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Passing parameters between Silverlight and ASP.NET – Part 1

- by mohanbrij

While working with Silverlight applications, we may face some scenarios where we may need to embed Silverlight as a component, like for e.g in Sharepoint Webpars or simple we can have the same with ASP.NET. The biggest challenge comes when we have to pass the parameters from ASP.NET to Silverlight components or back from Silverlight to ASP.NET. We have lots of ways we can do this, like using InitParams, QueryStrings, using HTML objects in Silverlight, etc. All these different techniques have some advantages or disadvantages or limitations. Lets see one by one why we should choose one and what are the ways to achieve the same. 1. InitParams: Lets start with InitParams, Start your Visual Studio 2010 IDE, and Create a Silverlight Application, give any name. Now go to the ASP.NET WebProject which is used to Host the Silverlight XAP component. You will find lots of different tags are used by Silverlight object as <params> tags. To use InitParams, Silverlight provides us with a tag called InitParams which we can use to pass parameters to Silverlight object from ASP.NET. 1: <object data="data:application/x-silverlight-2," type="application/x-silverlight-2" width="100%" height="100%"> 2: <param name="source" value="ClientBin/SilverlightApp.xap"/> 3: <param name="onError" value="onSilverlightError" /> 4: <param name="background" value="white" /> 5: <param name="minRuntimeVersion" value="4.0.50826.0" /> 6: <param name="initparams" id="initParams" runat="server" value=""/> 7: <param name="autoUpgrade" value="true" /> 8: <a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=149156&v=4.0.50826.0" style="text-decoration:none"> 9: <img src="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=161376" alt="Get Microsoft Silverlight" style="border-style:none"/> 10: </a> 11: </object> Here in the code above I have included a initParam as a param tag (line 6), now in the page load I will add a line 1: initParams.Attributes.Add("value", "key1=Brij, key2=Mohan"); This basically add a value parameter inside the initParam. So thats all we need in our ASP.NET side, now coming to the Silverlight Code open the code behind of App.xaml and add the following lines of code. 1: private string firstKey, secondKey; 2: private void Application_Startup(object sender, StartupEventArgs e) 3: { 4: if (e.InitParams.ContainsKey("key1")) 5: this.firstKey = e.InitParams["key1"]; 6: if (e.InitParams.ContainsKey("key2")) 7: this.secondKey = e.InitParams["key2"]; 8: this.RootVisual = new MainPage(firstKey, secondKey); 9: } This code fetch the init params and pass it to our MainPage.xaml constructor, in the MainPage.xaml we can use these variables according to our requirement, here in this example I am simply displaying the variables in a Message Box. 1: public MainPage(string param1, string param2) 2: { 3: InitializeComponent(); 4: MessageBox.Show("Welcome, " + param1 + " " + param2); 5: } This will give you a sample output as Limitations: Depending on the browsers you have some limitation on the overall string length of the parameters you can pass. To get more details on this limitation, you can refer to this link :http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/misc/urllength.html 2. QueryStrings To show this example I am taking the scenario where we have a default.aspx page and we are going to the SIlverlightTestPage.aspx, and we have to work with the parameters which was passed by default.aspx in the SilverlightTestPage.aspx Silverlight Component. So first I will add a new page in my application which contains a button with ID =btnNext, and on click of the button I will redirect my page to my SilverlightTestAppPage.aspx with the required query strings. Code of Default.aspx 1: protected void btnNext_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) 2: { 3: Response.Redirect("~/SilverlightAppTestPage.aspx?FName=Brij" + "&LName=Mohan"); 4: } Code of MainPage.xaml.cs 1: public partial class MainPage : UserControl 2: { 3: public MainPage() 4: { 5: InitializeComponent(); 6: this.Loaded += new RoutedEventHandler(MainPage_Loaded); 7: } 8: 9: void MainPage_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) 10: { 11: IDictionary<string, string> qString = HtmlPage.Document.QueryString; 12: string firstName = string.Empty; 13: string lastName = string.Empty; 14: foreach (KeyValuePair<string, string> keyValuePair in qString) 15: { 16: string key = keyValuePair.Key; 17: string value = keyValuePair.Value; 18: if (key == "FName") 19: firstName = value; 20: else if (key == "LName") 21: lastName = value; 22: } 23: MessageBox.Show("Welcome, " + firstName + " " + lastName); 24: } 25: } Set the Startup page as Default.aspx, now run the application. This will give you the following output: Since here also you are using the Query Strings to pass your parameters, so you are depending on the browser capabilities of the length of the query strings it can pass. Here also you can refer the limitation which I have mentioned in my previous example for the length of parameters you can use. 3. Using HtmlPage.Document Silverlight to ASP.NET <—> ASP.NET to Silverlight: To show this I setup a sample Silverlight Application with Buttons Get Data and Set Data with the Data Text Box. In ASP.NET page I kep a TextBox to Show how the values passed to and From Silverlight to ASP.NET reflects back. My page with Silverlight control looks like this. When I Say Get Data it pulls the data from ASP.NET to Silverlight Control Text Box, and When I say Set data it basically Set the Value from Silverlight Control TextBox to ASP.NET TextBox. Now let see the code how it is doing. This is my ASP.NET Source Code. Here I have just created a TextBox named : txtData 1: <body> 2: <form id="form1" runat="server" style="height:100%"> 3: <div id="silverlightControlHost"> 4: ASP.NET TextBox: <input type="text" runat="server" id="txtData" value="Some Data" /> 5: <object data="data:application/x-silverlight-2," type="application/x-silverlight-2" width="100%" height="100%"> 6: <param name="source" value="ClientBin/SilverlightApplication1.xap"/> 7: <param name="onError" value="onSilverlightError" /> 8: <param name="background" value="white" /> 9: <param name="minRuntimeVersion" value="4.0.50826.0" /> 10: <param name="autoUpgrade" value="true" /> 11: <a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=149156&v=4.0.50826.0" style="text-decoration:none"> 12: <img src="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=161376" alt="Get Microsoft Silverlight" style="border-style:none"/> 13: </a> 14: </object><iframe id="_sl_historyFrame" style="visibility:hidden;height:0px;width:0px;border:0px"></iframe> 15: </div> 16: </form> 17: </body> My actual logic for getting and setting the data lies in my Silverlight Control, this is my XAML code with TextBox and Buttons. 1: <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White" Height="100" Width="450" VerticalAlignment="Top"> 2: <Grid.ColumnDefinitions> 3: <ColumnDefinition Width="110" /> 4: <ColumnDefinition Width="110" /> 5: <ColumnDefinition Width="110" /> 6: <ColumnDefinition Width="110" /> 7: </Grid.ColumnDefinitions> 8: <TextBlock Text="Silverlight Text Box: " Grid.Column="0" VerticalAlignment="Center"></TextBlock> 9: <TextBox x:Name="DataText" Width="100" Grid.Column="1" Height="20"></TextBox> 10: <Button x:Name="GetData" Width="100" Click="GetData_Click" Grid.Column="2" Height="30" Content="Get Data"></Button> 11: <Button x:Name="SetData" Width="100" Click="SetData_Click" Grid.Column="3" Height="30" Content="Set Data"></Button> 12: </Grid> Now we have to write few lines of Button Events for Get Data and Set Data which basically make use of Windows.System.Browser namespace. 1: private void GetData_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) 2: { 3: DataText.Text = HtmlPage.Document.GetElementById("txtData").GetProperty("value").ToString(); 4: } 5: 6: private void SetData_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) 7: { 8: HtmlPage.Document.GetElementById("txtData").SetProperty("value", DataText.Text); 9: } That’s it so when we run this application my Form will look like this. 4. Using Object Serialization. This is a useful when we want to pass Objects of Data from our ASP.NET application to Silverlight Controls and back. This technique basically uses the above technique I mentioned in Pint 3 above. Since this itself is a length topic so details of this I am going to cover in Part 2 of this Post with Sample Code Example very soon.

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WPF Databinding- Not your fathers databinding Part 1-3

- by Shervin Shakibi

As Promised here is my advanced databinding presentation from South Florida Code camp and also Orlando Code camp. you can find the demo files here. http://ssccinc.com/wpfdatabinding.zip Here is a quick description of the first demos, there will be 2 other Blogposting in the next few days getting into more advance databinding topics. Example00 Here we have 3 textboxes, The first textbox mySourceElement Second textbox has a binding to mySourceElement and Path= Text <Binding ElementName="mySourceElement" Path="Text" /> Third textbox is also bound to the Text property but we use inline Binding <TextBlock Text="{Binding ElementName=mySourceElement,Path=Text }" Grid.Row="2" /> Here is the entire XAML <Grid > <Grid.RowDefinitions > <RowDefinition Height="*" /> <RowDefinition Height="*" /> <RowDefinition Height="*" /> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <TextBox Name="mySourceElement" Grid.Row="0" TextChanged="mySourceElement_TextChanged">Hello Orlnado</TextBox> <TextBlock Grid.Row="1"> <TextBlock.Text> <Binding ElementName="mySourceElement" Path="Text" /> </TextBlock.Text> </TextBlock> <TextBlock Text="{Binding ElementName=mySourceElement,Path=Text }" Grid.Row="2" /> </Grid> </Window> Example01 we have a slider control, then we have two textboxes bound to the value property of the slider. one has its text property bound, the second has its fontsize property bound. <Grid> <Grid.RowDefinitions > <RowDefinition Height="40px" /> <RowDefinition Height="40px" /> <RowDefinition Height="*" /> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <Slider Name="fontSizeSlider" Minimum="5" Maximum="100" Value="10" Grid.Row="0" /> <TextBox Name="SizeTextBox" Text="{Binding ElementName=fontSizeSlider, Path=Value}" Grid.Row="1"/> <TextBlock Text="Example 01" FontSize="{Binding ElementName=SizeTextBox, Path=Text}" Grid.Row="2"/> </Grid> Example02 very much like the previous example but it also has a font dropdown <Grid> <Grid.RowDefinitions > <RowDefinition Height="20px" /> <RowDefinition Height="40px" /> <RowDefinition Height="40px" /> <RowDefinition Height="*" /> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <ComboBox Name="FontNameList" SelectedIndex="0" Grid.Row="0"> <ComboBoxItem Content="Arial" /> <ComboBoxItem Content="Calibri" /> <ComboBoxItem Content="Times New Roman" /> <ComboBoxItem Content="Verdana" /> </ComboBox> <Slider Name="fontSizeSlider" Minimum="5" Maximum="100" Value="10" Grid.Row="1" /> <TextBox Name="SizeTextBox" Text="{Binding ElementName=fontSizeSlider, Path=Value}" Grid.Row="2"/> <TextBlock Text="Example 01" FontFamily="{Binding ElementName=FontNameList, Path=Text}" FontSize="{Binding ElementName=SizeTextBox, Path=Text}" Grid.Row="3"/> </Grid> Example03 In this example we bind to an object Employee.cs Notice we added a directive to our xaml which is clr-namespace and the namespace for our employee Class xmlns:local="clr-namespace:Example03" In Our windows Resources we create an instance of our object <Window.Resources> <local:Employee x:Key="MyEmployee" EmployeeNumber="145" FirstName="John" LastName="Doe" Department="Product Development" Title="QA Manager" /> </Window.Resources> then we bind our container to the that instance of the data <Grid DataContext="{StaticResource MyEmployee}"> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition Height="*" /> <RowDefinition Height="*" /> <RowDefinition Height="*" /> <RowDefinition Height="*" /> <RowDefinition Height="*" /> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <Grid.ColumnDefinitions > <ColumnDefinition Width="130px" /> <ColumnDefinition Width="178*" /> </Grid.ColumnDefinitions> </Grid> and Finally we have textboxes that will bind to that textbox <Label Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="0">Employee Number</Label> <TextBox Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="1" Text="{Binding Path=EmployeeNumber}"></TextBox> <Label Grid.Row="1" Grid.Column="0">First Name</Label> <TextBox Grid.Row="1" Grid.Column="1" Text="{Binding Path=FirstName}"></TextBox> <Label Grid.Row="2" Grid.Column="0">Last Name</Label> <TextBox Grid.Row="2" Grid.Column="1" Text="{Binding Path=LastName}" /> <Label Grid.Row="3" Grid.Column="0">Title</Label> <TextBox Grid.Row="3" Grid.Column="1" Text="{Binding Path=Title}"></TextBox> <Label Grid.Row="4" Grid.Column="0">Department</Label> <TextBox Grid.Row="4" Grid.Column="1" Text="{Binding Path=Department}" />

