable is plugged in. So this is not really wireless is it? And this indicates that even if I do get that network key password from my ISP, I will only solve one of the two problems I have. I will only solve being able to get online as long as I am connected to my router via the Ethernet cable. The Main Questions So how do I enable my acer IPN2220 Wireless LAN Card so that I can use my Acer laptop from anywhere with in my apartment? Or should I first get the network key from my ISP to access my security enabled wireless network? And then deal with getting the acer IPN2220 Wireless LAN Card working? Hard & Learned VS Easy & Stupid Of course contacting the ISP would be easier. Have em just come in here and do there thing. The problem with that is that they do not speak English (yeah, im in Poland) and it'd be a hell of a time trying to understand what they are doing (uncomfortable looking over their shoulder). Also, I want to learn how to do this task myself so that I can fix the problem if it ever happens again. You know, be more self sufficient. I look forward to helpful replies. Thanks, Xaviour

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• OCR anything with OneNote 2007 and 2010

  - by Matthew Guay

  Quality OCR software can often be very expensive, but you may have one already installed on your computer that you didn’t know about.  Here’s how you can use OneNote to OCR anything on your computer. OneNote is one of the overlooked gems in recent versions of Microsoft Office.  OneNote makes it simple to take notes and keep track of everything with integrated search, and offers more features than its popular competitor Evernote.  One way it is better is its high quality optical character recognition (OCR) engine.  One of Evernote’s most popular features is that you can search for anything, including text in an image, and you can easily find it.  OneNote takes this further, and instantly OCRs any text in images you add.  Then, you can use this text easily and copy it from the image.  Let’s see how this works and how you can use OneNote as the ultimate OCR. Please Note: This feature is available in OneNote 2007 and 2010.  OneNote 2007 is included with Office 2007 Home and Student, Enterprise, and Ultimate, while OneNote 2010 is included with all edition of Office 2010 except for Starter edition. OCR anything First, let’s add something to OCR into OneNote.  There are many different ways you can add items to OCR into OneNote.  Open a blank page or one you want to insert something into, and then follow these steps to add what you want into OneNote. Picture Simply drag-and-drop a picture with text into a notebook… You can insert a picture directly from OneNote as well.  In OneNote 2010, select the Insert tab, and then choose Picture. In OneNote 2007, select the Insert menu, select Picture, and then choose From File.   Screen Clipping There are many times we’d like to copy text from something we see onscreen, but there is no direct way to copy text from that thing.  For instance, you cannot copy text from the title-bar of a window, or from a flash-based online presentation.  For these cases, the Screen Clipping option is very useful.  To add a clip of anything onscreen in OneNote 2010, select the Insert tab in the ribbon and click Screen Clipping. In OneNote 2007, either click the Clip button on the toolbar or select the Insert menu and choose Screen Clipping.   Alternately, you can take a screen clipping by pressing the windows key + S. When you click Screen Clipping, OneNote will minimize, your desktop will fade lighter, and your mouse pointer will change to a plus sign.  Now, click and drag over anything you want to add to OneNote.  Here we’re selecting the title of this article. The section you selected will now show up in your OneNote notebook, complete with the date and time the clip was made. Insert a file You’re not limited to pictures; OneNote can even OCR anything in most files on your computer.  You can add files directly in OneNote 2010 by selecting File Printout in the Insert tab. In OneNote 2007, select the Insert menu and choose Files as Printout. Choose the file you want to add to OneNote in the dialog. Select Insert, and OneNote will pause momentarily as it processes the file. Now your file will show up in OneNote as a printout with a link to the original file above it. You can also send any file directly to OneNote via the OneNote virtual printer.  If you have a file open, such as a PDF, that you’d like to OCR, simply open the print dialog in that program and select the “Send to OneNote” printer. Or, if you have a scanner, you can scan documents directly into OneNote by clicking Scanner Printout in the Insert tab in OneNote 2010. In OneNote 2003, to add a scanned document select the Insert menu, select Picture, and then choose From Scanner or Camera. OCR the image, file, or screenshot you put in OneNote Now that you’ve got your stuff into OneNote, let’s put it to work.  OneNote automatically did an OCR scan on anything you inserted into OneNote.  You can check to make sure by right-clicking on any picture, screenshot, or file you inserted.  Select “Make Text in Image Searchable” and then make sure the correct language is selected. Now, you can copy text from the Picture.  Simply right-click on the picture, and select “Copy Text from Picture”. And here’s the text that OneNote found in this picture: OCR anything with OneNote 2007 and 2010 - Windows Live Writer Not bad, huh?  Now you can paste the text from the picture into a document or anywhere you need to use the text. If you are instead copying text from a printout, it may give you the option to copy text from this page or all pages of the printout.   This works the exact same in OneNote 2007. In OneNote 2010, you can also edit the text OneNote has saved in the image from the OCR.  This way, if OneNote read something incorrectly you can change it so you can still find it when you use search in OneNote.  Additionally, you can copy only a specific portion of the text from the edit box, so it can be useful just for general copying as well.  To do this, right-click on the item and select “Edit Alt Text”. Here is the window to edit alternate text.  If you want to copy only a portion of the text, simply select it and press Ctrl+C to copy that portion. Searching OneNote’s OCR engine is very useful for finding specific pictures you have saved in OneNote.  Simply enter your search query in the search box on top right, and OneNote will automatically find all instances of that term in all of your notebooks.  Notice how it highlights the search term even in the image! This works the same in OneNote 2007.  Notice how it highlighted “How-to” in a shot of the header image in our favorite website. In Windows Vista and 7, you can even search for things OneNote OCRed from the Start Menu search.  Here the start menu search found the words “Windows Live Writer” in our OCR Test notebook in OneNote where we inserted the screen clip above. Conclusion OneNote is a very useful OCR tool, and can help you capture text from just about anything.  Plus, since you can easily search everything you have stored in OneNote, you can quickly find anything you insert anytime.  OneNote is one of the least-used Office tools, but we have found it very useful and hope you do too. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Add or Remove Apps from the Microsoft Office 2007 or 2010 SuiteRemove Office 2010 Beta and Reinstall Office 2007How To Create and Publish Blog Posts in Word 2010 & 2007How To Copy Worksheets in Excel 2007 & 2010Add Page Numbers to Documents in Word 2007 & 2010 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Using TrueCrypt to Secure Your Data Quickly Schedule Meetings With NeedtoMeet Share Flickr Photos On Facebook Automatically Are You Blocked On Gtalk? Find out Discover Latest Android Apps On AppBrain The Ultimate Guide For YouTube Lovers

