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• How I Work: Staying Productive Whilst Traveling

  - by BuckWoody

  I travel a lot. Not like some folks that are gone every week, mind you, although in the last month I’ve been to: Cambridge, UK; Anchorage, AK; San Jose, CA; Copenhagen, DK, Boston, MA; and I’m currently en-route to Anaheim, CA.  While this many places in a month is a bit unusual for me, I would say I travel frequently. I’ve travelled most of my 28+ years in IT, and at one time was a consultant traveling weekly.   With that much time away from my primary work location, I have to find ways to stay productive. Some might say “just rest – take a nap!” – but I’m not able to do that. For one thing, I’m a very light sleeper and I’ve never slept on a plane - even a 30+ hour trip to New Zealand in Business Class - so that just isn’t option. I also am not always in the plane, of course. There’s the hotel, the taxi/bus/train, the airport and then all that over again when I arrive. Since my regular jobs have many demands, I have to get work done.   Note: No, I’m not always focused on work. I need downtime just like everyone else. Sometimes I just think, watch a movie or listen to tunes – and I give myself permission to do that anytime – sometimes the whole trip. I have too fewheartbeats left in life to only focus on work – it’s just not that important, and neither am I. Some of these tasks are letters to friends and family, or other personal things. What I’m talking about here is a plan, not some task list I have to follow. When I get to the location I’m traveling to, I always build in as much time as I can to ensure I enjoy those sights and the people I’m with. I would find traveling to be a waste if not for that.   The Unrealistic Expectation As I would evaluate the trip I was taking – say a 6-8 hour flight – I would expect to get 10-12 hours of work done. After all, there’s the time at the airport, the taxi and so on, and then of course the time in the air with all of the room, power, internet and everything else I needed to get my work done. I would pile up tasks at home, pack my bags, and head happily to the magical land of the TSA.   Right. On return from the trip, I had accomplished little, had more e-mails and other work that had piled up, and I was tired, hungry, and unorganized. This had to change. So, I decided to do three things: Segment my work Set realistic expectations Plan accordingly  Segmenting By Available Resources The first task was to decide what kind of work I could do in each location – if any. I found that I was dependent on a few things to get work done, such as power, the Internet, and a place to sit down. Before I fly, I take some time at home to get all of the work I’d like to accomplish while away segmented into these areas, and print that out on paper, which goes in my suit-coat pocket along with a mechanical pencil. I print my tickets, and I’m all set for the adventure ahead. Then I simply do each kind of work whenever I’m in that situation. No power There are certain times when I don’t have power available. But not only that, I might not even be able to use most of my electronics. So I now schedule as many phone calls as I can for the taxi/bus/train ride and the airports as I can. I have a paper notebook (Moleskine, of course) and a pencil and I print out any notes or numbers I need prior to the trip. Once I’m airborne or at the airport, I work on my laptop. I check and respond to e-mails, create slides, write code, do architecture, whatever I can.  If I can’t use any electronics, or once the power runs out, I schedule time for reading. I can read at the airport or anywhere, actually, even in-flight or any other transport. I “read with a pencil”, meaning I take a lot of notes, which I liketo put in OneNote, but since in most cases I don’t have power, I use the Moleskine to do that. Speaking of which, sometimes as I’m thinking I come up with new topics, ideas, blog posts, or things to teach in my classes. Once again I take out the notebook and write it down. All of these notes get a check-mark when I get back to the office and transfer the writing to OneNote. I’ve tried those “smart pens” and so on to automate this, but it just never works out. Pencil and paper are just fine. As I mentioned, sometime I just need to think. I’ll do nothing, and let my mind wander, thinking of nothing in particular, or some math problem or science question I’m interested in. My only issue with this is that I communicate tothink, and I don’t want to drive people crazy by being that guy that won’t shut up, so I think in a different way. Power, but no Internet or Phone If I have power but no Internet or phone, I focus on the laptop and the tablet as before, and I also recharge my other gadgets. Power, Internet, Phone and a Place to Work At first I thought that when I arrived at the hotel or event I could get the same amount of work done that I do at the office. Not so. There’s simply too many distractions, things you need, or other issues that allow this. Of course, Ican work on any device, read, think, write or whatever, but I am simply not as productive as I am in my home office. So I plan for about 25-50% as much work getting done in this environment as I think I could really do. I’ve done some measurements, and this holds out to be true almost every time. The key is that I re-set my expectations (and my co-worker’s expectations as well) that this is the case. I use the Out-Of-Office notices to let people know that I’m just not going to be 100% at this time – it’s hard for everyone, but it’s more honest and realistic, and I’d rather they know that – and that I realize that – than to let them think I’m totally available. Because I’m not – I’m traveling. I don’t tend to put too much detail, because after all I don’t necessarily want to let people know when I’m not home :) but I do think it’s important to let people that depend on my know that I’ll get back with them later. I hope this helps you think through your own methodology of staying productive when you travel. Or perhaps you just go offline, and don’t worry about any of this – good for you! That’s completely valid as well.   (Oh, and yes, I wrote this at 35K feet, on Alaska Airlines on a trip. :)  Practice what you preach, Buck.)

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• Cancelling Route Navigation in AngularJS Controllers

  - by dwahlin

  If you’re new to AngularJS check out my AngularJS in 60-ish Minutes video tutorial or download the free eBook. Also check out The AngularJS Magazine for up-to-date information on using AngularJS to build Single Page Applications (SPAs). Routing provides a nice way to associate views with controllers in AngularJS using a minimal amount of code. While a user is normally able to navigate directly to a specific route, there may be times when a user triggers a route change before they’ve finalized an important action such as saving data. In these types of situations you may want to cancel the route navigation and ask the user if they’d like to finish what they were doing so that their data isn’t lost. In this post I’ll talk about a technique that can be used to accomplish this type of routing task.   The $locationChangeStart Event When route navigation occurs in an AngularJS application a few events are raised. One is named $locationChangeStart and the other is named $routeChangeStart (there are other events as well). At the current time (version 1.2) the $routeChangeStart doesn’t provide a way to cancel route navigation, however, the $locationChangeStart event can be used to cancel navigation. If you dig into the AngularJS core script you’ll find the following code that shows how the $locationChangeStart event is raised as the $browser object’s onUrlChange() function is invoked:   $browser.onUrlChange(function (newUrl) { if ($location.absUrl() != newUrl) { if ($rootScope.$broadcast('$locationChangeStart', newUrl, $location.absUrl()).defaultPrevented) { $browser.url($location.absUrl()); return; } $rootScope.$evalAsync(function () { var oldUrl = $location.absUrl(); $location.$$parse(newUrl); afterLocationChange(oldUrl); }); if (!$rootScope.$$phase) $rootScope.$digest(); } }); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } The key part of the code is the call to $broadcast. This call broadcasts the $locationChangeStart event to all child scopes so that they can be notified before a location change is made. To handle the $locationChangeStart event you can use the $rootScope.on() function. For this example I’ve added a call to $on() into a function that is called immediately after the controller is invoked:   function init() { //initialize data here.. //Make sure they're warned if they made a change but didn't save it //Call to $on returns a "deregistration" function that can be called to //remove the listener (see routeChange() for an example of using it) onRouteChangeOff = $rootScope.$on('$locationChangeStart', routeChange); } This code listens for the $locationChangeStart event and calls routeChange() when it occurs. The value returned from calling $on is a “deregistration” function that can be called to detach from the event. In this case the deregistration function is named onRouteChangeOff (it’s accessible throughout the controller). You’ll see how the onRouteChangeOff function is used in just a moment.   Cancelling Route Navigation The routeChange() callback triggered by the $locationChangeStart event displays a modal dialog similar to the following to prompt the user:     Here’s the code for routeChange(): function routeChange(event, newUrl) { //Navigate to newUrl if the form isn't dirty if (!$scope.editForm.$dirty) return; var modalOptions = { closeButtonText: 'Cancel', actionButtonText: 'Ignore Changes', headerText: 'Unsaved Changes', bodyText: 'You have unsaved changes. Leave the page?' }; modalService.showModal({}, modalOptions).then(function (result) { if (result === 'ok') { onRouteChangeOff(); //Stop listening for location changes $location.path(newUrl); //Go to page they're interested in } }); //prevent navigation by default since we'll handle it //once the user selects a dialog option event.preventDefault(); return; } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Looking at the parameters of routeChange() you can see that it accepts an event object and the new route that the user is trying to navigate to. The event object is used to prevent navigation since we need to prompt the user before leaving the current view. Notice the call to event.preventDefault() at the end of the function. The modal dialog is shown by calling modalService.showModal() (see my previous post for more information about the custom modalService that acts as a wrapper around Angular UI Bootstrap’s $modal service). If the user selects “Ignore Changes” then their changes will be discarded and the application will navigate to the route they intended to go to originally. This is done by first detaching from the $locationChangeStart event by calling onRouteChangeOff() (recall that this is the function returned from the call to $on()) so that we don’t get stuck in a never ending cycle where the dialog continues to display when they click the “Ignore Changes” button. A call is then made to $location.path(newUrl) to handle navigating to the target view. If the user cancels the operation they’ll stay on the current view. Conclusion The key to canceling routes is understanding how to work with the $locationChangeStart event and cancelling it so that route navigation doesn’t occur. I’m hoping that in the future the same type of task can be done using the $routeChangeStart event but for now this code gets the job done. You can see this code in action in the Customer Manager application available on Github (specifically the customerEdit view). Learn more about the application here.

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• Webcast Q&A: Qualcomm Provides a Seamless Experience for Customers with Oracle WebCenter

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  Last Thursday we had the second webcast in our WebCenter in Action webcast series, "Qualcomm Provides a Seamless Experience for Customers with Oracle WebCenter, where customer Michael Chander from Qualcomm and Vince Casarez & Gourav Goyal from Oracle Partner Keste shared how Oracle WebCenter is powering Qualcomm’s externally facing website and providing a seamless experience for their customers. In case you missed it, here's a recap of the Q&A.   Mike Chandler, Qualcomm Q: Did you run into any issues when integrating all of the different applications together?A: Definitely, our main challenges were in the area of user provisioning and security propagation, all the standard stuff you might expect when hooking up SSO for authentication and authorization. In addition, we spent several iterations getting the UI’s in sync. While everyone was given the same digital material to build too, each team interpreted and implemented it their own way. Initially as a user navigated, if you were looking for it, you could slight variations in color or font or width , stuff like that. So we had to pull all the developers responsible for the UI together and get pixel level agreement on a lot of things so we could ensure seamless transitions across applications. Q: What has been the biggest benefit your end users have seen?A: Wow, there have been several. An SSO enabled environment was huge a win for our users. The portal application that this replaced had not really been invested in by the business. With this project, we had full business participation and backing, and it really showed in some key areas like the shopping experience. For example, while ordering in the previous site, the items did not have any pictures or really usable descriptions. A tremendous amount of work was done to try and make the site more intuitive and user friendly. Site performance has also drastically improved thanks to new hardware, improved database design, and of course the fact that ADF has made great strides in runtime performance. Q: Was there any resistance internally when implementing the solution? If so, how did you overcome that?A: Within a large company, I’m sure there is always going to be competition for large projects, as there was here. Once we got through the technical analysis and settled on the technology choices, it was actually no resistance to implementing the solution. This project was fully driven by the business with the aim of long term growth. I can confidently say that the fact that this project was given the utmost importance by both the business and IT really help put down any resistance that you would typically see while implementing a new solution. Q: Given the performance, what do you estimate to be the top end capacity of the system? A:I think our top end capacity is really only limited by our hardware. I’m comfortable saying we could grow 10x on our current hardware, both in terms of transactions and users. We can easily spin up new JVM instances if needed. We already use less JVM’s than we had planned. In addition, ADF is doing a very good job with his connection pooling and application module pooling, so we see a very good ratio of users connected to the systems vs db connections, without impacting performace. Q: What's the overview or summary of feedback from the users interacting with the site?A: Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive from both the business and our customers. They’re very happy with the new SSO environment , the new LAF, and the performance of the site. Of course, it’s not all roses. No matter what, there are always going to be people that don’t like the layout or the color scheme, etc. By and large though, customers are happy and the business is happy. Q: Can you describe the impressions about the site before and after the project within Qualcomm?A: Before the project, the site worked and people were using it, but most people were not happy with it. It was slow and tended to be a bit tempermental, for example a user would perform a transaction and the system would throw and unexpected error. The user could back up and retry the steps and things would work fine, so why didn’t work the first time?. From a UI perspective, we’d hear comments like it looked like it was built by a high school student.  Vince Casarez & Gourav Goyal, Keste Q: Did you run into any obstacles when implementing the solution?A: It's interesting some people call them "obstacles" on this project we just called them "dependencies".  There were both technical and business related dependencies that we had to work out. Mike points out the SSO dependencies and the coordination and synchronization between the teams to have a seamless login experience and a seamless end user experience.  There was also a set of dependencies on the User Acceptance testing to make sure that everyone understood the use cases for how the system would be used.  With a branching into a new market and trying to match a simple user experience as many consumer sites have today, there was always a tendency for the team members to provide their suggestions on how things could be simpler.  But with all the work up front on the user design and getting the business driving this set of experiences, this minimized the downstream suggestions that tend to distract a team.  In this case, all the work up front allowed us to enumerate the "dependencies" and keep the distractions to a minimum. Q: Was there a lot of custom work that needed to be done for this particular solution?A: The focus for this particular solution was really on the custom processes. The interesting thing is that with the data flows and the integration with applications, there are some pre-built integrations, but realistically for the process flow, we had to build those. The framework and tooling we used made things easier so we didn’t have to implement core functionality, like transitioning from screen to screen or from flow to flow. The design feature of Task Flows really helped speed the development and keep the component infrastructure in line with the dynamic processes.  Task flows and other elements like Skins are core to the infrastructure or technology stack of Oracle. This then allowed the team to center the project focus around the business flows and use cases to meet the core requirements and keep the project on time. Q: What do you think were the keys to success for rolling out WebCenter?A:  The 5 main keys to success were: 1) Sponsorship from the whole organization around this project from senior executive agreement, business owners driving functionality, and IT development alignment; 2) Upfront design planning and use case definition to clearly define the project scope and requirements; 3) Focussed development and project management aligned with the top level goals and drivers; 4) User acceptance and usability testing along the way to identify potential issues and direct resolution of the issues;  and 5) Constant prioritization of the issues for development to fix by the business.  It also helps to have great team chemistry and really smart people working on the project. If you missed the webcast, be sure to catch the replay to see a live demonstration of WebCenter in action!  Qualcomm Provides a Seamless Experience for Customers with Oracle WebCenter from Oracle WebCenter

