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• Nginx - Redirect any Subdomain to File without Rewriting

  - by Waffle

  Recently I have switched from Apache to Nginx to increase performance on a web server running Ubuntu 11.10. I have been having issues trying to figure out how certain things work in Nginx compared to Apache, but one issue has been stumping me and I have not been able to find the answer online. My problem is that I need to be able to redirect (not rewrite) any sub-domain to a file, but that file needs to be able to get the sub-domain part of the URL in order to do a database look-up of that sub-domain. So far, I have been able to get any sub-domain to rewrite to that file, but then it loses the text of the sub-domain I need. So, for example, I would like test.server.com to redirect to server.com/resolve.php, but still remain as test.server.com. If this is not possible, the thing that I would need at the very least would be something such as going to test.server.com would go to server.com/resolve.php?=test . One of these options must be possible in Nginx. My config as it stands right now looks something like this: server { listen 80; ## listen for ipv4; this line is default and implied listen [::]:80 default ipv6only=on; ## listen for ipv6 root /usr/share/nginx/www; index index.php index.html index.htm; # Make site accessible from http://localhost/ server_name www.server.com server.com; location / { # First attempt to serve request as file, then # as directory, then fall back to index.html try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html; } location /doc { root /usr/share; autoindex on; allow 127.0.0.1; } location /images { root /usr/share; autoindex off; } #error_page 404 /404.html; # redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html # #error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html; #location = /50x.html { # root /usr/share/nginx/www; #} # proxy the PHP scripts to Apache listening on 127.0.0.1:80 # #location ~ \.php$ { # proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1; #} # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000 # location ~ \.php$ { fastcgi_pass unix:/tmp/php5-fpm.sock; fastcgi_index index.php; include fastcgi_params; } # deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root # concurs with nginx's one # #location ~ /\.ht { # deny all; #} } server { listen 80 default; server_name *.server.com; rewrite ^ http://www.server.com/resolve.php; } As I said before, I am very new to Nginx, so I have a feeling the answer is pretty simple, but no examples online seem to deal with just redirects without rewrites or rewriting with the sub-domain section included. Any help on what to do would be most appreciated and if any one has a better idea to accomplish what I need, I am also open to ideas. Thank you very much.

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• Windows 7 inbuilt and 3rd party (de)fragmentation related queries

  - by Karan

  I have a pretty good idea of how files end up getting fragmented. That said, I just copied ~3,200 files of varying sizes (from a few KB to ~20GB) from an external USB HDD to an internal, freshly formatted (under Windows 7 x64), NTFS, 2TB, 5400RPM, WD, SATA, non-system (i.e. secondary) drive, filling it up 57%. Since it should have been very much possible for each file to have been stored in one contiguous block, I expected the drive to be fragmented not more than 1-2% at most after this rather lengthy exercise (unfortunately this older machine doesn't support USB 3.0). Windows 7's inbuilt defrag utility told me after a quick analysis that the drive was fragmented only 1% or so, which dovetailed neatly with my expectations. However, just out of curiosity I downloaded and ran the latest portable x64 version of Piriform's Defraggler, and was shocked to see the drive being reported as being ~85% fragmented! The portable version of Auslogics Disk Defrag also agreed with Defraggler, and both clearly expected to grind away for ~10 hours to completely defragment the drive. 1) How in blazes could the inbuilt and 3rd party defrag utils disagree so badly? I mean, 10-20% variance is probably understandable, but 1% and 85% are miles apart! This Engineering Windows 7 blog post states: In Windows XP, any file that is split into more than one piece is considered fragmented. Not so in Windows Vista if the fragments are large enough – the defragmentation algorithm was changed (from Windows XP) to ignore pieces of a file that are larger than 64MB. As a result, defrag in XP and defrag in Vista will report different amounts of fragmentation on a volume. ... [Please read the entire post so the quote is not taken out of context.] Could it simply be that the 3rd party defrag utils ignore this post-XP change and continue to use analysis algos similar to those XP used? 2) Assuming that the 3rd party utils aren't lying about the real extent of fragmentation (which Windows is downplaying post-XP), how could the files have even got fragmented so badly given they were just copied over afresh to an empty drive? 3) If vastly differing analysis algos explain the yawning gap, which do I believe? I'm no defrag fanatic for sure, but 85% is enough to make me seriously consider spending 10 hours defragging this drive. On the other hand, 1% reported by Windows' own defragger clearly implies that there is no cause for concern and defragging would actually have negative consequences (as per the post). Is Windows' assumption valid and should I just let it be, or will there be any noticeable performance gains after running one of the 3rd party utils for 10 hours straight? 4) I see that out of the box Windows 7 defrag is scheduled to run weekly. