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  • Scheduling a Delay Job on Heroku with a Worker Dyno

    - by user1524775
    I'm currently using Heroku's scheduler to run a script. However, the time that the script takes to run is going to increase from a few milliseconds to a few minutes. I'm looking at using the delayed_job gem to push this process off to a Worker Dyno. I want to continue to run this script once-a-day, just offload it to the worker. My current rake task is: desc "This task updates some stuff for you." task :update_some_stuff => :environment do puts "Updating some stuff ..." SomeClass.new.process puts "... done." end Once the gem is installed, migration run, and worker dyno started, will the script just need to change to: desc "This task updates some stuff for you." task :update_some_stuff => :environment do puts "Updating some stuff ..." SomeClass.new.delay.process puts "... done." end With this task still being a rake task scheduled by Heroku's Scheduler, is the only thing that needs to happen here the introduction of the delay method to put this in the Worker's queue? Thanks in advance for any help.

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  • Is it possible to return a list of numbers from a Sybase function?

    - by ps_rs4
    I'm trying to overcome a very serious performance issue in which Sybase refuses to use the primary key index on a large table because one of the required fields is specified indirectly through another table - or, in other words; SELECT ... FROM BIGTABLE WHERE KFIELD = 123 runs in ms but SELECT ... FROM BIGTABLE, LTLTBL WHERE KFIELD = LTLTBL.LOOKUP AND LTLTBL.UNIQUEID = 'STRINGREPOF123' takes 30 - 40 seconds. I've managed to work around this first problem by using a function that basically lets me do this; SELECT ... FROM BIGTABLE WHERE KFIELD = MYFUNC('STRINGREPOF123') which also runs in ms. The problem, however, is that this approach only works when there is a single value returned by MYFUNCT but I have some cases where it may return 2 or 3 values. I know that the SQL SELECT ... FROM BIGTABLE WHERE KFIELD IN (123,456,789) also returns in millis so I'd like to have a function that returns a list of possible values rather than just a single one - is this possible? Sadly the application is running on Sybase ASA 9. Yes I know it is old and is scheduled to be refreshed but there's nothing I can do about it now so I need logic that will work with this version of the DB. Thanks in advance for any assistance on this matter.

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  • Why can’t PHP script write a file on server 2008 via command line or task scheduler?

    - by rg89
    I created a question on serverfault.com, and it was recommended that I ask here. http://serverfault.com/questions/140669/why-cant-php-script-write-a-file-on-server-2008-via-command-line-or-task-schedul I have a PHP script. It runs well when I use a browser. It writes an XML file in the same directory. The script takes ~60 seconds to run, and the resulting XML file is ~16 MB. I am running PHP 5.2.13 via FastCGI on Windows Server Web edition SP1 64 bit. The code pulls inventory from SQL server, runs a loop to build an XML file for a third party. I created a task in task scheduler to run c:\php5\php.exe "D:\inetpub\tools\build.php" The task scheduler shows a time lapse of about a minute, which is how long the script takes to run in a browser. No error returned, but no file created. Each time I make a change to the scheduled task properties, a user password box comes up and I enter the administrator account password. If I run this same path and argument at a command line it does not error and does not create the file. When I right click run command prompt as an administrator, the file is still not created. I get my echo statement "file published" that is after the file creation and no error is returned. I am doing a simple fopen fwrite fclose to save the contents of a php variable to a .xml file, and the file only gets created when the script is run through the browser. Here's what happens after the xml-building loop: $feedContent .= "</feed"; sqlsrv_close( $conn ); echo "<p>feed built</p>"; $feedFile = "feed.xml"; $handler = fopen($feedFile, 'w'); fwrite( $handler, $feedContent ); fclose( $handler ); echo "<p>file published</p>"; Thanks

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  • c++ and visual studio 08, how to develop the following web extracting application. folloow up of las

    - by user287745
    the purpose is to use c++ in a useful way. i have just started programming and have made a few small applications in c and c#. my understanding is that programming for web and thing related to web is now a days a very easy task. please note this is for personnel learning not for rent a coder or any money making. an application which can run on any windows platform even win98. the application should start automatically at a scheduled time and do the following. connect to a site which displays stock prices summary (high low current open ). captures the data (excluding the other things in the site) and saves it to disk ( a sql database) please note:- internet connection is assumed to be there always. do not want to know how to make database schema or database. the stock exchange has no law prohibiting the use of the data provided on its site, but i do not want to mention the name in case i am wrong, but its for personnel private use only. the data of summary of pricing is arranged in a table such that when copied pasted to ms excel it automatically forms a table. guidance needed thank u.

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  • Show div based on getDay and getHours + getMinutes

    - by Peta Reardon
    I am building a website for a radio station and want to show which presenter is currently on air. I have built a web app that contains data on the presenter: name, photo, bio and start/end times for each weekday. <div id="presenter1"> <div class="slot"> <div id="sunday-off"> - </div> <div id="monday-afternoon">12:00 - 15:59</div> <div id="tuesday-afternoon">12:00 - 15:59</div> <div id="wednesday-afternoon">12:00 - 15:59</div> <div id="thursday-afternoon">12:00 - 15:59</div> <div id="friday-afternoon">12:00 - 15:59</div> <div id="saturday-morning">06:00 - 08:59</div> </div> </div> What I would like to do is use Javascript functions getDay() and getHours() + getMinutes() to show only the presenter that is scheduled to be on air based on the times specified in the app. The main part I am having difficulty with is with determining whether this presenter falls within the current time and then showing/hiding the div as necessary. Any help or guidance on how I can acheive this would be greatly appreciated.

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  • MySql product\tag query optimisation - please help!

    - by Nige
    Hi There I have an sql query i am struggling to optimise. It basically is used to pull back products for a shopping cart. The products each have tags attached using a many to many table product_tag and also i pull back a store name from a separate store table. Im using group_concat to get a list of tags for the display (this is why i have the strange groupby orderby clauses at the bottom) and i need to order by dateadded, showing the latest scheduled product first. Here is the query.... SELECT products.*, stores.name, GROUP_CONCAT(tags.taglabel ORDER BY tags.id ASC SEPARATOR " ") taglist FROM (products) JOIN product_tag ON products.id=product_tag.productid JOIN tags ON tags.id=product_tag.tagid JOIN stores ON products.cid=stores.siteid WHERE dateadded < '2010-05-28 07:55:41' GROUP BY products.id ASC ORDER BY products.dateadded DESC LIMIT 2 Unfortunately even with a small set of data (3 tags and about 12 products) the query is taking 00.0034 seconds to run. Eventually i want to have about 2000 products and 50 tagsin this system (im guessing this will be very slooooow). Here is the ExplainSql... id|select_type|table|type|possible_keys|key|key_len|ref|rows|Extra 1|SIMPLE|tags|ALL|PRIMARY|NULL|NULL|NULL|4|Using temporary; Using filesort 1|SIMPLE|product_tag|ref|tagid,productid|tagid|4|cs_final.tags.id|2| 1|SIMPLE|products|eq_ref|PRIMARY,cid|PRIMARY|4|cs_final.product_tag.productid|1|Using where 1|SIMPLE|stores|ALL|siteid|NULL|NULL|NULL|7|Using where; Using join buffer Can anyone help?

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  • Sync video play over network

    - by Nemesis
    Hi, I have made a media player that plays basically anything that's scheduled to it via a text file. The player can also play the exact same clip on multiple machines(PC's). The problem is the syncing. The same video starts playing on each of the machines, but they are out by about 400ms, which looks crap and if there's sound it's even worse. What I do at the moment is: One machine is set up as the master and all other machines are set up as slaves. The master decides what item will be played. It waits for a message from each of the slaves, once all slaves are connected (or after the timeout), it broadcasts the item id of the file that needs to be played. All machines then start playing that file. What I also tried: I thought that the file loading time might be the major driving factor in the sync mismatch, so I chankged the code to do the following. The master still decides what file to play. It waits for the connect message from each slave (or timeout) and transmits the item id of the file to play. All machines start playing that file but pauses it immediately. The master then again waits for a ready message from each of the slaves. As soon as all slaves responded the master sends a play message to all slaves. All machines then continue the file. This unfortunately did not improve the problem. I am now pretty sure the sync mismatch is due to network delay. How can I compensate for this? Or maybe determine the delay to each slave? All network comms are done with winsock. Any thoughts or ideas is much appreciated.

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  • What do I do about a Java program that spawned two instaces of itself?