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• BI Applications overview

  - by sv744

  Welcome to Oracle BI applications blog! This blog will talk about various features, general roadmap, description of functionality and implementation steps related to Oracle BI applications. In the first post we start with an overview of the BI apps and will delve deeper into some of the topics below in the upcoming weeks and months. If there are other topics you would like us to talk about, pl feel free to provide feedback on that. The Oracle BI applications are a set of pre-built applications that enable pervasive BI by providing role-based insight for each functional area, including sales, service, marketing, contact center, finance, supplier/supply chain, HR/workforce, and executive management. For example, Sales Analytics includes role-based applications for sales executives, sales management, as well as front-line sales reps, each of whom have different needs. The applications integrate and transform data from a range of enterprise sources—including Siebel, Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP, and others—into actionable intelligence for each business function and user role. This blog  starts with the key benefits and characteristics of Oracle BI applications. In a series of subsequent blogs, each of these points will be explained in detail. Why BI apps? Demonstrate the value of BI to a business user, show reports / dashboards / model that can answer their business questions as part of the sales cycle. Demonstrate technical feasibility of BI project and significantly lower risk and improve success Build Vs Buy benefit Don’t have to start with a blank sheet of paper. Help consolidate disparate systems Data integration in M&A situations Insulate BI consumers from changes in the OLTP Present OLTP data and highlight issues of poor data / missing data – and improve data quality and accuracy Prebuilt Integrations BI apps support prebuilt integrations against leading ERP sources: Fusion Applications, E- Business Suite, Peoplesoft, JD Edwards, Siebel, SAP Co-developed with inputs from functional experts in BI and Applications teams. Out of the box dimensional model to source model mappings Multi source and Multi Instance support Rich Data Model    BI apps have a very rich dimensionsal data model built over 10 years that incorporates best practises from BI modeling perspective as well as reflect the source system complexities  Thanks for reading a long post, and be on the lookout for future posts.  We will look forward to your valuable feedback on these topics as well as suggestions on what other topics would you like us to cover. I Conformed dimensional model across all business subject areas allows cross functional reporting, e.g. customer / supplier 360 Over 360 fact tables across 7 product areas CRM – 145, SCM – 47, Financials – 28, Procurement – 20, HCM – 27, Projects – 18, Campus Solutions – 21, PLM - 56 Supported by 300 physical dimensions Support for extensive calendars; Gregorian, enterprise and ledger based Conformed data model and metrics for real time vs warehouse based reporting  Multi-tenant enabled Extensive BI related transformations BI apps ETL and data integration support various transformations required for dimensional models and reporting requirements. All these have been distilled into common patterns and abstracted logic which can be readily reused across different modules Slowly Changing Dimension support Hierarchy flattening support Row / Column Hybrid Hierarchy Flattening As Is vs. As Was hierarchy support Currency Conversion :-  Support for 3 corporate, CRM, ledger and transaction currencies UOM conversion Internationalization / Localization Dynamic Data translations Code standardization (Domains) Historical Snapshots Cycle and process lifecycle computations Balance Facts Equalization of GL accounting chartfields/segments Standardized values for categorizing GL accounts Reconciliation between GL and subledgers to track accounted/transferred/posted transactions to GL Materialization of data only available through costly and complex APIs e.g. Fusion Payroll, EBS / Fusion Accruals Complex event Interpretation of source data – E.g. o    What constitutes a transfer o    Deriving supervisors via position hierarchy o    Deriving primary assignment in PSFT o    Categorizing and transposition to measures of Payroll Balances to specific metrics to support side by side comparison of measures of for example Fixed Salary, Variable Salary, Tax, Bonus, Overtime Payments. o    Counting of Events – E.g. converting events to fact counters so that for example the number of hires can easily be added up and compared alongside the total transfers and terminations. Multi pass processing of multiple sources e.g. headcount, salary, promotion, performance to allow side to side comparison. Adding value to data to aid analysis through banding, additional domain classifications and groupings to allow higher level analytical reporting and data discovery Calculation of complex measures examples: o    COGs, DSO, DPO, Inventory turns  etc o    Transfers within a Hierarchy or out of / into a hierarchy relative to view point in hierarchy. Configurability and Extensibility support  BI apps offer support for extensibility for various entities as automated extensibility or part of extension methodology Key Flex fields and Descriptive Flex support  Extensible attribute support (JDE)  Conformed Domains ETL Architecture BI apps offer a modular adapter architecture which allows support of multiple product lines into a single conformed model Multi Source Multi Technology Orchestration – creates load plan taking into account task dependencies and customers deployment to generate a plan based on a customers of multiple complex etl tasks Plan optimization allowing parallel ETL tasks Oracle: Bit map indexes and partition management High availability support    Follow the sun support. TCO BI apps support several utilities / capabilities that help with overall total cost of ownership and ensure a rapid implementation Improved cost of ownership – lower cost to deploy On-going support for new versions of the source application Task based setups flows Data Lineage Functional setup performed in Web UI by Functional person Configuration Test to Production support Security BI apps support both data and object security enabling implementations to quickly configure the application as per the reporting security needs Fine grain object security at report / dashboard and presentation catalog level Data Security integration with source systems  Extensible to support external data security rules Extensive Set of KPIs Over 7000 base and derived metrics across all modules Time series calculations (YoY, % growth etc) Common Currency and UOM reporting Cross subject area KPIs (analyzing HR vs GL data, drill from GL to AP/AR, etc) Prebuilt reports and dashboards 3000+ prebuilt reports supporting a large number of industries Hundreds of role based dashboards Dynamic currency conversion at dashboard level Highly tuned Performance The BI apps have been tuned over the years for both a very performant ETL and dashboard performance. The applications use best practises and advanced database features to enable the best possible performance. Optimized data model for BI and analytic queries Prebuilt aggregates& the ability for customers to create their own aggregates easily on warehouse facts allows for scalable end user performance Incremental extracts and loads Incremental Aggregate build Automatic table index and statistics management Parallel ETL loads Source system deletes handling Low latency extract with Golden Gate Micro ETL support Bitmap Indexes Partitioning support Modularized deployment, start small and add other subject areas seamlessly Source Specfic Staging and Real Time Schema Support for source specific operational reporting schema for EBS, PSFT, Siebel and JDE Application Integrations The BI apps also allow for integration with source systems as well as other applications that provide value add through BI and enable BI consumption during operational decision making Embedded dashboards for Fusion, EBS and Siebel applications Action Link support Marketing Segmentation Sales Predictor Dashboard Territory Management External Integrations The BI apps data integration choices include support for loading extenral data External data enrichment choices : UNSPSC, Item class etc. Extensible Spend Classification Broad Deployment Choices Exalytics support Databases :  Oracle, Exadata, Teradata, DB2, MSSQL ETL tool of choice : ODI (coming), Informatica Extensible and Customizable Extensible architecture and Methodology to add custom and external content Upgradable across releases

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• Effectiveness and Efficiency

  - by Daniel Moth

  In the professional environment, i.e. at work, I am always seeking personal growth and to be challenged. The result is that my assignments, my work list, my tasks, my goals, my commitments, my [insert whatever word resonates with you] keep growing (in scope and desired impact). Which in turn means I have to keep finding new ways to deliver more value, while not falling into the trap of working more hours. To do that I continuously evaluate both my effectiveness and my efficiency. EFFECTIVENESS The first thing I check is my effectiveness: Am I doing the right things? Am I focusing too much on unimportant things? Am I spending more time doing stuff that is important to my team/org/division/business/company, or am I spending it on stuff that is important to me and that I enjoy doing? Am I valuing activities that maybe I have outgrown and should be delegated to others who are at a stage I have surpassed (in Microsoft speak: is the work I am doing level appropriate or am I still operating at the previous level)? Notice how the answers to those questions change over time and due to certain events, so I have to remind myself to revisit them frequently. Events that force me to re-examine them are: change of role, change of team/org/etc, change of direction of team/org/etc, re-org, new hires on the team that take on some of the work I did, personal promotion, change of manager... and if none of those events has occurred since the last annual review, I ask myself those at each annual review anyway. If you think you are not being effective at work, make a list of the stuff that you do and start tracking where your time goes. In parallel, have a discussion with your manager about where they think your time should go. Ultimately your time is finite and hence it is your most precious investment, don't waste it. If your management doesn't value as highly what you spend your time on, then either convince your management, or stop spending your time on it, or find different management: Lead, Follow, or get out of the way! That's my view on effectiveness. You have to fix that before moving to being efficient, or you may end up being very efficient at stuff that nobody wants you to be doing in the first place. For example, you may be spending your time writing blog posts and becoming better and faster at it all the time. If your manager thinks that is not even part of your job description, you are wasting your time to satisfy your inner desires. Nobody can help you with your effectiveness other than your management chain and your management peers - they are the judges of it. EFFICIENCY The second thing I check is my efficiency: Am I doing things right? For me, doing things right means that I deliver the same quality of work faster [than what I used to, and than my peers, and than expected of me]. The result is that I can achieve more [than what I used to, and than my peers, and than expected of me]. Notice how the efficiency goal is a more portable one. If, by whatever criteria, you think you are the best at [insert your own skill here], this can change at two events: because you have new colleagues (who are potentially better than your older ones), and it can change with a change of manager (who has potentially higher expectations). That's about it. Once you are efficient at something, you carry that with you... All you need to really be doing here is, when taking on new kinds of work that you haven't done before, try a few approaches and devise a system so that you can become efficient at this new activity too... Just keep "collecting" stuff that you are efficient at. If you think you are not being efficient at something, break it down: What are the steps you take to complete that task? How long do you spend on each step? Talk to others about what steps they take, to see if you can optimize some steps away or trade them for better steps, or just learn how to complete a step faster. Have a system for every task you take so that you can have repeatable success. That's my view on efficiency. You have to fix it so that you can free up time to do more. When you plan a route from A to B - all else being equal - you try to get there as fast as possible so why would you not want to do that with your everyday work? For example, imagine you are inefficient at processing email: You spend more time than necessary dealing with email, and you still end up with dropped email threads and with slower response times than others. How can you improve? Talk to someone that you think is good at this, understand their system (e.g. here is my email processing system) and come up with one that works for you. Parting Thoughts Are you considered, by your colleagues and manager, an effective and efficient person at your workplace? If you are, what would you change if you were asked by your management to do the job of two people? Seriously, think about that! Your immediate reaction may be "that is not possible", but it actually is. You just have to re-assess what things that were previously important will now stop being important, by discussing them with your management and reaching agreement on relative priorities. For example, stuff that was previously on your plate may now have to be delegated or dropped. Where you thought you were efficient, maybe now you have to find an even faster path to completion, perhaps keeping in mind that Perfect is the Enemy of “Good Enough”. My personal experience (from both observing others and from my own reflection) is that when folks are struggling to keep up at work it is because of two reasons: They are investing energy in stuff that they enjoy doing which the business regards as having a lower priority than a lot of other things on their plate. They are completing tasks to a level of higher quality than what is required (due to personal pride) missing the big picture which almost always mandates completing three tasks at good enough quality than knocking only one of them out of the park while the other two come in late or not at all. There is a lot of content on the web, so I strongly encourage you to use your favorite search engine to read other views on effectiveness and efficiency (Bing, Google). Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• Testing Workflows &ndash; Test-First

  - by Timothy Klenke

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TimothyK/archive/2014/05/30/testing-workflows-ndash-test-first.aspxThis is the second of two posts on some common strategies for approaching the job of writing tests.  The previous post covered test-after workflows where as this will focus on test-first.  Each workflow presented is a method of attack for adding tests to a project.  The more tools in your tool belt the better.  So here is a partial list of some test-first methodologies. Ping Pong Ping Pong is a methodology commonly used in pair programing.  One developer will write a new failing test.  Then they hand the keyboard to their partner.  The partner writes the production code to get the test passing.  The partner then writes the next test before passing the keyboard back to the original developer. The reasoning behind this testing methodology is to facilitate pair programming.  That is to say that this testing methodology shares all the benefits of pair programming, including ensuring multiple team members are familiar with the code base (i.e. low bus number). Test Blazer Test Blazing, in some respects, is also a pairing strategy.  The developers don’t work side by side on the same task at the same time.  Instead one developer is dedicated to writing tests at their own desk.  They write failing test after failing test, never touching the production code.  With these tests they are defining the specification for the system.  The developer most familiar with the specifications would be assigned this task. The next day or later in the same day another developer fetches the latest test suite.  Their job is to write the production code to get those tests passing.  Once all the tests pass they fetch from source control the latest version of the test project to get the newer tests. This methodology has some of the benefits of pair programming, namely lowering the bus number.  This can be good way adding an extra developer to a project without slowing it down too much.  The production coder isn’t slowed down writing tests.  The tests are in another project from the production code, so there shouldn’t be any merge conflicts despite two developers working on the same solution. This methodology is also a good test for the tests.  Can another developer figure out what system should do just by reading the tests?  This question will be answered as the production coder works there way through the test blazer’s tests. Test Driven Development (TDD) TDD is a highly disciplined practice that calls for a new test and an new production code to be written every few minutes.  There are strict rules for when you should be writing test or production code.  You start by writing a failing (red) test, then write the simplest production code possible to get the code working (green), then you clean up the code (refactor).  This is known as the red-green-refactor cycle. The goal of TDD isn’t the creation of a suite of tests, however that is an advantageous side effect.  The real goal of TDD is to follow a practice that yields a better design.  The practice is meant to push the design toward small, decoupled, modularized components.  This is generally considered a better design that large, highly coupled ball of mud. TDD accomplishes this through the refactoring cycle.  Refactoring is only possible to do safely when tests are in place.  In order to use TDD developers must be trained in how to look for and repair code smells in the system.  Through repairing these sections of smelly code (i.e. a refactoring) the design of the system emerges. For further information on TDD, I highly recommend the series “Is TDD Dead?”.  It discusses its pros and cons and when it is best used. Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) Whereas TDD focuses on small unit tests that concentrate on a small piece of the system, Acceptance Tests focuses on the larger integrated environment.  Acceptance Tests usually correspond to user stories, which come directly from the customer. The unit tests focus on the inputs and outputs of smaller parts of the system, which are too low level to be of interest to the customer. ATDD generally uses the same tools as TDD.  However, ATDD uses fewer mocks and test doubles than TDD. ATDD often complements TDD; they aren’t competing methods.  A full test suite will usually consist of a large number of unit (created via TDD) tests and a smaller number of acceptance tests. Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) BDD is more about audience than workflow.  BDD pushes the testing realm out towards the client.  Developers, managers and the client all work together to define the tests. Typically different tooling is used for BDD than acceptance and unit testing.  This is done because the audience is not just developers.  Tools using the Gherkin family of languages allow for test scenarios to be described in an English format.  Other tools such as MSpec or FitNesse also strive for highly readable behaviour driven test suites. Because these tests are public facing (viewable by people outside the development team), the terminology usually changes.  You can’t get away with the same technobabble you can with unit tests written in a programming language that only developers understand.  For starters, they usually aren’t called tests.  Usually they’re called “examples”, “behaviours”, “scenarios”, or “specifications”. This may seem like a very subtle difference, but I’ve seen this small terminology change have a huge impact on the acceptance of the process.  Many people have a bias that testing is something that comes at the end of a project.  When you say we need to define the tests at the start of the project many people will immediately give that a lower priority on the project schedule.  But if you say we need to define the specification or behaviour of the system before we can start, you’ll get more cooperation.   Keep these test-first and test-after workflows in your tool belt.  With them you’ll be able to find new opportunities to apply them.