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Microsoft’s 22tracks Music Service now Available in All Browsers

- by Akemi Iwaya

Are you tired of listening to the same old music and looking for something new to listen to? Then 22tracks from Microsoft is definitely worth a look! This online music service is available in your favorite browser, does not require an account to use, and lets you listen to music from multiple international sources! If you are curious about 22tracks, then the following excerpt and video sum up the service very nicely. From the blog post: The concept behind 22tracks is simple: 22 local top DJs from cities like Amsterdam, Brussels, London and Paris share their genre’s 22 hottest tracks of the moment. Each city boosts its own team of specialized DJs bringing you the newest tracks in their genre. When you get ready to select (or change to) another set of tracks, just click on the desired city at the top of the browser window, then click on the appropriate set from the drop-down list. 22tracks Homepage 22tracks and Internet Explorer team up to bring you a completely new online music experience [22tracks Blog] 22tracks about [YouTube] [via BetaNews and The Next Web]

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Installing Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Service Pack 1

- by Martin Hinshelwood

As has become customary when the product team releases a new patch, SP or version I like to document the install. Although I had no errors on my main computer, my netbook did have problems. Although I am not ready to call it a Service Pack problem just yet! Update 2011-03-10 – Running the Team Foundation Server 2010 Service Pack 1 install a second time worked As per Brian's post I am installing the Team Foundation Server Service Pack first and indeed as this is a single server local deployment I need to install both. If I only install one it will leave the other product broken. This however does not affect you if you are running Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server on separate computers as is normal in a production deployment. Main workhorse I will be installing the service pack first on my main computer as I want to actually use it here. Figure: My main workhorse I will also be installing this on my netbook which is obviously of significantly lower spec, but I will do that one after. Although, as always I had my fingers crossed, I was not really worried. Figure: KB2182621 Compared to Visual Studio there are not really a lot of components to update. Figure: TFS 2010 and SQL 2008 are the main things to update There is no “web” installer for the Team Foundation Server 2010 Service Pack, but that is ok as most people will be installing it on a production server and will want to have everything local. I would have liked a Web installer, but the added complexity for the product team is not work the capability for a 500mb patch. Figure: There is currently no way to roll SP1 and RTM together Figure: No problems with the file verification, phew Figure: Although the install took a while, it progressed smoothly Figure: I always like a success screen Well, as far as the install is concerned everything is OK, but what about TFS? Can I still connect and can I still administer it. Figure: Service Pack 1 is reflected correctly in the Administration Console I am confident that there are no major problems with TFS on my system and that it has been updated to SP1. I can do all of the things that I used before with ease, and with the new features detailed by Brian I think I will be happy. Netbook The great god Murphy has stuck, and my poor wee laptop spat the Team Foundation Server 2010 Service Pack 1 out so fast it hit me on the back of the head. That will teach me for not looking… Figure: “Installation did not succeed” I am pretty sure should not be all caps! On examining the file I found that everything worked, except the actual Team Foundation Server 2010 serving step. Action: System Requirement Checks... Action complete Action: Downloading and/or Verifying Items c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\VS10-KB2182621.msp: Verifying signature for VS10-KB2182621.msp c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\VS10-KB2182621.msp Signature verified successfully for VS10-KB2182621.msp c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\DACFramework_enu.msi: Verifying signature for DACFramework_enu.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\DACFramework_enu.msi Signature verified successfully for DACFramework_enu.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\DACProjectSystemSetup_enu.msi: Verifying signature for DACProjectSystemSetup_enu.msi Exists: evaluating Exists evaluated to false c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\DACProjectSystemSetup_enu.msi Signature verified successfully for DACProjectSystemSetup_enu.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\TSqlLanguageService_enu.msi: Verifying signature for TSqlLanguageService_enu.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\TSqlLanguageService_enu.msi Signature verified successfully for TSqlLanguageService_enu.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\SharedManagementObjects_x86_enu.msi: Verifying signature for SharedManagementObjects_x86_enu.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\SharedManagementObjects_x86_enu.msi Signature verified successfully for SharedManagementObjects_x86_enu.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\SharedManagementObjects_amd64_enu.msi: Verifying signature for SharedManagementObjects_amd64_enu.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\SharedManagementObjects_amd64_enu.msi Signature verified successfully for SharedManagementObjects_amd64_enu.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\SQLSysClrTypes_x86_enu.msi: Verifying signature for SQLSysClrTypes_x86_enu.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\SQLSysClrTypes_x86_enu.msi Signature verified successfully for SQLSysClrTypes_x86_enu.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\SQLSysClrTypes_amd64_enu.msi: Verifying signature for SQLSysClrTypes_amd64_enu.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\SQLSysClrTypes_amd64_enu.msi Signature verified successfully for SQLSysClrTypes_amd64_enu.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x86.cab: Verifying signature for vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x86.cab c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x86.cab Signature verified successfully for vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x86.cab c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x86.msi: Verifying signature for vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x86.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x86.msi Signature verified successfully for vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x86.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\SetupUtility.exe: Verifying signature for SetupUtility.exe c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\SetupUtility.exe Signature verified successfully for SetupUtility.exe c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x64.cab: Verifying signature for vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x64.cab c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x64.cab Signature verified successfully for vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x64.cab c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x64.msi: Verifying signature for vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x64.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x64.msi Signature verified successfully for vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x64.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\NDP40-KB2468871.exe: Verifying signature for NDP40-KB2468871.exe c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\NDP40-KB2468871.exe Signature verified successfully for NDP40-KB2468871.exe Action complete Action: Performing actions on all Items Entering Function: BaseMspInstallerT >::PerformAction Action: Performing Install on MSP: c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\VS10-KB2182621.msp targetting Product: Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010 - ENU Returning IDOK. INSTALLMESSAGE_ERROR [Error 1935.An error occurred during the installation of assembly 'Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WebAccess.WorkItemTracking,version="10.0.0.0",publicKeyToken="b03f5f7f11d50a3a",processorArchitecture="MSIL",fileVersion="10.0.40219.1",culture="neutral"'. Please refer to Help and Support for more information. HRESULT: 0x80070005. ] Returning IDOK. INSTALLMESSAGE_ERROR [Error 1712.One or more of the files required to restore your computer to its previous state could not be found. Restoration will not be possible.] Patch (c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\VS10-KB2182621.msp) Install failed on product (Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010 - ENU). Msi Log: MSI returned 0x643 Entering Function: MspInstallerT >::Rollback Action Rollback changes PerformMsiOperation returned 0x643 PerformMsiOperation returned 0x643 OnFailureBehavior for this item is to Rollback. Action complete Final Result: Installation failed with error code: (0x80070643), "Fatal error during installation. " (Elapsed time: 0 00:14:09). Figure: Error log for Team Foundation Server 2010 install shows a failure As there is really no information in this log as to why the installation failed so I checked the event log on that box. Figure: There are hundreds of errors and it actually looks like there are more problems than a failed Service Pack I am going to just run it again and see if it was because the netbook was slow to catch on to the update. Hears hoping, but even if it fails, I would question the installation of Windows (PDC laptop original install) before I question the Service Pack Figure: Second run through was successful I don’t know if the laptop was just slow, or what… Did you get this error? If you did I will push this to the product team as a problem, but unless more people have this sort of error, I will just look to write this off as a corrupted install of Windows and reinstall.

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Windows Phone 7 development: Using isolated storage

- by DigiMortal

In my previous posting about Windows Phone 7 development I showed how to use WebBrowser control in Windows Phone 7. In this posting I make some other improvements to my blog reader application and I will show you how to use isolated storage to store information to phone. Why isolated storage? Isolated storage is place where your application can save its data and settings. The image on right (that I stole from MSDN library) shows you how application data store is organized. You have no other options to keep your files besides isolated storage because Windows Phone 7 does not allow you to save data directly to other file system locations. From MSDN: “Isolated storage enables managed applications to create and maintain local storage. The mobile architecture is similar to the Silverlight-based applications on Windows. All I/O operations are restricted to isolated storage and do not have direct access to the underlying operating system file system. Ultimately, this helps to provide security and prevents unauthorized access and data corruption.” Saving files from web to isolated storage I updated my RSS-reader so it reads RSS from web only if there in no local file with RSS. User can update RSS-file by clicking a button. Also file is created when application starts and there is no RSS-file. Why I am doing this? I want my application to be able to work also offline. As my code needs some more refactoring I provide it with some next postings about Windows Phone 7. If you want it sooner then please leave me a comment here. Here is the code for my RSS-downloader that downloads RSS-feed and saves it to isolated storage file calles rss.xml. public class RssDownloader { private string _url; private string _fileName; public delegate void DownloadCompleteDelegate(); public event DownloadCompleteDelegate DownloadComplete; public RssDownloader(string url, string fileName) { _url = url; _fileName = fileName; } public void Download() { var request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(_url); var result = (IAsyncResult)request.BeginGetResponse(ResponseCallback, request); } private void ResponseCallback(IAsyncResult result) { var request = (HttpWebRequest)result.AsyncState; var response = request.EndGetResponse(result); using(var stream = response.GetResponseStream()) using(var reader = new StreamReader(stream)) using(var appStorage = IsolatedStorageFile.GetUserStoreForApplication()) using(var file = appStorage.OpenFile("rss.xml", FileMode.OpenOrCreate)) using(var writer = new StreamWriter(file)) { writer.Write(reader.ReadToEnd()); } if (DownloadComplete != null) DownloadComplete(); } } Of course I modified RSS-source for my application to use rss.xml file from isolated storage. As isolated storage files also base on streams we can use them everywhere where streams are expected. Reading isolated storage files As isolated storage files are opened as streams you can read them like usual files in your usual applications. The next code fragment shows you how to open file from isolated storage and how to read it using XmlReader. Previously I used response stream in same place. using(var appStorage = IsolatedStorageFile.GetUserStoreForApplication()) using(var file = appStorage.OpenFile("rss.xml", FileMode.Open)) { var reader = XmlReader.Create(file); // more code } As you can see there is nothing complex. If you have worked with System.IO namespace objects then you will find isolated storage classes and methods to be very similar to these. Also mention that application storage and isolated storage files must be disposed after you are not using them anymore.