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• Week in Geek: FBI Back Door in OpenBSD Edition

  - by Asian Angel

  This week we learned how to migrate bookmarks from Delicious to Diigo, fix annoying arrows, play old-school DOS games, schedule smart computer shutdowns, use breaks in Microsoft Word to better format documents, check the condition of hard-disks using Linux disk utilities, & what the Linux fstab is and how it works. Photo by Jameson42. Random Geek Links Another week with extra news link goodness to help keep you up to date. Photo by justmakeit. Report of FBI back door roils OpenBSD community Allegations that the FBI surreptitiously placed a back door into the OpenBSD operating system have alarmed the computer security community, prompting calls for an audit of the source code and claims that the charges must be a hoax. Fortinet: Job outlook improving for cybercrooks In an ironic twist in the job market, more positions will open up for developers who can write customized malware packers, people who can break CAPTCHA codes, and distributors who can spread malicious code, according to Fortinet. Enisa: Malware for smartphones is a ’serious risk’ Businesses and consumers are at risk of data breaches through smartphone use, according to the European Network and Information Security Agency. The trick with the f: Google and Microsoft web sites distribute malware Last week, Google’s DoubleClick advertising platform and Microsoft’s rad.msn.com online ad network briefly distributed malware to other web sites in the form of advertising banners. New scam tactic: Fake disk defraggers It would appear that scammers are trying out new programs to see which might best confuse potential victims and evade detection by legitimate antivirus software. Microsoft closes IE and Stuxnet holes As previously announced, Microsoft has released 17 security updates to close 40 security holes. All four Windows holes so far disclosed in connection with Stuxnet have now been closed. Microsoft Offers H.264 Support to Firefox on Windows via Add-On The new HTML5 Extension for Windows Media Player Firefox Plug-in add-on from Microsoft offers users that are running Firefox on Windows 7 H.264 support for HTML5 video playback. Google proclaims Chrome business-ready Google has announced that Chrome is ready for corporate use. Microsoft Tells Exchange Customers to Think Twice Before Opting for Google Message Continuity This week, Microsoft is telling companies still running Exchange 2010’s precursors that they should carefully consider the implications of embracing Google Message Continuity. Who Google has in mind for its Chrome OS users Steven Vaughan-Nichols explains why he feels that Chrome OS will be ideal for either office-workers or people who need a computer, but do not know the first thing about how to use one safely. Oracle takes office suite to the cloud Oracle has introduced Cloud Office 1.0, a cloud-based version of its office suite, which is aimed at web and mobile users. Mozilla pays premiums for reports of vulnerabilities The Mozilla Foundation has followed Google’s example by expanding its rewards program for reports of vulnerabilities in its Web applications. Who bought those 882 Novell patents? Not just Microsoft The mysterious CPTN Holdings — the organization that bought the 882 Novell patents as part of the terms of the Attachmate acquisition of Novell – has been unmasked (Microsoft, Apple, EMC and Oracle). Appeals court: Feds need warrants for e-mail Police must obtain search warrants before perusing Internet users’ e-mail records, a federal appeals court ruled today in a landmark decision that struck down part of a 1986 law allowing warrantless access. Geek Video of the Week What happens when someone plays a wicked prank by shoveling crazy snow paths that lead to dead ends or turn back on themselves? Watch to find out! Photo by CollegeHumor. Janitor Snow Shoveling Prank Random TinyHacker Links The Oatmeal on Cat vs Internet What lengths will our poor neglected kitty hero have to go to in order to get some attention? Guide On Using JoliCloud With Windows JoliCloud is a nifty operating system that’s made for people who need a light-weight OS that’s mostly cloud based. Check this guide on using it with Windows. Use Cameyo to Easily Create Portable Programs Here’s a nifty tool to make portable apps out of programs in Windows. Check out the guide to do it. Better Family Tech Support A nice new site by Google to help members of family understand how computers work. Track Your Stolen Mobile Phone With F-Secure A useful anti-theft tool for your mobile phone. Super User Questions Another week with great answers to popular questions from Super User. What Chrome password manager fits my requirements? What’s the best way to be able to reimage windows computers? Could you suggest feature-rich disk-based personal backup program for linux (and I’ve seen a few)? What is IPv6 and why should I care? Is there any way to find out what programs are trying to connect to Internet on windows? How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Here are our hottest articles full of geeky goodness from this past week at HTG. 20 OS X Keyboard Shortcuts You Might Not Know Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0 Kills Viruses Dead. Download It Now. Is Your Desktop Printer More Expensive Than Printing Services? Ask the Readers: Would You Be Willing to Give Windows Up and Use a Different O.S.? The Twelve Days of Geekmas One Year Ago on How-To Geek Enjoy reading through our latest batch of retro-geek goodness from one year ago. Macrium Reflect is a Free and Easy To Use Backup Utility How To Turn a Physical Computer Into A Virtual Machine with Disk2vhd How To Restore Windows 7 from a System Image How To Manage Hard Drive Space Used by Windows 7 Backup and Restore How To Manage Hibernate Mode in Windows 7 The Geek Note That is all we have for you this week, so see you back here again after the holidays! Got a great tip? Send it in to us at [email protected]. Photo by mitjamavsar. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials The 50 Best Registry Hacks that Make Windows Better The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like) LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor Deathwing the Destroyer – WoW Cataclysm Dragon Wallpaper Drag2Up Lets You Drag and Drop Files to the Web With Ease The Spam Police Parts 1 and 2 – Goodbye Spammers [Videos] Snow Angels Theme for Windows 7 Exploring the Jungle Ruins Wallpaper Protect Your Privacy When Browsing with Chrome and Iron Browser

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• Week in Geek: US Govt E-card Scam Siphons Confidential Data Edition

  - by Asian Angel

  This week we learned how to “back up photos to Flickr, automate repetitive tasks, & normalize MP3 volume”, enable “stereo mix” in Windows 7 to record audio, create custom papercraft toys, read up on three alternatives to Apple’s flaky iOS alarm clock, decorated our desktops & app docks with Google icon packs, and more. Photo by alexschlegel. Random Geek Links It has been a busy week on the security & malware fronts and we have a roundup of the latest news to help keep you updated. Photo by TopTechWriter.US. US govt e-card scam hits confidential data A fake U.S. government Christmas e-card has managed to siphon off gigabytes of sensitive data from a number of law enforcement and military staff who work on cybersecurity matters, many of whom are involved in computer crime investigations. Security tool uncovers multiple bugs in every browser Michal Zalewski reports that he discovered the vulnerability in Internet Explorer a while ago using his cross_fuzz fuzzing tool and reported it to Microsoft in July 2010. Zalewski also used cross_fuzz to discover bugs in other browsers, which he also reported to the relevant organisations. Microsoft to fix Windows holes, but not ones in IE Microsoft said that it will release two security bulletins next week fixing three holes in Windows, but it is still investigating or working on fixing holes in Internet Explorer that have been reportedly exploited in attacks. Microsoft warns of Windows flaw affecting image rendering Microsoft has warned of a Windows vulnerability that could allow an attacker to take control of a computer if the user is logged on with administrative rights. Windows 7 Not Affected by Critical 0-Day in the Windows Graphics Rendering Engine While confirming that details on a Critical zero-day vulnerability have made their way into the wild, Microsoft noted that customers running the latest iteration of Windows client and server platforms are not exposed to any risks. Microsoft warns of Office-related malware Microsoft’s Malware Protection Center issued a warning this week that it has spotted malicious code on the Internet that can take advantage of a flaw in Word and infect computers after a user does nothing more than read an e-mail. *Refers to a flaw that was addressed in the November security patch releases. Make sure you have all of the latest security updates installed. Unpatched hole in ImgBurn disk burning application According to security specialist Secunia, a highly critical vulnerability in ImgBurn, a lightweight disk burning application, can be used to remotely compromise a user’s system. Hole in VLC Media Player Virtual Security Research (VSR) has identified a vulnerability in VLC Media Player. In versions up to and including 1.1.5 of the VLC Media Player. Flash Player sandbox can be bypassed Flash applications run locally can read local files and send them to an online server – something which the sandbox is supposed to prevent. Chinese auction site touts hacked iTunes accounts Tens of thousands of reportedly hacked iTunes accounts have been found on Chinese auction site Taobao, but the company claims it is unable to take action unless there are direct complaints. What happened in the recent Hotmail outage Mike Schackwitz explains the cause of the recent Hotmail outage. DOJ sends order to Twitter for Wikileaks-related account info The U.S. Justice Department has obtained a court order directing Twitter to turn over information about the accounts of activists with ties to Wikileaks, including an Icelandic politician, a legendary Dutch hacker, and a U.S. computer programmer. Google gets court to block Microsoft Interior Department e-mail win The U.S. Federal Claims Court has temporarily blocked Microsoft from proceeding with the $49.3 million, five-year DOI contract that it won this past November. Google Apps customers get email lockdown Companies and organisations using Google Apps are now able to restrict the email access