    - by user288915
    I have a java JAR file that is triggered by a SQL server job. It's been running successfully for months. The process pulls in a structured flat file to a staging database then pushes that data into an XML file. However yesterday the process was triggered twice at the same time. I can tell from a log file that gets created, it looks like the process ran twice simultaneously. This caused a lot of issues and the XML file that it kicked out was malformed and contained duplicate nodes etc. My question is, is this a known issue with Java JVM's spawning multiple instances of itself? Or should I be looking at sql server as the culprit? I'm looking into 'socket locking' or file locking to prevent multiple instances in the future. This is the first instance of this issue that I've ever heard of. More info: The job is scheduled to run every minute. The job triggers a .bat file that contains the java.exe - jar filename.jar The java program runs, scans a directory for a file and then executes a loop to process if the file if it finds one. After it processes the file it runs another loop that kicks out XML messages. I can provide code samples if that would help. Thank you, Kevin

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  • How to access parents' members from a inner class in WPF?

    - by black sensei
    Hello Experts! I'm trying to do scheduled operation let's say to check for user's credit left via web service call and update the user interface. i've tried with quartz.net to implement the scheduling bit.i created an inner class in the window class i need to update.That inner class has the method that calls the webservice and the result needs to be displayed back to the UI. here is an example of what i did. public partial class Window2 : Window { private int i; public Window2() { InitializeComponent(); } public class Myclass :IJob { public void Execute(JobExecutionContext context) { string result = doMyOperation(); //i'll like to call parent label member of name lblNotif //is something like parent.lblNotif.Content = result; //possible? } public string doMyOperation() { //calling the wermethod to retreive user's balance return result = service.GetUsersBalace(user); } } } Well the quartz bit is working and this post is not about quartz. here are my questions Question 1 : How is it possible to access Window2 controls, for instace lable lblNotif? Question 2 : If my thinking about this is wrong, what is done as best practice to solve my kind of problem, where an application need to do an operation let's say every 5mn and update the the UI. Question 3 : i at first tried to use the backgroundworker and i felt like i can't do the scheduling bit with it.Is that correct or i'm wrong. thanks for those who commented already and sorry for those who didn't get the meaning of my post.I hope this will be a bit clearer.Thanks for reading

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  • Write out to text file using T-SQL

    - by sasfrog
    I am creating a basic data transfer task using TSQL where I am retrieving certain records from one database that are more recent than a given datetime value, and loading them into another database. This will happen periodically throughout the day. It's such a small task that SSIS seems like overkill - I want to just use a scheduled task which runs a .sql file. Where I need guidance is that I need to persist the datetime from the last run of this task, then use this to filter the records next time the task runs. My initial thought is to just store the datetime in a text file, and update (overwrite) it as part of the task each time it runs. I can read the file in without problems using T-SQL, but writing back out has got me stuck. I've seen plenty of examples which make use of a dynamically-built bcp command, which is then executed using xp_cmdshell. Trouble is, security on the server I'm deploying to precludes the use of xp_cmdshell. So, my question is, are there other ways to simply write a datetime value to a file using TSQL, or should I be thinking about a different approach? EDIT: happy to be corrected about SSIS being "overkill"...

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  • Bash script to find a directory, list it's contents and sub-folders info

    - by lithiumion
    Hi I want to write a script that will: 1- locate folder "store" on a *nix filesystem 2- move into that folder 3- print list of contents with last modification date 4- calculate sub-folders size This folder's absolute path changes from server to server, but the folder name remains the same always. There is a config file that contains the correct path to that folder though, but it doesn't give absolute bath to it. Sample Config: Account ON DIR-Store /hdd1 Scheduled YES ?According to the config file the absolute path would be "/hdd1/backup/store/" I need the script to grep the "/hdd1" or anything beyond the word "Config-Store", add "/backup/store/" to it, move into folder "store", print list of it's contents, and calculate sub-folders size. Until now I manually edit the script on each server to reflect the path to the "store" folder. Here is a sample script: #!/bin/bash echo " " echo " " echo "Moving Into Directory" cd /hdd1/backup/store/ echo "Listing Directory Content" echo " " ls -alh echo "*******************************" sleep 2 echo " " echo "Calculating Backup Size" echo " " du -sh store/* echo "********** Done! **********" I know I could use grep cat /etc/store.conf | grep DIR-Store Just don't know how to get around selecting the path, adding the "/backup/store/" and moving ahead. Any help will be appreciated

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  • linux process scheduling delayed for long time

    - by Medicine
    I have done strace on my multi-threaded c++ application running on linux after couple hours of running, none of the threads got run, for about 12 seconds. I have seen that the unfinished select system call which is called with a timeout was unfinished before the thread was suspended, reported after it resumed that, it took 11.x seconds for the operation to finish. This is clear indication that the process got starved for a long time. All threads in the process are created with default scheduling policy(SCHED_OTHER) of linux and default priority. There are another 5 similar apps running on the same box which are also heavy I/O bound like this app due to heavy data received on the socket. But most of the time, this app is getting scheduled delay. The other apps are created with same sched policy and priority as this i.e. the defaults. why is only this process gets blocked almost all of the time? Could it be because this process is more I/O intensive as in more busy due to may be higher rates of data? So, the linux dynamic priority adjusting in play here which pushed this process down?

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  • "The system time has changed" events after waking from sleep

    - by Damir Arh
    Sometimes when my computer running Windows 7 wakes up from sleep, it has to adjust the time. When this happens the following system event is logged: <Event xmlns='http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event'> <System> <Provider Name='Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-General' Guid='{A68CA8B7-004F-D7B6-A698-07E2DE0F1F5D}'/> <EventID>1</EventID> <Version>0</Version> <Level>4</Level> <Task>0</Task> <Opcode>0</Opcode> <Keywords>0x8000000000000010</Keywords> <TimeCreated SystemTime='2010-03-06T19:09:57.500000000Z'/> <EventRecordID>10672</EventRecordID> <Correlation/> <Execution ProcessID='4' ThreadID='56'/> <Channel>System</Channel> <Computer>GAME</Computer> <Security/> </System> <EventData> <Data Name='NewTime'>2010-03-06T19:09:57.500000000Z</Data> <Data Name='OldTime'>2010-03-06T17:34:32.870117200Z</Data> </EventData> <RenderingInfo Culture='sl-SI'> <Message>The system time has changed to ?2010?-?03?-?06T19:09:57.500000000Z from ?2010?-?03?-?06T17:34:32.870117200Z.</Message> <Level>Information</Level> <Task></Task> <Opcode>Info</Opcode> <Channel>System</Channel> <Provider>Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-General</Provider> <Keywords> <Keyword>Time</Keyword> </Keywords> </RenderingInfo> </Event> When this happens (I noticed it twice until now) the old time always corresponds to the time when computer entered sleep. The problem is that if Windows Media Center is scheduled for recording during this time, it just skips it as if the computer was turned off. I never had this problem running Windows Vista on the same machine. Any ideas what could be causing this problem and how to solve it are welcome.

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  • "The system time has changed" avents after waking from sleep

    - by Damir Arh
    Sometimes when my computer running Windows 7 wakes up from sleep, it has to adjust the time. When this happens the following system event is logged: <Event xmlns='http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event'> <System> <Provider Name='Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-General' Guid='{A68CA8B7-004F-D7B6-A698-07E2DE0F1F5D}'/> <EventID>1</EventID> <Version>0</Version> <Level>4</Level> <Task>0</Task> <Opcode>0</Opcode> <Keywords>0x8000000000000010</Keywords> <TimeCreated SystemTime='2010-03-06T19:09:57.500000000Z'/> <EventRecordID>10672</EventRecordID> <Correlation/> <Execution ProcessID='4' ThreadID='56'/> <Channel>System</Channel> <Computer>GAME</Computer> <Security/> </System> <EventData> <Data Name='NewTime'>2010-03-06T19:09:57.500000000Z</Data> <Data Name='OldTime'>2010-03-06T17:34:32.870117200Z</Data> </EventData> <RenderingInfo Culture='sl-SI'> <Message>The system time has changed to ?2010?-?03?-?06T19:09:57.500000000Z from ?2010?-?03?-?06T17:34:32.870117200Z.</Message> <Level>Information</Level> <Task></Task> <Opcode>Info</Opcode> <Channel>System</Channel> <Provider>Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-General</Provider> <Keywords> <Keyword>Time</Keyword> </Keywords> </RenderingInfo> </Event> When this happens (I noticed it twice until now) the old time always corresponds to the time when computer entered sleep. The problem is that if Windows Media Center is scheduled for recording during this time, it just skips it as if the computer was turned off. I never had this problem running Windows Vista on the same machine. Any ideas what could be causing this problem and how to solve it are welcome.