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8 Things You Can Do In Android’s Developer Options

- by Chris Hoffman

The Developer Options menu in Android is a hidden menu with a variety of advanced options. These options are intended for developers, but many of them will be interesting to geeks. You’ll have to perform a secret handshake to enable the Developer Options menu in the Settings screen, as it’s hidden from Android users by default. Follow the simple steps to quickly enable Developer Options. Enable USB Debugging “USB debugging” sounds like an option only an Android developer would need, but it’s probably the most widely used hidden option in Android. USB debugging allows applications on your computer to interface with your Android phone over the USB connection. This is required for a variety of advanced tricks, including rooting an Android phone, unlocking it, installing a custom ROM, or even using a desktop program that captures screenshots of your Android device’s screen. You can also use ADB commands to push and pull files between your device and your computer or create and restore complete local backups of your Android device without rooting. USB debugging can be a security concern, as it gives computers you plug your device into access to your phone. You could plug your device into a malicious USB charging port, which would try to compromise you. That’s why Android forces you to agree to a prompt every time you plug your device into a new computer with USB debugging enabled. Set a Desktop Backup Password If you use the above ADB trick to create local backups of your Android device over USB, you can protect them with a password with the Set a desktop backup password option here. This password encrypts your backups to secure them, so you won’t be able to access them if you forget the password. Disable or Speed Up Animations When you move between apps and screens in Android, you’re spending some of that time looking at animations and waiting for them to go away. You can disable these animations entirely by changing the Window animation scale, Transition animation scale, and Animator duration scale options here. If you like animations but just wish they were faster, you can speed them up. On a fast phone or tablet, this can make switching between apps nearly instant. If you thought your Android phone was speedy before, just try disabling animations and you’ll be surprised how much faster it can seem. Force-Enable FXAA For OpenGL Games If you have a high-end phone or tablet with great graphics performance and you play 3D games on it, there’s a way to make those games look even better. Just go to the Developer Options screen and enable the Force 4x MSAA option. This will force Android to use 4x multisample anti-aliasing in OpenGL ES 2.0 games and other apps. This requires more graphics power and will probably drain your battery a bit faster, but it will improve image quality in some games. This is a bit like force-enabling antialiasing using the NVIDIA Control Panel on a Windows gaming PC. See How Bad Task Killers Are We’ve written before about how task killers are worse than useless on Android. If you use a task killer, you’re just slowing down your system by throwing out cached data and forcing Android to load apps from system storage whenever you open them again. Don’t believe us? Enable the Don’t keep activities option on the Developer options screen and Android will force-close every app you use as soon as you exit it. Enable this app and use your phone normally for a few minutes — you’ll see just how harmful throwing out all that cached data is and how much it will slow down your phone. Don’t actually use this option unless you want to see how bad it is! It will make your phone perform much more slowly — there’s a reason Google has hidden these options away from average users who might accidentally change them. Fake Your GPS Location The Allow mock locations option allows you to set fake GPS locations, tricking Android into thinking you’re at a location where you actually aren’t. Use this option along with an app like Fake GPS location and you can trick your Android device and the apps running on it into thinking you’re at locations where you actually aren’t. How would this be useful? Well, you could fake a GPS check-in at a location without actually going there or confuse your friends in a location-tracking app by seemingly teleporting around the world. Stay Awake While Charging You can use Android’s Daydream Mode to display certain apps while charging your device. If you want to force Android to display a standard Android app that hasn’t been designed for Daydream Mode, you can enable the Stay awake option here. Android will keep your device’s screen on while charging and won’t turn it off. It’s like Daydream Mode, but can support any app and allows users to interact with them. Show Always-On-Top CPU Usage You can view CPU usage data by toggling the Show CPU usage option to On. This information will appear on top of whatever app you’re using. If you’re a Linux user, the three numbers on top probably look familiar — they represent the system load average. From left to right, the numbers represent your system load over the last one, five, and fifteen minutes. This isn’t the kind of thing you’d want enabled most of the time, but it can save you from having to install third-party floating CPU apps if you want to see CPU usage information for some reason. Most of the other options here will only be useful to developers debugging their Android apps. You shouldn’t start changing options you don’t understand. If you want to undo any of these changes, you can quickly erase all your custom options by sliding the switch at the top of the screen to Off.

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Use Ubuntu’s Public Folder to Easily Share Files Between Computers

- by Chris Hoffman

You’ve probably noticed that Ubuntu comes with a Public folder in your home directory. This folder isn’t shared by default, but you can easily set up several different types of file-sharing to easily share files on your local network. This folder was originally meant for the Personal File Sharing tool, which is no longer included with Ubuntu by default. You can install the Personal File Sharing tool or use Ubuntu’s built-in file-sharing feature to share files. HTG Explains: What Is RSS and How Can I Benefit From Using It? HTG Explains: Why You Only Have to Wipe a Disk Once to Erase It HTG Explains: Learn How Websites Are Tracking You Online

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10 Essential Tools for building ASP.NET Websites

- by Stephen Walther

I recently put together a simple public website created with ASP.NET for my company at Superexpert.com. I was surprised by the number of free tools that I ended up using to put together the website. Therefore, I thought it would be interesting to create a list of essential tools for building ASP.NET websites. These tools work equally well with both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC. Performance Tools After reading Steve Souders two (very excellent) books on front-end website performance High Performance Web Sites and Even Faster Web Sites, I have been super sensitive to front-end website performance. According to Souders’ Performance Golden Rule: “Optimize front-end performance first, that's where 80% or more of the end-user response time is spent” You can use the tools below to reduce the size of the images, JavaScript files, and CSS files used by an ASP.NET application. 1. Sprite and Image Optimization Framework CSS sprites were first described in an article written for A List Apart entitled CSS sprites: Image Slicing’s Kiss of Death. When you use sprites, you combine multiple images used by a website into a single image. Next, you use CSS trickery to display particular sub-images from the combined image in a webpage. The primary advantage of sprites is that they reduce the number of requests required to display a webpage. Requesting a single large image is faster than requesting multiple small images. In general, the more resources – images, JavaScript files, CSS files – that must be moved across the wire, the slower your website. However, most people avoid using sprites because they require a lot of work. You need to combine all of the images and write just the right CSS rules to display the sub-images. The Microsoft Sprite and Image Optimization Framework enables you to avoid all of this work. The framework combines the images for you automatically. Furthermore, the framework includes an ASP.NET Web Forms control and an ASP.NET MVC helper that makes it easy to display the sub-images. You can download the Sprite and Image Optimization Framework from CodePlex at http://aspnet.codeplex.com/releases/view/50869. The Sprite and Image Optimization Framework was written by Morgan McClean who worked in the office next to mine at Microsoft. Morgan was a scary smart Intern from Canada and we discussed the Framework while he was building it (I was really excited to learn that he was working on it). Morgan added some great advanced features to this framework. For example, the Sprite and Image Optimization Framework supports something called image inlining. When you use image inlining, the actual image is stored in the CSS file. Here’s an example of what image inlining looks like: .Home_StephenWalther_small-jpg { width:75px; height:100px; background: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAEsAAABkCAIAAABB1lpeAAAAB GdBTUEAALGOfPtRkwAAACBjSFJNAACHDwAAjA8AAP1SAACBQAAAfXkAAOmLAAA85QAAGcxzPIV3AAAKL s+zNfREAAAAASUVORK5CYII=) no-repeat 0% 0%; } The actual image (in this case a picture of me that is displayed on the home page of the Superexpert.com website) is stored in the CSS file. If you visit the Superexpert.com website then very few separate images are downloaded. For example, all of the images with a red border in the screenshot below take advantage of CSS sprites: Unfortunately, there are some significant Gotchas that you need to be aware of when using the Sprite and Image Optimization Framework. There are workarounds for these Gotchas. I plan to write about these Gotchas and workarounds in a future blog entry. 2. Microsoft Ajax Minifier Whenever possible you should combine, minify, compress, and cache with a far future header all of your JavaScript and CSS files. The Microsoft Ajax Minifier makes it easy to minify JavaScript and CSS files. Don’t confuse minification and compression. You need to do both. According to Souders, you can reduce the size of a JavaScript file by an additional 20% (on average) by minifying a JavaScript file after you compress the file. When you minify a JavaScript or CSS file, you use various tricks to reduce the size of the file before you compress the file. For example, you can minify a JavaScript file by replacing long JavaScript variables names with short variables names and removing unnecessary white space and comments. You can minify a CSS file by doing such things as replacing long color names such as #ffffff with shorter equivalents such as #fff. The Microsoft Ajax Minifier was created by Microsoft employee Ron Logan. Internally, this tool was being used by several large Microsoft websites. We also used the tool heavily on the ASP.NET team. I convinced Ron to publish the tool on CodePlex so that everyone in the world could take advantage of it. You can download the tool from the ASP.NET Ajax website and read documentation for the tool here. I created the installer for the Microsoft Ajax Minifier. When creating the installer, I also created a Visual Studio build task to make it easy to minify all of your JavaScript and CSS files whenever you do a build within Visual Studio automatically. Read the Ajax Minifier Quick Start to learn how to configure the build task. 3. ySlow The ySlow tool is a free add-on for Firefox created by Yahoo that enables you to test the front-end of your website. For example, here are the current test results for the Superexpert.com website: The Superexpert.com website has an overall score of B (not perfect but not bad). The ySlow tool is not perfect. For example, the Superexpert.com website received a failing grade of F for not using a Content Delivery Network even though the website using the Microsoft Ajax Content Delivery Network for JavaScript files such as jQuery. Uptime After publishing a website live to the world, you want to ensure that the website does not encounter any issues and that it stays live. I use the following tools to monitor the Superexpert.com website now that it is live. 4. ELMAH ELMAH stands for Error Logging Modules and Handlers for ASP.NET. ELMAH enables you to record any errors that happen at your website so you can review them in the future. You can download ELMAH for free from the ELMAH project website. ELMAH works great with both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC. You can configure ELMAH to store errors in a number of different stores including XML files, the Event Log, an Access database, a SQL database, an Oracle database, or in computer RAM. You also can configure ELMAH to email error messages to you when they happen. By default, you can access ELMAH by requesting the elmah.axd page from a website with ELMAH installed. Here’s what the elmah page looks like from the Superexpert.com website (this page is password-protected because secret information can be revealed in an error message): If you click on a particular error message, you can view the original Yellow Screen ASP.NET error message (even when the error message was never displayed to the actual user). I installed ELMAH by taking advantage of the new package manager for ASP.NET named NuGet (originally named NuPack). You can read the details about NuGet in the following blog entry by Scott Guthrie. You can download NuGet from CodePlex. 5. Pingdom I use Pingdom to verify that the Superexpert.com website is always up. You can sign up for Pingdom by visiting Pingdom.com. You can use Pingdom to monitor a single website for free. At the Pingdom website, you configure the frequency that your website gets pinged. I verify that the Superexpert.com website is up every 5 minutes. I have the Pingdom service verify that it can retrieve the string “Contact Us” from the website homepage. If your website goes down, you can configure Pingdom so that it sends an email, Twitter, SMS, or iPhone alert. I use the Pingdom iPhone app which looks like this: 6. Host Tracker If your website does go down then you need some way of determining whether it is a problem with your local network or if your website is down for everyone. I use a website named Host-Tracker.com to check how badly a website is down. Here’s what the Host-Tracker website displays for the Superexpert.com website when the website can be successfully pinged from everywhere in the world: Notice that Host-Tracker pinged the Superexpert.com website from 68 locations including Roubaix, France and Scranton, PA. Debugging I mean debugging in the broadest possible sense. I use the following tools when building a website to verify that I have not made a mistake. 7. HTML Spell Checker Why doesn’t Visual Studio have a built-in spell checker? Don’t know – I’ve always found this mysterious. Fortunately, however, a former member of the ASP.NET team wrote a free spell checker that you can use with your ASP.NET pages. I find a spell checker indispensible. It is easy to delude yourself that you are capable of perfect spelling. I’m always super embarrassed when I actually run the spell checking tool and discover all of my spelling mistakes. The fastest way to add the HTML Spell Checker extension to Visual Studio is to select the menu option Tools, Extension Manager within Visual Studio. Click on Online Gallery and search for HTML Spell Checker: 8. IIS SEO Toolkit If people cannot find your website through Google then you should not even bother to create it. Microsoft has a great extension for IIS named the IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit that you can use to identify issue with your website that would hurt its page rank. You also can use this tool to quickly create a sitemap for your website that you can submit to Google or Bing. You can even generate the sitemap for an ASP.NET MVC website. Here’s what the report overview for the Superexpert.com website looks like: Notice that the Sueprexpert.com website had plenty of violations. For example, there are 65 cases in which a page has a broken hyperlink. You can drill into these violations to identity the exact page and location where these violations occur. 9. LinqPad If your ASP.NET website accesses a database then you should be using LINQ to Entities with the Entity Framework. Using LINQ involves some magic. LINQ queries written in C# get converted into SQL queries for you. If you are not careful about how you write your LINQ queries, you could unintentionally build a really badly performing website. LinqPad is a free tool that enables you to experiment with your LINQ queries. It even works with Microsoft SQL CE 4 and Azure. You can use LinqPad to execute a LINQ to Entities query and see the results. You also can use it to see the resulting SQL that gets executed against the database: 10. .NET Reflector I use .NET Reflector daily. The .NET Reflector tool enables you to take any assembly and disassemble the assembly into C# or VB.NET code. You can use .NET Reflector to see the “Source Code” of an assembly even when you do not have the actual source code. You can download a free version of .NET Reflector from the Redgate website. I use .NET Reflector primarily to help me understand what code is doing internally. For example, I used .NET Reflector with the Sprite and Image Optimization Framework to better understand how the MVC Image helper works. Here’s part of the disassembled code from the Image helper class: Summary In this blog entry, I’ve discussed several of the tools that I used to create the Superexpert.com website. These are tools that I use to improve the performance, improve the SEO, verify the uptime, or debug the Superexpert.com website. All of the tools discussed in this blog entry are free. Furthermore, all of these tools work with both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC. Let me know if there are any tools that you use daily when building ASP.NET websites.