of selected users. LibreOffice Is the Default Office Suite for Ubuntu 11.04 Matthias Klose has announced some details regarding the replacement of the old OpenOffice.org 3.2.1 packages with the new LibreOffice 3.3 ones, starting with the upcoming Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) Alpha 2 release. Sysadmin Geek Tips Photo by Filomena Scalise. How to Setup Software RAID for a Simple File Server on Ubuntu Do you need a file server that is cheap and easy to setup, “rock solid” reliable, and has Email Alerting? This tutorial shows you how to use Ubuntu, software RAID, and SaMBa to accomplish just that. How to Control the Order of Startup Programs in Windows While you can specify the applications you want to launch when Windows starts, the ability to control the order in which they start is not available. However, there are a couple of ways you can easily overcome this limitation and control the startup order of applications. Random TinyHacker Links Using Opera Unite to Send Large Files A tutorial on using Opera Unite to easily send huge files from your computer. WorkFlowy is a Useful To-do List Tool A cool to-do list tool that lets you integrate multiple tasks in one single list easily. Playing Flash Videos on iOS Devices Yes, you can play flash videos on jailbroken iPhones. Here’s a tutorial. Clear Safari History and Cookies On iPhone A tutorial on clearing your browser history on iPhone and other iOS devices. Monitor Your Internet Usage Here’s a cool, cross-platform tool to monitor your internet bandwidth. Super User Questions See what the community had to say on these popular questions from Super User this week. Why is my upload speed much less than my download speed? Where should I find drivers for my laptop if it didn’t come with a driver disk? OEM Office 2010 without media – how to reinstall? Is there a point to using theft tracking software like Prey on my laptop, if you have login security? Moving an “all-in-one” PC when turned on/off How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Get caught up on your HTG reading with our hottest articles from this past week. How to Combine Rescue Disks to Create the Ultimate Windows Repair Disk How To Boot 10 Different Live CDs From 1 USB Flash Drive What is Camera Raw, and Why Would a Professional Prefer it to JPG? Did You Know Facebook Has Built-In Shortcut Keys? The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: The Basics One Year Ago on How-To Geek Enjoy looking through our latest gathering of retro article goodness. Learning Windows 7: Create a Homegroup & Join a New Computer To It How To Disconnect a Machine from a Homegroup Use Remote Desktop To Access Other Computers On a Small Office or Home Network How To Share Files and Printers Between Windows 7 and Vista Allow Users To Run Only Specified Programs in Windows 7 The Geek Note That is all we have for you this week and we hope your first week back at work or school has gone very well now that the holidays are over. Know a great tip? Send it in to us at [email protected]. Photo by Pamela Machado. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC HTG Projects: How to Create Your Own Custom Papercraft Toy How to Combine Rescue Disks to Create the Ultimate Windows Repair Disk What is Camera Raw, and Why Would a Professional Prefer it to JPG? The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: The Basics How To Boot 10 Different Live CDs From 1 USB Flash Drive The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 Arctic Theme for Windows 7 Gives Your Desktop an Icy Touch Install LibreOffice via PPA and Receive Auto-Updates in Ubuntu Creative Portraits Peek Inside the Guts of Modern Electronics Scenic Winter Lane Wallpaper to Create a Relaxing Mood Access Your Web Apps Directly Using the Context Menu in Chrome The Deep – Awesome Use of Metal Objects as Deep Sea Creatures [Video]

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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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• Test All Features of Windows Phone 7 On Your PC