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  • Windows 7 boot problem (with colorful blinking smilies)

    - by Ishmael Smyrnow
    I put my computer (Windows 7) to sleep, and a couple hours later, tried to wake it back up, but the monitor wouldn't come back on. I did a hard reset (held power button), but I still couldn't get the monitor to show anything. I plugged it into my laptop, and the monitor works fine. I then swapped out the video card with an older one I have. The monitor came on and started showing the boot process. However, shortly after the Windows 7 animated logo came up, the screen went blank, it made this weird beeping noise, and I seen the strangest thing ever. Small, colorful blocks started to fill my screen, and flash, as if something was loading. Inside of those blocks, were smilies (like the ASCII character kind). This continued for about a minute, then the computer rebooted. It scared the sh!t out of me. I've never had a virus before, and I'm savvy enough to keep myself from one, but I'm wondering if that's what it was. I've been using computers for ages, and never seen anything quite like this. Has anyone ever seen something like this? I'm doing hardware diagnostics before trying to boot into Windows again. Hopefully I can figure this out, but I thought I would consult the SU community while I wait on these results. -- UPDATE -- I did a Memory Diagnostic, which turned up nothing. I also booted into Safe Mode no problem, and scheduled a disk check on both of my drives (I dual boot XP & 7). I was feeling good, and tried putting my regular video card back in, and the monitor won't display anything with it. Also, even though the monitor displays nothing, the system sounds like it's booting up. However, I hear a clicking in one of my hard drives that isn't there with the older video card. Could this be a problem with my hard drive, video card, or PSU? PSU makes sense, except for the fact I've been using the same setup for over a year, and the video card doesn't require it's own power plug thing.

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  • ZFS/Btrfs/LVM2-like storage with advanced features on Linux?

    - by Easter Sunshine
    I have 3 identical internal 7200 RPM SATA hard disk drives on a Linux machine. I'm looking for a storage set-up that will give me all of this: Different data sets (filesystems or subtrees) can have different RAID levels so I can choose performance, space overhead, and risk trade-offs differently for different data sets while having a few number of physical disks (very important data can be 3xRAID1, important data can be 3xRAID5, unimportant reproducible data can be 3xRAID0). If each data set has an explicit size or size limit, then the ability to grow and shrink the size limit (offline if need be) Avoid out-of-kernel modules R/W or read-only COW snapshots. If it's a block-level snapshots, the filesystem should be synced and quiesced during a snapshot. Ability to add physical disks and then grow/redistribute RAID1, RAID5, and RAID0 volumes to take advantage of the new spindle and make sure no spindle is hotter than the rest (e.g., in NetApp, growing a RAID-DP raid group by a few disks will not balance the I/O across them without an explicit redistribution) Not required but nice-to-haves: Transparent compression, per-file or subtree. Even better if, like NetApps, analyzes the data first for compressibility and only compresses compressible data Deduplication that doesn't have huge performance penalties or require obscene amounts of memory (NetApp does scheduled deduplication on weekends, which is good) Resistance to silent data corruption like ZFS (this is not required because I have never seen ZFS report any data corruption on these specific disks) Storage tiering, either automatic (based on caching rules) or user-defined rules (yes, I have all-identical disks now but this will let me add a read/write SSD cache in the future). If it's user-defined rules, these rules should have the ability to promote to SSD on a file level and not a block level. Space-efficient packing of small files I tried ZFS on Linux but the limitations were: Upgrading is additional work because the package is in an external repository and is tied to specific kernel versions; it is not integrated with the package manager Write IOPS does not scale with number of devices in a raidz vdev. Cannot add disks to raidz vdevs Cannot have select data on RAID0 to reduce overhead and improve performance without additional physical disks or giving ZFS a single partition of the disks ext4 on LVM2 looks like an option except I can't tell whether I can shrink, extend, and redistribute onto new spindles RAID-type logical volumes (of course, I can experiment with LVM on a bunch of files). As far as I can tell, it doesn't have any of the nice-to-haves so I was wondering if there is something better out there. I did look at LVM dangers and caveats but then again, no system is perfect.

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  • Problems updating to Windows 8.1

    - by user52428
    yesterday I attempted to upgrade to windows 8.1 from windows 8. My brother downloaded it on his computer the day before then. I got it from the Windows store. It downloaded and prompted me to restart so I did. It just had the windows 8 loading screen with the HP sign above it, no percentages or anything else, I waited for about 2 hours and while I was waiting I did some research. After reading I saw it could take 20 minutes to an hour to update, but it had already been 2 hours. I read another article and it said someone restarted their computer and it restored to windows 8.0. That's what I did and it worked. So I tried again and the same thing happens, so instead of waiting I decided I would just restart it again. I tried again and this time it showed a percentage it said,"Setting Up" After it reached 100% it went back to what happened before HP sign and just loaded again, I thought it would be different this time because it did show percentages. I waited an hour and nothing happened so I restarted the computer again. This time when I restarted it, it didn't restore, so I turned the laptop of for around 30 minutes turned it back on and it said,"Attempting to restore to previous version of Windows" It said that for around 10 minutes and it restored, so I shut downed my computer for an hour and did some more research, later I found that I needed to update my drivers my drivers we're updated so I did some more research after this I saw I needed to search for updates via: SettingsChange PC settingsWindows Update. It said I already had automatic updates on, I decided to check for updates and it said there was one update scheduled for Saturday. I didn't think this could change anything so I updated what I could. I tried to install it again it was around 11:30 last night when it was done downloading and it prompted me to restart but I had gone to sleep. I woke up today and saw it showed the HP sign and loaded again. I tried restarting it again but this didn't work I had to shut it of for 30 minutes and try again and it worked. So now I'm posting this seeing If I can get any help with this problem. Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

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  • PHP hits 100% CPU and eats RAM at the same time Monday to Friday

    - by Daniel Samuels
    We run a learning platform for primary schools here in the UK and it's all been running extremely well. However at around 4PM Monday to Friday we see the same issue arise -- 1-2 PHP threads will spike to 100% CPU and gradually start eating up RAM until the server(s) fall over. 98%+ of our requests are HTTPS, these come into our Layer 7 load balancer which then decrypts the SSL data, adds the X-HTTP-Forwarded-For header and forwards the data onto an application server (we have 2 of those at the moment) on port 80. Our application servers have Varnish on port 80 which takes in the request from the load balancer and passes the request through to Nginx on port 81. Nginx then works out which 'vhost' it needs to use and passes any PHP processing through to PHP-CGI which is listening on a socket (managed through spawn-fcgi). There's an instance of Memcached running too, MySQL runs on a separate server / slave setup. Throughout the day the load will typically go no higher than 0.8 on either of the application servers, however at around 4PM our problem arises. I've managed to run strace on a few of the actual threads when they cause the problem and I always see the same thing: stat("/usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/London", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644,st_size=3661, ...}) = 0 stat("/usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/London", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644,st_size=3661, ...}) = 0 This is repeated infinitely and never stops until you SEGKILL the process or oomkiller kills it. There are no cron jobs scheduled to run at that time and I don't have any way of seeing exactly what Nginx request is associated with the PHP process which is running. We are running PHP 5.3.14 which we upgraded to from 5.3.8 last week to rule out the older version being the problem. This issue has been going on a few months now and we have no idea what is causing it. We deploy our software very frequently, so it's difficult to track down a specific release which may have started the problem - especially as we do not know the date of the first occurrence of this issue. Varnish is version 3.0.1, Nginx is 1.0.6 (which I understand is about a year old now), our servers are running CentOS release 5.7 (Final) they have Intel i3 540s at 3.07Ghz and 8GB of RAM. There's a discussion on the Debian mailing list about something very similar, you can find that here. Has anyone seen anything like this in the past, does anyone have any ideas or suggestions? Are there a way of linking an Nginx request directly to a PHP thread? Is there a better way of seeing what the PHP process is doing? (I've seen GDB mentioned, though I'll have to recompile PHP) Thanks!

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  • Some services refusing to start on Win 7 machine. What could the root cause be?

    - by BombDefused
    When I check msconfig, there are no services that are blocked from starting up. When I look in services.msc, the problem services have a start up type of 'Automatic', but have a blank space where others will show 'Started'. Attempting to start them manually results in the following pop up error messages. I have no idea what's causing this, looks like some sort of cascade effect from another problem service. It's affecting scheduled tasks, SQL server agent and windows back up services. How can I resolve this? I don't know how to work out what the root cause is. Task Scheduler Service Start Error: "Windows could not start the Task Scheduler service on local computer. 1068: The dependecy service or group failed to start. SQL Server Service Start Error: "The SQL Server Agent service on Local Computer started and then stopped. Some services stop automatically if they are not in use by other services or programs." UPDATE: I've just noticed some other services have a description of "Failed to Read Description. Error Code: 2" They are: NetMsmqActivator, NetPipeActivator, NetTcpActivator, NetTcpPortSharing UPDATE 2: As joeqwerty says the Event Log service does seem to be the root of the problem. This service will not start either. It fails with 'Error 31 - A device attached to the system is not functioning correctly'. I've tried detaching all devices. I've also followed the advice here, where the same problem is described, but with no luck: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itprosecurity/thread/44479c49-55e6-4bd7-b25e-3f2a6497306e Update 3 @ Pacey - The following was a good tip, really clear instruction. However, I found that those reg keys do not exist on my system. "Your Problem might also derive from the UpperFilter or LowerFilter Settings of the CDROM Drive. These are a known cause for Errorcode 31. You can find step-by-step instructions on removing the filters on about.com" I followed the advice through to checking every component in device manager separately, but everything is reported as working correctly!? These services did all work at one point. The hardware set up hasn't changed much. Guess I'm looking at a repair install maybe???!