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Best/Bad practices for code sharing?

- by sunpech

The more I explore Github, the more I like it. I really enjoy how coding is becoming more social. I'm curious as to if there are any bad practices that programmers should avoid in sharing their code with each other. And in naming bad practices, what are the best practices for code sharing? For example: Is it a bad practice for a single repo to have multiple scripts/projects named 'MiscProjects'? Where this repo, as the name suggest, is a collection of miscellaneous small scripts and projects. This may resemble how a programmer organizes projects on his/her local storage, but it's possibly not optimal for code sharing? Maybe if a good README/documentation is done, it would be better? Or as long as it's well documented, anything goes?

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SQLAuthority News – Free Download – Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 RTM – Express with Management Tools

- by pinaldave

This blog post is in response to several inquiry about Free Download of SQL Server 2008 R2 RTM. Microsoft has announced SQL Server 2008 R2 as RTM (Release To Manufacture). Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 R2 Express is a powerful and reliable data management system that delivers a rich set of features, data protection, and performance for embedded applications, lightweight Web Sites and applications, and local data stores. Download Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 RTM – Express with Management Tools. Download Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 RTM – Management Studio Express. Download SQL Server 2008 R2 Books Online. Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Download, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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Cold Start

- by antony.reynolds

Well we had snow drifts 3ft deep on Saturday so it must be spring time. In preparation for Spring we decided to move the lawn tractor. Of course after sitting in the garage all winter it refused to start. I then come into the office and need to start my 11g SOA Suite installation. I thought about this and decided my tractor might be cranky but at least I can script the startup of my SOA Suite 11g installation. So with this in mind I created 6 scripts. I created them for Linux but they should translate to Windows without too many problems. This is left as an exercise to the reader, note you will have to hardcode more than I did in the Linux scripts and create separate script files for the sqlplus and WLST sections. Order to start things I believe there should be order in all things, especially starting the SOA Suite. So here is my preferred order. Start Database This is need by EM and the rest of SOA Suite so best to start it before the Admin Server and managed servers. Start Node Manager on all machines This is needed if you want the scripts to work across machines. Start Admin Server Once this is done in theory you can manually stat the managed servers using WebLogic console. But then you have to wait for console to be available. Scripting it all is quicker and easier way of starting. Start Managed Servers & Clusters Best to start them one per physical machine at a time to avoid undue load on the machines. Non-clustered install will have just soa_server1 and bam_serv1 by default. Clusters will have at least SOA and BAM clusters that can be started as a group or individually. I have provided scripts for standalone servers, but easy to change them to work with clusters. Starting Database I have provided a very primitive script (available here) to start the database, the listener and the DB console. The section highlighted in red needs to match your database name. #!/bin/sh echo "##############################" echo "# Setting Oracle Environment #" echo "##############################" . oraenv <<-EOF orcl EOF echo "#####################" echo "# Starting Database #" echo "#####################" sqlplus / as sysdba <<-EOF startup exit EOF echo "#####################" echo "# Starting Listener #" echo "#####################" lsnrctl start echo "######################" echo "# Starting dbConsole #" echo "######################" emctl start dbconsole read -p "Hit <enter> to continue" Starting SOA Suite My script for starting the SOA Suite (available here) breaks the task down into five sections. Setting the Environment First set up the environment variables. The variables highlighted in red probably need changing for your environment. #!/bin/sh echo "###########################" echo "# Setting SOA Environment #" echo "###########################" export MW_HOME=~oracle/Middleware11gPS1 export WL_HOME=$MW_HOME/wlserver_10.3 export ORACLE_HOME=$MW_HOME/Oracle_SOA export DOMAIN_NAME=soa_std_domain export DOMAIN_HOME=$MW_HOME/user_projects/domains/$DOMAIN_NAME Starting the Node Manager I start node manager with a nohup to stop it exiting when the script terminates and I redirect the standard output and standard error to a file in a logs directory. cd $DOMAIN_HOME echo "#########################" echo "# Starting Node Manager #" echo "#########################" nohup $WL_HOME/server/bin/startNodeManager.sh >logs/NodeManager.out 2>&1 & Starting the Admin Server I had problems starting the Admin Server from Node Manager so I decided to start it using the command line script. I again use nohup and redirect output. echo "#########################" echo "# Starting Admin Server #" echo "#########################" nohup ./startWebLogic.sh >logs/AdminServer.out 2>&1 & Starting the Managed Servers I then used WLST (WebLogic Scripting Tool) to start the managed servers. First I waited for the Admin Server to come up by putting a connect command in a loop. I could have put the WLST commands into a separate script file but I wanted to reduce the number of files I was using and so used redirected input (here syntax). $ORACLE_HOME/common/bin/wlst.sh <<-EOF import time sleep=time.sleep print "#####################################" print "# Waiting for Admin Server to Start #" print "#####################################" while True: try: connect(adminServerName="AdminServer") break except: sleep(10) I then start the SOA server and tell WLST to wait until it is started before returning. If starting a cluster then the start command would be modified accordingly to start the SOA cluster. print "#######################" print "# Starting SOA Server #" print "#######################" start(name="soa_server1", block="true") I then start the BAM server in the same way as the SOA server. print "#######################" print "# Starting BAM Server #" print "#######################" start(name="bam_server1", block="true") EOF Finally I let people know the servers are up and wait for input in case I am running in a separate window, in which case the result would be lost without the read command. echo "#####################" echo "# SOA Suite Started #" echo "#####################" read -p "Hit <enter> to continue" Stopping the SOA Suite My script for shutting down the SOA Suite (available here) is basically the reverse of my startup script. After setting the environment I connect to the Admin Server using WLST and shut down the managed servers and the admin server. Again the script would need modifying for a cluster. Stopping the Servers If I cannot connect to the Admin Server I try to connect to the node manager, in case the Admin Server is down but the managed servers are up. #!/bin/sh echo "###########################" echo "# Setting SOA Environment #" echo "###########################" export MW_HOME=~oracle/Middleware11gPS1 export WL_HOME=$MW_HOME/wlserver_10.3 export ORACLE_HOME=$MW_HOME/Oracle_SOA export DOMAIN_NAME=soa_std_domain export DOMAIN_HOME=$MW_HOME/user_projects/domains/$DOMAIN_NAME cd $DOMAIN_HOME $MW_HOME/Oracle_SOA/common/bin/wlst.sh <<-EOF try: print("#############################") print("# Connecting to AdminServer #") print("#############################") connect(username='weblogic',password='welcome1',url='t3://localhost:7001') except: print "#########################################" print "# Unable to connect to Admin Server #" print "# Attempting to connect to Node Manager #" print "#########################################" nmConnect(domainName=os.getenv("DOMAIN_NAME")) print "#######################" print "# Stopping BAM Server #" print "#######################" shutdown('bam_server1') print "#######################" print "# Stopping SOA Server #" print "#######################" shutdown('soa_server1') print "#########################" print "# Stopping Admin Server #" print "#########################" shutdown('AdminServer') disconnect() nmDisconnect() EOF Stopping the Node Manager I stopped the node manager by searching for the java node manager process using the ps command and then killing that process. echo "#########################" echo "# Stopping Node Manager #" echo "#########################" kill -9 `ps -ef | grep java | grep NodeManager | awk '{print $2;}'` echo "#####################" echo "# SOA Suite Stopped #" echo "#####################" read -p "Hit <enter> to continue" Stopping the Database Again my script for shutting down the database is the reverse of my start script. It is available here. The only change needed might be to the database name. #!/bin/sh echo "##############################" echo "# Setting Oracle Environment #" echo "##############################" . oraenv <<-EOF orcl EOF echo "######################" echo "# Stopping dbConsole #" echo "######################" emctl stop dbconsole echo "#####################" echo "# Stopping Listener #" echo "#####################" lsnrctl stop echo "#####################" echo "# Stopping Database #" echo "#####################" sqlplus / as sysdba <<-EOF shutdown immediate exit EOF read -p "Hit <enter> to continue" Cleaning Up Cleaning SOA Suite I often run tests and want to clean up all the log files. The following script (available here) does this for the WebLogic servers in a given domain on a machine. After setting the domain I just remove all files under the servers logs directories. It also cleans up the log files I created with my startup scripts. These scripts could be enhanced to copy off the log files if you needed them but in my test environments I don’t need them and would prefer to reclaim the disk space. #!/bin/sh echo "###########################" echo "# Setting SOA Environment #" echo "###########################" export MW_HOME=~oracle/Middleware11gPS1 export WL_HOME=$MW_HOME/wlserver_10.3 export ORACLE_HOME=$MW_HOME/Oracle_SOA export DOMAIN_NAME=soa_std_domain export DOMAIN_HOME=$MW_HOME/user_projects/domains/$DOMAIN_NAME echo "##########################" echo "# Cleaning SOA Log Files #" echo "##########################" cd $DOMAIN_HOME rm -Rf logs/* servers/*/logs/* read -p "Hit <enter> to continue" Cleaning Database I also created a script to clean up the dump files of an Oracle database instance and also the EM log files (available here). This relies on the machine name being correct as the EM log files are stored in a directory that is based on the hostname and the Oracle SID. #!/bin/sh echo "##############################" echo "# Setting Oracle Environment #" echo "##############################" . oraenv <<-EOF orcl EOF echo "#############################" echo "# Cleaning Oracle Log Files #" echo "#############################" rm -Rf $ORACLE_BASE/admin/$ORACLE_SID/*dump/* rm -Rf $ORACLE_HOME/`hostname`_$ORACLE_SID/sysman/log/* read -p "Hit <enter> to continue" Summary Hope you find the above scripts useful. They certainly stop me hanging around waiting for things to happen on my test machine and make it easy to run a test, change parameters, bounce the SOA Suite and clean the logs between runs so I can see exactly what is happening. Now I need to get that mower started…