  - by Matthew Guay

  Are you developer or just excited about the upcoming Windows Phone 7, and want to try it out now?  Thanks to free developer tools from Microsoft and a new unlocked emulator rom, you can try out most of the exciting features today from your PC. Last week we showed you how to try out Windows Phone 7 on your PC and get started developing for the upcoming new devices.  We noticed, however, that the emulator only contains Internet Explorer Mobile and some settings.  This is still interesting to play around with, but it wasn’t the full Windows Phone 7 experience. Some enterprising tweakers discovered that more applications were actually included in the emulator, but were simply hidden from users.  Developer Dan Ardelean then figured out how to re-enable these features, and released a tweaked emulator rom so everyone can try out all of the Windows Phone 7 features for themselves.  Here we’ll look at how you can run this new emulator image on your PC, and then look at some interesting features in Windows Phone 7. Editor Note: This modified emulator image is not official, and isn’t sanctioned by Microsoft. Use your own judgment when choosing to download and use the emulator. Setting Up Emulator Rom To test-drive Windows Phone 7 on your PC, you must first download and install the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP (link below).  Follow the steps we showed you last week at: Try out Windows Phone 7 on your PC today.  Once it’s installed, go ahead and run the default emulator as we showed to make sure everything works ok. Once the Windows Phone Developer Tools are installed and running, download the new emulator rom from XDA Forums (link below).  This will be a zip file, so extract it first. Note where you save the file, as you will need the address in the next step. Now, to run our new emulator image, we need to open the emulator in command line and point to the new rom image.  To do this, browse to the correct directory, depending on whether you’re running the 32 bit or 64 bit version of Windows: 32 bit: C:\Program Files\Microsoft XDE\1.0\ 64 bit: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft XDE\1.0\ Hold your Shift key down and right-click in the folder.  Choose Open Command Window here. At the command prompt, enter XDE.exe followed by the location of your new rom image.  Here, we downloaded the rom to our download folder, so at the command prompt we entered: XDE.exe C:\Users\Matthew\Downloads\WM70Full\WM70Full.bin The emulator loads … with the full Windows Phone 7 experience! To make it easier, let’s make a shortcut on our desktop to load the emulator with the new rom directly.  Right-click on your desktop (or any folder you want to create the shortcut in), select New, and then Shortcut. Now, in the box, we need to enter the path for the emulator followed by the location of our rom.  Both items must be in quotes.  So, in our test, we entered the following: 32 bit: “C:\Program Files\Microsoft XDE\1.0\” “C:\Users\Matthew\Downloads\WM70Full\WM70Full.bin” 64 bit: “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft XDE\1.0\” “C:\Users\Matthew\Downloads\WM70Full\WM70Full.bin” Make sure to enter the correct location of the new emulator rom for your computer, and keep both items in separate quotes.  Click next when you’ve entered the location. Name the shortcut; we named it Windows Phone 7, but simply enter whatever you’d like.  Click Finish when you’re done. You should now have a nice Windows Phone icon and your fully functional shortcut!  Double-click it to run the Windows Phone 7 emulator as above. Features in the Unlocked Windows Phone 7 Emulator So let’s look at what you can do with this new emulator.  Almost everything you’ve seen in demos from the Mobile World Conference and Mix’10 are right here for you to play with.  Here’s the application menu, which you can access by clicking on the arrow on the top of the home screen, which shows how much stuff they’ve got in this!   And, of course, even the home screen itself shows much more activity than it did in the original emulator. Let’s check out some of these sections.  Here’s Zune running on Windows Phone 7, and the Zune Marketplace.  The animations are beautiful, so be sure to check this out yourself. The new picture hub is much nicer than any picture viewer included with Windows Mobile in the past…   Stay productive, and on schedule with the new Calendar. The XBOX hub gives us only a hint of things to come, and the links to games now are simply placeholders. Here’s a look at the Office hub.  This doesn’t show up on the homescreen right now, but you can access it in the applications menu.  Office obviously still has a lot of work left on it, but even at a glance here it looks like it includes a lot more functionality than Office Mobile in Windows Mobile 6. Here’s a look at each of the three apps: Word, Excel, and OneNote, and the formatting pallet in Office apps.   This emulator also includes a lot more settings than the default one, including settings for individual applications. You can even activate the screen lock, and try out the lift-to-peek-or-unlock feature… Finally, this version of Windows Phone 7 includes a very nice SystemInfo app with an advanced task manager.  We hope this is still available when the actual phones are released. Conclusion If you’re excited about the upcoming Windows Phone 7 series, or simply want to learn more about what’s coming, this is a great way to test it out.  With these exciting new hubs and applications, there’s something here for everyone.  Let us know what you like most about Windows Phone 7 and what your favorite app or hub is. Links Please note: These roms are not officially supported by Microsoft, and could be taken down. Download the unlocked Windows Phone 7 emulator from XDA Forums – click the link in this post to download How the unlocked emulator image was created Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Try out Windows Phone 7 on your PC todayGet stats on your Ruby on Rails codeDisable Windows Vista’s Built-in CD/DVD Burning FeaturesWeek in Geek – The Slick Windows 7 File Copy Animation EditionGeek Fun: Virtualized Old School Windows – Windows 95 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Get Better Windows Search With UltraSearch Scan News With NY Times Article Skimmer SpeedyFox Claims to Speed up your Firefox Beware Hover Kitties Test Drive Mobile Phones Online With TryPhone Ben & Jerry’s Free Cone Day, 3/23/10

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• Reporting Services - It's a Wrap!