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  • Why would a process monitoring script use exit 1; on finding no problems?

    - by user568458
    General question: On a Linux (Centos) server, if a process monitoring script run by cron is set to close with exit 1; rather than exit 0; on finding that everything is okay and that no action is needed, is that a mistake? Or are there legitimate reasons for calling exit 1; instead of exit 0; on the "Everything's fine, no action needed" condition? exit 0; on finding no problems seems to me to be more appropriate. But maybe there's something I'm not aware of. For example, maybe there's something specific to Cron? Or maybe there's a convention in process monitoring scripts that 'failure' means 'this script failed to need to fix a problem' (rather than what I would expect which is that exit 1; would mean 'the process being monitored has failed'?) My specific case: I'm looking at a process monitoring script written by my web hosting company. By process monitoring script, I mean a script executed by Cron on a regular basis that checks if an important system process is running, and if it isn't running, takes actions such as mailing an administrator or restarting the process. Here's the (generalised) structure of their script, for a service running on port 8080 (in this case, Apache Tomcat): SERVICE=$(/usr/sbin/lsof -i tcp:8080 | wc -l); if [ $SERVICE != 0 ]; then exit 1; else #take action fi Seems simple enough even for someone with limited knowledge like me, except the exit 1; part seems odd. As I understand it, exit 0; closes a program and signifies to the parent that executed the program that everything is fine, exit n; where n0 and n<127 signifies that there has been some kind of error or problem. Here, their script seems to go against that rule - it calls exit 1; in the condition where everything is fine, and doesn't exit after taking remedial action in the problem condition. To me, this looks like a mistake - but my experience in this area is limited. Are there cases where calling exit 1; in the "Everything's fine, no action needed" condition is more appropriate than calling exit 0;? Or is it a mistake? Wider context is pretty simple. It's a Centos VPS, running Plesk. The script is being called by Cron via Plesk's "Scheduled tasks" Cron manager. There's no custom layer between Cron and this script that would respond in an unusual way to the exit call. It's a fairly average, almost out-of-the box Plesk-managed Centos VPS (in so far as there is such a thing). The process being monitored by this script is Apache Tomcat.

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  • How to run a restricted set of programs with Administrator privileges without giving up Admin acces (Win7 Pro)

    - by frLich
    I have a shared system, running Windows7 X64, restricted to a 'standard user' with no password. Not everyone who has access to the system has the administrator password. This works rather well, except for some applications - specially the unlock-applications for encrypted hard drives/USB flash drives. The specific ones either require Administrator access (eg. Seagate Blackarmor) or simply fail without it -- since these programs are sending raw commands to a device, this is to be expected. I would like to be able to add the hashes of these particular programs to a whitelist, and have them run as administrator without needing any prompts. Since these are by definition on removable media, I can't simply use a filename or even a path. One of the users who shares the system can be considered 'crafty', so anything which temporarily grants administrator rights to an user account is certain to cause problems. What i'd like to be able to do: 1) Create an admin account that can only run programs from a whitelist (or, failing that, from a directory) I can't find a good way to do this: As far as I can tell, SRP applies equally to ALL users? Even if I put a "Deny" token on all directories on the system, such that new directories would inherit it, it could still potentially run things from the mounted USB devices. I also don't know whether it's possible to create a new directory that DOESN'T inherit from the parent, that would lake the deny token, and provide admin access. 2) Find a lightweight service that will run these programs in its local context Windows7 seems to block cross-privilege level communication by default, and I haven't found such for windows 7. One example seems to be "sudo" (http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~nfriess/sudo/) but because it uses a WLNOTIFY hook, it won't work under Vista nor Windows7 Non-Solutions: - RunAs: Requires administrator password! (but everyone calls it "sudo" anyway) - RunAs /savecred: Nice idea, but appears to be completely insecure. - RUNASSPC - Same concept as RunAs, uses "encrypted" files with credentials, but checks in user-space. - Scheduled Tasks - "Fixed" permissions make this difficult, and doesn't support interactive processes even if it did. - SuRun: From Google: "Surun uses its own Windows service that adds the user to the group of administrators during program start and removes him automatically from that group again"

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  • How to run a restricted set of programs with Administrator privileges without giving up Admin acces (Win7 Pro)

    - by frLich
    I have a shared system, running Windows7 X64, restricted to a 'standard user' with no password. Not everyone who has access to the system has the administrator password. This works rather well, except for some applications - specially the unlock-applications for encrypted hard drives/USB flash drives. The specific ones either require Administrator access (eg. Seagate Blackarmor) or simply fail without it -- since these programs are sending raw commands to a device, this is to be expected. I would like to be able to add the hashes of these particular programs to a whitelist, and have them run as administrator without needing any prompts. Since these are by definition on removable media, I can't simply use a filename or even a path. One of the users who shares the system can be considered 'crafty', so anything which temporarily grants administrator rights to an user account is certain to cause problems. What i'd like to be able to do: 1) Create an admin account that can only run programs from a whitelist (or, failing that, from a directory) I can't find a good way to do this: As far as I can tell, SRP applies equally to ALL users? Even if I put a "Deny" token on all directories on the system, such that new directories would inherit it, it could still potentially run things from the mounted USB devices. I also don't know whether it's possible to create a new directory that DOESN'T inherit from the parent, that would lake the deny token, and provide admin access. 2) Find a lightweight service that will run these programs in its local context Windows7 seems to block cross-privilege level communication by default, and I haven't found such for windows 7. One example seems to be "sudo" (http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~nfriess/sudo/) but because it uses a WLNOTIFY hook, it won't work under Vista nor Windows7 Non-Solutions: - RunAs: Requires administrator password! (but everyone calls it "sudo" anyway) - RunAs /savecred: Nice idea, but appears to be completely insecure. - RUNASSPC - Same concept as RunAs, uses "encrypted" files with credentials, but checks in user-space. - Scheduled Tasks - "Fixed" permissions make this difficult, and doesn't support interactive processes even if it did. - SuRun: From Google: "Surun uses its own Windows service that adds the user to the group of administrators during program start and removes him automatically from that group again"

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  • HP ProLiant DL380 G3 Running Windows Server 2000 has crashed between 6-7:30am for the past 5 days

    - by user109717
    I have a HP ProLiant DL380 G3 running Windows Server 2000 that has been crashing everyday between 6-730am. This started when I changed out a failing hard drive 6 days ago. I have looked at the scheduled tasks which does not have anything pertaining to this issue. Below are the only things I see in the system log and some of the dump files. Can this be a hardware issue if this happens at a certain time frame everyday? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks The previous system shutdown at 6:07:55 AM on 2/7/2012 was unexpected. System Information Agent: Health: The server is operational again. The server has previously been shutdown by the Automatic Server Recovery (ASR) feature and has just become operational again. [SNMP TRAP: 6025 in CPQHLTH.MIB] BugCheck 7A, {3, c0000005, 3400028, 0} Probably caused by : memory_corruption ( nt!MiMakeSystemAddressValidPfn+42 ) Followup: MachineOwner 0: kd !analyze -v * Bugcheck Analysis * * KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR (7a) The requested page of kernel data could not be read in. Typically caused by a bad block in the paging file or disk controller error. Also see KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR. If the error status is 0xC000000E, 0xC000009C, 0xC000009D or 0xC0000185, it means the disk subsystem has experienced a failure. If the error status is 0xC000009A, then it means the request failed because a filesystem failed to make forward progress. Arguments: Arg1: 00000003, lock type that was held (value 1,2,3, or PTE address) Arg2: c0000005, error status (normally i/o status code) Arg3: 03400028, current process (virtual address for lock type 3, or PTE) Arg4: 00000000, virtual address that could not be in-paged (or PTE contents if arg1 is a PTE address) MODULE_NAME: nt IMAGE_NAME: memory_corruption BugCheck A, {0, 2, 1, 804137d6} Probably caused by : ntkrnlmp.exe ( nt!CcGetVirtualAddress+ba ) * Bugcheck Analysis * * IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (a) An attempt was made to access a pageable (or completely invalid) address at an interrupt request level (IRQL) that is too high. This is usually caused by drivers using improper addresses. If a kernel debugger is available get the stack backtrace. Arguments: Arg1: 00000000, memory referenced Arg2: 00000002, IRQL Arg3: 00000001, bitfield : bit 0 : value 0 = read operation, 1 = write operation bit 3 : value 0 = not an execute operation, 1 = execute operation (only on chips which support this level of status) Arg4: 804137d6, address which referenced memory MODULE_NAME: nt IMAGE_NAME: ntkrnlmp.exe