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E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) seems to be choking on kde-runtime-data version issue

- by BMT

12.04 LTS, on a dell mini 10. Install stable until about a week ago. Updated about 1x a week, sometimes more often. Several days ago, I booted up and the system was no longer working correctly. All these symptoms occurred simultaneously: Cannot run (exit on opening, every time): Update manager, software center, ubuntuOne, libreOffice. Vinagre autostarts on boot, no explanation, not set to startup with Ubuntu. Using apt-get to fix install results in the following: maura@pandora:~$ sudo apt-get -f install Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Correcting dependencies... Done The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required: libtelepathy-farstream2 Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them. The following extra packages will be installed: gwibber gwibber-service kde-runtime-data software-center Suggested packages: gwibber-service-flickr gwibber-service-digg gwibber-service-statusnet gwibber-service-foursquare gwibber-service-friendfeed gwibber-service-pingfm gwibber-service-qaiku unity-lens-gwibber The following packages will be upgraded: gwibber gwibber-service kde-runtime-data software-center 4 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 39 not upgraded. 20 not fully installed or removed. Need to get 0 B/5,682 kB of archives. After this operation, 177 kB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? debconf: Perl may be unconfigured (Can't locate Scalar/Util.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /etc/perl /usr/local/lib/perl/5.14.2 /usr/local/share/perl/5.14.2 /usr/lib/perl5 /usr/share/perl5 /usr/lib/perl/5.14 /usr/share/perl/5.14 /usr/local/lib/site_perl .) at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/Hash/Util.pm line 9. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/Hash/Util.pm line 9. Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl/5.14/fields.pm line 122. Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Log.pm line 10. Compilation failed in require at (eval 1) line 4. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at (eval 1) line 4. ) -- aborting (Reading database ... 242672 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to replace gwibber 3.4.1-0ubuntu1 (using .../gwibber_3.4.2-0ubuntu1_i386.deb) ... Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix> Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>] Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 25, in <module> import logging ImportError: No module named logging Error in sys.excepthook: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport_python_hook.py", line 64, in apport_excepthook from apport.fileutils import likely_packaged, get_recent_crashes File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/__init__.py", line 1, in <module> from apport.report import Report File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/report.py", line 16, in <module> from xml.parsers.expat import ExpatError File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xml/parsers/expat.py", line 4, in <module> from pyexpat import * ImportError: No module named pyexpat Original exception was: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 25, in <module> import logging ImportError: No module named logging dpkg: warning: subprocess old pre-removal script returned error exit status 1 dpkg - trying script from the new package instead ... Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix> Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>] Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 25, in <module> import logging ImportError: No module named logging Error in sys.excepthook: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport_python_hook.py", line 64, in apport_excepthook from apport.fileutils import likely_packaged, get_recent_crashes File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/__init__.py", line 1, in <module> from apport.report import Report File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/report.py", line 16, in <module> from xml.parsers.expat import ExpatError File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xml/parsers/expat.py", line 4, in <module> from pyexpat import * ImportError: No module named pyexpat Original exception was: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 25, in <module> import logging ImportError: No module named logging dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/gwibber_3.4.2-0ubuntu1_i386.deb (--unpack): subprocess new pre-removal script returned error exit status 1 Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix> Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>] Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pycompile", line 27, in <module> import logging ImportError: No module named logging Error in sys.excepthook: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport_python_hook.py", line 64, in apport_excepthook from apport.fileutils import likely_packaged, get_recent_crashes File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/__init__.py", line 1, in <module> from apport.report import Report File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/report.py", line 16, in <module> from xml.parsers.expat import ExpatError File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xml/parsers/expat.py", line 4, in <module> from pyexpat import * ImportError: No module named pyexpat Original exception was: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pycompile", line 27, in <module> import logging ImportError: No module named logging dpkg: error while cleaning up: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1 Preparing to replace gwibber-service 3.4.1-0ubuntu1 (using .../gwibber-service_3.4.2-0ubuntu1_all.deb) ... Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix> Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>] Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 25, in <module> import logging ImportError: No module named logging Error in sys.excepthook: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport_python_hook.py", line 64, in apport_excepthook from apport.fileutils import likely_packaged, get_recent_crashes File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/__init__.py", line 1, in <module> from apport.report import Report File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/report.py", line 16, in <module> from xml.parsers.expat import ExpatError File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xml/parsers/expat.py", line 4, in <module> from pyexpat import * ImportError: No module named pyexpat Original exception was: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 25, in <module> import logging ImportError: No module named logging dpkg: warning: subprocess old pre-removal script returned error exit status 1 dpkg - trying script from the new package instead ... Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix> Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>] Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 25, in <module> import logging ImportError: No module named logging Error in sys.excepthook: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport_python_hook.py", line 64, in apport_excepthook from apport.fileutils import likely_packaged, get_recent_crashes File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/__init__.py", line 1, in <module> from apport.report import Report File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/report.py", line 16, in <module> from xml.parsers.expat import ExpatError File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xml/parsers/expat.py", line 4, in <module> from pyexpat import * ImportError: No module named pyexpat Original exception was: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 25, in <module> import logging ImportError: No module named logging dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/gwibber-service_3.4.2-0ubuntu1_all.deb (--unpack): subprocess new pre-removal script returned error exit status 1 Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix> Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>] Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pycompile", line 27, in <module> import logging ImportError: No module named logging Error in sys.excepthook: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport_python_hook.py", line 64, in apport_excepthook from apport.fileutils import likely_packaged, get_recent_crashes File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/__init__.py", line 1, in <module> from apport.report import Report File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/report.py", line 16, in <module> from xml.parsers.expat import ExpatError File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xml/parsers/expat.py", line 4, in <module> from pyexpat import * ImportError: No module named pyexpat Original exception was: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pycompile", line 27, in <module> import logging ImportError: No module named logging dpkg: error while cleaning up: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1 Preparing to replace kde-runtime-data 4:4.8.3-0ubuntu0.1 (using .../kde-runtime-data_4%3a4.8.4-0ubuntu0.1_all.deb) ... Unpacking replacement kde-runtime-data ... dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/kde-runtime-data_4%3a4.8.4-0ubuntu0.1_all.deb (--unpack): trying to overwrite '/usr/share/sounds', which is also in package sound-theme-freedesktop 0.7.pristine-2 dpkg-deb (subprocess): subprocess data was killed by signal (Broken pipe) dpkg-deb: error: subprocess <decompress> returned error exit status 2 Preparing to replace python-crypto 2.4.1-1 (using .../python-crypto_2.4.1-1_i386.deb) ... Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix> Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>] Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 25, in <module> import logging ImportError: No module named logging Error in sys.excepthook: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport_python_hook.py", line 64, in apport_excepthook from apport.fileutils import likely_packaged, get_recent_crashes File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/__init__.py", line 1, in <module> from apport.report import Report File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/report.py", line 16, in <module> from xml.parsers.expat import ExpatError File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xml/parsers/expat.py", line 4, in <module> from pyexpat import * ImportError: No module named pyexpat Original exception was: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 25, in <module> import logging ImportError: No module named logging dpkg: warning: subprocess old pre-removal script returned error exit status 1 dpkg - trying script from the new package instead ... Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix> Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>] Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 25, in <module> import logging ImportError: No module named logging Error in sys.excepthook: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport_python_hook.py", line 64, in apport_excepthook from apport.fileutils import likely_packaged, get_recent_crashes File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/__init__.py", line 1, in <module> from apport.report import Report File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/report.py", line 16, in <module> from xml.parsers.expat import ExpatError File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xml/parsers/expat.py", line 4, in <module> from pyexpat import * ImportError: No module named pyexpat Original exception was: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 25, in <module> import logging ImportError: No module named logging dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/python-crypto_2.4.1-1_i386.deb (--unpack): subprocess new pre-removal script returned error exit status 1 No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix> Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>] Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pycompile", line 27, in <module> import logging ImportError: No module named logging Error in sys.excepthook: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport_python_hook.py", line 64, in apport_excepthook from apport.fileutils import likely_packaged, get_recent_crashes File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/__init__.py", line 1, in <module> from apport.report import Report File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/report.py", line 16, in <module> from xml.parsers.expat import ExpatError File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xml/parsers/expat.py", line 4, in <module> from pyexpat import * ImportError: No module named pyexpat Original exception was: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pycompile", line 27, in <module> import logging ImportError: No module named logging dpkg: error while cleaning up: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1 Preparing to replace software-center 5.2.2.2 (using .../software-center_5.2.4_all.deb) ... Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix> Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>] Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 25, in <module> import logging ImportError: No module named logging Error in sys.excepthook: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport_python_hook.py", line 64, in apport_excepthook from apport.fileutils import likely_packaged, get_recent_crashes File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/__init__.py", line 1, in <module> from apport.report import Report File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/report.py", line 16, in <module> from xml.parsers.expat import ExpatError File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xml/parsers/expat.py", line 4, in <module> from pyexpat import * ImportError: No module named pyexpat Original exception was: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 25, in <module> import logging ImportError: No module named logging dpkg: warning: subprocess old pre-removal script returned error exit status 1 dpkg - trying script from the new package instead ... Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix> Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>] Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 25, in <module> import logging ImportError: No module named logging Error in sys.excepthook: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport_python_hook.py", line 64, in apport_excepthook from apport.fileutils import likely_packaged, get_recent_crashes File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/__init__.py", line 1, in <module> from apport.report import Report File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/report.py", line 16, in <module> from xml.parsers.expat import ExpatError File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xml/parsers/expat.py", line 4, in <module> from pyexpat import * ImportError: No module named pyexpat Original exception was: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 25, in <module> import logging ImportError: No module named logging dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/software-center_5.2.4_all.deb (--unpack): subprocess new pre-removal script returned error exit status 1 No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix> Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>] Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pycompile", line 27, in <module> import logging ImportError: No module named logging Error in sys.excepthook: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport_python_hook.py", line 64, in apport_excepthook from apport.fileutils import likely_packaged, get_recent_crashes File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/__init__.py", line 1, in <module> from apport.report import Report File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/report.py", line 16, in <module> from xml.parsers.expat import ExpatError File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xml/parsers/expat.py", line 4, in <module> from pyexpat import * ImportError: No module named pyexpat Original exception was: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pycompile", line 27, in <module> import logging ImportError: No module named logging dpkg: error while cleaning up: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1 Preparing to replace xdiagnose 2.5 (using .../archives/xdiagnose_2.5_all.deb) ... Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix> Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>] Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 25, in <module> import logging ImportError: No module named logging Error in sys.excepthook: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport_python_hook.py", line 64, in apport_excepthook from apport.fileutils import likely_packaged, get_recent_crashes File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/__init__.py", line 1, in <module> from apport.report import Report File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/report.py", line 16, in <module> from xml.parsers.expat import ExpatError File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xml/parsers/expat.py", line 4, in <module> from pyexpat import * ImportError: No module named pyexpat Original exception was: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 25, in <module> import logging ImportError: No module named logging dpkg: warning: subprocess old pre-removal script returned error exit status 1 dpkg - trying script from the new package instead ... Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix> Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>] Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 25, in <module> import logging ImportError: No module named logging Error in sys.excepthook: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport_python_hook.py", line 64, in apport_excepthook from apport.fileutils import likely_packaged, get_recent_crashes File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/__init__.py", line 1, in <module> from apport.report import Report File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/report.py", line 16, in <module> from xml.parsers.expat import ExpatError File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xml/parsers/expat.py", line 4, in <module> from pyexpat import * ImportError: No module named pyexpat Original exception was: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pyclean", line 25, in <module> import logging ImportError: No module named logging dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/xdiagnose_2.5_all.deb (--unpack): subprocess new pre-removal script returned error exit status 1 No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix> Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>] Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pycompile", line 27, in <module> import logging ImportError: No module named logging Error in sys.excepthook: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport_python_hook.py", line 64, in apport_excepthook from apport.fileutils import likely_packaged, get_recent_crashes File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/__init__.py", line 1, in <module> from apport.report import Report File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/report.py", line 16, in <module> from xml.parsers.expat import ExpatError File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xml/parsers/expat.py", line 4, in <module> from pyexpat import * ImportError: No module named pyexpat Original exception was: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pycompile", line 27, in <module> import logging ImportError: No module named logging dpkg: error while cleaning up: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1 Errors were encountered while processing: /var/cache/apt/archives/gwibber_3.4.2-0ubuntu1_i386.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/gwibber-service_3.4.2-0ubuntu1_all.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/kde-runtime-data_4%3a4.8.4-0ubuntu0.1_all.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/python-crypto_2.4.1-1_i386.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/software-center_5.2.4_all.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/xdiagnose_2.5_all.deb E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) maura@pandora:~$ ^C maura@pandora:~$