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• Benefits of Behavior Driven Development

  - by Aligned

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Aligned/archive/2013/07/26/benefits-of-behavior-driven-development.aspxContinuing my previous article on BDD, I wanted to point out some benefits of BDD and since BDD is an extension of Test Driven Development (TDD), you get those as well. I’ll add another article on some possible downsides of this approach. There are many articles about the benefits of TDD and they apply to BDD. I’ve pointed out some here and copied some of the main points for each article, but there are many more including the book The Art of Unit Testing by Roy Osherove. http://geekswithblogs.net/leesblog/archive/2008/04/30/the-benefits-of-test-driven-development.aspx (Lee Brandt) Stability Accountability Design Ability Separated Concerns Progress Indicator http://tddftw.com/benefits-of-tdd/ Help maintainers understand the intention behind the code Bring validation and proper data handling concerns to the forefront. Writing the tests first is fun. Better APIs come from writing testable code. TDD will make you a better developer. http://www.slideshare.net/dhelper/benefit-from-unit-testing-in-the-real-world (from Typemock). Take a look at the slides, especially the extra time required for TDD (slide 10) and the next one of the bugs avoided using TDD (slide 11). Less bugs (slide 11) about testing and development (13) Increase confidence in code (14) Fearlessly change your code (14) Document Requirements (14) also see http://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2013/06/01/roc-rocks.aspx Discover usability issues early (14) All these points and articles are great and there are many more. The following are my additions to the benefits of BDD from using it in real projects for my company. July 2013 on MSDN - Behavior-Driven Design with SpecFlow Scott Allen did a very informative TDD and MVC module, but to me he is doing BDDCompile and Execute Requirements in Microsoft .NET ~ Video from TechEd 2012 Communication I was working through a complicated task that the decision tree kept growing. After writing out the Given, When, Then of the scenario, I was able tell QA what I had worked through for their initial test cases. They were able to add from there. It is also useful to use this language with other developers, managers, or clients to help make informed decisions on if it meets the requirements or if it can simplified to save time (money). Thinking through solutions, before starting to code This was the biggest benefit to me. I like to jump into coding to figure out the problem. Many times I don't understand my path well enough and have to do some parts over. A past supervisor told me several times during reviews that I need to get better at seeing "the forest for the trees". When I sit down and write out the behavior that I need to implement, I force myself to think things out further and catch scenarios before they get to QA. A co-worker that is new to BDD and we’ve been using it in our new project for the last 6 months, said “It really clarifies things”. It took him awhile to understand it all, but now he’s seeing the value of this approach (yes there are some downsides, but that is a different issue). Developers’ Confidence This is huge for me. With tests in place, my confidence grows that I won’t break code that I’m not directly changing. In the past, I’ve worked on projects with out tests and we would frequently find regression bugs (or worse the users would find them). That isn’t fun. We don’t catch all problems with the tests, but when QA catches one, I can write a test to make sure it doesn’t happen again. It’s also good for Releasing code, telling your manager that it’s good to go. As time goes on and the code gets older, how confident are you that checking in code won’t break something somewhere else? Merging code - pre release confidence If you’re merging code a lot, it’s nice to have the tests to help ensure you didn’t merge incorrectly. Interrupted work I had a task that I started and planned out, then was interrupted for a month because of different priorities. When I started it up again, and un-shelved my changes, I had the BDD specs and it helped me remember what I had figured out and what was left to do. It would have much more difficult without the specs and tests. Testing and verifying complicated scenarios Sometimes in the UI there are scenarios that get tricky, because there are a lot of steps involved (click here to open the dialog, enter the information, make sure it’s valid, when I click cancel it should do {x}, when I click ok it should close and do {y}, then do this, etc….). With BDD I can avoid some of the mouse clicking define the scenarios and have them re-run quickly, without using a mouse. UI testing is still needed, but this helps a bunch. The same can be true for tricky server logic. Documentation of Assumptions and Specifications The BDD spec tests (Jasmine or SpecFlow or other tool) also work as documentation and show what the original developer was trying to accomplish. It’s not a different Word document, so developers will keep this up to date, instead of letting it become obsolete. What happens if you leave the project (consulting, new job, etc) with no specs or at the least good comments in the code? Sometimes I think of a new scenario, so I add a failing spec and continue in the same stream of thought (don’t forget it because it was on a piece of paper or in a notepad). Then later I can come back and handle it and have it documented. Jasmine tests and JavaScript –> help deal with the non-typed system I like JavaScript, but I also dislike working with JavaScript. I miss C# telling me if a property doesn’t actually exist at build time. I like the idea of TypeScript and hope to use it more in the future. I also use KnockoutJs, which has observables that need to be called with ending (), since the observable is a function. It’s hard to remember when to use () or not and the Jasmine specs/tests help ensure the correct usage.   This should give you an idea of the benefits that I see in using the BDD approach. I’m sure there are more. It talks a lot of practice, investment and experimentation to figure out how to approach this and to get comfortable with it. I agree with Scott Allen in the video I linked above “Remember that TDD can take some practice. So if you're not doing test-driven design right now? You can start and practice and get better. And you'll reach a point where you'll never want to get back.”

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• Restoring databases to a set drive and directory

  - by okeofs

   Restoring databases to a set drive and directory Introduction Often people say that necessity is the mother of invention. In this case I was faced with the dilemma of having to restore several databases, with multiple ‘ndf’ files, and having to restore them with different physical file names, drives and directories on servers other than the servers from which they originated. As most of us would do, I went to Google to see if I could find some code to achieve this task and found some interesting snippets on Pinal Dave’s website. Naturally, I had to take it further than the code snippet, HOWEVER it was a great place to start. Creating a temp table to hold database file details First off, I created a temp table which would hold the details of the individual data files within the database. Although there are a plethora of fields (within the temp table below), I utilize LogicalName only within this example. The temporary table structure may be seen below:   create table #tmp ( LogicalName nvarchar(128)  ,PhysicalName nvarchar(260)  ,Type char(1)  ,FileGroupName nvarchar(128)  ,Size numeric(20,0)  ,MaxSize numeric(20,0), Fileid tinyint, CreateLSN numeric(25,0), DropLSN numeric(25, 0), UniqueID uniqueidentifier, ReadOnlyLSN numeric(25,0), ReadWriteLSN numeric(25,0), BackupSizeInBytes bigint, SourceBlocSize int, FileGroupId int, LogGroupGUID uniqueidentifier, DifferentialBaseLSN numeric(25,0), DifferentialBaseGUID uniqueidentifier, IsReadOnly bit, IsPresent bit,  TDEThumbPrint varchar(50) )    We now declare and populate a variable(@path), setting the variable to the path to our SOURCE database backup. declare @path varchar(50) set @path = 'P:\DATA\MYDATABASE.bak'   From this point, we insert the file details of our database into the temp table. Note that we do so by utilizing a restore statement HOWEVER doing so in ‘filelistonly’ mode.   insert #tmp EXEC ('restore filelistonly from disk = ''' + @path + '''')   At this point, I depart from what I gleaned from Pinal Dave.   I now instantiate a few more local variables. The use of each variable will be evident within the cursor (which follows):   Declare @RestoreString as Varchar(max) Declare @NRestoreString as NVarchar(max) Declare @LogicalName  as varchar(75) Declare @counter as int Declare @rows as int set @counter = 1 select @rows = COUNT(*) from #tmp  -- Count the number of records in the temp                                    -- table   Declaring and populating the cursor At this point I do realize that many people are cringing about the use of a cursor. Being an Oracle professional as well, I have learnt that there is a time and place for cursors. I would remind the reader that the data that will be read into the cursor is from a local temp table and as such, any locking of the records (within the temp table) is not really an issue.   DECLARE MY_CURSOR Cursor  FOR  Select LogicalName  From #tmp   Parsing the logical names from within the cursor. A small caveat that works in our favour,  is that the first logical name (of our database) is the logical name of the primary data file (.mdf). Other files, except for the very last logical name, belong to secondary data files. The last logical name is that of our database log file.   I now open my cursor and populate the variable @RestoreString Open My_Cursor  set @RestoreString =  'RESTORE DATABASE [MYDATABASE] FROM DISK = N''P:\DATA\ MYDATABASE.bak''' + ' with  '   We now fetch the first record from the temp table.   Fetch NEXT FROM MY_Cursor INTO @LogicalName   While there are STILL records left within the cursor, we dynamically build our restore string. Note that we are using concatenation to create ‘one big restore executable string’.   Note also that the target physical file name is hardwired, as is the target directory.   While (@@FETCH_STATUS <> -1) BEGIN IF (@@FETCH_STATUS <> -2) -- As long as there are no rows missing select @RestoreString = case  when @counter = 1 then -- This is the mdf file    @RestoreString + 'move  N''' + @LogicalName + '''' + ' TO N’’X:\DATA1\'+ @LogicalName + '.mdf' + '''' + ', '   -- OK, if it passes through here we are dealing with an .ndf file -- Note that Counter must be greater than 1 and less than the number of rows.   when @counter > 1 and @counter < @rows then -- These are the ndf file(s)    @RestoreString + 'move  N''' + @LogicalName + '''' + ' TO N’’X:\DATA1\'+ @LogicalName + '.ndf' + '''' + ', '   -- OK, if it passes through here we are dealing with the log file When @LogicalName like '%log%' then    @RestoreString + 'move  N''' + @LogicalName + '''' + ' TO N’’X:\DATA1\'+ @LogicalName + '.ldf' +'''' end --Increment the counter   set @counter = @counter + 1 FETCH NEXT FROM MY_CURSOR INTO @LogicalName END   At this point we have populated the varchar(max) variable @RestoreString with a concatenation of all the necessary file names. What we now need to do is to run the sp_executesql stored procedure, to effect the restore.   First, we must place our ‘concatenated string’ into an nvarchar based variable. Obviously this will only work as long as the length of @RestoreString is less than varchar(max) / 2.   set @NRestoreString = @RestoreString EXEC sp_executesql @NRestoreString   Upon completion of this step, the database should be restored to the server. I now close and deallocate the cursor, and to be clean, I would also drop my temp table.   CLOSE MY_CURSOR DEALLOCATE MY_CURSOR GO   Conclusion Restoration of databases on different servers with different physical names and on different drives are a fact of life. Through the use of a few variables and a simple cursor, we may achieve an efficient and effective way to achieve this task.

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• Entity Framework 6: Alpha2 Now Available

  - by ScottGu

  The Entity Framework team recently announced the 2nd alpha release of EF6.   The alpha 2 package is available for download from NuGet. Since this is a pre-release package make sure to select “Include Prereleases” in the NuGet package manager, or execute the following from the package manager console to install it: PM> Install-Package EntityFramework -Pre This week’s alpha release includes a bunch of great improvements in the following areas: Async language support is now available for queries and updates when running on .NET 4.5. Custom conventions now provide the ability to override the default conventions that Code First uses for mapping types, properties, etc. to your database. Multi-tenant migrations allow the same database to be used by multiple contexts with full Code First Migrations support for independently evolving the model backing each context. Using Enumerable.Contains in a LINQ query is now handled much more efficiently by EF and the SQL Server provider resulting greatly improved performance. All features of EF6 (except async) are available on both .NET 4 and .NET 4.5. This includes support for enums and spatial types and the performance improvements that were previously only available when using .NET 4.5. Start-up time for many large models has been dramatically improved thanks to improved view generation performance. Below are some additional details about a few of the improvements above: Async Support .NET 4.5 introduced the Task-Based Asynchronous Pattern that uses the async and await keywords to help make writing asynchronous code easier. EF 6 now supports this pattern. This is great for ASP.NET applications as database calls made through EF can now be processed asynchronously – avoiding any blocking of worker threads. This can increase scalability on the server by allowing more requests to be processed while waiting for the database to respond. The following code shows an MVC controller that is querying a database for a list of location entities:     public class HomeController : Controller     {         LocationContext db = new LocationContext();           public async Task<ActionResult> Index()         {             var locations = await db.Locations.ToListAsync();               return View(locations);         }     } Notice above the call to the new ToListAsync method with the await keyword. When the web server reaches this code it initiates the database request, but rather than blocking while waiting for the results to come back, the thread that is processing the request returns to the thread pool, allowing ASP.NET to process another incoming request with the same thread. In other words, a thread is only consumed when there is actual processing work to do, allowing the web server to handle more concurrent requests with the same resources. A more detailed walkthrough covering async in EF is available with additional information and examples. Also a walkthrough is available showing how to use async in an ASP.NET MVC application. Custom Conventions When working with EF Code First, the default behavior is to map .NET classes to tables using a set of conventions baked into EF. For example, Code First will detect properties that end with “ID” and configure them automatically as primary keys. However, sometimes you cannot or do not want to follow those conventions and would rather provide your own. For example, maybe your primary key properties all end in “Key” instead of “Id”. Custom conventions allow the default conventions to be overridden or new conventions to be added so that Code First can map by convention using whatever rules make sense for your project. The following code demonstrates using custom conventions to set the precision of all decimals to 5. As with other Code First configuration, this code is placed in the OnModelCreating method which is overridden on your derived DbContext class:         protected override void OnModelCreating(DbModelBuilder modelBuilder)         {             modelBuilder.Properties<decimal>()                 .Configure(x => x.HasPrecision(5));           } But what if there are a couple of places where a decimal property should have a different precision? Just as with all the existing Code First conventions, this new convention can be overridden for a particular property simply by explicitly configuring that property using either the fluent API or a data annotation. A more detailed description of custom code first conventions is available here. Community Involvement I blogged a while ago about EF being released under an open source license.  Since then a number of community members have made contributions and these are included in EF6 alpha 2. Two examples of community contributions are: AlirezaHaghshenas contributed a change that increases the startup performance of EF for larger models by improving the performance of view generation. The change means that it is less often necessary to use of pre-generated views. UnaiZorrilla contributed the first community feature to EF: the ability to load all Code First configuration classes in an assembly with a single method call like the following: protected override void OnModelCreating(DbModelBuilder modelBuilder) {        modelBuilder.Configurations            .AddFromAssembly(typeof(LocationContext).Assembly); } This code will find and load all the classes that inherit from EntityTypeConfiguration<T> or ComplexTypeConfiguration<T> in the assembly where LocationContext is defined. This reduces the amount of coupling between the context and Code First configuration classes, and is also a very convenient shortcut for large models. Other upcoming features coming in EF 6 Lots of information about the development of EF6 can be found on the EF CodePlex site, including a roadmap showing the other features that are planned for EF6. One of of the nice upcoming features is connection resiliency, which will automate the process of retying database operations on transient failures common in cloud environments and with databases such as the Windows Azure SQL Database. Another often requested feature that will be included in EF6 is the ability to map stored procedures to query and update operations on entities when using Code First. Summary EF6 is the first open source release of Entity Framework being developed in CodePlex. The alpha 2 preview release of EF6 is now available on NuGet, and contains some really great features for you to try. The EF team are always looking for feedback from developers - especially on the new features such as custom Code First conventions and async support. To provide feedback you can post a comment on the EF6 alpha 2 announcement post, start a discussion or file a bug on the CodePlex site. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• DHCP settings out of range Internet shuts off after a few minutes

  - by user263115

  I recently upgraded from windows eight to windows 8.1 I do not know if this has anything to do with anything I have a 64 bit OS. My Internet goes off by itself every 5 minutes even though my wireless icon at the lower right of the screen still shows connected I had an error message in the last event in it said that might DHCP settings were out of range. I get my internet at my house through a wireless portable hotspot through my smart phone. But i haven't ever had any problems before and i only have this problem on this network. If i turn airplane mode on and reset my network card, the internet will come back to life but soon die. i don't experience this problem while on a different network or if i'm on WiFi. This s really annoying please help Windows IP Configuration Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : NastyMcnastyJr Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . : Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection: Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : Description . . . . . . . . . . . : TeamViewer VPN Adapter Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-FF-5D-13-26-21 DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes Wireless LAN adapter Local Area Connection* 11: Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Microsoft Wi-Fi Direct Virtual Adapter Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : F6-B7-E2-50-09-38 DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes Wireless LAN adapter SAMMY McNASTY: Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Broadcom 802.11n Network Adapter Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : F4-B7-E2-50-09-38 DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::3107:66bc:cf1f:c776%4(Preferred) IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.43.3(Preferred) Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0 Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Friday, November 1, 2013 9:50:20 PM Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Saturday, November 2, 2013 12:56:46 AM Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.43.1 DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.43.1 DHCPv6 IAID . . . . . . . . . . . : 83146722 DHCPv6 Client DUID. . . . . . . . : 00-01-00-01-19-F1-98-B4-20-89-84-84-61-BB DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.43.1 NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled Ethernet adapter Ethernet: Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Broadcom NetLink (TM) Gigabit Ethernet Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 20-89-84-84-61-BB DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes Log Name: System Source: Microsoft-Windows-UserPnp Date: 10/26/2013 7:52:23 PM Event ID: 20003 Task Category: (7005) Level: Information Keywords: User: SYSTEM Computer: NastyMcnastyJr Description: Driver Management has concluded the process to add Service vwifibus for Device Instance ID PCI\VEN_14E4&DEV_4727&SUBSYS_E042105B&REV_01\4&3265ADAB&0&00E1 with the following status: 0. Event Xml: 20003 0 4 7005 0 0x8000000000000000 5118 System NastyMcnastyJr vwifibus \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\vwifibus.sys PCI\VEN_14E4&DEV_4727&SUBSYS_E042105B&REV_01\4&3265ADAB&0&00E1 false true 0 Log Name: System Source: Microsoft-Windows-UserPnp Date: 10/19/2013 3:29:12 PM Event ID: 20001 Task Category: (7005) Level: Information Keywords: User: SYSTEM Computer: NastyMcnastyJr Description: Driver Management concluded the process to install driver netbc64.inf_amd64_0df63b5297d0f820\netbc64.inf for Device Instance ID PCI\VEN_14E4&DEV_4727&SUBSYS_E042105B&REV_01\4&3265ADAB&0&00E1 with the following status: 0x0. Event Xml: 20001 0 4 7005 0 0x8000000000000000 2015 System NastyMcnastyJr netbc64.inf_amd64_0df63b5297d0f820\netbc64.inf 6.30.223.102 Microsoft PCI\VEN_14E4&DEV_4727&SUBSYS_E042105B&REV_01\4&3265ADAB&0&00E1 {4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} false false false 0x0 Broadcom 802.11n Network Adapter Log Name: System Source: Microsoft-Windows-DNS-Client Date: 11/2/2013 12:24:59 AM Event ID: 1014 Task Category: (1014) Level: Warning Keywords: (268435456) User: NETWORK SERVICE Computer: NastyMcnastyJr Description: Name resolution for the name www.google.com timed out after none of the configured DNS servers responded. Event Xml: 1014 0 3 1014 0 0x4000000010000000 34771 System NastyMcnastyJr www.google.com 128 02000000C0A82B01000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