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  • Agile Development

    - by James Oloo Onyango
    Alot of literature has and is being written about agile developement and its surrounding philosophies. In my quest to find the best way to express the importance of agile methodologies, i have found Robert C. Martin's "A Satire Of Two Companies" to be both the most concise and thorough! Enjoy the read! Rufus Inc Project Kick Off Your name is Bob. The date is January 3, 2001, and your head still aches from the recent millennial revelry. You are sitting in a conference room with several managers and a group of your peers. You are a project team leader. Your boss is there, and he has brought along all of his team leaders. His boss called the meeting. "We have a new project to develop," says your boss's boss. Call him BB. The points in his hair are so long that they scrape the ceiling. Your boss's points are just starting to grow, but he eagerly awaits the day when he can leave Brylcream stains on the acoustic tiles. BB describes the essence of the new market they have identified and the product they want to develop to exploit this market. "We must have this new project up and working by fourth quarter October 1," BB demands. "Nothing is of higher priority, so we are cancelling your current project." The reaction in the room is stunned silence. Months of work are simply going to be thrown away. Slowly, a murmur of objection begins to circulate around the conference table.   His points give off an evil green glow as BB meets the eyes of everyone in the room. One by one, that insidious stare reduces each attendee to quivering lumps of protoplasm. It is clear that he will brook no discussion on this matter. Once silence has been restored, BB says, "We need to begin immediately. How long will it take you to do the analysis?" You raise your hand. Your boss tries to stop you, but his spitwad misses you and you are unaware of his efforts.   "Sir, we can't tell you how long the analysis will take until we have some requirements." "The requirements document won't be ready for 3 or 4 weeks," BB says, his points vibrating with frustration. "So, pretend that you have the requirements in front of you now. How long will you require for analysis?" No one breathes. Everyone looks around to see whether anyone has some idea. "If analysis goes beyond April 1, we have a problem. Can you finish the analysis by then?" Your boss visibly gathers his courage: "We'll find a way, sir!" His points grow 3 mm, and your headache increases by two Tylenol. "Good." BB smiles. "Now, how long will it take to do the design?" "Sir," you say. Your boss visibly pales. He is clearly worried that his 3 mms are at risk. "Without an analysis, it will not be possible to tell you how long design will take." BB's expression shifts beyond austere.   "PRETEND you have the analysis already!" he says, while fixing you with his vacant, beady little eyes. "How long will it take you to do the design?" Two Tylenol are not going to cut it. Your boss, in a desperate attempt to save his new growth, babbles: "Well, sir, with only six months left to complete the project, design had better take no longer than 3 months."   "I'm glad you agree, Smithers!" BB says, beaming. Your boss relaxes. He knows his points are secure. After a while, he starts lightly humming the Brylcream jingle. BB continues, "So, analysis will be complete by April 1, design will be complete by July 1, and that gives you 3 months to implement the project. This meeting is an example of how well our new consensus and empowerment policies are working. Now, get out there and start working. I'll expect to see TQM plans and QIT assignments on my desk by next week. Oh, and don't forget that your crossfunctional team meetings and reports will be needed for next month's quality audit." "Forget the Tylenol," you think to yourself as you return to your cubicle. "I need bourbon."   Visibly excited, your boss comes over to you and says, "Gosh, what a great meeting. I think we're really going to do some world shaking with this project." You nod in agreement, too disgusted to do anything else. "Oh," your boss continues, "I almost forgot." He hands you a 30-page document. "Remember that the SEI is coming to do an evaluation next week. This is the evaluation guide. You need to read through it, memorize it, and then shred it. It tells you how to answer any questions that the SEI auditors ask you. It also tells you what parts of the building you are allowed to take them to and what parts to avoid. We are determined to be a CMM level 3 organization by June!"   You and your peers start working on the analysis of the new project. This is difficult because you have no requirements. But from the 10-minute introduction given by BB on that fateful morning, you have some idea of what the product is supposed to do.   Corporate process demands that you begin by creating a use case document. You and your team begin enumerating use cases and drawing oval and stick diagrams. Philosophical debates break out among the team members. There is disagreement as to whether certain use cases should be connected with <<extends>> or <<includes>> relationships. Competing models are created, but nobody knows how to evaluate them. The debate continues, effectively paralyzing progress.   After a week, somebody finds the iceberg.com Web site, which recommends disposing entirely of <<extends>> and <<includes>> and replacing them with <<precedes>> and <<uses>>. The documents on this Web site, authored by Don Sengroiux, describes a method known as stalwart-analysis, which claims to be a step-by-step method for translating use cases into design diagrams. More competing use case models are created using this new scheme, but again, people can't agree on how to evaluate them. The thrashing continues. More and more, the use case meetings are driven by emotion rather than by reason. If it weren't for the fact that you don't have requirements, you'd be pretty upset by the lack of progress you are making. The requirements document arrives on February 15. And then again on February 20, 25, and every week thereafter. Each new version contradicts the previous one. Clearly, the marketing folks who are writing the requirements, empowered though they might be, are not finding consensus.   At the same time, several new competing use case templates have been proposed by the various team members. Each template presents its own particularly creative way of delaying progress. The debates rage on. On March 1, Prudence Putrigence, the process proctor, succeeds in integrating all the competing use case forms and templates into a single, all-encompassing form. Just the blank form is 15 pages long. She has managed to include every field that appeared on all the competing templates. She also presents a 159- page document describing how to fill out the use case form. All current use cases must be rewritten according to the new standard.   You marvel to yourself that it now requires 15 pages of fill-in-the-blank and essay questions to answer the question: What should the system do when the user presses Return? The corporate process (authored by L. E. Ott, famed author of "Holistic Analysis: A Progressive Dialectic for Software Engineers") insists that you discover all primary use cases, 87 percent of all secondary use cases, and 36.274 percent of all tertiary use cases before you can complete analysis and enter the design phase. You have no idea what a tertiary use case is. So in an attempt to meet this requirement, you try to get your use case document reviewed by the marketing department, which you hope will know what a tertiary use case is.   Unfortunately, the marketing folks are too busy with sales support to talk to you. Indeed, since the project started, you have not been able to get a single meeting with marketing, which has provided a never-ending stream of changing and contradictory requirements documents.   While one team has been spinning endlessly on the use case document, another team has been working out the domain model. Endless variations of UML documents are pouring out of this team. Every week, the model is reworked.   The team members can't decide whether to use <<interfaces>> or <<types>> in the model. A huge disagreement has been raging on the proper syntax and application of OCL. Others on the team just got back from a 5-day class on catabolism, and have been producing incredibly detailed and arcane diagrams that nobody else can fathom.   On March 27, with one week to go before analysis is to be complete, you have produced a sea of documents and diagrams but are no closer to a cogent analysis of the problem than you were on January 3. **** And then, a miracle happens.   **** On Saturday, April 1, you check your e-mail from home. You see a memo from your boss to BB. It states unequivocally that you are done with the analysis! You phone your boss and complain. "How could you have told BB that we were done with the analysis?" "Have you looked at a calendar lately?" he responds. "It's April 1!" The irony of that date does not escape you. "But we have so much more to think about. So much more to analyze! We haven't even decided whether to use <<extends>> or <<precedes>>!" "Where is your evidence that you are not done?" inquires your boss, impatiently. "Whaaa . . . ." But he cuts you off. "Analysis can go on forever; it has to be stopped at some point. And since this is the date it was scheduled to stop, it has been stopped. Now, on Monday, I want you to gather up all existing analysis materials and put them into a public folder. Release that folder to Prudence so that she can log it in the CM system by Monday afternoon. Then get busy and start designing."   As you hang up the phone, you begin to consider the benefits of keeping a bottle of bourbon in your bottom desk drawer. They threw a party to celebrate the on-time completion of the analysis phase. BB gave a colon-stirring speech on empowerment. And your boss, another 3 mm taller, congratulated his team on the incredible show of unity and teamwork. Finally, the CIO takes the stage to tell everyone that the SEI audit went very well and to thank everyone for studying and shredding the evaluation guides that were passed out. Level 3 now seems assured and will be awarded by June. (Scuttlebutt has it that managers at the level of BB and above are to receive significant bonuses once the SEI awards level 3.)   As the weeks flow by, you and your team work on the design of the system. Of course, you find that the analysis that the design is supposedly based on is flawedno, useless; no, worse than useless. But when you tell your boss that you need to go back and work some more on the analysis to shore up its weaker sections, he simply states, "The analysis phase is over. The only allowable activity is design. Now get back to it."   So, you and your team hack the design as best you can, unsure of whether the requirements have been properly analyzed. Of course, it really doesn't matter much, since the requirements document is still thrashing with weekly revisions, and the marketing department still refuses to meet with you.     The design is a nightmare. Your boss recently misread a book named The Finish Line in which the author, Mark DeThomaso, blithely suggested that design documents should be taken down to code-level detail. "If we are going to be working at that level of detail," you ask, "why don't we simply write the code instead?" "Because then you wouldn't be designing, of course. And the only allowable activity in the design phase is design!" "Besides," he continues, "we have just purchased a companywide license for Dandelion! This tool enables 'Round the Horn Engineering!' You are to transfer all design diagrams into this tool. It will automatically generate our code for us! It will also keep the design diagrams in sync with the code!" Your boss hands you a brightly colored shrinkwrapped box containing the Dandelion distribution. You accept it numbly and shuffle off to your cubicle. Twelve hours, eight crashes, one disk reformatting, and eight shots of 151 later, you finally have the tool installed on your server. You consider the week your team will lose while attending Dandelion training. Then you smile and think, "Any week I'm not here is a good week." Design diagram after design diagram is created by your team. Dandelion makes it very difficult to draw these diagrams. There are dozens and dozens of deeply nested dialog boxes with funny text fields and check boxes that must all be filled in correctly. And then there's the problem of moving classes between packages. At first, these diagram are driven from the use cases. But the requirements are changing so often that the use cases rapidly become meaningless. Debates rage about whether VISITOR or DECORATOR design patterns should be used. One developer refuses to use VISITOR in any form, claiming that it's not a properly object-oriented construct. Someone refuses to use multiple inheritance, since it is the spawn of the devil. Review meetings rapidly degenerate into debates about the meaning of object orientation, the definition of analysis versus design, or when to use aggregation versus association. Midway through the design cycle, the marketing folks announce that they have rethought the focus of the system. Their new requirements document is completely restructured. They have eliminated several major feature areas and replaced them with feature areas that they anticipate customer surveys will show to be more appropriate. You tell your boss that these changes mean that you need to reanalyze and redesign much of the system. But he says, "The analysis phase is system. But he says, "The analysis phase is over. The only allowable activity is design. Now get back to it."   