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Tracking My Internet Provider Speeds

- by Scott Weinstein

Of late, our broadband internet has been feeling sluggish. A call to the company took way more hold-time than I wanted to spend, and it only fixed the problem for a short while. Thus a perfect opportunity to play with some new tech to solve a problem, in this case, documenting a systemic issue from a service provider. The goal – a log a internet speeds, taken say every 15 min. Recording ping time, upload speed, download speed, and local LAN usage. The solution A WCF service to measure speeds Internet speed was measured via speedtest.net LAN usage was measured by querying my router for packets received and sent A SQL express instance to persist the data A PowerShell script to invoke the WCF service – launched by Windows’ Task Scheduler An OData WCF Data Service to allow me to read the data MS PowerPivot to show a nice viz (scratch that, the beta expired) LinqPad to get the data, export it to excel Tableau Public to show the viz Powered by Tableau

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Chrome Apps Office Hours: Chrome Storage APIs

Chrome Apps Office Hours: Chrome Storage APIs Ask and vote for questions: goo.gl You spoke, we listened. Join Paul Kinlan, Paul Lewis, Pete LePage, and Renato Dias to learn about the new storage APIs that are available to Chrome Packaged Apps in the next installment of Chrome Apps Office Hours. We'll take a look at the new sync-able and local storage APIs as well as other ways you can save data locally on your users machine. We didn't get through quite as many questions as we hoped last week, and are going to dedicate some extra time this week, so be sure to post your questions on Moderator below! From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 0 9 ratings Time: 00:00 More in Science & Technology

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L2TP connection fails!

- by a.toraby

I've installed l2tp-ipsec-vpn but when I try to connect to the vpn server I get error 500. Here are the logs: Jun 17 12:54:37.449 ipsec_setup: Stopping Openswan IPsec... Jun 17 12:54:38.858 Stopping xl2tpd: xl2tpd. Jun 17 12:54:38.859 xl2tpd[1511]: death_handler: Fatal signal 15 received Jun 17 12:54:38.872 ipsec_setup: Starting Openswan IPsec U2.6.37/K3.2.0-23-generic... Jun 17 12:54:39.027 ipsec__plutorun: Starting Pluto subsystem... Jun 17 12:54:39.033 ipsec__plutorun: adjusting ipsec.d to /etc/ipsec.d Jun 17 12:54:39.037 recvref[30]: Protocol not available Jun 17 12:54:39.038 xl2tpd[2442]: This binary does not support kernel L2TP. Jun 17 12:54:39.038 xl2tpd[2444]: xl2tpd version xl2tpd-1.3.1 started on atp-ThinkPad-SL410 PID:2444 Jun 17 12:54:39.038 xl2tpd[2444]: Written by Mark Spencer, Copyright (C) 1998, Adtran, Inc. Jun 17 12:54:39.038 xl2tpd[2444]: Forked by Scott Balmos and David Stipp, (C) 2001 Jun 17 12:54:39.038 xl2tpd[2444]: Inherited by Jeff McAdams, (C) 2002 Jun 17 12:54:39.039 xl2tpd[2444]: Forked again by Xelerance (www.xelerance.com) (C) 2006 Jun 17 12:54:39.039 xl2tpd[2444]: Listening on IP address 0.0.0.0, port 1701 Jun 17 12:54:39.040 Starting xl2tpd: xl2tpd. Jun 17 12:54:39.062 ipsec__plutorun: 002 added connection description "L2TP" Jun 17 12:55:30.753 104 "L2TP" #1: STATE_MAIN_I1: initiate Jun 17 12:55:30.754 010 "L2TP" #1: STATE_MAIN_I1: retransmission; will wait 20s for response Jun 17 12:55:30.754 010 "L2TP" #1: STATE_MAIN_I1: retransmission; will wait 40s for response Jun 17 12:55:30.754 003 "L2TP" #1: ignoring Vendor ID payload [MS NT5 ISAKMPOAKLEY 00000008] Jun 17 12:55:30.754 003 "L2TP" #1: received Vendor ID payload [RFC 3947] method set to=109 Jun 17 12:55:30.754 003 "L2TP" #1: received Vendor ID payload [draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-02_n] meth=106, but already using method 109 Jun 17 12:55:30.755 003 "L2TP" #1: ignoring Vendor ID payload [FRAGMENTATION] Jun 17 12:55:30.755 003 "L2TP" #1: ignoring Vendor ID payload [MS-Negotiation Discovery Capable] Jun 17 12:55:30.755 003 "L2TP" #1: ignoring Vendor ID payload [IKE CGA version 1] Jun 17 12:55:30.755 106 "L2TP" #1: STATE_MAIN_I2: sent MI2, expecting MR2 Jun 17 12:55:30.755 010 "L2TP" #1: STATE_MAIN_I2: retransmission; will wait 20s for response Jun 17 12:55:30.755 003 "L2TP" #1: NAT-Traversal: Result using RFC 3947 (NAT-Traversal): i am NATed Jun 17 12:55:30.755 108 "L2TP" #1: STATE_MAIN_I3: sent MI3, expecting MR3 Jun 17 12:55:30.756 004 "L2TP" #1: STATE_MAIN_I4: ISAKMP SA established {auth=OAKLEY_PRESHARED_KEY cipher=oakley_3des_cbc_192 prf=oakley_sha group=modp1024} Jun 17 12:55:30.756 117 "L2TP" #2: STATE_QUICK_I1: initiate Jun 17 12:55:30.756 010 "L2TP" #2: STATE_QUICK_I1: retransmission; will wait 20s for response Jun 17 12:55:30.756 003 "L2TP" #2: ignoring informational payload, type IPSEC_RESPONDER_LIFETIME msgid=6b03ff69 Jun 17 12:55:30.756 003 "L2TP" #2: NAT-Traversal: received 2 NAT-OA. ignored because peer is not NATed Jun 17 12:55:30.756 003 "L2TP" #2: our client subnet returned doesn't match my proposal - us:192.168.1.3/32 vs them:109.162.174.235/32 Jun 17 12:55:30.757 003 "L2TP" #2: Allowing questionable proposal anyway [ALLOW_MICROSOFT_BAD_PROPOSAL] Jun 17 12:55:30.757 004 "L2TP" #2: STATE_QUICK_I2: sent QI2, IPsec SA established transport mode {ESP=>0x23af21f8 <0xdb4a87b6 xfrm=AES_128-HMAC_SHA1 NATOA=none NATD=none DPD=none} Jun 17 12:55:31.759 xl2tpd[2444]: Connecting to host x.x.x.x, port 1701 Jun 17 12:55:32.021 xl2tpd[2444]: Connection established to x.x.x.x, 1701. Local: 4720, Remote: 200 (ref=0/0). Jun 17 12:55:32.023 xl2tpd[2444]: Calling on tunnel 4720 Jun 17 12:55:32.454 xl2tpd[2444]: Call established with x.x.x.x, Local: 9667, Remote: 3, Serial: 1 (ref=0/0) Jun 17 12:55:32.456 xl2tpd[2444]: start_pppd: I'm running: Jun 17 12:55:32.456 xl2tpd[2444]: "/usr/sbin/pppd" Jun 17 12:55:32.457 xl2tpd[2444]: "passive" Jun 17 12:55:32.458 xl2tpd[2444]: "nodetach" Jun 17 12:55:32.458 xl2tpd[2444]: ":" Jun 17 12:55:32.459 xl2tpd[2444]: "file" Jun 17 12:55:32.459 xl2tpd[2444]: "/etc/ppp/L2TP.options.xl2tpd" Jun 17 12:55:32.460 xl2tpd[2444]: "ipparam" Jun 17 12:55:32.461 xl2tpd[2444]: "x.x.x.x" Jun 17 12:55:32.462 xl2tpd[2444]: "/dev/pts/1" Jun 17 12:55:32.583 pppd[2711]: Plugin passprompt.so loaded. Jun 17 12:55:32.583 pppd[2711]: pppd 2.4.5 started by root, uid 0 Jun 17 12:55:32.619 pppd[2711]: Using interface ppp0 Jun 17 12:55:32.620 pppd[2711]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/pts/1 Jun 17 12:55:33.693 pppd[2711]: /usr/bin/L2tpIPsecVpn exited with code 0 Jun 17 12:55:34.454 [ERROR 404] Authentication failed: closing connection to 'L2TP' Jun 17 12:55:34.456 pppd[2711]: MS-CHAP authentication failed: E=691 Authentication failure Jun 17 12:55:34.457 pppd[2711]: CHAP authentication failed Jun 17 12:55:34.461 Stopping xl2tpd: xl2tpd. Jun 17 12:55:34.462 xl2tpd[2444]: death_handler: Fatal signal 15 received Jun 17 12:55:34.463 pppd[2711]: Modem hangup Jun 17 12:55:34.463 pppd[2711]: Connection terminated. Jun 17 12:55:34.474 ipsec_setup: Stopping Openswan IPsec... Jun 17 12:55:34.482 pppd[2711]: Exit. Jun 17 12:55:35.587 ipsec_setup: ERROR: Module xfrm4_mode_transport is in use Jun 17 12:55:35.665 ipsec_setup: ERROR: Module esp4 is in use I had this problem by ubuntu 11.10 though I can easily connect to the server from windows. I use ubuntu 12.0 64bit

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Install Control Center Agent on Oracle Application Server