  - by smisner

  If you have any experience at all with Reporting Services, you have probably developed a report using the matrix data region. It's handy when you want to generate columns dynamically based on data. If users view a matrix report online, they can scroll horizontally to view all columns and all is well. But if they want to print the report, the experience is completely different and you'll have to decide how you want to handle dynamic columns. By default, when a user prints a matrix report for which the number of columns exceeds the width of the page, Reporting Services determines how many columns can fit on the page and renders one or more separate pages for the additional columns. In this post, I'll explain two techniques for managing dynamic columns. First, I'll show how to use the RepeatRowHeaders property to make it easier to read a report when columns span multiple pages, and then I'll show you how to "wrap" columns so that you can avoid the horizontal page break. Included with this post are the sample RDLs for download. First, let's look at the default behavior of a matrix. A matrix that has too many columns for one printed page (or output to page-based renderer like PDF or Word) will be rendered such that the first page with the row group headers and the inital set of columns, as shown in Figure 1. The second page continues by rendering the next set of columns that can fit on the page, as shown in Figure 2.This pattern continues until all columns are rendered. The problem with the default behavior is that you've lost the context of employee and sales order - the row headers - on the second page. That makes it hard for users to read this report because the layout requires them to flip back and forth between the current page and the first page of the report. You can fix this behavior by finding the RepeatRowHeaders of the tablix report item and changing its value to True. The second (and subsequent pages) of the matrix now look like the image shown in Figure 3. The problem with this approach is that the number of printed pages to flip through is unpredictable when you have a large number of potential columns. What if you want to include all columns on the same page? You can take advantage of the repeating behavior of a tablix and get repeating columns by embedding one tablix inside of another. For this example, I'm using SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services. You can get similar results with SQL Server 2008. (In fact, you could probably do something similar in SQL Server 2005, but I haven't tested it. The steps would be slightly different because you would be working with the old-style matrix as compared to the new-style tablix discussed in this post.) I created a dataset that queries AdventureWorksDW2008 tables: SELECT TOP (100) e.LastName + ', ' + e.FirstName AS EmployeeName, d.FullDateAlternateKey, f.SalesOrderNumber, p.EnglishProductName, sum(SalesAmount) as SalesAmount FROM FactResellerSales AS f INNER JOIN DimProduct AS p ON p.ProductKey = f.ProductKey INNER JOIN DimDate AS d ON d.DateKey = f.OrderDateKey INNER JOIN DimEmployee AS e ON e.EmployeeKey = f.EmployeeKey GROUP BY p.EnglishProductName, d.FullDateAlternateKey, e.LastName + ', ' + e.FirstName, f.SalesOrderNumber ORDER BY EmployeeName, f.SalesOrderNumber, p.EnglishProductName To start the report: Add a matrix to the report body and drag Employee Name to the row header, which also creates a group. Next drag SalesOrderNumber below Employee Name in the Row Groups panel, which creates a second group and a second column in the row header section of the matrix, as shown in Figure 4. Now for some trickiness. Add another column to the row headers. This new column will be associated with the existing EmployeeName group rather than causing BIDS to create a new group. To do this, right-click on the EmployeeName textbox in the bottom row, point to Insert Column, and then click Inside Group-Right. Then add the SalesOrderNumber field to this new column. By doing this, you're creating a report that repeats a set of columns for each EmployeeName/SalesOrderNumber combination that appears in the data. Next, modify the first row group's expression to group on both EmployeeName and SalesOrderNumber. In the Row Groups section, right-click EmployeeName, click Group Properties, click the Add button, and select [SalesOrderNumber]. Now you need to configure the columns to repeat. Rather than use the Columns group of the matrix like you might expect, you're going to use the textbox that belongs to the second group of the tablix as a location for embedding other report items. First, clear out the text that's currently in the third column - SalesOrderNumber - because it's already added as a separate textbox in this report design. Then drag and drop a matrix into that textbox, as shown in Figure 5. Again, you need to do some tricks here to get the appearance and behavior right. We don't really want repeating rows in the embedded matrix, so follow these steps: Click on the Rows label which then displays RowGroup in the Row Groups pane below the report body. Right-click on RowGroup,click Delete Group, and select the option to delete associated rows and columns. As a result, you get a modified matrix which has only a ColumnGroup in it, with a row above a double-dashed line for the column group and a row below the line for the aggregated data. Let's continue: Drag EnglishProductName to the data textbox (below the line). Add a second data row by right-clicking EnglishProductName, pointing to Insert Row, and clicking Below. Add the SalesAmount field to the new data textbox. Now eliminate the column group row without eliminating the group. To do this, right-click the row above the double-dashed line, click Delete Rows, and then select Delete Rows Only in the message box. Now you're ready for the fit and finish phase: Resize the column containing the embedded matrix so that it fits completely. Also, the final column in the matrix is for the column group. You can't delete this column, but you can make it as small as possible. Just click on the matrix to display the row and column handles, and then drag the right edge of the rightmost column to the left to make the column virtually disappear. Next, configure the groups so that the columns of the embedded matrix will wrap. In the Column Groups pane, right-click ColumnGroup1 and click on the expression button (labeled fx) to the right of Group On [EnglishProductName]. Replace the expression with the following: =RowNumber("SalesOrderNumber" ). We use SalesOrderNumber here because that is the name of the group that "contains" the embedded matrix. The next step is to configure the number of columns to display before wrapping. Click any cell in the matrix that is not inside the embedded matrix, and then double-click the second group in the Row Groups pane - SalesOrderNumber. Change the group expression to the following expression: =Ceiling(RowNumber("EmployeeName")/3) The last step is to apply formatting. In my example, I set the SalesAmount textbox's Format property to C2 and also right-aligned the text in both the EnglishProductName and the SalesAmount textboxes. And voila - Figure 6 shows a matrix report with wrapping columns. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Database users in the Oracle Utilities Application Framework