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• IPsec tunnel to Android device not created even though there is an IKE SA

  - by Quentin Swain

  I'm trying to configure a VPN tunnel between an Android device running 4.1 and a Fedora 17 Linux box running strongSwan 5.0. The device reports that it is connected and strongSwan statusall returns that there is an IKE SA, but doesn't display a tunnel. I used the instructions for iOS in the wiki to generate certificates and configure strongSwan. Since Android uses a modified version of racoon this should work and since the connection is partly established I think I am on the right track. I don't see any errors about not being able to create the tunnel. This is the configuration for the strongSwan connection conn android2 keyexchange=ikev1 authby=xauthrsasig xauth=server left=96.244.142.28 leftsubnet=0.0.0.0/0 leftfirewall=yes leftcert=serverCert.pem right=%any rightsubnet=10.0.0.0/24 rightsourceip=10.0.0.2 rightcert=clientCert.pem ike=aes256-sha1-modp1024 auto=add This is the output of strongswan statusall Status of IKE charon daemon (strongSwan 5.0.0, Linux 3.3.4-5.fc17.x86_64, x86_64): uptime: 20 minutes, since Oct 31 10:27:31 2012 malloc: sbrk 270336, mmap 0, used 198144, free 72192 worker threads: 8 of 16 idle, 7/1/0/0 working, job queue: 0/0/0/0, scheduled: 7 loaded plugins: charon aes des sha1 sha2 md5 random nonce x509 revocation constraints pubkey pkcs1 pkcs8 pgp dnskey pem openssl fips-prf gmp xcbc cmac hmac attr kernel-netlink resolve socket-default stroke updown xauth-generic Virtual IP pools (size/online/offline): android-hybrid: 1/0/0 android2: 1/1/0 Listening IP addresses: 96.244.142.28 Connections: android-hybrid: %any...%any IKEv1 android-hybrid: local: [C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org] uses public key authentication android-hybrid: cert: "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org" android-hybrid: remote: [%any] uses XAuth authentication: any android-hybrid: child: dynamic === dynamic TUNNEL android2: 96.244.142.28...%any IKEv1 android2: local: [C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org] uses public key authentication android2: cert: "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org" android2: remote: [C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client] uses public key authentication android2: cert: "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client" android2: remote: [%any] uses XAuth authentication: any android2: child: 0.0.0.0/0 === 10.0.0.0/24 TUNNEL Security Associations (1 up, 0 connecting): android2[3]: ESTABLISHED 10 seconds ago, 96.244.142.28[C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org]...208.54.35.241[C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client] android2[3]: Remote XAuth identity: android android2[3]: IKEv1 SPIs: 4151e371ad46b20d_i 59a56390d74792d2_r*, public key reauthentication in 56 minutes android2[3]: IKE proposal: AES_CBC_256/HMAC_SHA1_96/PRF_HMAC_SHA1/MODP_1024 The output of ip -s xfrm policy src ::/0 dst ::/0 uid 0 socket in action allow index 3851 priority 0 ptype main share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft 0(bytes), hard 0(bytes) limit: soft 0(packets), hard 0(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:29:08 use - src ::/0 dst ::/0 uid 0 socket out action allow index 3844 priority 0 ptype main share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft 0(bytes), hard 0(bytes) limit: soft 0(packets), hard 0(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:29:08 use - src ::/0 dst ::/0 uid 0 socket in action allow index 3835 priority 0 ptype main share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft 0(bytes), hard 0(bytes) limit: soft 0(packets), hard 0(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:29:08 use - src ::/0 dst ::/0 uid 0 socket out action allow index 3828 priority 0 ptype main share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft 0(bytes), hard 0(bytes) limit: soft 0(packets), hard 0(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:29:08 use - src 0.0.0.0/0 dst 0.0.0.0/0 uid 0 socket in action allow index 3819 priority 0 ptype main share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft 0(bytes), hard 0(bytes) limit: soft 0(packets), hard 0(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:29:08 use 2012-10-31 13:29:39 src 0.0.0.0/0 dst 0.0.0.0/0 uid 0 socket out action allow index 3812 priority 0 ptype main share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft 0(bytes), hard 0(bytes) limit: soft 0(packets), hard 0(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:29:08 use 2012-10-31 13:29:22 src 0.0.0.0/0 dst 0.0.0.0/0 uid 0 socket in action allow index 3803 priority 0 ptype main share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft 0(bytes), hard 0(bytes) limit: soft 0(packets), hard 0(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:29:08 use 2012-10-31 13:29:20 src 0.0.0.0/0 dst 0.0.0.0/0 uid 0 socket out action allow index 3796 priority 0 ptype main share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft 0(bytes), hard 0(bytes) limit: soft 0(packets), hard 0(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:29:08 use 2012-10-31 13:29:20 So a xfrm policy isn't being created for the connection, even though there is an SA between device and strongswan. Executing ip -s xfrm policy on the android device results in the following output: src 0.0.0.0/0 dst 10.0.0.2/32 uid 0 dir in action allow index 40 priority 2147483648 share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft (INF)(bytes), hard (INF)(bytes) limit: soft (INF)(packets), hard (INF)(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:42:08 use - tmpl src 96.244.142.28 dst 25.239.33.30 proto esp spi 0x00000000(0) reqid 0(0x00000000) mode tunnel level required share any enc-mask 00000000 auth-mask 00000000 comp-mask 00000000 src 10.0.0.2/32 dst 0.0.0.0/0 uid 0 dir out action allow index 33 priority 2147483648 share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft (INF)(bytes), hard (INF)(bytes) limit: soft (INF)(packets), hard (INF)(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:42:08 use - tmpl src 25.239.33.30 dst 96.244.142.28 proto esp spi 0x00000000(0) reqid 0(0x00000000) mode tunnel level required share any enc-mask 00000000 auth-mask 00000000 comp-mask 00000000 src 0.0.0.0/0 dst 0.0.0.0/0 uid 0 dir 4 action allow index 28 priority 0 share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft (INF)(bytes), hard (INF)(bytes) limit: soft (INF)(packets), hard (INF)(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:42:04 use 2012-10-31 13:42:08 src 0.0.0.0/0 dst 0.0.0.0/0 uid 0 dir 3 action allow index 19 priority 0 share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft (INF)(bytes), hard (INF)(bytes) limit: soft (INF)(packets), hard (INF)(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:42:04 use 2012-10-31 13:42:08 src 0.0.0.0/0 dst 0.0.0.0/0 uid 0 dir 4 action allow index 12 priority 0 share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft (INF)(bytes), hard (INF)(bytes) limit: soft (INF)(packets), hard (INF)(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:42:04 use 2012-10-31 13:42:06 src 0.0.0.0/0 dst 0.0.0.0/0 uid 0 dir 3 action allow index 3 priority 0 share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft (INF)(bytes), hard (INF)(bytes) limit: soft (INF)(packets), hard (INF)(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:42:04 use 2012-10-31 13:42:07 Logs from charon: 00[DMN] Starting IKE charon daemon (strongSwan 5.0.0, Linux 3.3.4-5.fc17.x86_64, x86_64) 00[KNL] listening on interfaces: 00[KNL] em1 00[KNL] 96.244.142.28 00[KNL] fe80::224:e8ff:fed2:18b2 00[CFG] loading ca certificates from '/etc/strongswan/ipsec.d/cacerts' 00[CFG] loaded ca certificate "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=strongSwan CA" from '/etc/strongswan/ipsec.d/cacerts/caCert.pem' 00[CFG] loading aa certificates from '/etc/strongswan/ipsec.d/aacerts' 00[CFG] loading ocsp signer certificates from '/etc/strongswan/ipsec.d/ocspcerts' 00[CFG] loading attribute certificates from '/etc/strongswan/ipsec.d/acerts' 00[CFG] loading crls from '/etc/strongswan/ipsec.d/crls' 00[CFG] loading secrets from '/etc/strongswan/ipsec.secrets' 00[CFG] loaded RSA private key from '/etc/strongswan/ipsec.d/private/clientKey.pem' 00[CFG] loaded IKE secret for %any 00[CFG] loaded EAP secret for android 00[CFG] loaded EAP secret for android 00[DMN] loaded plugins: charon aes des sha1 sha2 md5 random nonce x509 revocation constraints pubkey pkcs1 pkcs8 pgp dnskey pem openssl fips-prf gmp xcbc cmac hmac attr kernel-netlink resolve socket-default stroke updown xauth-generic 08[NET] waiting for data on sockets 16[LIB] created thread 16 [15338] 16[JOB] started worker thread 16 11[CFG] received stroke: add connection 'android-hybrid' 11[CFG] conn android-hybrid 11[CFG] left=%any 11[CFG] leftsubnet=(null) 11[CFG] leftsourceip=(null) 11[CFG] leftauth=pubkey 11[CFG] leftauth2=(null) 11[CFG] leftid=(null) 11[CFG] leftid2=(null) 11[CFG] leftrsakey=(null) 11[CFG] leftcert=serverCert.pem 11[CFG] leftcert2=(null) 11[CFG] leftca=(null) 11[CFG] leftca2=(null) 11[CFG] leftgroups=(null) 11[CFG] leftupdown=ipsec _updown iptables 11[CFG] right=%any 11[CFG] rightsubnet=(null) 11[CFG] rightsourceip=96.244.142.3 11[CFG] rightauth=xauth 11[CFG] rightauth2=(null) 11[CFG] rightid=%any 11[CFG] rightid2=(null) 11[CFG] rightrsakey=(null) 11[CFG] rightcert=(null) 11[CFG] rightcert2=(null) 11[CFG] rightca=(null) 11[CFG] rightca2=(null) 11[CFG] rightgroups=(null) 11[CFG] rightupdown=(null) 11[CFG] eap_identity=(null) 11[CFG] aaa_identity=(null) 11[CFG] xauth_identity=(null) 11[CFG] ike=aes256-sha1-modp1024 11[CFG] esp=aes128-sha1-modp2048,3des-sha1-modp1536 11[CFG] dpddelay=30 11[CFG] dpdtimeout=150 11[CFG] dpdaction=0 11[CFG] closeaction=0 11[CFG] mediation=no 11[CFG] mediated_by=(null) 11[CFG] me_peerid=(null) 11[CFG] keyexchange=ikev1 11[KNL] getting interface name for %any 11[KNL] %any is not a local address 11[KNL] getting interface name for %any 11[KNL] %any is not a local address 11[CFG] left nor right host is our side, assuming left=local 11[CFG] loaded certificate "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org" from 'serverCert.pem' 11[CFG] id '%any' not confirmed by certificate, defaulting to 'C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org' 11[CFG] added configuration 'android-hybrid' 11[CFG] adding virtual IP address pool 'android-hybrid': 96.244.142.3/32 13[CFG] received stroke: add connection 'android2' 13[CFG] conn android2 13[CFG] left=96.244.142.28 13[CFG] leftsubnet=0.0.0.0/0 13[CFG] leftsourceip=(null) 13[CFG] leftauth=pubkey 13[CFG] leftauth2=(null) 13[CFG] leftid=(null) 13[CFG] leftid2=(null) 13[CFG] leftrsakey=(null) 13[CFG] leftcert=serverCert.pem 13[CFG] leftcert2=(null) 13[CFG] leftca=(null) 13[CFG] leftca2=(null) 13[CFG] leftgroups=(null) 13[CFG] leftupdown=ipsec _updown iptables 13[CFG] right=%any 13[CFG] rightsubnet=10.0.0.0/24 13[CFG] rightsourceip=10.0.0.2 13[CFG] rightauth=pubkey 13[CFG] rightauth2=xauth 13[CFG] rightid=(null) 13[CFG] rightid2=(null) 13[CFG] rightrsakey=(null) 13[CFG] rightcert=clientCert.pem 13[CFG] rightcert2=(null) 13[CFG] rightca=(null) 13[CFG] rightca2=(null) 13[CFG] rightgroups=(null) 13[CFG] rightupdown=(null) 13[CFG] eap_identity=(null) 13[CFG] aaa_identity=(null) 13[CFG] xauth_identity=(null) 13[CFG] ike=aes256-sha1-modp1024 13[CFG] esp=aes128-sha1-modp2048,3des-sha1-modp1536 13[CFG] dpddelay=30 13[CFG] dpdtimeout=150 13[CFG] dpdaction=0 13[CFG] closeaction=0 13[CFG] mediation=no 13[CFG] mediated_by=(null) 13[CFG] me_peerid=(null) 13[CFG] keyexchange=ikev0 13[KNL] getting interface name for %any 13[KNL] %any is not a local address 13[KNL] getting interface name for 96.244.142.28 13[KNL] 96.244.142.28 is on interface em1 13[CFG] loaded certificate "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org" from 'serverCert.pem' 13[CFG] id '96.244.142.28' not confirmed by certificate, defaulting to 'C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org' 13[CFG] loaded certificate "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client" from 'clientCert.pem' 13[CFG] id '%any' not confirmed by certificate, defaulting to 'C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client' 13[CFG] added configuration 'android2' 13[CFG] adding virtual IP address pool 'android2': 10.0.0.2/32 08[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[32235] to 96.244.142.28[500] 15[CFG] looking for an ike config for 96.244.142.28...208.54.35.241 15[CFG] candidate: %any...%any, prio 2 15[CFG] candidate: 96.244.142.28...%any, prio 5 15[CFG] found matching ike config: 96.244.142.28...%any with prio 5 01[JOB] next event in 29s 999ms, waiting 15[IKE] received NAT-T (RFC 3947) vendor ID 15[IKE] received draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-02 vendor ID 15[IKE] received draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-02\n vendor ID 15[IKE] received draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-00 vendor ID 15[IKE] received XAuth vendor ID 15[IKE] received Cisco Unity vendor ID 15[IKE] received DPD vendor ID 15[IKE] 208.54.35.241 is initiating a Main Mode IKE_SA 15[IKE] IKE_SA (unnamed)[1] state change: CREATED => CONNECTING 15[CFG] selecting proposal: 15[CFG] proposal matches 15[CFG] received proposals: IKE:AES_CBC_256/HMAC_SHA1_96/PRF_HMAC_SHA1/MODP_1024, IKE:AES_CBC_256/HMAC_MD5_96/PRF_HMAC_MD5/MODP_1024, IKE:AES_CBC_128/HMAC_SHA1_96/PRF_HMAC_SHA1/MODP_1024, IKE:AES_CBC_128/HMAC_MD5_96/PRF_HMAC_MD5/MODP_1024, IKE:3DES_CBC/HMAC_SHA1_96/PRF_HMAC_SHA1/MODP_1024, IKE:3DES_CBC/HMAC_MD5_96/PRF_HMAC_MD5/MODP_1024, IKE:DES_CBC/HMAC_SHA1_96/PRF_HMAC_SHA1/MODP_1024, IKE:DES_CBC/HMAC_MD5_96/PRF_HMAC_MD5/MODP_1024 15[CFG] configured proposals: IKE:AES_CBC_256/HMAC_SHA1_96/PRF_HMAC_SHA1/MODP_1024, IKE:AES_CBC_128/AES_CBC_192/AES_CBC_256/3DES_CBC/CAMELLIA_CBC_128/CAMELLIA_CBC_192/CAMELLIA_CBC_256/HMAC_MD5_96/HMAC_SHA1_96/HMAC_SHA2_256_128/HMAC_SHA2_384_192/HMAC_SHA2_512_256/AES_XCBC_96/AES_CMAC_96/PRF_HMAC_MD5/PRF_HMAC_SHA1/PRF_HMAC_SHA2_256/PRF_HMAC_SHA2_384/PRF_HMAC_SHA2_512/PRF_AES128_XCBC/PRF_AES128_CMAC/MODP_2048/MODP_2048_224/MODP_2048_256/MODP_1536/MODP_4096/MODP_8192/MODP_1024/MODP_1024_160 15[CFG] selected proposal: IKE:AES_CBC_256/HMAC_SHA1_96/PRF_HMAC_SHA1/MODP_1024 15[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[500] to 208.54.35.241[32235] 04[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[500] to 208.54.35.241[32235] 15[MGR] checkin IKE_SA (unnamed)[1] 15[MGR] check-in of IKE_SA successful. 08[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[32235] to 96.244.142.28[500] 08[NET] waiting for data on sockets 07[MGR] checkout IKE_SA by message 07[MGR] IKE_SA (unnamed)[1] successfully checked out 07[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[32235] to 96.244.142.28[500] 07[LIB] size of DH secret exponent: 1023 bits 07[IKE] remote host is behind NAT 07[IKE] sending cert request for "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=strongSwan CA" 07[ENC] generating NAT_D_V1 payload finished 07[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[500] to 208.54.35.241[32235] 07[MGR] checkin IKE_SA (unnamed)[1] 07[MGR] check-in of IKE_SA successful. 04[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[500] to 208.54.35.241[32235] 08[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[35595] to 96.244.142.28[4500] 10[IKE] ignoring certificate request without data 10[IKE] received end entity cert "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client" 10[CFG] looking for XAuthInitRSA peer configs matching 96.244.142.28...208.54.35.241[C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client] 10[CFG] candidate "android-hybrid", match: 1/1/2/2 (me/other/ike/version) 10[CFG] candidate "android2", match: 1/20/5/1 (me/other/ike/version) 10[CFG] selected peer config "android2" 10[CFG] certificate "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client" key: 2048 bit RSA 10[CFG] using trusted ca certificate "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=strongSwan CA" 10[CFG] checking certificate status of "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client" 10[CFG] ocsp check skipped, no ocsp found 10[CFG] certificate status is not available 10[CFG] certificate "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=strongSwan CA" key: 2048 bit RSA 10[CFG] reached self-signed root ca with a path length of 0 10[CFG] using trusted certificate "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client" 10[IKE] authentication of 'C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client' with RSA successful 10[ENC] added payload of type ID_V1 to message 10[ENC] added payload of type SIGNATURE_V1 to message 10[IKE] authentication of 'C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org' (myself) successful 10[IKE] queueing XAUTH task 10[IKE] sending end entity cert "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org" 10[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[4500] to 208.54.35.241[35595] 04[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[4500] to 208.54.35.241[35595] 10[IKE] activating new tasks 10[IKE] activating XAUTH task 10[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[4500] to 208.54.35.241[35595] 04[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[4500] to 208.54.35.241[35595] 01[JOB] next event in 3s 999ms, waiting 10[MGR] checkin IKE_SA android2[1] 10[MGR] check-in of IKE_SA successful. 08[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[35595] to 96.244.142.28[4500] 08[NET] waiting for data on sockets 12[MGR] checkout IKE_SA by message 12[MGR] IKE_SA android2[1] successfully checked out 12[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[35595] to 96.244.142.28[4500] 12[MGR] checkin IKE_SA android2[1] 12[MGR] check-in of IKE_SA successful. 08[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[35595] to 96.244.142.28[4500] 16[MGR] checkout IKE_SA by message 16[MGR] IKE_SA android2[1] successfully checked out 16[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[35595] to 96.244.142.28[4500] 08[NET] waiting for data on sockets 16[IKE] XAuth authentication of 'android' successful 16[IKE] reinitiating already active tasks 16[IKE] XAUTH task 16[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[4500] to 208.54.35.241[35595] 04[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[4500] to 208.54.35.241[35595] 16[MGR] checkin IKE_SA android2[1] 01[JOB] next event in 3s 907ms, waiting 16[MGR] check-in of IKE_SA successful. 08[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[35595] to 96.244.142.28[4500] 09[MGR] checkout IKE_SA by message 09[MGR] IKE_SA android2[1] successfully checked out 09[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[35595] to 96.244.142.28[4500] .8rS 09[IKE] IKE_SA android2[1] established between 96.244.142.28[C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org]...208.54.35.241[C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client] 09[IKE] IKE_SA android2[1] state change: CONNECTING => ESTABLISHED 09[IKE] scheduling reauthentication in 3409s 09[IKE] maximum IKE_SA lifetime 3589s 09[IKE] activating new tasks 09[IKE] nothing to initiate 09[MGR] checkin IKE_SA android2[1] 09[MGR] check-in of IKE_SA successful. 09[MGR] checkout IKE_SA 09[MGR] IKE_SA android2[1] successfully checked out 09[MGR] checkin IKE_SA android2[1] 09[MGR] check-in of IKE_SA successful. 01[JOB] next event in 3s 854ms, waiting 08[NET] waiting for data on sockets 08[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[35595] to 96.244.142.28[4500] 14[MGR] checkout IKE_SA by message 14[MGR] IKE_SA android2[1] successfully checked out 14[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[35595] to 96.244.142.28[4500] 14[IKE] processing INTERNAL_IP4_ADDRESS attribute 14[IKE] processing INTERNAL_IP4_NETMASK attribute 14[IKE] processing INTERNAL_IP4_DNS attribute 14[IKE] processing INTERNAL_IP4_NBNS attribute 14[IKE] processing UNITY_BANNER attribute 14[IKE] processing UNITY_DEF_DOMAIN attribute 14[IKE] processing UNITY_SPLITDNS_NAME attribute 14[IKE] processing UNITY_SPLIT_INCLUDE attribute 14[IKE] processing UNITY_LOCAL_LAN attribute 14[IKE] processing APPLICATION_VERSION attribute 14[IKE] peer requested virtual IP %any 14[CFG] assigning new lease to 'android' 14[IKE] assigning virtual IP 10.0.0.2 to peer 'android' 14[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[4500] to 208.54.35.241[35595] 14[MGR] checkin IKE_SA android2[1] 14[MGR] check-in of IKE_SA successful. 04[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[4500] to 208.54.35.241[35595] 08[NET] waiting for data on sockets 01[JOB] got event, queuing job for execution 01[JOB] next event in 91ms, waiting 13[MGR] checkout IKE_SA 13[MGR] IKE_SA android2[1] successfully checked out 13[MGR] checkin IKE_SA android2[1] 13[MGR] check-in of IKE_SA successful. 01[JOB] got event, queuing job for execution 01[JOB] next event in 24s 136ms, waiting 15[MGR] checkout IKE_SA 15[MGR] IKE_SA android2[1] successfully checked out 15[MGR] checkin IKE_SA android2[1] 15[MGR] check-in of IKE_SA successful.