- by qianqian.wu

Control Center Agent (CCA) The Control Center Agent is the OWB component that runs the Template Mappings in the Oracle Containers for J2EE (OC4J) server; also referred to as the J2EE Runtime. The Control Center Agent provides a Java-based runtime environment that can be installed on Oracle and non-Oracle database hosts. The Control Center Agent provides fundamental infrastructure for the heterogeneous, Code Template-based mapping support and Web services-related features of OWB in this release. In Oracle Warehouse Builder 11gR2 the Control Center Agent, by default will run in the built-in OC4J that is bundled in the Oracle Home. Besides that, you also have ability to install the Control Center Agent in an Oracle Application Server install. In this article, you will find step-by-step instructions how to install the Control Center Agent on an Oracle Application Server instance. The instructions cover the following tasks: Task 1: Install and Configure the Application Server Task 2: Deploy the Control Center Agent to the Application Server Task 3: Optional Configuration Tasks Task 1: Install and Configure the Application Server Before configuring the Application Server, you need to install it from Oracle Application Server CD-ROM, or by downloading the installation program from Oracle Technology Network (OTN). Once the installation is completed, you are ready to configure the Application Server. The purpose of the configuration task is to make sure the Control Center Agent ear file can be deployed and runs in the Application Server successfully. The essential configuration tasks are outlined below: · Modify the OC4J Startup Script · Set up Control Center Agent Server Side Logging · Set up Audit Table Data Source · Copy ct_permissions.properties File · Set up Security Roles for Control Center Agent · Create JMS Queues · Install JDBC Drivers to OC4J Modify the OC4J Startup Script The OC4J startup script “opmn.xml” is located in Application Server configuration directory, $AS_HOME/opmn/conf. $AS_HOME stands for the root home directory of the application server. Open the file opmn.xml in a text editor, and alter the contents of the file as displayed in the following sample. You need to make sure that: The MaxPerSize is set to 128M. This is to ensure that you allocate enough PermGen space to OC4J to run Control Center Agent. This will prevent java.lang.OutOfMemoryError when running the agent. The Python.path sets the path for the Python library files used by the Control Center Agent: jython_lib.zip and jython_owblib.jar. These two files are in the $OWB_HOME/owb/lib/int directory, where $OWB_HOME is the directory where owb is installed. · The km_security_needed determines whether restrictions will be applied to the kinds of operating system commands allowed to be executed by the OWB Code Template script executed by Control Center Agent. Setting km_security_needed to “true” enforces such restriction while setting it to “false” removes such restrictions. Set up Control Center Agent Server Side Logging Ensure that you are in the Application Server configuration directory, $AS_HOME/j2ee/home/config. Open the file j2ee-logging.xml in a text editor and add the following lines to the log handler section. The jrt-internal-log-handler is the handler used by Control Center Agent runtime logger to create log files. Then add the following entry into the loggers section to create the logger for Control Center Agent runtime auditing. Set up Audit Table Data Source To enable Audit Table logging, a managed data source and connection pool need to be set up before Control Center Agent deployment. Ensure that you are in the Application Server configuration directory, $AS_HOME/j2ee/home/config. Open the file data-sources.xml in a text editor. Define the audit data source shown below in the file, <managed-data-source name="AuditDS" connection-pool-name="OWBSYS Audit Connection Pool" jndi-name="jdbc/AuditDS"/> <connection-pool name="OWBSYS Audit Connection Pool"> <connection-factory factory-class="oracle.jdbc.pool.OracleDataSource" user="owbsys_audit" password="owbsys_audit" url="jdbc:oracle:thin:@//localhost:1521/ORCL"/> </connection-pool> Copy ct_permissions.properties File The ct_permissions.properties can be obtained from $OWB_HOME /owb/jrt/config/ directory. You need to copy the file to $AS_HOME/j2ee/home/config directory.This properties file takes effect when the setting km-security is set to true in Control Center Agent. By default the ALLOWED_CMD is commented out in ct_permissions.properties file. This prevents all system command from being invoked from scripts executed in Control Center Agent (when km-security is set to true). To allow certain system commands to be invoked, ALLOWED_CMD needs to be uncommented out, and the system commands (allowed to be invoked) need to be added to the ALLOWED_CMD. Set up Security Roles for Control Center Agent You can set up the Control Center Agent security roles through Oracle Enterprise Manager. In a web browser, navigate to Enterprise Manager Homepage (e.g. http://hostname:8889/em). 1. Log in using the oc4jadmin credentials. After the Cluster Topology page is loaded, click home (the OC4J instance). This takes you to the home page of the OC4J instance. On the OC4J home screen, click the Administration tab. On the Administration Tasks screen, expand Security. Click the task icon next to Security Providers. 2. On Security Providers page click on the button “Instance Level Security”. On Instance Level Security page, go to “Realms” tab. You will see a row for the default realm “jazn.com” in the results table. It has a “Roles” column and a “Users” column. Click on the number in “Roles” column. In the “Roles” page it will display all the roles available for the realm. Click on “Create” button to create a new role “OWB_J2EE_ EXECUTOR”. 3. On the Add Role screen, enter Name OWB_J2EE_EXECUTOR, and click OK. 4. Follow the same steps as before, and create a new role “OWB_J2EE_OPERATOR”. 5. Assign role “oc4j-administrators” and “OWB_J2EE_EXECUTOR” to the role “OWB_J2EE_OPERATOR” by moving these roles from “Available Roles” and click “OK” to save. 6. Go back to Instance Level Security page and create a new role “OWB_J2EE_ADMINISTRATOR”. 7. Assign roles “OWB_J2EE_ OPERATOR” and “OWB_J2EE_EXECUTOR” to the role “OWB_J2EE_ ADMINISTRATOR” by moving these roles from “Available Roles” and click “OK” to save. 8.Go back to Instance Level Security page. This time, click on the number in “Users” column for the realm “jazn.com”. In the “Users” page, it shows all the users defined for this realm. Locate the user “oc4jadmin” in the results table and click on it. 9. Assign the roles “OWB_J2EE_ADMINISTRATOR” and “oc4j-app-administrators” to this user by moving the role from the “Available Roles” selection box to “Selected Roles” box and click “Apply” to save. 10. Go back to Instance Level Security page and create a new role “OWB_INTERNAL_USERS”, assign no user or role to this role. Simply click “OK” to create this role. Now you have finished creating the security roles required for Control Center Agent. Create JMS Queues You need to create two JMS queues for Control Center Agent: owbQueue and abort_owbQueue. 1. Now go to OC4J home Page. On the OC4J home screen, click the Administration tab. On the Administration Tasks screen, expand Services and then expand Enterprise Messaging Service. Click the task icon next to JMS Destinations. 2. On JMS Destinations page, click “Create New” button to create a new JMS queue. On Add Destination page, choose “Queue” as Destination Type. Put “owbQueue” as Destination Name. Select “In Memory Persistence Only” as the Persistence Type and put “jms/owbQueue” as JNDI Location and click on “OK” to finish. 3. Follow the same instruction as above to create the owb_abortQueue. Now you have finished creating the JMS queues required for Control Center Agent. Install JDBC Drivers to OC4J In order to execute Code Templates using commercial databases other than Oracle, e.g. DB2, SQL Server etc, the corresponding jdbc driver files need to be added to $AS_HOME/j2ee/home/applib directory. 1. To install other JDBC drivers to OC4J, first obtain the .jar file containing the JDBC driver. All the external JDBC drivers .jar files can be found in the directory: $OWB_HOME/owb/lib/ext/. For DB2, the files needed are db2jcc.jar and db2jcc_license_cu.jar. For SQL Server the file is sqljdbc.jar. For sunopsis JDBC drivers, the file needed is snpsxmlo.jar. 2. Copy the required JDBC driver file into the directory $AS_HOME/j2ee/home/applib. Now you have finished the Application Server configuration. To make the configuration to take an effect, you need to restart the Application Server. Task 2: Deploy the Control Center Agent to the Application Server Now you can deploy the Control Center Agent to the Application Server. In a web browser, navigate to Enterprise Manager Homepage (e.g. http://hostname:8889/em). 1. Log in using the oc4jadmin credentials. After the Cluster Topology page is loaded, click home (the OC4J instance). This takes you to the home page of the OC4J instance. On the OC4J home screen, click the Applications tab. Click Deploy to begin deploying Control Center Agent. 2. On the Deploy: Select Archive screen, under Archive, select Archive is present on local host. Upload the archive to the server where Application Server Control is running. Click Browse and locate the jrt.ear file in the $OWB_HOME/owb/jrt/applications directory. Under Deployment Plan, select Automatically create a new deployment plan. Click Next. 3. Wait for the ear file to be uploaded to Application Server. On the Deploy: Application Attributes screen, enter Application Name jrt, and Context Root jrt. Leave the other attributes at their default values. Click Next. 4. On Deploy: Deployment Settings screen, leave all attributes at their default values, and click Deploy. This will take about 1 minute or so and when the application is deployed successfully, a confirmation message will be displayed. Now the Control Center Agent is started automatically. Go back to OC4J home page and click on Applications tab to make sure the deployed application jrt is showing in the applications list. Task 3: Optional Configuration Tasks The optional configuration tasks contain: · Secure Control Center Agent Web Service · Setting the PATH Environment Variable Secure Control Center Agent Web Service If you want to use JRTWebService with a secure website, you need to do the following steps, 1. Create a file “secure-web-site.xml” in the $AS_HOME/j2ee/home/config directory. The file can be obtained from $OWB_HOME/owb/jrt/config directory. A sample secure-web-site.xml is shown as below. We need to modify the “protocol” to “https”, and “secure” to “true”, also choose an port as the secure http port. Also we need to add the entry “ssl-config” in the file. Remember to use the absolute path for the key store file. 2. Modify the file “server.xml” that is located at $AS_HOME/j2ee/home/config directory. Then add the <web-site> element in the file for the secure-web-site. 3. Create a key store file “serverkeystore.jks” in the $AS_HOME/j2ee/home/config directory. The file can be obtained from $OWB_HOME/owb/jrt/config directory. After the three files are altered, restart the application server. Now you can access the JRTWebService in SSL way through https://hostname:4443/jrt/webservice. Setting the PATH Environment Variable Sometimes, some system commands such as linux ls, sh etc, can not be executed successfully during the script execution due to they are not found in PATH. To ensure they work normally, you can setup the environment variable PATH. Let’s navigate to the Enterprise Manager Homepage. 1. Go to OC4J home screen and click the Administration tab. Expand Administration Tasks, then expand Properties. Click the task icon next to Server Properties. 2. On the Server Properties screen, scroll down to Environment Variables section. Under Environment Variables, click Add Another Row. Enter PATH in Name, and fill Value with directories that contain the system commands. Click Apply. After you work through this article, I believe you have developed a deeper understanding of the Control Center Agent installation process, and you can apply this knowledge in other installation plan such as Control Center Agent installation on Standalone OC4J.

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On which crowdsourced design site have you the best experience? (ie, crowdspring, mycroburst, etc)

- by Darryl Hein

I wasn't sure which site to ask this on (as Graphic Design hasn't reached beta yet), so I thought I would try here. I'm looking to have a couple logos and website designs done. I've had some great local designers, but each one has moved or gone else where so I keep having to look for new designers. My thought and realization in the last couple days is to go to a crowdsourced design site like crowdspring.com or mycroburst.com. Both of these sites look good, but I'm wondering what else is out there? Are there better ones and how have your experiences been them?

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Enable Claims based Auth on a SP2010 website, after it has been provisioned

- by Sahil Malik

Ad:: SharePoint 2007 Training in .NET 3.5 technologies (more information). When you provision a web app in SP2010, you can choose it to use Claims Based Auth or Classic Auth right through the GUI. However, after you have provisioned a web app, there is no GUI to switch from Classic to Claims based. So the below powershell script will let you convert a SP2010 website to claims based auth after it has been provisioned. 1: $w = Get-SPWebApplication "http://sp2010" 2: $w.UseClaimsAuthentication = "True"; 3: $w.Update() The user running the above script should be a member of the SharePoint_Shell_Access role on the config DB, and a member of the WSS_ADMIN_WPG local group. Comment on the article ....