You suggest that it might be better to create a simple prototype to show to the marketing folks and even some potential customers. But your boss says, "The analysis phase is over. The only allowable activity is design. Now get back to it." Hack, hack, hack, hack. You try to create some kind of a design document that might reflect the new requirements documents. However, the revolution of the requirements has not caused them to stop thrashing. Indeed, if anything, the wild oscillations of the requirements document have only increased in frequency and amplitude.   You slog your way through them.   On June 15, the Dandelion database gets corrupted. Apparently, the corruption has been progressive. Small errors in the DB accumulated over the months into bigger and bigger errors. Eventually, the CASE tool just stopped working. Of course, the slowly encroaching corruption is present on all the backups. Calls to the Dandelion technical support line go unanswered for several days. Finally, you receive a brief e-mail from Dandelion, informing you that this is a known problem and that the solution is to purchase the new version, which they promise will be ready some time next quarter, and then reenter all the diagrams by hand.   ****   Then, on July 1 another miracle happens! You are done with the design!   Rather than go to your boss and complain, you stock your middle desk drawer with some vodka.   **** They threw a party to celebrate the on-time completion of the design phase and their graduation to CMM level 3. This time, you find BB's speech so stirring that you have to use the restroom before it begins. New banners and plaques are all over your workplace. They show pictures of eagles and mountain climbers, and they talk about teamwork and empowerment. They read better after a few scotches. That reminds you that you need to clear out your file cabinet to make room for the brandy. You and your team begin to code. But you rapidly discover that the design is lacking in some significant areas. Actually, it's lacking any significance at all. You convene a design session in one of the conference rooms to try to work through some of the nastier problems. But your boss catches you at it and disbands the meeting, saying, "The design phase is over. The only allowable activity is coding. Now get back to it."   ****   The code generated by Dandelion is really hideous. It turns out that you and your team were using association and aggregation the wrong way, after all. All the generated code has to be edited to correct these flaws. Editing this code is extremely difficult because it has been instrumented with ugly comment blocks that have special syntax that Dandelion needs in order to keep the diagrams in sync with the code. If you accidentally alter one of these comments, the diagrams will be regenerated incorrectly. It turns out that "Round the Horn Engineering" requires an awful lot of effort. The more you try to keep the code compatible with Dandelion, the more errors Dandelion generates. In the end, you give up and decide to keep the diagrams up to date manually. A second later, you decide that there's no point in keeping the diagrams up to date at all. Besides, who has time?   Your boss hires a consultant to build tools to count the number of lines of code that are being produced. He puts a big thermometer graph on the wall with the number 1,000,000 on the top. Every day, he extends the red line to show how many lines have been added. Three days after the thermometer appears on the wall, your boss stops you in the hall. "That graph isn't growing quickly enough. We need to have a million lines done by October 1." "We aren't even sh-sh-sure that the proshect will require a m-million linezh," you blather. "We have to have a million lines done by October 1," your boss reiterates. His points have grown again, and the Grecian formula he uses on them creates an aura of authority and competence. "Are you sure your comment blocks are big enough?" Then, in a flash of managerial insight, he says, "I have it! I want you to institute a new policy among the engineers. No line of code is to be longer than 20 characters. Any such line must be split into two or more preferably more. All existing code needs to be reworked to this standard. That'll get our line count up!"   You decide not to tell him that this will require two unscheduled work months. You decide not to tell him anything at all. You decide that intravenous injections of pure ethanol are the only solution. You make the appropriate arrangements. Hack, hack, hack, and hack. You and your team madly code away. By August 1, your boss, frowning at the thermometer on the wall, institutes a mandatory 50-hour workweek.   Hack, hack, hack, and hack. By September 1st, the thermometer is at 1.2 million lines and your boss asks you to write a report describing why you exceeded the coding budget by 20 percent. He institutes mandatory Saturdays and demands that the project be brought back down to a million lines. You start a campaign of remerging lines. Hack, hack, hack, and hack. Tempers are flaring; people are quitting; QA is raining trouble reports down on you. Customers are demanding installation and user manuals; salespeople are demanding advance demonstrations for special customers; the requirements document is still thrashing, the marketing folks are complaining that the product isn't anything like they specified, and the liquor store won't accept your credit card anymore. Something has to give.    On September 15, BB calls a meeting. As he enters the room, his points are emitting clouds of steam. When he speaks, the bass overtones of his carefully manicured voice cause the pit of your stomach to roll over. "The QA manager has told me that this project has less than 50 percent of the required features implemented. He has also informed me that the system crashes all the time, yields wrong results, and is hideously slow. He has also complained that he cannot keep up with the continuous train of daily releases, each more buggy than the last!" He stops for a few seconds, visibly trying to compose himself. "The QA manager estimates that, at this rate of development, we won't be able to ship the product until December!" Actually, you think it's more like March, but you don't say anything. "December!" BB roars with such derision that people duck their heads as though he were pointing an assault rifle at them. "December is absolutely out of the question. Team leaders, I want new estimates on my desk in the morning. I am hereby mandating 65-hour work weeks until this project is complete. And it better be complete by November 1."   As he leaves the conference room, he is heard to mutter: "Empowermentbah!" * * * Your boss is bald; his points are mounted on BB's wall. The fluorescent lights reflecting off his pate momentarily dazzle you. "Do you have anything to drink?" he asks. Having just finished your last bottle of Boone's Farm, you pull a bottle of Thunderbird from your bookshelf and pour it into his coffee mug. "What's it going to take to get this project done? " he asks. "We need to freeze the requirements, analyze them, design them, and then implement them," you say callously. "By November 1?" your boss exclaims incredulously. "No way! Just get back to coding the damned thing." He storms out, scratching his vacant head.   A few days later, you find that your boss has been transferred to the corporate research division. Turnover has skyrocketed. Customers, informed at the last minute that their orders cannot be fulfilled on time, have begun to cancel their orders. Marketing is re-evaluating whether this product aligns with the overall goals of the company. Memos fly, heads roll, policies change, and things are, overall, pretty grim. Finally, by March, after far too many sixty-five hour weeks, a very shaky version of the software is ready. In the field, bug-discovery rates are high, and the technical support staff are at their wits' end, trying to cope with the complaints and demands of the irate customers. Nobody is happy.   In April, BB decides to buy his way out of the problem by licensing a product produced by Rupert Industries and redistributing it. The customers are mollified, the marketing folks are smug, and you are laid off.     Rupert Industries: Project Alpha   Your name is Robert. The date is January 3, 2001. The quiet hours spent with your family this holiday have left you refreshed and ready for work. You are sitting in a conference room with your team of professionals. The manager of the division called the meeting. "We have some ideas for a new project," says the division manager. Call him Russ. He is a high-strung British chap with more energy than a fusion reactor. He is ambitious and driven but understands the value of a team. Russ describes the essence of the new market opportunity the company has identified and introduces you to Jane, the marketing manager, who is responsible for defining the products that will address it. Addressing you, Jane says, "We'd like to start defining our first product offering as soon as possible. When can you and your team meet with me?" You reply, "We'll be done with the current iteration of our project this Friday. We can spare a few hours for you between now and then. After that, we'll take a few people from the team and dedicate them to you. We'll begin hiring their replacements and the new people for your team immediately." "Great," says Russ, "but I want you to understand that it is critical that we have something to exhibit at the trade show coming up this July. If we can't be there with something significant, we'll lose the opportunity."   "I understand," you reply. "I don't yet know what it is that you have in mind, but I'm sure we can have something by July. I just can't tell you what that something will be right now. In any case, you and Jane are going to have complete control over what we developers do, so you can rest assured that by July, you'll have the most important things that can be accomplished in that time ready to exhibit."   Russ nods in satisfaction. He knows how this works. Your team has always kept him advised and allowed him to steer their development. He has the utmost confidence that your team will work on the most important things first and will produce a high-quality product.   * * *   "So, Robert," says Jane at their first meeting, "How does your team feel about being split up?" "We'll miss working with each other," you answer, "but some of us were getting pretty tired of that last project and are looking forward to a change. So, what are you people cooking up?" Jane beams. "You know how much trouble our customers currently have . . ." And she spends a half hour or so describing the problem and possible solution. "OK, wait a second" you respond. "I need to be clear about this." And so you and Jane talk about how this system might work. Some of her ideas aren't fully formed. You suggest possible solutions. She likes some of them. You continue discussing.   During the discussion, as each new topic is addressed, Jane writes user story cards. Each card represents something that the new system has to do. The cards accumulate on the table and are spread out in front of you. Both you and Jane point at them, pick them up, and make notes on them as you discuss the stories. The cards are powerful mnemonic devices that you can use to represent complex ideas that are barely formed.   At the end of the meeting, you say, "OK, I've got a general idea of what you want. I'm going to talk to the team about it. I imagine they'll want to run some experiments with various database structures and presentation formats. Next time we meet, it'll be as a group, and we'll start identifying the most important features of the system."   A week later, your nascent team meets with Jane. They spread the existing user story cards out on the table and begin to get into some of the details of the system. The meeting is very dynamic. Jane presents the stories in the order of their importance. There is much discussion about each one. The developers are concerned about keeping the stories small enough to estimate and test. So they continually ask Jane to split one story into several smaller stories. Jane is concerned that each story have a clear business value and priority, so as she splits them, she makes sure that this stays true.   The stories accumulate on the table. Jane writes them, but the developers make notes on them as needed. Nobody tries to capture everything that is said; the cards are not meant to capture everything but are simply reminders of the conversation.   As the developers become more comfortable with the stories, they begin writing estimates on them. These estimates are crude and budgetary, but they give Jane an idea of what the story will cost.   At the end of the meeting, it is clear that many more stories could be discussed. It is also clear that the most important stories have been addressed and that they represent several months worth of work. Jane closes the meeting by taking the cards with her and promising to have a proposal for the first release in the morning.   * * *   The next morning, you reconvene the meeting. Jane chooses five cards and places them on the table. "According to your estimates, these cards represent about one perfect team-week's worth of work. The last iteration of the previous project managed to get one perfect team-week done in 3 real weeks. If we can get these five stories done in 3 weeks, we'll be able to demonstrate them to Russ. That will make him feel very comfortable about our progress." Jane is pushing it. The sheepish look on her face lets you know that she knows it too. You reply, "Jane, this is a new team, working on a new project. It's a bit presumptuous to expect that our velocity will be the same as the previous team's. However, I met with the team yesterday afternoon, and we all agreed that our initial velocity should, in fact, be set to one perfectweek for every 3 real-weeks. So you've lucked out on this one." "Just remember," you continue, "that the story estimates and the story velocity are very tentative at this point. We'll learn more when we plan the iteration and even more when we implement it."   Jane looks over her glasses at you as if to say "Who's the boss around here, anyway?" and then smiles and says, "Yeah, don't worry. I know the drill by now."Jane then puts 15 more cards on the table. She says, "If we can get all these cards done by the end of March, we can turn the system over to our beta test customers. And we'll get good feedback from them."   You reply, "OK, so we've got our first iteration defined, and we have the stories for the next three iterations after that. These four iterations will make our first release."   "So," says Jane, can you really do these five stories in the next 3 weeks?" "I don't know for sure, Jane," you reply. "Let's break them down into tasks and see what we get."   So Jane, you, and your team spend the next several hours taking each of the five stories that Jane chose for the first iteration and breaking them down into small tasks. The developers quickly realize that some of the tasks can be shared between stories and that other tasks have commonalities that can probably be taken advantage of. It is clear that potential designs are popping into the developers' heads. From time to time, they form little discussion knots and scribble UML diagrams on some cards.   Soon, the whiteboard is filled with the tasks that, once completed, will implement the five stories for this iteration. You start the sign-up process by saying, "OK, let's sign up for these tasks." "I'll take the initial database generation." Says Pete. "That's what I did on the last project, and this doesn't look very different. I estimate it at two of my perfect workdays." "OK, well, then, I'll take the login screen," says Joe. "Aw, darn," says Elaine, the junior member of the team, "I've never done a GUI, and kinda wanted to try that one."   "Ah, the impatience of youth," Joe says sagely, with a wink in your direction. "You can assist me with it, young Jedi." To Jane: "I think it'll take me about three of my perfect workdays."   One by one, the developers sign up for tasks and estimate them in terms of their own perfect workdays. Both you and Jane know that it is best to let the developers volunteer for tasks than to assign the tasks to them. You also know full well that you daren't challenge any of the developers' estimates. You know these people, and you trust them. You know that they are going to do the very best they can.   The developers know that they can't sign up for more perfect workdays than they finished in the last iteration they worked on. Once each developer has filled his or her schedule for the iteration, they stop signing up for tasks.   Eventually, all the developers have stopped signing up for tasks. But, of course, tasks are still left on the board.   "I was worried that that might happen," you say, "OK, there's only one thing to do, Jane. We've got too much to do in this iteration. What stories or tasks can we remove?" Jane sighs. She knows that this is the only option. Working overtime at the beginning of a project is insane, and projects where she's tried it have not fared well.   So Jane starts to remove the least-important functionality. "Well, we really don't need the login screen just yet. We can simply start the system in the logged-in state." "Rats!" cries Elaine. "I really wanted to do that." "Patience, grasshopper." says Joe. "Those who wait for the bees to leave the hive will not have lips too swollen to relish the honey." Elaine looks confused. Everyone looks confused. "So . . .," Jane continues, "I think we can also do away with . . ." And so, bit by bit, the list of tasks shrinks. Developers who lose a task sign up for one of the remaining ones.   The negotiation is not painless. Several times, Jane exhibits obvious frustration and impatience. Once, when tensions are especially high, Elaine volunteers, "I'll work extra hard to make up some of the missing time." You are about to correct her when, fortunately, Joe looks her in the eye and says, "When once you proceed down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny."   In the end, an iteration acceptable to Jane is reached. It's not what Jane wanted. Indeed, it is significantly less. But it's something the team feels that can be achieved in the next 3 weeks.   And, after all, it still addresses the most important things that Jane wanted in the iteration. "So, Jane," you say when things had quieted down a bit, "when can we expect acceptance tests from you?" Jane sighs. This is the other side of the coin. For every story the development team implements,   Jane must supply a suite of acceptance tests that prove that it works. And the team needs these long before the end of the iteration, since they will certainly point out differences in the way Jane and the developers imagine the system's behaviour.   "I'll get you some example test scripts today," Jane promises. "I'll add to them every day after that. You'll have the entire suite by the middle of the iteration."   * * *   The iteration begins on Monday morning with a flurry of Class, Responsibilities, Collaborators sessions. By midmorning, all the developers have assembled into pairs and are rapidly coding away. "And now, my young apprentice," Joe says to Elaine, "you shall learn the mysteries of test-first design!"   "Wow, that sounds pretty rad," Elaine replies. "How do you do it?" Joe beams. It's clear that he has been anticipating this moment. "OK, what does the code do right now?" "Huh?" replied Elaine, "It doesn't do anything at all; there is no code."   "So, consider our task; can you think of something the code should do?" "Sure," Elaine said with youthful assurance, "First, it should connect to the database." "And thereupon, what must needs be required to connecteth the database?" "You sure talk weird," laughed Elaine. "I think we'd have to get the database object from some registry and call the Connect() method. "Ah, astute young wizard. Thou perceives correctly that we requireth an object within which we can cacheth the database object." "Is 'cacheth' really a word?" "It is when I say it! So, what test can we write that we know the database registry should pass?" Elaine sighs. She knows she'll just have to play along. "We should be able to create a database object and pass it to the registry in a Store() method. And then we should be able to pull it out of the registry with a Get() method and make sure it's the same object." "Oh, well said, my prepubescent sprite!" "Hay!" "So, now, let's write a test function that proves your case." "But shouldn't we write the database object and registry object first?" "Ah, you've much to learn, my young impatient one. Just write the test first." "But it won't even compile!" "Are you sure? What if it did?" "Uh . . ." "Just write the test, Elaine. Trust me." And so Joe, Elaine, and all the other developers began to code their tasks, one test case at a time. The room in which they worked was abuzz with the conversations between the pairs. The murmur was punctuated by an occasional high five when a pair managed to finish a task or a difficult test case.   As development proceeded, the developers changed partners once or twice a day. Each developer got to see what all the others were doing, and so knowledge of the code spread generally throughout the team.   Whenever a pair finished something significant whether a whole task or simply an important part of a task they integrated what they had with the rest of the system. Thus, the code base grew daily, and integration difficulties were minimized.   The developers communicated with Jane on a daily basis. They'd go to her whenever they had a question about the functionality of the system or the interpretation of an acceptance test case.   Jane, good as her word, supplied the team with a steady stream of acceptance test scripts. The team read these carefully and thereby gained a much better understanding of what Jane expected the system to do. By the beginning of the second week, there was enough functionality to demonstrate to Jane. She watched eagerly as the demonstration passed test case after test case. "This is really cool," Jane said as the demonstration finally ended. "But this doesn't seem like one-third of the tasks. Is your velocity slower than anticipated?"   You grimace. You'd been waiting for a good time to mention this to Jane but now she was forcing the issue. "Yes, unfortunately, we are going more slowly than we had expected. The new application server we are using is turning out to be a pain to configure. Also, it takes forever to reboot, and we have to reboot it whenever we make even the slightest change to its configuration."   Jane eyes you with suspicion. The stress of last Monday's negotiations had still not entirely dissipated. She says, "And what does this mean to our schedule? We can't slip it again, we just can't. Russ will have a fit! He'll haul us all into the woodshed and ream us some new ones."   You look Jane right in the eyes. There's no pleasant way to give someone news like this. So you just blurt out, "Look, if things keep going like they're going, we're not going to be done with everything by next Friday. Now it's possible that we'll figure out a way to go faster. But, frankly, I wouldn't depend on that. You should start thinking about one or two tasks that could be removed from the iteration without ruining the demonstration for Russ. Come hell or high water, we are going to give that demonstration on Friday, and I don't think you want us to choose which tasks to omit."   "Aw forchrisakes!" Jane barely manages to stifle yelling that last word as she stalks away, shaking her head. Not for the first time, you say to yourself, "Nobody ever promised me project management would be easy." You are pretty sure it won't be the last time, either.   Actually, things went a bit better than you had hoped. The team did, in fact, have to drop one task from the iteration, but Jane had chosen wisely, and the demonstration for Russ went without a hitch. Russ was not impressed with the progress, but neither was he dismayed. He simply said, "This is pretty good. But remember, we have to be able to demonstrate this system at the trade show in July, and at this rate, it doesn't look like you'll have all that much to show." Jane, whose attitude had improved dramatically with the completion of the iteration, responded to Russ by saying, "Russ, this team is working hard, and well. When July comes around, I am confident that we'll have something significant to demonstrate. It won't be everything, and some of it may be smoke and mirrors, but we'll have something."   Painful though the last iteration was, it had calibrated your velocity numbers. The next iteration went much better. Not because your team got more done than in the last iteration but simply because the team didn't have to remove any tasks or stories in the middle of the iteration.   By the start of the fourth iteration, a natural rhythm has been established. Jane, you, and the team know exactly what to expect from one another. The team is running hard, but the pace is sustainable. You are confident that the team can keep up this pace for a year or more.   The number of surprises in the schedule diminishes to near zero; however, the number of surprises in the requirements does not. Jane and Russ frequently look over the growing system and make recommendations or changes to the existing functionality. But all parties realize that these changes take time and must be scheduled. So the changes do not cause anyone's expectations to be violated. In March, there is a major demonstration of the system to the board of directors. The system is very limited and is not yet in a form good enough to take to the trade show, but progress is steady, and the board is reasonably impressed.   The second release goes even more smoothly than the first. By now, the team has figured out a way to automate Jane's acceptance test scripts. The team has also refactored the design of the system to the point that it is really easy to add new features and change old ones. The second release was done by the end of June and was taken to the trade show. It had less in it than Jane and Russ would have liked, but it did demonstrate the most important features of the system. Although customers at the trade show noticed that certain features were missing, they were very impressed overall. You, Russ, and Jane all returned from the trade show with smiles on your faces. You all felt as though this project was a winner.   Indeed, many months later, you are contacted by Rufus Inc. That company had been working on a system like this for its internal operations. Rufus has canceled the development of that system after a death-march project and is negotiating to license your technology for its environment.   Indeed, things are looking up!