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• Tip/Trick: Fix Common SEO Problems Using the URL Rewrite Extension

  - by ScottGu

  Search engine optimization (SEO) is important for any publically facing web-site.  A large % of traffic to sites now comes directly from search engines, and improving your site’s search relevancy will lead to more users visiting your site from search engine queries.  This can directly or indirectly increase the money you make through your site. This blog post covers how you can use the free Microsoft URL Rewrite Extension to fix a bunch of common SEO problems that your site might have.  It takes less than 15 minutes (and no code changes) to apply 4 simple URL Rewrite rules to your site, and in doing so cause search engines to drive more visitors and traffic to your site.  The techniques below work equally well with both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC based sites.  They also works with all versions of ASP.NET (and even work with non-ASP.NET content). [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] Measuring the SEO of your website with the Microsoft SEO Toolkit A few months ago I blogged about the free SEO Toolkit that we’ve shipped.  This useful tool enables you to automatically crawl/scan your site for SEO correctness, and it then flags any SEO issues it finds.  I highly recommend downloading and using the tool against any public site you work on.  It makes it easy to spot SEO issues you might have in your site, and pinpoint ways to optimize it further. Below is a simple example of a report I ran against one of my sites (www.scottgu.com) prior to applying the URL Rewrite rules I’ll cover later in this blog post:   Search Relevancy and URL Splitting Two of the important things that search engines evaluate when assessing your site’s “search relevancy” are: How many other sites link to your content.  Search engines assume that if a lot of people around the web are linking to your content, then it is likely useful and so weight it higher in relevancy. The uniqueness of the content it finds on your site.  If search engines find that the content is duplicated in multiple places around the Internet (or on multiple URLs on your site) then it is likely to drop the relevancy of the content. One of the things you want to be very careful to avoid when building public facing sites is to not allow different URLs to retrieve the same content within your site.  Doing so will hurt with both of the situations above.  In particular, allowing external sites to link to the same content with multiple URLs will cause your link-count and page-ranking to be split up across those different URLs (and so give you a smaller page rank than what it would otherwise be if it was just one URL).  Not allowing external sites to link to you in different ways sounds easy in theory – but you might wonder what exactly this means in practice and how you avoid it. 4 Really Common SEO Problems Your Sites Might Have Below are 4 really common scenarios that can cause your site to inadvertently expose multiple URLs for the same content.  When this happens external sites linking to yours will end up splitting their page links across multiple URLs - and as a result cause you to have a lower page ranking with search engines than you deserve. SEO Problem #1: Default Document IIS (and other web servers) supports the concept of a “default document”.  This allows you to avoid having to explicitly specify the page you want to serve at either the root of the web-site/application, or within a sub-directory.  This is convenient – but means that by default this content is available via two different publically exposed URLs (which is bad).  For example: http://scottgu.com/ http://scottgu.com/default.aspx SEO Problem #2: Different URL Casings Web developers often don’t realize URLs are case sensitive to search engines on the web.  This means that search engines will treat the following links as two completely different URLs: http://scottgu.com/Albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx SEO Problem #3: Trailing Slashes Consider the below two URLs – they might look the same at first, but they are subtly different. The trailing slash creates yet another situation that causes search engines to treat the URLs as different and so split search rankings: http://scottgu.com http://scottgu.com/ SEO Problem #4: Canonical Host Names Sometimes sites support scenarios where they support a web-site with both a leading “www” hostname prefix as well as just the hostname itself.  This causes search engines to treat the URLs as different and split search rankling: http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx/ http://www.scottgu.com/albums.aspx/ How to Easily Fix these SEO Problems in 10 minutes (or less) using IIS Rewrite If you haven’t been careful when coding your sites, chances are you are suffering from one (or more) of the above SEO problems.  Addressing these issues will improve your search engine relevancy ranking and drive more traffic to your site. The “good news” is that fixing the above 4 issues is really easy using the URL Rewrite Extension.  This is a completely free Microsoft extension available for IIS 7.x (on Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7 and Windows Vista).  The great thing about using the IIS Rewrite extension is that it allows you to fix the above problems *without* having to change any code within your applications.  You can easily install the URL Rewrite Extension in under 3 minutes using the Microsoft Web Platform Installer (a free tool we ship that automates setting up web servers and development machines).  Just click the green “Install Now” button on the URL Rewrite Spotlight page to install it on your Windows Server 2008, Windows 7 or Windows Vista machine: Once installed you’ll find that a new “URL Rewrite” icon is available within the IIS 7 Admin Tool: Double-clicking the icon will open up the URL Rewrite admin panel – which will display the list of URL Rewrite rules configured for a particular application or site: Notice that our rewrite rule list above is currently empty (which is the default when you first install the extension).  We can click the “Add Rule…” link button in the top-right of the panel to add and enable new URL Rewriting logic for our site.  Scenario 1: Handling Default Document Scenarios One of the SEO problems I discussed earlier in this post was the scenario where the “default document” feature of IIS causes you to inadvertently expose two URLs for the same content on your site.  For example: http://scottgu.com/ http://scottgu.com/default.aspx We can fix this by adding a new IIS Rewrite rule that automatically redirects anyone who navigates to the second URL to instead go to the first one.  We will setup the HTTP redirect to be a “permanent redirect” – which will indicate to search engines that they should follow the redirect and use the new URL they are redirected to as the identifier of the content they retrieve.  Let’s look at how we can create such a rule.  We’ll begin by clicking the “Add Rule” link in the screenshot above.  This will cause the below dialog to display: We’ll select the “Blank Rule” template within the “Inbound rules” section to create a new custom URL Rewriting rule.  This will display an empty pane like below: Don’t worry – setting up the above rule is easy.  The following 4 steps explain how to do so: Step 1: Name the Rule Our first step will be to name the rule we are creating.  Naming it with a descriptive name will make it easier to find and understand later.  Let’s name this rule our “Default Document URL Rewrite” rule: Step 2: Setup the Regular Expression that Matches this Rule Our second step will be to specify a regular expression filter that will cause this rule to execute when an incoming URL matches the regex pattern.   Don’t worry if you aren’t good with regular expressions - I suck at them too. The trick is to know someone who is good at them or copy/paste them from a web-site.  Below we are going to specify the following regular expression as our pattern rule: (.*?)/?Default\.aspx$ This pattern will match any URL string that ends with Default.aspx. The "(.*?)" matches any preceding character zero or more times. The "/?" part says to match the slash symbol zero or one times. The "$" symbol at the end will ensure that the pattern will only match strings that end with Default.aspx.  Combining all these regex elements allows this rule to work not only for the root of your web site (e.g. http://scottgu.com/default.aspx) but also for any application or subdirectory within the site (e.g. http://scottgu.com/photos/default.aspx.  Because the “ignore case” checkbox is selected it will match both “Default.aspx” as well as “default.aspx” within the URL.   One nice feature built-into the rule editor is a “Test pattern” button that you can click to bring up a dialog that allows you to test out a few URLs with the rule you are configuring: Above I've added a “products/default.aspx” URL and clicked the “Test” button.  This will give me immediate feedback on whether the rule will execute for it.  Step 3: Setup a Permanent Redirect Action We’ll then setup an action to occur when our regular expression pattern matches the incoming URL: In the dialog above I’ve changed the “Action Type” drop down to be a “Redirect” action.  The “Redirect Type” will be a HTTP 301 Permanent redirect – which means search engines will follow it. I’ve also set the “Redirect URL” property to be: {R:1}/ This indicates that we want to redirect the web client requesting the original URL to a new URL that has the originally requested URL path - minus the "Default.aspx" in it.  For example, requests for http://scottgu.com/default.aspx will be redirected to http://scottgu.com/, and requests for http://scottgu.com/photos/default.aspx will be redirected to http://scottgu.com/photos/ The "{R:N}" regex construct, where N >= 0, is called a back-reference and N is the back-reference index. In the case of our pattern "(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$", if the input URL is "products/Default.aspx" then {R:0} will contain "products/Default.aspx" and {R:1} will contain "products".  We are going to use this {R:1}/ value to be the URL we redirect users to.  Step 4: Apply and Save the Rule Our final step is to click the “Apply” button in the top right hand of the IIS admin tool – which will cause the tool to persist the URL Rewrite rule into our application’s root web.config file (under a <system.webServer/rewrite> configuration section): <configuration>     <system.webServer>         <rewrite>             <rules>                 <rule name="Default Document" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$" />                     <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />                 </rule>             </rules>         </rewrite>     </system.webServer> </configuration> Because IIS 7.x and ASP.NET share the same web.config files, you can actually just copy/paste the above code into your web.config files using Visual Studio and skip the need to run the admin tool entirely.  This also makes adding/deploying URL Rewrite rules with your ASP.NET applications really easy. Step 5: Try the Rule Out Now that we’ve saved the rule, let’s try it out on our site.  Try the following two URLs on my site: http://scottgu.com/ http://scottgu.com/default.aspx Notice that the second URL automatically redirects to the first one.  Because it is a permanent redirect, search engines will follow the URL and should update the page ranking of http://scottgu.com to include links to http://scottgu.com/default.aspx as well. Scenario 2: Different URL Casing Another common SEO problem I discussed earlier in this post is that URLs are case sensitive to search engines on the web.  This means that search engines will treat the following links as two completely different URLs: http://scottgu.com/Albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx We can fix this by adding a new IIS Rewrite rule that automatically redirects anyone who navigates to the first URL to instead go to the second (all lower-case) one.  Like before, we will setup the HTTP redirect to be a “permanent redirect” – which will indicate to search engines that they should follow the redirect and use the new URL they are redirected to as the identifier of the content they retrieve. To create such a rule we’ll click the “Add Rule” link in the URL Rewrite admin tool again.  This will cause the “Add Rule” dialog to appear again: Unlike the previous scenario (where we created a “Blank Rule”), with this scenario we can take advantage of a built-in “Enforce lowercase URLs” rule template.  When we click the “ok” button we’ll see the following dialog which asks us if we want to create a rule that enforces the use of lowercase letters in URLs: When we click the “Yes” button we’ll get a pre-written rule that automatically performs a permanent redirect if an incoming URL has upper-case characters in it – and automatically send users to a lower-case version of the URL: We can click the “Apply” button to use this rule “as-is” and have it apply to all incoming URLs to our site.  Because my www.scottgu.com site uses ASP.NET Web Forms, I’m going to make one small change to the rule we generated above – which is to add a condition that will ensure that URLs to ASP.NET’s built-in “WebResource.axd” handler are excluded from our case-sensitivity URL Rewrite logic.  URLs to the WebResource.axd handler will only come from server-controls emitted from my pages – and will never be linked to from external sites.  While my site will continue to function fine if we redirect these URLs to automatically be lower-case – doing so isn’t necessary and will add an extra HTTP redirect to many of my pages.  The good news is that adding a condition that prevents my URL Rewriting rule from happening with certain URLs is easy.  We simply need to expand the “Conditions” section of the form above We can then click the “Add” button to add a condition clause.  This will bring up the “Add Condition” dialog: Above I’ve entered {URL} as the Condition input – and said that this rule should only execute if the URL does not match a regex pattern which contains the string “WebResource.axd”.  This will ensure that WebResource.axd URLs to my site will be allowed to execute just fine without having the URL be re-written to be all lower-case. Note: If you have static resources (like references to .jpg, .css, and .js files) within your site that currently use upper-case characters you’ll probably want to add additional condition filter clauses so that URLs to them also don’t get redirected to be lower-case (just add rules for patterns like .jpg, .gif, .js, etc).  Your site will continue to work fine if these URLs get redirected to be lower case (meaning the site won’t break) – but it will cause an extra HTTP redirect to happen on your site for URLs that don’t need to be redirected for SEO reasons.  So setting up a condition clause makes sense to add. When I click the “ok” button above and apply our lower-case rewriting rule the admin tool will save the following additional rule to our web.config file: <configuration>     <system.webServer>         <rewrite>             <rules>                 <rule name="Default Document" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$" />                     <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />                 </rule>                 <rule name="Lower Case URLs" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="[A-Z]" ignoreCase="false" />                     <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">                         <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" />                     </conditions>                     <action type="Redirect" url="{ToLower:{URL}}" />                 </rule>             </rules>         </rewrite>     </system.webServer> </configuration> Try the Rule Out Now that we’ve saved the rule, let’s try it out on our site.  