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Tool to convert blogger.com content to dasBlog

Due to blogger.com dropping FTP support, I've had to move my blog. If you are in a similar situation, this post will help you by showing you the necessary steps to take. Goals No loss on blog posts, comments AND all existing permalinks continue to work (redirect to the correct place). Steps Download the XML files corresponding to your blogger.com content and store them in a folder. Install and configure dasBlog on your local machine. Configure your web.config file (will need updating...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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Installing SubText with Web PI

- by Ben Griswold

SubText is the engine behind our company blog. With the goal of ensuring a smooth transition between the main website and the blogs, I spent some time tightening up the styles for the aggregate and individual blogs last week. This required a custom SubText skin and lot of css tweaking. Though I’ve previously had the SubText source running on my machine, there was no need to update or rebuild the solution in my current case so just went ahead with a local installation using the Microsoft Web Platform Installer (Web PI). I just checked the SubText box, provided answers to a few key setup questions (admin user credentials, SubText database, etc) and I was up and running in minutes. Once the setup was complete, I was asked if I’d like to launch SubText. The SubText Installation Wizard picked up where Web PI left off and the setup couldn’t have been easier. Web PI provides quick and easy installs for lots of goodies. Check it out.

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ASP.NET 4 Unleashed in Bookstores!

- by Stephen Walther

I’m happy to announce that ASP.NET 4 Unleashed is now in bookstores! The book is over 1,800 pages and it is packed with code samples and tutorials on all the features of ASP.NET 4. Given the size of the book – did I mention that it is over 1,800 pages? -- I can safely say that it is the most comprehensive book on ASP.NET This edition of the book has several new chapters written by Kevin Hoffman and Nate Dudek. Kevin and Nate did a fantastic job of covering the new features of ASP.NET 4 including: The new ASP.NET Chart Control The new ASP.NET QueryExtender Control The new ASP.NET routing framework jQuery You can buy the book from your local bookstore or buy the book from Amazon:

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What’s Your Tax Strategy? Automate the Tax Transfer Pricing Process!

- by tobyehatch

Does your business operate in multiple countries? Well, whether you like it or not, many local and international tax authorities inspect your tax strategy. Legal, effective tax planning is perceived as a “moral” issue. CEOs are being asked to testify on their process of tax transfer pricing between multinational legal entities. Marc Seewald, Senior Director of Product Management for EPM Applications specializing in all tax subjects and Product Manager for Oracle Hyperion Tax Provisioning, and Bart Stoehr, Senior Director of Product Strategy for Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management joined me for a discussion/podcast on this interesting subject. So what exactly is “tax transfer pricing”? Marc defined it this way. “Tax transfer pricing is a profit allocation methodology required to be used by multinational corporations. Specifically, the ultimate goal of the transfer pricing is to ensure that the global multinational pays their fair share of income tax in each of their local markets. Specifically, it prevents companies from unfairly moving profit from ‘high tax’ countries to ‘low tax’ countries.” According to Marc, in today’s global economy, profitability can be significantly impacted by goods and services exchanged between the related divisions within a single multinational company. To ensure that these cost allocations are done fairly, there are rules that govern the process. These rules ensure that intercompany allocations fairly represent the actual nature of the businesses activity- as if two divisions were unrelated - and provide a clear audit trail of how the costs have been allocated to prove that allocations fall within reasonable ranges. What are the repercussions of improper tax transfer pricing? How important is it? Tax transfer pricing allocations can materially impact the amount of overall corporate income taxes paid by a company worldwide, in some cases by hundreds of millions of dollars! Since so much tax revenue is at stake, revenue agencies like the IRS, and international regulatory bodies like the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) are pushing to reform and clarify reporting for tax transfer pricing. Most recently the OECD announced an “Action Plan for Base Erosion and Profit Shifting”. As Marc explained, the times are changing and companies need to be responsive to this issue. “It feels like every other week there is another company being accused of avoiding taxes,” said Marc. Most recently, Caterpillar was accused of avoiding billions of dollars in taxes. In the last couple of years, Apple, GE, Ikea, and Starbucks, have all been accused of tax avoidance. It’s imperative that companies like these have a clear and auditable tax transfer process that enables them to justify tax transfer pricing allocations and avoid steep penalties and bad publicity. Transparency and efficiency are what is needed when it comes to the tax transfer pricing process. Bart explained that tax transfer pricing is driving a deeper inspection of profit recognition specifically focused on the tax element of profit. However, allocations needed to support tax profitability are nearly identical in process to allocations taking place in other parts of the finance organization. For example, the methods and processes necessary to arrive at tax profitability by legal entity are no different than those used to arrive at fully loaded profitability for a product line. In fact, there is a great opportunity for alignment across these two different functions.So it seems that tax transfer pricing should be reflected in profitability in general. Bart agreed and told us more about some of the critical sub-processes of an overall tax transfer pricing process within the Oracle solution for tax transfer pricing. “First, there is a ton of data preparation, enrichment and pre-allocation data analysis that is managed in the Oracle Hyperion solution. This serves as the “data staging” to the next, critical sub-processes. From here, we leverage the Oracle EPM platform’s ability to re-use dimensions and legal entity driver data and financial data with Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management (HPCM). Within HPCM, we manage the driver data, define the legal entity to legal entity allocation rules (like cost plus), and have the option to test out multiple, simultaneous tax transfer pricing what-if scenarios. Once processed, a tax expert can evaluate the effectiveness of any one scenario result versus another via a variance analysis configured with HPCM’s pre-packaged reporting capability known as Oracle Hyperion SmartView for Office.” Further, Bart explained that the ability to visibly demonstrate how a cost or revenue has been allocated is really helpful and auditable. “HPCM’s Traceability Maps are that visual representation of all allocation flows that have been executed and is the tax transfer analyst’s best friend in maintaining clear documentation for tax transfer pricing audits. Simply click and drill as you inspect the chain of allocation definitions and results. Once final, the post-allocated tax data can be compared to the GL to create invoices and journal entries for posting to your GL system of choice. Of course, there is a framework for overall governance of the journal entries, allocation percentages, and reporting to include necessary approvals.” Lastly, Marc explained that the key value in using the Oracle Hyperion solution for tax transfer pricing is that it keeps everything in alignment in one single place. Specifically, Oracle Hyperion effectively becomes the single book of record for the GAAP, management, and the tax set of books. There are many benefits to having one source of the truth. These include EFFICIENCY, CONTROLS and TRANSPARENCY.So, what’s your tax strategy? Why not automate the tax transfer pricing process!To listen to the entire podcast, click here.To learn more about Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management (HPCM), click here.

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SQL Server service accounts and SPNs

- by simonsabin

Service Principal Names (SPNs) are a must for kerberos authentication which is a must when using sharepoint, reporting services and sql server where you access one server that then needs to access another resource, this is called the double hop. The reason this is a complex problem is that the second hop has to be done with impersonation/delegation. For this to work there needs to be a way for the security system to make sure that the service in the middle is allowed to impersonate you, after all you are not giving the service your password. To do this you need to be using kerberos. The following is my simple interpretation of how kerberos works. I find the Kerberos documentation rediculously complex so the following might be sligthly wrong but I think its close enough. Keberos works on a ticketing system, the prinicipal is that you get a security token from AD and then you can pass that to the service in the middle which can then use that token to impersonate you. For that to work AD has to be able to identify who is allowed to use the token, in this case the service account.But how do you as a client know what service account the service in the middle is configured with. The answer is SPNs. The SPN is the mapping between your logical connection to the service account. One type of SPN is for the DNS name for the server and the port. i.e. MySQL.mydomain.com and 1433. You can see how this maps to SQL Server on that server, but how does it map to the account. Well it can be done in two ways, either you can have a mapping defined in AD or AD can use a default mapping (this is something I didn't know about). To map the SPN in AD then you have to add the SPN to the user account, this is documented in the first link below either directly or using a tool called SetSPN. You might say that is complex, well it is and thats why SQL Server tries to do it for you, at start up it tries to connect to AD and set the SPN on the account it is running as, clearly that can only happen IF SQL is running as a domain account AND importantly it has permission to do so. By default a normal domain user account doesn't have the correct permission, and is why so many people have this problem. If the account is a domain admin then it will have permission, but non of us run SQL using domain admin accounts do we. You might also note that the SPN contains the port number (this isn't a requirement now in sql 2008 but I won't go into that), so if you set it manually and you are using dynamic ports (the default for a named instance) what do you do, well every time the port changes you need to change the SPN allocated to the account. Thats why its advised to let SQL Server register the SPN itself. You may also have thought, well what happens if I change my service account, won't that lead to two accounts with the same SPN. Possibly. Having two accounts with the same SPN is definitely a problem. Why? Well because if there are two accounts Kerberos can't identify the exact account that the service is running as, it could be either account, and so your security falls back to NTLM. SETSPN is useful for finding duplicate SPNs Reading this you will probably be thinking Oh my goodness this is really difficult. It is however I've found today in investigating something else that there is an easy option. Use Network Service as your service account. Network Service is a special account and is tied to the computer. It appears that Network Service has the update rights to AD to set an SPN mapping for the computer account. This then allows the SPN mapping to work. I believe this also works for the local system account. To get all the SPNs in your AD run the following, it could be a large file, so you might want to restrict it to a specific OU, or CN ldifde -d "DC=<domain>" -l servicePrincipalName -F spn.txt You will read in the links below that you need SQL to register the SPN this is done how to use Kerberos authenticaiton in SQL Server - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/319723 Using Kerberos with SQL Server - http://blogs.msdn.com/sql_protocols/archive/2005/10/12/479871.aspx Understanding Kerberos and NTLM authentication in SQL Server Connections - http://blogs.msdn.com/sql_protocols/archive/2006/12/02/understanding-kerberos-and-ntlm-authentication-in-sql-server-connections.aspx Summary The only reason I personally know to use a domain account is when you can't get kerberos to work and you want to do BULK INSERT or other network service that requires access to a a remote server. In this case you have to resort to using SQL authentication and the SQL Server uses its service account to access the remote service, and thus you need a domain account. You migth need this if using some forms of replication. I've always found Kerberos awkward to setup and so fallen back to this domain account approach. So in summary to get Kerberos to work try using the network service or local system accounts. For a great post from the Adam Saxton of the SQL Server support team go to http://blogs.msdn.com/psssql/archive/2010/03/09/what-spn-do-i-use-and-how-does-it-get-there.aspx

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Mono and GTK#, installing problem with gtk#

- by user207785

I've been trying and trying to install gtk# into mono, but I can't seem to install gtk# I've downloaded the tarball, used ./configure, and I get this: Configuration summary Installation prefix = /usr/local C# compiler: /usr/bin/mcs -define:GTK_SHARP_2_6 -define:GTK_SHARP_2_8 -define:GTK_SHARP_2_10 -define:GTK_SHARP_2_12 Optional assemblies included in the build: glade-sharp.dll: no gtk-dotnet.dll: yes Mono.Cairo.dll: using system assembly NOTE: if any of the above say 'no' you may install the corresponding development packages for them, rerun autogen.sh to include them in the build. Documentation build enabled: yes WARNING: The install prefix is different than the monodoc prefix. Monodoc will not be able to load the documentation. Now what? I've been ./autogen.sh - ing like crazy and its not working! Please help! I just want to program in c# with a visual window builder like in c# visual studio...

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Certificate error with Web Platform Installer

- by findleyd

A friend of mine was having an issue getting the Web Platform Installer to work on his Windows Server 2008 R2 box. He said there was some sort of cert error and asked me to try https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=158722 on my local machine to see if I got the cert error. I tried it and I did get a cert error on Windows 7 64bit. I happened to notice that that url simply redirects to https://www.microsoft.com/web/webpi/2.0/WebProductList.xml . Out of curiosity I dropped to a command line and tried to run .\WebPlatformInstaller.exe /? to see if there were any command line options. It gave an error that said invalid URI. So we tried running it with the product list url like: "WebPlatformInstaller.exe https://www.microsoft.com/web/webpi/2.0/WebProductList.xml" . This seems to get around the expired cert that is on go.microsoft.com. Here's a screen shot of the error:

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