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  • SQLAuthority News – Author Visit Review – TechMela Nepal – March 29-30, 2010

    - by pinaldave
    I was very fortunate to attend TechMela at Kathmandu, Nepal on 29th and 30th of March 2010. I would like to thank Allen Bailochan Tuladhar from Microsoft MDP Nepal for inviting me. Allen is a person with seemingly infinite energy and unlimited passion for Microsoft Technology. If you get an opportunity to spend just one hour with him, you will surely be more enthusiastic with regards to Microsoft Technology. And, I was lucky enough that I was able to spend about a total of 9 days with him in Kathmandu, working along with him in the Tech Community. TechMela Nepal Pinal at TechMela, Nepal TechMela is considered as one of the biggest events in Nepal, having been organized by Microsoft MDP Nepal. This event was attended by around 500 students and hundreds of Tech professionals. The event was handled very professionally and at very large scale. Every minor detail was properly planned and obviously thought out well. There were around 50+ volunteers from MS MDP who were monitoring this event systematically to make sure the event would run as smooth as planned. Attendees in Geek T-Shirts During this event, I was delighted to meet David Lim of Microsoft Singapore. He is very passionate in working for Microsoft Technology, as well as building deep relations with the Community. I was fortunate to spend my entire afternoon with him during the sight-seeing trip. We discussed various MS technologies and their community’s adoption as well as the way how each of us can be a part of the community activity. He also delivered excellent keynotes at the event. I must say that this is one of the most enjoyable keynotes I have ever attended. It was interesting and interactive, and I must say that I had the 70s feelings with all the fonts and graphics. I still remember him saying, “Yeah, I was a student and I know you.” Allen Tuladhar, David Lim, Pinal Dave and Guests After the keynote, everybody cheered when Allen came on stage to talk about the event and to introduce the agenda for the next two days. I must say that Allen is one of the most well-known people in Nepal. I was impressed with his popularity, and to prove this, when he got on the stage he had to wait for a long full minute before he was able to greet “Welcome” while the attendees were clapping and cheering. Technology Panelist at Techmela Kathmandu, Nepal This event was blessed with the top-of-the-top officials of various IT industries, Nepal ministries and the US Embassy. All the prominent personalities were present for panel discussion on the stage. The talk was done on various subjects. Also, the energy level which was set by Allen really echoed in the audience as they asked certain questions on different global as well local IT-related questions. The panel discussion really was discussion instead of usual monologue of one person. Pinal Dave presenting at TechMela Kathmandu, Nepal This was a two-day event and my session was on either of the day. I had a great participation from the audience on both days. The place where the event was organized had a capacity of around 500+ audience. Both of my sessions were heavily attended and volunteers did a fabulous job helping the attendees find empty seats or arrange some additional seats. I was overwhelmed with the interaction I have received in the large hall. Attendees were not so shy to express their thoughts, so both the sessions were followed up by top notch one-on-one conversations for a couple of hours. Pinal Dave presenting at TechMela Kathmandu, Nepal Pinal Dave presenting at TechMela Kathmandu, Nepal There are many questions that I have received during the event, and many of them can be interesting for all of us here so I will write detailed blog posts on these subjects. I also tried to participate in the gaming activities held at the event, but I felt I was kind of lost even if I was only playing for the very first minutes. This made me realize that I am really getting old for video games. Allen presenting at TechMela Kathmandu, Nepal Allen’s session on Digital Photography was very impressive as he demonstrated so many features of the Windows Live Product that at one point I felt he is MVP for Windows Live. In fact, he demonstrated how all the Microsoft products work together to give users an excellent desktop experience; no wonder he is an MVP for Windows Desktop Experience. Pinal Dave presending at TechMela Kathmandu, Nepal Any event has two common dilemmas – food and logistics. However, this event had excellent food and state-of-the-art organization. I was very glad that this two-day event turned out to be one of the most successful events in Nepal. I also noticed that almost all attendees rate their experience as beyond expectation and truly exceptional. Pinal Dave and Allen Bailochan Tuladhar If you ever get invited by Allen in any of his event, I strongly suggest that you drop all your plans and scheduled stuff, and accept his invitation. For sure, the event will be a very memorable one and would be your once-in-a-lifetime experience. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: MVP, Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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