Try the following two URLs on my site: http://scottgu.com/Albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx Notice that the first URL (which has a capital “A”) automatically does a redirect to a lower-case version of the URL.  Scenario 3: Trailing Slashes Another common SEO problem I discussed earlier in this post is the scenario of trailing slashes within URLs.  The trailing slash creates yet another situation that causes search engines to treat the URLs as different and so split search rankings: http://scottgu.com http://scottgu.com/ We can fix this by adding a new IIS Rewrite rule that automatically redirects anyone who navigates to the first URL (that does not have a trailing slash) to instead go to the second one that does.  Like before, we will setup the HTTP redirect to be a “permanent redirect” – which will indicate to search engines that they should follow the redirect and use the new URL they are redirected to as the identifier of the content they retrieve.  To create such a rule we’ll click the “Add Rule” link in the URL Rewrite admin tool again.  This will cause the “Add Rule” dialog to appear again: The URL Rewrite admin tool has a built-in “Append or remove the trailing slash symbol” rule template.  When we select it and click the “ok” button we’ll see the following dialog which asks us if we want to create a rule that automatically redirects users to a URL with a trailing slash if one isn’t present: Like within our previous lower-casing rewrite rule we’ll add one additional condition clause that will exclude WebResource.axd URLs from being processed by this rule.  This will avoid an unnecessary redirect for happening for those URLs. When we click the “OK” button we’ll get a pre-written rule that automatically performs a permanent redirect if the URL doesn’t have a trailing slash – and if the URL is not processed by either a directory or a file.  This will save the following additional rule to our web.config file: <configuration>     <system.webServer>         <rewrite>             <rules>                 <rule name="Default Document" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$" />                     <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />                 </rule>                 <rule name="Lower Case URLs" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="[A-Z]" ignoreCase="false" />                     <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">                         <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" />                     </conditions>                     <action type="Redirect" url="{ToLower:{URL}}" />                 </rule>                 <rule name="Trailing Slash" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="(.*[^/])$" />                     <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">                         <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" />                         <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" />                         <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" />                     </conditions>                     <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />                 </rule>             </rules>         </rewrite>     </system.webServer> </configuration> Try the Rule Out Now that we’ve saved the rule, let’s try it out on our site.  Try the following two URLs on my site: http://scottgu.com http://scottgu.com/ Notice that the first URL (which has no trailing slash) automatically does a redirect to a URL with the trailing slash.  Because it is a permanent redirect, search engines will follow the URL and update the page ranking. Scenario 4: Canonical Host Names The final SEO problem I discussed earlier are scenarios where a site works with both a leading “www” hostname prefix as well as just the hostname itself.  This causes search engines to treat the URLs as different and split search rankling: http://www.scottgu.com/albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx We can fix this by adding a new IIS Rewrite rule that automatically redirects anyone who navigates to the first URL (that has a www prefix) to instead go to the second URL.  Like before, we will setup the HTTP redirect to be a “permanent redirect” – which will indicate to search engines that they should follow the redirect and use the new URL they are redirected to as the identifier of the content they retrieve.  To create such a rule we’ll click the “Add Rule” link in the URL Rewrite admin tool again.  This will cause the “Add Rule” dialog to appear again: The URL Rewrite admin tool has a built-in “Canonical domain name” rule template.  When we select it and click the “ok” button we’ll see the following dialog which asks us if we want to create a redirect rule that automatically redirects users to a primary host name URL: Above I’m entering the primary URL address I want to expose to the web: scottgu.com.  When we click the “OK” button we’ll get a pre-written rule that automatically performs a permanent redirect if the URL has another leading domain name prefix.  This will save the following additional rule to our web.config file: <configuration>     <system.webServer>         <rewrite>             <rules>                 <rule name="Cannonical Hostname">                     <match url="(.*)" />                     <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">                         <add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^scottgu\.com$" negate="true" />                     </conditions>                     <action type="Redirect" url="http://scottgu.com/{R:1}" />                 </rule>                 <rule name="Default Document" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$" />                     <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />                 </rule>                 <rule name="Lower Case URLs" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="[A-Z]" ignoreCase="false" />                     <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">                         <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" />                     </conditions>                     <action type="Redirect" url="{ToLower:{URL}}" />                 </rule>                 <rule name="Trailing Slash" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="(.*[^/])$" />                     <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">                         <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" />                         <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" />                         <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" />                     </conditions>                     <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />                 </rule>             </rules>         </rewrite>     </system.webServer> </configuration> Try the Rule Out Now that we’ve saved the rule, let’s try it out on our site.  Try the following two URLs on my site: http://www.scottgu.com/albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx Notice that the first URL (which has the “www” prefix) now automatically does a redirect to the second URL which does not have the www prefix.  Because it is a permanent redirect, search engines will follow the URL and update the page ranking. 4 Simple Rules for Improved SEO The above 4 rules are pretty easy to setup and should take less than 15 minutes to configure on existing sites you already have.  The beauty of using a solution like the URL Rewrite Extension is that you can take advantage of it without having to change code within your web-site – and without having to break any existing links already pointing at your site.  Users who follow existing links will be automatically redirected to the new URLs you wish to publish.  And search engines will start to give your site a higher search relevancy ranking – which will list your site higher in search results and drive more traffic to it. Customizing your URL Rewriting rules further is easy to-do either by editing the web.config file directly, or alternatively, just double click the URL Rewrite icon within the IIS 7.x admin tool and it will list all the active rules for your web-site or application: Clicking any of the rules above will open the rules editor back up and allow you to tweak/customize/save them further. Summary Measuring and improving SEO is something every developer building a public-facing web-site needs to think about and focus on.  If you haven’t already, download and use the SEO Toolkit to analyze the SEO of your sites today. New URL Routing features in ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Web Forms 4 make it much easier to build applications that have more control over the URLs that are published.  Tools like the URL Rewrite Extension that I’ve talked about in this blog post make it much easier to improve the URLs that are published from sites you already have built today – without requiring you to change a lot of code. The URL Rewrite Extension provides a bunch of additional great capabilities – far beyond just SEO - as well.  I’ll be covering these additional capabilities more in future blog posts. Hope this helps, Scott

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• JasperReport Issue using with struts2 - getting null in final PDF file

  - by Nirmal

  Hello, i am writing my jasper report problem with struts2. Following is the code that i am trying to execute : struts.xml contains : <action name="myJasperTest1" class="temp.JasperAction1"> <result name="success" type="jasper"> <param name="location">/jasper/our_compiled_template.jasper</param> <param name="dataSource">myList</param> <param name="format">PDF</param> </result> </action> My JasperAction1 contains : import java.util.ArrayList; import java.util.List; import com.sufalam.business.model.util.LegacyJasperInputStream; import net.sf.jasperreports.engine.JasperCompileManager; import com.opensymphony.xwork2.ActionSupport; import com.sufalam.business.finance.model.bean.Account; import java.io.FileInputStream; import net.sf.jasperreports.engine.design.JasperDesign; import net.sf.jasperreports.engine.xml.JRXmlLoader; public class JasperAction1 extends ActionSupport { /** List to use as our JasperReports dataSource. */ private List<Account> myList; public String execute() throws Exception { // Create some imaginary persons. Account a1 = new Account(); Account a2 = new Account(); a1.setId(77); a1.setName("aaa"); a2.setId(88); a2.setName("bbb"); // Store people in our dataSource list (normally would come from database). myList = new ArrayList<Account>(); myList.add(a1); myList.add(a2); // Normally we would provide a pre-compiled .jrxml file // or check to make sure we don't compile on every request. try { JasperDesign design = JRXmlLoader.load( new LegacyJasperInputStream(new FileInputStream("F://backup//backup 26-5(final acegi)//SufalamERP//build//web//jasper//report2.jrxml"))); JasperCompileManager.compileReportToFile(design,"F://backup//backup 26-5(final acegi)//SufalamERP//build//web//jasper//our_compiled_template1.jasper"); } catch (Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); return ERROR; } return SUCCESS; } public List<Account> getMyList() { return myList; } } I am using ireport plugin of Netbeans for generation .jrxml file. After Designing my page using IReport wizard my our_jasper_template.jrxml file contains following code : <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <jasperReport xmlns="http://jasperreports.sourceforge.net/jasperreports" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://jasperreports.sourceforge.net/jasperreports http://jasperreports.sourceforge.net/xsd/jasperreport.xsd" name="null" pageWidth="595" pageHeight="842" columnWidth="535" leftMargin="20" rightMargin="20" topMargin="20" bottomMargin="20"> <queryString language="SQL"> <![CDATA[SELECT account_master."name" AS account_master_name, account_master."id" AS account_master_id FROM "public"."account_master" account_master]]> </queryString> <field name="account_master_name" class="java.lang.String"> <fieldDescription><![CDATA[]]></fieldDescription> </field> <field name="account_master_id" class="java.lang.Integer"> <fieldDescription><![CDATA[]]></fieldDescription> </field> <background> <band/> </background> <title> <band height="58"> <line> <reportElement x="0" y="8" width="555" height="1"/> </line> <line> <reportElement positionType="FixRelativeToBottom" x="0" y="51" width="555" height="1"/> </line> <staticText> <reportElement x="65" y="13" width="424" height="35"/> <textElement textAlignment="Center"> <font size="26" isBold="true"/> </textElement> <text><![CDATA[Classic template]]></text> </staticText> </band> </title> <pageHeader> <band/> </pageHeader> <columnHeader> <band/> </columnHeader> <detail> <band height="40"> <staticText> <reportElement x="0" y="0" width="139" height="20"/> <textElement> <font size="12"/> </textElement> <text><![CDATA[account_master_name]]></text> </staticText> <textField> <reportElement x="139" y="0" width="416" height="20"/> <textElement> <font size="12"/> </textElement> <textFieldExpression class="java.lang.String"><![CDATA[$F{account_master_name}]]></textFieldExpression> </textField> <staticText> <reportElement x="0" y="20" width="139" height="20"/> <textElement> <font size="12"/> </textElement> <text><![CDATA[account_master_id]]></text> </staticText> <textField> <reportElement x="139" y="20" width="416" height="20"/> <textElement> <font size="12"/> </textElement> <textFieldExpression class="java.lang.Integer"><![CDATA[$F{account_master_id}]]></textFieldExpression> </textField> </band> </detail> <columnFooter> <band/> </columnFooter> <pageFooter> <band height="26"> <textField evaluationTime="Report" pattern="" isBlankWhenNull="false"> <reportElement key="textField" x="516" y="6" width="36" height="19" forecolor="#000000" backcolor="#FFFFFF"/> <box> <topPen lineWidth="0.0" lineStyle="Solid" lineColor="#000000"/> <leftPen lineWidth="0.0" lineStyle="Solid" lineColor="#000000"/> <bottomPen lineWidth="0.0" lineStyle="Solid" lineColor="#000000"/> <rightPen lineWidth="0.0" lineStyle="Solid" lineColor="#000000"/> </box> <textElement> <font size="10"/> </textElement> <textFieldExpression class="java.lang.String"><![CDATA["" + $V{PAGE_NUMBER}]]></textFieldExpression> </textField> <textField pattern="" isBlankWhenNull="false"> <reportElement key="textField" x="342" y="6" width="170" height="19" forecolor="#000000" backcolor="#FFFFFF"/> <box> <topPen lineWidth="0.0" lineStyle="Solid" lineColor="#000000"/> <leftPen lineWidth="0.0" lineStyle="Solid" lineColor="#000000"/> <bottomPen lineWidth="0.0" lineStyle="Solid" lineColor="#000000"/> <rightPen lineWidth="0.0" lineStyle="Solid" lineColor="#000000"/> </box> <textElement textAlignment="Right"> <font size="10"/> </textElement> <textFieldExpression class="java.lang.String"><![CDATA["Page " + $V{PAGE_NUMBER} + " of "]]></textFieldExpression> </textField> <textField pattern="" isBlankWhenNull="false"> <reportElement key="textField" x="1" y="6" width="209" height="19" forecolor="#000000" backcolor="#FFFFFF"/> <box> <topPen lineWidth="0.0" lineStyle="Solid" lineColor="#000000"/> <leftPen lineWidth="0.0" lineStyle="Solid" lineColor="#000000"/> <bottomPen lineWidth="0.0" lineStyle="Solid" lineColor="#000000"/> <rightPen lineWidth="0.0" lineStyle="Solid" lineColor="#000000"/> </box> <textElement> <font size="10"/> </textElement> <textFieldExpression class="java.util.Date"><![CDATA[new Date()]]></textFieldExpression> </textField> </band> </pageFooter> <summary> <band/> </summary> </jasperReport> Now the problem i am facing is when i execute this action class it gives me following output as pdf format :

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• How to fix a Sticky Footer that works, but after a browser window is resized, the footer overlaps.