  - by Anthony Shorten

  I mentioned the product database users fleetingly in the last blog post and they deserve a better mention. This applies to all versions of the Oracle Utilities Application Framework. The Oracle Utilities Application Framework uses up to three users initially as part of the base operations of the product. The type of database supported (the framework supports Oracle, IBM DB2 and Microsoft SQL Server) dictates the number of users used and their permissions. For publishing brevity I will outline what is available for the Oracle database and, in summary, mention where it differs for the other database supported. For Oracle database customers we ship three distinct database users: Administration User (SPLADM or CISADM by default) - This is the database user that actually owns the schema. This user is not used by the product to do any DML (Data Manipulation Language) SQL other than that is necessary for maintenance of the database. This database user performs all the DCL (Data Control Language) and DDL (Data Definition Language) against the database. It is typically reserved for Database Administration use only. Product Read Write User (SPLUSER or CISUSER by default) - This is the database user used by the product itself to execute DML (Data Manipulation Language) statements against the schema owned by the Administration user. This user has the appropriate read and write permission to objects within the schema owned by the Administration user. For databases such as DB2 and SQL Server we may not create this user but use other DCL (Data Control Language) statements and facilities to simulate this user. Product Read User (SPLREAD or CISREAD by default) - This is the database that has read only permission to the schema owned by the Administration user. It is used for reporting or any part of the product or interface that requires read permissions to the database (for example, products that have ConfigLab and Archiving use this user for remote access). For databases such as DB2 and SQL Server we may not create this user but use other DCL (Data Control Language) statements and facilities to simulate this user. You may notice the words by default in the list above. The values supplied with the installer are the default and can be changed to what the site standard or implementation wants to use (as long as they conform to the standards supported by the underlying database). You can even create multiples of each within the same database and pointing to same schema. To manage the permissions for the users, there is a utility provided with the installation (oragensec (Oracle), db2gensec (DB2) or msqlgensec (SQL Server)) that generates the security definitions for the above users. That can be executed a number of times for each schema to give users appropriate permissions. For example, it is possible to define more than one read/write User to access the database. This is a common technique used by implementations to have a different user per access mode (to separate online and batch). In fact you can also allocate additional security (such as resource profiles in Oracle) to limit the impact of specific users at the database. To facilitate users and permissions, in Oracle for example, we create a CISREAD role (read only role) and a CISUSER role (read write role) that can be allocated to the appropriate database user. When the security permissions utility, oragensec in this case, is executed it uses the role to determine the permissions. To give you a case study, my underpowered laptop has multiple installations on it of multiple products but I have one database. I create a different schema for each product and each version (with my own naming convention to help me manage the databases). I create individual users on each schema and run oragensec to maintain the permissions for each appropriately. It works fine as long I have setup the userids appropriately. This means: Creating the users with the appropriate roles. I use the common CISUSER and CISREAD role across versions and across Oracle Utilities Application Framework products. Just remember to associate the CISUSER role with the database user you want to use for read/write operations and the CISREAD role with the user you wish to use for the read only operations. The role is treated as a tag to indicate the oragensec utility which appropriate permissions to assign to the user. The utilities for the other database types essentially do the same, obviously using the technology available within those databases. Run oragensec against the read write user and read only user against the appropriate administration user (I will abbreviate the user to ADM user). This ensures the right permissions are allocated to the right users for the right products. To help me there, I use the same prefix on the user name for the same product. For example, my Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4 environment has the administration user set to FW4ADM and the associated FW4USER and FW4READ as the users for the product to use. For my MWM environment I used MWMADM for the administration user and MWMUSER and MWMREAD for my associated users. You get the picture. When I run oragensec (once for each ADM user), I know what other users to associate with it. Remember to rerun oragensec against the users if I run upgrades, service packs or database based single fixes. This assures that the users are in synchronization with the ADM user. As a side note, for those who do not understand the difference between DML, DCL and DDL: DDL (Data Definition Language) - These are SQL statements that define the database schema and the structures within. SQL Statements such as CREATE and DROP are examples of DDL SQL statements. DCL (Data Control Language) - These are the SQL statements that define the database level permissions to DDL maintained objects within the database. SQL Statements such as GRANT and REVOKE are examples of DCL SQL statements. DML (Database Manipulation Language) - These are SQL statements that alter the data within the tables. SQL Statements such as SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE are examples of DML SQL statements. Hope this has clarified the database user support. Remember in Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4 we enhanced this by also supporting CLIENT_IDENTIFIER to allow the database to still use the administration user for the main processing but make the database session more traceable.

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• Creating packages in code - Package Configurations