  - by UXdesigner

  Good day, I've been trying to build a perfect footer who sticks at the bottom of the browser window after it's content. And I got help here @ Stack Overflow previously. But after a while, and doing a few tests, found out that after the browser window is resized, and then I scroll down , the footer overlaps...it is causing me a big headache right now and I'd like to fix this so I can move on. I'm going to post the display.css right here: @charset "utf-8"; body, html { margin: 0; padding: 0; text-align: center; position: relative; min-height:100%; /* needed for footer positioning*/ height:100%; /* needed for footer positioning*/ } .spacer { clear: both; height: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0; font-size: 0.1em; } .spacer_left { clear: left; margin: 0 0 10px 0; padding: 0; font-size: 0.1em; } hr { height: 1px; margin: 20px 0 20px 0; border: 0; color: #ccc; background: #ccc; } #container { position:relative; /* needed for footer positioning*/ min-height: 100%;/* needed for footer positioning*/ height: auto !important;/* needed for footer positioning*/ height: 100%;/* needed for footer positioning*/ margin: 0 auto -30px;/* needed for footer positioning*/ width: 1160px; padding: 0; border: 1px solid #333; text-align: left; } #header { margin: 0; padding: 5px; height:70px; } #login { font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; color:#FFF; text-align: right; width: 440px; margin: 2px; } #login .theInput { font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; width: 110px; margin-right: 5px; } #login .theSubmit { font-family: Arial; font-size: 10px; background-color: #333333; color: #FFFFFF; margin-right: 5px; } h1#lineainvisible { width:1160px; height:4px; position:relative; margin-top:4px; visibility: inherit; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:12px; } ul#nav { width:100%; height:36px; display:block; background-color:#000; background-repeat:repeat-x; } #wrapthatbanner { display:block; float:left; width:100%; height:524px; margin-bottom:20px; } #content { margin: 0px 20px 30px 20px; /* needed for footer positioning*/ } .panelsreadmore { margin-right: 10px; text-align:right; } div#content.columns { margin-left: 100px; } #content abbr, #content acronym { cursor: help; border-bottom: 1px dotted; } #content ul { list-style-type: square; margin-left: 75px; } #content ul li, #content ol li { margin: 0 0 0.4em 0; padding: 0; } #content blockquote { width: 75%; margin: 0 auto; padding: 20px; } #contentLeft { float: left; width:580px; } #contentRight { float: right; width:580px; } .sitenote { display:block; padding:6px; border:1px solid #bae2f0; background:#e3f4f9; line-height:130%; font-size:13px; margin-top: 0; margin-right: 0; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0; } #footer, .push /* needed for footer positioning*/ { padding: 5px; clear: both; position:absolute;/* needed for footer positioning*/ bottom:0;/* needed for footer positioning*/ height: -30px;/* needed for footer positioning*/ width:1150px; } And this is the HTML Template File. <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <!-- TemplateBeginEditable name="doctitle" --> <title>Title of Page</title> <!-- TemplateEndEditable --> <!-- TemplateParam name="categoria" type="text" value="home" --> <!-- Meta Tags --> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> <!-- Meta Tags - Close --> <!-- CSS Loader - StartsS --> <link href="../css/main-client.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="all" /> <!-- CSS Loader - Ends --> <!-- Drop Down Menu --> <link href="../css/dropdown.css" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> <link href="../css/default.advanced.css" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> <!-- Drop Down Menu - Ends --> <!-- Font Replacement Starts --> <script src="../cufon-yui.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="../AFB_400.font.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> Cufon.replace('h2'); </script> <script type="text/javascript"> Cufon.replace('h3'); </script> <script type="text/javascript"> Cufon.replace('h4'); </script> <!-- Font Replacement = END --> <!-- Start VisualLightBox.com HEAD section --> <link rel="stylesheet" href="engine/css/vlightbox.css" type="text/css" /> <style type="text/css">#vlightbox a#vlb{display:none}</style> <link rel="stylesheet" href="engine/css/visuallightbox.css" type="text/css" media="screen" /> <script src="engine/js/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <!-- End VisualLightBox.com HEAD section --> <!-- TemplateBeginEditable name="head" --> <!-- TemplateEndEditable --> </head> <body id="@@(categoria)@@"> <div id="container"> <div id="header"> <table width="100%" border="0"> <tr> <td width="67%" height="77px;"><a href="index.html"><img src="../images/Titulos/5.png" alt="" width="257" hspace="10" vspace="10" border="0" id="screen_logo" title=""/></a></td> <td width="33%" valign="top"><form id="login">Log in: <input type="text" class="theInput" name="user" /> <input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Submit" /> </form> </td> </tr> </table> </div> <!-- Aqui es donde empieza fisicamente el menu drop down --> <ul id="nav" class="dropdown dropdown-horizontal"> <li><a href="../index.html">Home</a></li> <li><a href="#" class="dir">Service 1</a></li> <li><a href="#" class="dir">Service 2</a></li> <li><a href="#" class="dir">Service 3</a></li> <li><a href="#" class="dir">Service 4</a></li> <li><a href="#" class="dir">Service 5</a></li> <li><a href="#" class="dir">Service 6</a></li> </ul> <!-- Aqui termina el menu CSS--> <!-- Reset --> <div id="wmfg"> </div> <!-- Reset --> <!-- TemplateBeginEditable name="banner-grande" --> <!-- TemplateEndEditable --> <div id="content"><!-- TemplateBeginEditable name="content" --> <p>&nbsp;</p> <!-- TemplateEndEditable --></div> <div id="footer"><a href="../terms.html">Terms and Conditions</a> |<a href="privacy.html"> Privacy Policy</a><br/> Copyright 2010. .</div> </div> </div> </body> </html> Can somebody take a look at this, and tell me what am I doing wrong ? Thanks in advance.

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• compass-rails 1.03 - TypeError: can't convert nil into String

  - by Romiko

  I am running: ruby 1.9.3p392 (2013-02-22) [i386-mingw32] compass-rails 1.0.3 I used the Windows RailsInstaller to install Ruby on Rails Gemfile group :assets do gem 'sass-rails', '~> 3.2.3' gem 'coffee-rails', '~> 3.2.1' gem 'compass-rails','~> 1.0.2' # See https://github.com/sstephenson/execjs#readme for more supported runtimes # gem 'therubyracer', :platforms => :ruby gem 'uglifier', '>= 1.0.3' end I am currently experiencing issues importing sprites. My sprites are in: assets/images/source in my _shared.scss file I have: //Sprites @import "./source/*.png"; $source-sprite-dimensions: true; In my application.scss I have: /* * This is a manifest file that'll be compiled into application.css, which will include all the files * listed below. * * Any CSS and SCSS file within this directory, lib/assets/stylesheets, vendor/assets/stylesheets, * or vendor/assets/stylesheets of plugins, if any, can be referenced here using a relative path. * * You're free to add application-wide styles to this file and they'll appear at the top of the * compiled file, but it's generally better to create a new file per style scope. * *= require_self */ @import "_shared.scss"; @import "baseline.scss"; @import "global.scss"; @import "normalize.scss"; @import "print.scss"; @import "desktop.scss"; @import "tablet.scss"; @import "home.css.scss"; I am also using rails server and not compass watcher. However when I browse to the page at localhost:3000/assets/application.css, I get the following error: body:before { font-weight: bold; content: "\000a TypeError: can't convert nil into String\000a (in c:\002f RangerRomOnRails\002f RangerRom\002f app\002f assets\002f stylesheets\002f desktop.scss)"; } body:after { content: "\000a C:\002f RailsInstaller\002f Ruby1.9.3\002f lib\002f ruby\002f gems\002f 1.9.1\002f gems\002f compass-0.12.2\002f lib\002f compass\002f sass_extensions\002f functions\002f image_size.rb:17:in `extname'"; } Here is the full stack trace: compass (0 .12.2) lib/compass/sass_extensions/functions/image_size.rb:17:in `extname' compass (0.12.2) lib/compass/sass_extensions/functions/image_size.rb:17:in `initialize' compass (0.12.2) lib/compass/sass_extensions/functions/image_size.rb:50:in `new' compass (0.12.2) lib/compass/sass_extensions/functions/image_size.rb:50:in `image_dimensions' compass (0.12.2) lib/compass/sass_extensions/functions/image_size.rb:4:in `image_width' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/script/funcall.rb:112:in `_perform' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/script/node.rb:40:in `perform' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/perform.rb:298:in `visit_prop' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/base.rb:37:in `visit' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/perform.rb:100:in `visit' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/base.rb:53:in `block in visit_children' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/base.rb:53:in `map' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/base.rb:53:in `visit_children' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/perform.rb:109:in `block in visit_children' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/perform.rb:121:in `with_environment' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/perform.rb:108:in `visit_children' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/base.rb:37:in `block in visit' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/perform.rb:320:in `visit_rule' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/base.rb:37:in `visit' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/perform.rb:100:in `visit' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/base.rb:53:in `block in visit_children' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/base.rb:53:in `map' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/base.rb:53:in `visit_children' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/perform.rb:109:in `block in visit_children' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/perform.rb:121:in `with_environment' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/perform.rb:108:in `visit_children' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/base.rb:37:in `block in visit' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/perform.rb:320:in `visit_rule' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/base.rb:37:in `visit' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/perform.rb:100:in `visit' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/base.rb:53:in `block in visit_children' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/base.rb:53:in `map' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/base.rb:53:in `visit_children' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/perform.rb:109:in `block in visit_children' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/perform.rb:121:in `with_environment' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/perform.rb:108:in `visit_children' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/base.rb:37:in `block in visit' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/perform.rb:362:in `visit_media' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/base.rb:37:in `visit' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/perform.rb:100:in `visit' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/base.rb:53:in `block in visit_children' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/base.rb:53:in `map' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/base.rb:53:in `visit_children' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/perform.rb:109:in `block in visit_children' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/perform.rb:121:in `with_environment' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/perform.rb:108:in `visit_children' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/base.rb:37:in `block in visit' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/perform.rb:128:in `visit_root' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/base.rb:37:in `visit' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/perform.rb:100:in `visit' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/visitors/perform.rb:7:in `visit' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/tree/root_node.rb:20:in `render' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/engine.rb:315:in `_render' sass (3.2.9) lib/sass/engine.rb:262:in `render' sass-rails (3.2.6) lib/sass/rails/template_handlers.rb:106:in `evaluate' tilt (1.4.1) lib/tilt/template.rb:103:in `render' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/context.rb:193:in `block in evaluate' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/context.rb:190:in `each' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/context.rb:190:in `evaluate' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/processed_asset.rb:12:in `initialize' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/base.rb:249:in `new' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/base.rb:249:in `block in build_asset' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/base.rb:270:in `circular_call_protection' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/base.rb:248:in `build_asset' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/index.rb:93:in `block in build_asset' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/caching.rb:19:in `cache_asset' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/index.rb:92:in `build_asset' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/base.rb:169:in `find_asset' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/index.rb:60:in `find_asset' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/processed_asset.rb:111:in `block in resolve_dependencies' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/processed_asset.rb:105:in `each' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/processed_asset.rb:105:in `resolve_dependencies' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/processed_asset.rb:97:in `build_required_assets' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/processed_asset.rb:16:in `initialize' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/base.rb:249:in `new' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/base.rb:249:in `block in build_asset' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/base.rb:270:in `circular_call_protection' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/base.rb:248:in `build_asset' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/index.rb:93:in `block in build_asset' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/caching.rb:19:in `cache_asset' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/index.rb:92:in `build_asset' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/base.rb:169:in `find_asset' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/index.rb:60:in `find_asset' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/bundled_asset.rb:38:in `init_with' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/asset.rb:24:in `from_hash' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/caching.rb:15:in `cache_asset' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/index.rb:92:in `build_asset' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/base.rb:169:in `find_asset' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/index.rb:60:in `find_asset' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/environment.rb:78:in `find_asset' sprockets (2.2.2) lib/sprockets/base.rb:177:in `[]' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/sprockets/helpers/rails_helper.rb:126:in `asset_for' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/sprockets/helpers/rails_helper.rb:44:in `block in stylesheet_link_tag' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/sprockets/helpers/rails_helper.rb:43:in `collect' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/sprockets/helpers/rails_helper.rb:43:in `stylesheet_link_tag' app/views/layouts/application.html.erb:16:in `_app_views_layouts_application_html_erb___824639613_33845076' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_view/template.rb:145:in `block in render' activesupport (3.2.13) lib/active_support/notifications.rb:125:in `instrument' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_view/template.rb:143:in `render' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_view/renderer/template_renderer.rb:59:in `render_with_layout' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_view/renderer/template_renderer.rb:45:in `render_template' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_view/renderer/template_renderer.rb:18:in `render' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_view/renderer/renderer.rb:36:in `render_template' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_view/renderer/renderer.rb:17:in `render' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/abstract_controller/rendering.rb:110:in `_render_template' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_controller/metal/streaming.rb:225:in `_render_template' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/abstract_controller/rendering.rb:103:in `render_to_body' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_controller/metal/renderers.rb:28:in `render_to_body' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_controller/metal/compatibility.rb:50:in `render_to_body' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/abstract_controller/rendering.rb:88:in `render' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_controller/metal/rendering.rb:16:in `render' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_controller/metal/instrumentation.rb:40:in `block (2 levels) in render' activesupport (3.2.13) lib/active_support/core_ext/benchmark.rb:5:in `block in ms' C:/RailsInstaller/Ruby1.9.3/lib/ruby/1.9.1/benchmark.rb:295:in `realtime' activesupport (3.2.13) lib/active_support/core_ext/benchmark.rb:5:in `ms' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_controller/metal/instrumentation.rb:40:in `block in render' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_controller/metal/instrumentation.rb:83:in `cleanup_view_runtime' activerecord (3.2.13) lib/active_record/railties/controller_runtime.rb:24:in `cleanup_view_runtime' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_controller/metal/instrumentation.rb:39:in `render' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_controller/metal/implicit_render.rb:10:in `default_render' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_controller/metal/implicit_render.rb:5:in `send_action' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/abstract_controller/base.rb:167:in `process_action' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_controller/metal/rendering.rb:10:in `process_action' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/abstract_controller/callbacks.rb:18:in `block in process_action' activesupport (3.2.13) lib/active_support/callbacks.rb:414:in `_run__956028316__process_action__416811168__callbacks' activesupport (3.2.13) lib/active_support/callbacks.rb:405:in `__run_callback' activesupport (3.2.13) lib/active_support/callbacks.rb:385:in `_run_process_action_callbacks' activesupport (3.2.13) lib/active_support/callbacks.rb:81:in `run_callbacks' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/abstract_controller/callbacks.rb:17:in `process_action' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_controller/metal/rescue.rb:29:in `process_action' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_controller/metal/instrumentation.rb:30:in `block in process_action' activesupport (3.2.13) lib/active_support/notifications.rb:123:in `block in instrument' activesupport (3.2.13) lib/active_support/notifications/instrumenter.rb:20:in `instrument' activesupport (3.2.13) lib/active_support/notifications.rb:123:in `instrument' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_controller/metal/instrumentation.rb:29:in `process_action' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_controller/metal/params_wrapper.rb:207:in `process_action' activerecord (3.2.13) lib/active_record/railties/controller_runtime.rb:18:in `process_action' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/abstract_controller/base.rb:121:in `process' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/abstract_controller/rendering.rb:45:in `process' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_controller/metal.rb:203:in `dispatch' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_controller/metal/rack_delegation.rb:14:in `dispatch' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_controller/metal.rb:246:in `block in action' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_dispatch/routing/route_set.rb:73:in `call' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_dispatch/routing/route_set.rb:73:in `dispatch' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_dispatch/routing/route_set.rb:36:in `call' journey (1.0.4) lib/journey/router.rb:68:in `block in call' journey (1.0.4) lib/journey/router.rb:56:in `each' journey (1.0.4) lib/journey/router.rb:56:in `call' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_dispatch/routing/route_set.rb:612:in `call' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_dispatch/middleware/best_standards_support.rb:17:in `call' rack (1.4.5) lib/rack/etag.rb:23:in `call' rack (1.4.5) lib/rack/conditionalget.rb:25:in `call' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_dispatch/middleware/head.rb:14:in `call' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_dispatch/middleware/params_parser.rb:21:in `call' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_dispatch/middleware/flash.rb:242:in `call' rack (1.4.5) lib/rack/session/abstract/id.rb:210:in `context' rack (1.4.5) lib/rack/session/abstract/id.rb:205:in `call' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_dispatch/middleware/cookies.rb:341:in `call' activerecord (3.2.13) lib/active_record/query_cache.rb:64:in `call' activerecord (3.2.13) lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:479:in `call' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_dispatch/middleware/callbacks.rb:28:in `block in call' activesupport (3.2.13) lib/active_support/callbacks.rb:405:in `_run__360878605__call__248365880__callbacks' activesupport (3.2.13) lib/active_support/callbacks.rb:405:in `__run_callback' activesupport (3.2.13) lib/active_support/callbacks.rb:385:in `_run_call_callbacks' activesupport (3.2.13) lib/active_support/callbacks.rb:81:in `run_callbacks' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_dispatch/middleware/callbacks.rb:27:in `call' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_dispatch/middleware/reloader.rb:65:in `call' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_dispatch/middleware/remote_ip.rb:31:in `call' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_dispatch/middleware/debug_exceptions.rb:16:in `call' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_dispatch/middleware/show_exceptions.rb:56:in `call' railties (3.2.13) lib/rails/rack/logger.rb:32:in `call_app' railties (3.2.13) lib/rails/rack/logger.rb:16:in `block in call' activesupport (3.2.13) lib/active_support/tagged_logging.rb:22:in `tagged' railties (3.2.13) lib/rails/rack/logger.rb:16:in `call' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_dispatch/middleware/request_id.rb:22:in `call' rack (1.4.5) lib/rack/methodoverride.rb:21:in `call' rack (1.4.5) lib/rack/runtime.rb:17:in `call' activesupport (3.2.13) lib/active_support/cache/strategy/local_cache.rb:72:in `call' rack (1.4.5) lib/rack/lock.rb:15:in `call' actionpack (3.2.13) lib/action_dispatch/middleware/static.rb:63:in `call' railties (3.2.13) lib/rails/engine.rb:479:in `call' railties (3.2.13) lib/rails/application.rb:223:in `call' rack (1.4.5) lib/rack/content_length.rb:14:in `call' railties (3.2.13) lib/rails/rack/log_tailer.rb:17:in `call' rack (1.4.5) lib/rack/handler/webrick.rb:59:in `service' C:/RailsInstaller/Ruby1.9.3/lib/ruby/1.9.1/webrick/httpserver.rb:138:in `service' C:/RailsInstaller/Ruby1.9.3/lib/ruby/1.9.1/webrick/httpserver.rb:94:in `run' C:/RailsInstaller/Ruby1.9.3/lib/ruby/1.9.1/webrick/server.rb:191:in `block in start_thread'

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• HDFS some datanodes of cluster are suddenly disconnected while reducers are running

  - by user1429825

  I have 8 slave computers and 1 master computer for running Hadoop (ver 0.21) some datanodes of cluster are suddenly disconnected while I was running MapReduce code on 10GB data After all mappers finished and around 80% of reducers was processed, randomly one or more datanode disconned from network. and then the other datanodes start to disappear from network even if I killed the MapReduce job when I found some datanode was disconnected. I've tried to change dfs.datanode.max.xcievers to 4096, turned off fire-walls of all computing node, disabled selinux and increased the number of file open limit to 20000 but they didn't work at all... anyone have a idea to solve this problem? followings are error log from mapreduce 12/06/01 12:31:29 INFO mapreduce.Job: Task Id : attempt_201206011227_0001_r_000006_0, Status : FAILED java.io.IOException: Bad connect ack with firstBadLink as ***.***.***.148:20010 at org.apache.hadoop.hdfs.DFSOutputStream$DataStreamer.createBlockOutputStream(DFSOutputStream.java:889) at org.apache.hadoop.hdfs.DFSOutputStream$DataStreamer.nextBlockOutputStream(DFSOutputStream.java:820) at org.apache.hadoop.hdfs.DFSOutputStream$DataStreamer.run(DFSOutputStream.java:427) and followings are logs from datanode 2012-06-01 13:01:01,118 INFO org.apache.hadoop.hdfs.server.datanode.DataNode: Receiving block blk_-5549263231281364844_3453 src: /*.*.*.147:56205 dest: /*.*.*.142:20010 2012-06-01 13:01:01,136 INFO org.apache.hadoop.hdfs.server.datanode.DataNode: DatanodeRegistration(*.*.*.142:20010, storageID=DS-1534489105-*.*.*.142-20010-1337757934836, infoPort=20075, ipcPort=20020) Starting thread to transfer block blk_-3849519151985279385_5906 to *.*.*.147:20010 2012-06-01 13:01:19,135 WARN org.apache.hadoop.hdfs.server.datanode.DataNode: DatanodeRegistration(*.*.*.142:20010, storageID=DS-1534489105-*.*.*.142-20010-1337757934836, infoPort=20075, ipcPort=20020):Failed to transfer blk_-5797481564121417802_3453 to *.*.*.146:20010 got java.net.ConnectException: > Connection timed out at sun.nio.ch.SocketChannelImpl.checkConnect(Native Method) at sun.nio.ch.SocketChannelImpl.finishConnect(SocketChannelImpl.java:701) at org.apache.hadoop.net.SocketIOWithTimeout.connect(SocketIOWithTimeout.java:206) at org.apache.hadoop.net.NetUtils.connect(NetUtils.java:373) at org.apache.hadoop.hdfs.server.datanode.DataNode$DataTransfer.run(DataNode.java:1257) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:722) 2012-06-01 13:06:20,342 INFO org.apache.hadoop.hdfs.server.datanode.DataBlockScanner: Verification succeeded for blk_6674438989226364081_3453 2012-06-01 13:09:01,781 WARN org.apache.hadoop.hdfs.server.datanode.DataNode: DatanodeRegistration(*.*.*.142:20010, storageID=DS-1534489105-*.*.*.142-20010-1337757934836, infoPort=20075, ipcPort=20020):Failed to transfer blk_-3849519151985279385_5906 to *.*.*.147:20010 got java.net.SocketTimeoutException: 480000 millis timeout while waiting for channel to be ready for write. ch : java.nio.channels.SocketChannel[connected local=/*.*.*.142:60057 remote=/*.*.*.147:20010] at org.apache.hadoop.net.SocketIOWithTimeout.waitForIO(SocketIOWithTimeout.java:246) at org.apache.hadoop.net.SocketOutputStream.waitForWritable(SocketOutputStream.java:164) at org.apache.hadoop.net.SocketOutputStream.transferToFully(SocketOutputStream.java:203) at org.apache.hadoop.hdfs.server.datanode.BlockSender.sendChunks(BlockSender.java:388) at org.apache.hadoop.hdfs.server.datanode.BlockSender.sendBlock(BlockSender.java:476) at org.apache.hadoop.hdfs.server.datanode.DataNode$DataTransfer.run(DataNode.java:1284) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:722) hdfs-site.xml <configuration> <property> <name>dfs.name.dir</name> <value>/home/hadoop/data/name</value> </property> <property> <name>dfs.data.dir</name> <value>/home/hadoop/data/hdfs1,/home/hadoop/data/hdfs2,/home/hadoop/data/hdfs3,/home/hadoop/data/hdfs4,/home/hadoop/data/hdfs5</value> </property> <property> <name>dfs.replication</name> <value>3</value> </property> <property> <name>dfs.datanode.max.xcievers</name> <value>4096</value> </property> <property> <name>dfs.http.address</name> <value>0.0.0.0:20070</value> <description>50070 The address and the base port where the dfs namenode web ui will listen on. If the port is 0 then the server will start on a free port. </description> </property> <property> <name>dfs.datanode.http.address</name> <value>0.0.0.0:20075</value> <description>50075 The datanode http server address and port. If the port is 0 then the server will start on a free port. </description> </property> <property> <name>dfs.secondary.http.address</name> <value>0.0.0.0:20090</value> <description>50090 The secondary namenode http server address and port. If the port is 0 then the server will start on a free port. </description> </property> <property> <name>dfs.datanode.address</name> <value>0.0.0.0:20010</value> <description>50010 The address where the datanode server will listen to. If the port is 0 then the server will start on a free port. </description> <property> <name>dfs.datanode.ipc.address</name> <value>0.0.0.0:20020</value> <description>50020 The datanode ipc server address and port. If the port is 0 then the server will start on a free port. </description> </property> <property> <name>dfs.datanode.https.address</name> <value>0.0.0.0:20475</value> </property> <property> <name>dfs.https.address</name> <value>0.0.0.0:20470</value> </property> </configuration> mapred-site.xml <configuration> <property> <name>mapred.job.tracker</name> <value>masternode:29001</value> </property> <property> <name>mapred.system.dir</name> <value>/home/hadoop/data/mapreduce/system</value> </property> <property> <name>mapred.local.dir</name> <value>/home/hadoop/data/mapreduce/local</value> </property> <property> <name>mapred.map.tasks</name> <value>32</value> <description> default number of map tasks per job.</description> </property> <property> <name>mapred.tasktracker.map.tasks.maximum</name> <value>4</value> </property> <property> <name>mapred.reduce.tasks</name> <value>8</value> <description> default number of reduce tasks per job.</description> </property> <property> <name>mapred.map.child.java.opts</name> <value>-Xmx2048M</value> </property> <property> <name>io.sort.mb</name> <value>500</value> </property> <property> <name>mapred.task.timeout</name> <value>1800000</value> <!-- 30 minutes --> </property> <property> <name>mapred.job.tracker.http.address</name> <value>0.0.0.0:20030</value> <description> 50030 The job tracker http server address and port the server will listen on. If the port is 0 then the server will start on a free port. </description> </property> <property> <name>mapred.task.tracker.http.address</name> <value>0.0.0.0:20060</value> <description> 50060 </property> </configuration>

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• Dell PowerEdge R720xd stuck in BIOS

  - by G_P

  I have a Dell PowerEdge R720xd that gets stuck in the BIOS when booting. It successfully gets past the "configuring memory" and "configuring iDRAC" screens, but once it shows the "CPLD version : 103" with the various management engine versions/patches, it just hangs. No errors messages are displayed. This started happening when we tried adding additional RAM to the machine. Since then, we tried re-seating the new memory which resulted in the same issue. Then, we took out all the new memory, and the problem persists. We have also tried pressing F2 to get into System Setup, but it just indicates "Entering System Setup" and hangs at the same point. Has anybody seen this issue before or have any ideas on what to try next? UPDATE After troubleshooting and trying to isolate the issue (stripping things down to a single CPU and single DIMM, same problem, swapping to the other CPU and a different DIMM, same problem), Dell support will be coming out to swap the system board.

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• Windows Server Backup "Reading Data; please wait..."

  - by Reafidy

  On windows Server 2008 R2 I have recently added the windows server backup (WSB) feature. Opening WSB I get the message "Reading Data; please wait...". This message fails to go away, even after leaving the server for over 12 hours. I also notice in the task manager that svchost.exe (username: networkservice) is using all available processing power. So I terminated that process and then WSB comes on-line. However after restarting the server and WSB the issue reoccurs. WSB also fails to recognize my store-in-go flash drive (2gb). What is the underlying problem here?

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• Capturing image with WDS is stuck on 'Capturing Windows Image Metadata'

  - by user74499

  Hello, I'm trying to capture a rather large (100gigs) windows xp partition to a WIM file on an attached USB hard drive. Under 'Task Progress' it's saying 'Capturing Windows image Metadata', which is where it has been for a while (like 1.5 hours) - the blue bar is at the end of the screen, i.e. 100% I can move the windows around the screen so I suspect that the operation hasn't crashed yet but does this part of the process take a long time? I have only ever captured a 3gig partition before. Thanks.

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• Cannot connect to Amazon RDS

  - by Justin

  I have created an Amazon RDS database under the free tier (SQL Server Express, micro instance etc.), but I cannot connect to the server using Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio. I have configured the security group of the database instance (default) to accept my IP address. I am following the connection guide from amazon located here The error I receive is: Cannot connect to databaseName.c***rnqg***v.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com,1433. A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: TCP Provider, error: 0 - A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond.) (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 10060) I am using Server type "Database Engine" and using SQL Server Authentication.

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• Domino HTTP Server: Error - Unable to Bind 1.2.3.4, port 80, port in use or Bind To Host configuration specifies a duplicate IP address/host

  - by pdewaard

  We have a Domino 9.0.1 Server hosted on Ubuntu 14.04 Server, which hosts several other http based Tasks, (Nginx, Couchdb, Confluence on Tomcat). The Ubuntu Server has multiple IPs, all bind correctly to the different Tasks. The Domino SMTP task binds correctly and is working well. All http tasks (other than Domino) are proxied behind Nginx version 1.6x and all are working well, netstat shows no 0.0.0.0 bindings, no one is listening on 1.2.3.4:80 . when I try to load http on the (Domino) server console it failes with HTTP Server: Error - Unable to Bind 1.2.3.4, port 80, port in use or Bind To Host configuration specifies a duplicate IP address/host a couple of times, may be 4 or 5 times then it loads without failure! And: when it comes up, I see http is listening on 80 AND 443, but SSL Connections are not working, nor any error log! It must be a kind of bad magic :-( thanks in advance Pitt

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• The Application was unable to start correctly (0xc0000142)

  - by Guy Thomas

  System = Windows 7 64-bit Various programs, notably Regedit, won't start. Instead I get: The Application was unable to start correctly (0xc0000142). Strangly, at least to my thinking, I can launch them via Task Manager. I am also grappling with AVG errors or over-activity, e.g. reports of Broken digital Signature. I am also having problems with Excel Update KB978474 I mention these just incase anyone thinks there is a connection, rather than expecting people to solve 3 problems at once.

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• Should I enable "Intel NIC DMA Channels"?

  - by javapowered

  I have HP DL360p Gen8 646902-xx1 I'm trying to optimize my config for low latency trading. Should I enable "Intel NIC DMA Channels"? Will that help/affect my system? From HP doc: Added a new ROM Based Setup Utility (RBSU) Advanced Performance Option menu that allows the user to enable Intel NIC DMA Channels (IOAT). This option is disabled by default. When enabled, certain networking devices may see an improvement in performance by utilizing Intel's DMA engine to offload network activity. Please consult documentation from the network adapter to determine if this feature is supported.

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• MySQL error: Can't find symbol '_mysql_plugin_interface_version_' in library

  - by Josh Smith

  The boring, necessary details: I'm on Snow Leopard running MySQL locally. I'm trying to install the Sphinx engine for MySQL like so: mysql> install plugin sphinx soname 'sphinx.so'; ERROR 1127 (HY000): Can't find symbol '_mysql_plugin_interface_version_' in library I've Googled everywhere and can't seem to find an actual solution to this problem. For example this issue on the Sphinx forums seems unresolved. Someone else also raised this issue with similar results. The first post linked to an O'Reilly article which says: There is a common problem that might occur at this point: ERROR 1127 (HY000): Can't find symbol '_mysql_plugin_interface_version_' in library If you see a message like this, it is likely that you forgot to include the -DMYSQL_DYNAMIC_PLUGIN option when compiling the plugin. Adding this option to the g++ compile line is required to create a dynamically loadable plug-in. But the article ends on that point; I have no idea what this means or how to resolve the issue.

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• Event 36888 : The following fatal alert was generated: 10. The internal error state is 1203

  - by Param

  I search on the Internet, but i am unable to find, Why this error is coming? It has flooded my Event Viewer, after interval of 1 minutes, this Error pops-up. ( means the frequency is 1 minutes ) I didn't have any IIS installed. This server is purely Domain controller and no other role has been added. Please suggest, what should i do? Server OS - Window Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition More detail:- Log Name: System Source: Schannel Date: 6/28/2012 6:06:11 PM Event ID: 36888 Task Category: None Level: Error Keywords: User: SYSTEM Computer: QKSRVDC212.Corp.abc.com Description: The following fatal alert was generated: 10. The internal error state is 1203. Event Xml: 36888 0 2 0 0 0x8000000000000000 9305 System QKSRVDC212.Corp.abc.com 10 1203 Thanks & Regards, Param

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