  Continuing my theme of building various types of packages in code, this example shows how to building a package with package configurations. Incidentally it shows you how to add a variable, and a connection too. It covers the five most common configurations: Configuration File Indirect Configuration File SQL Server Indirect SQL Server Environment Variable  For a general overview try the SQL Server Books Online Package Configurations topic. The sample uses a a simple helper function ApplyConfig to create or update a configuration, although in the example we will only ever create. The most useful knowledge is the configuration string (Configuration.ConfigurationString) that you need to set. Configuration Type Configuration String Description Configuration File The full path and file name of an XML configuration file. The file can contain one or more configuration and includes the target path and new value to set. Indirect Configuration File An environment variable the value of which contains full path and file name of an XML configuration file as per the Configuration File type described above. SQL Server A three part configuration string, with each part being quote delimited and separated by a semi-colon. -- The first part is the connection manager name. The connection tells you which server and database to look for the configuration table. -- The second part is the name of the configuration table. The table is of a standard format, use the Package Configuration Wizard to help create an example, or see the sample script files below. The table contains one or more rows or configuration items each with a target path and new value. -- The third and final part is the optional filter name. A configuration table can contain multiple configurations, and the filter is  literal value that can be used to group items together and act as a filter clause when configurations are being read. If you do not need a filter, just leave the value empty. Indirect SQL Server An environment variable the value of which is the three part configuration string as per the SQL Server type described above. Environment Variable An environment variable the value of which is the value to set in the package. This is slightly different to the other examples as the configuration definition in the package also includes the target information. In our ApplyConfig function this is the only example that actually supplies a target value for the Configuration.PackagePath property. The path is an XPath style path for the target property, \Package.Variables[User::Variable].Properties[Value], the equivalent of which can be seen in the screenshot below, with the object being our variable called Variable, and the property to set is the Value property of that variable object. The configurations as seen when opening the generated package in BIDS: The sample code creates the package, adds a variable and connection manager, enables configurations, and then adds our example configurations. The package is then saved to disk, useful for checking the package and testing, before finally executing, just to prove it is valid. There are some external resources used here, namely some environment variables and a table, see below for more details. namespace Konesans.Dts.Samples { using System; using Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime; public class PackageConfigurations { public void CreatePackage() { // Create a new package Package package = new Package(); package.Name = "ConfigurationSample"; // Add a variable, the target for our configurations package.Variables.Add("Variable", false, "User", 0); // Add a connection, for SQL configurations // Add the SQL OLE-DB connection ConnectionManager connectionManagerOleDb = package.Connections.Add("OLEDB"); connectionManagerOleDb.Name = "SQLConnection"; connectionManagerOleDb.ConnectionString = "Provider=SQLOLEDB.1;Data Source=(local);Initial Catalog=master;Integrated Security=SSPI;"; // Add our example configurations, first must enable package setting package.EnableConfigurations = true; // Direct configuration file, see sample file this.ApplyConfig(package, "Configuration File", DTSConfigurationType.ConfigFile, "C:\\Temp\\XmlConfig.dtsConfig", string.Empty); // Indirect configuration file, the emvironment variable XmlConfigFileEnvironmentVariable // contains the path to the configuration file, e.g. C:\Temp\XmlConfig.dtsConfig this.ApplyConfig(package, "Indirect Configuration File", DTSConfigurationType.IConfigFile, "XmlConfigFileEnvironmentVariable", string.Empty); // Direct SQL Server configuration, uses the SQLConnection package connection to read // configurations from the [dbo].[SSIS Configurations] table, with a filter of "SampleFilter" this.ApplyConfig(package, "SQL Server", DTSConfigurationType.SqlServer, "\"SQLConnection\";\"[dbo].[SSIS Configurations]\";\"SampleFilter\";", string.Empty); // Indirect SQL Server configuration, the environment variable "SQLServerEnvironmentVariable" // contains the configuration string e.g. "SQLConnection";"[dbo].[SSIS Configurations]";"SampleFilter"; this.ApplyConfig(package, "Indirect SQL Server", DTSConfigurationType.ISqlServer, "SQLServerEnvironmentVariable", string.Empty); // Direct environment variable, the value of the EnvironmentVariable environment variable is // applied to the target property, the value of the "User::Variable" package variable this.ApplyConfig(package, "EnvironmentVariable", DTSConfigurationType.EnvVariable, "EnvironmentVariable", "\\Package.Variables[User::Variable].Properties[Value]"); #if DEBUG // Save package to disk, DEBUG only new Application().SaveToXml(String.Format(@"C:\Temp\{0}.dtsx", package.Name), package, null); Console.WriteLine(@"C:\Temp\{0}.dtsx", package.Name); #endif // Execute package package.Execute(); // Basic check for warnings foreach (DtsWarning warning in package.Warnings) { Console.WriteLine("WarningCode : {0}", warning.WarningCode); Console.WriteLine(" SubComponent : {0}", warning.SubComponent); Console.WriteLine(" Description : {0}", warning.Description); Console.WriteLine(); } // Basic check for errors foreach (DtsError error in package.Errors) { Console.WriteLine("ErrorCode : {0}", error.ErrorCode); Console.WriteLine(" SubComponent : {0}", error.SubComponent); Console.WriteLine(" Description : {0}", error.Description); Console.WriteLine(); } package.Dispose(); } /// <summary> /// Add or update an package configuration. /// </summary> /// <param name="package">The package.</param> /// <param name="name">The configuration name.</param> /// <param name="type">The type of configuration</param> /// <param name="setting">The configuration setting.</param> /// <param name="target">The target of the configuration, leave blank if not required.</param> internal void ApplyConfig(Package package, string name, DTSConfigurationType type, string setting, string target) { Configurations configurations = package.Configurations; Configuration configuration; if (configurations.Contains(name)) { configuration = configurations[name]; } else { configuration = configurations.Add(); } configuration.Name = name; configuration.ConfigurationType = type; configuration.ConfigurationString = setting; configuration.PackagePath = target; } } } The following table lists the environment variables required for the full example to work along with some sample values. Variable Sample value EnvironmentVariable 1 SQLServerEnvironmentVariable "SQLConnection";"[dbo].[SSIS Configurations]";"SampleFilter"; XmlConfigFileEnvironmentVariable C:\Temp\XmlConfig.dtsConfig Sample code, package and configuration file. ConfigurationApplication.cs ConfigurationSample.dtsx XmlConfig.dtsConfig

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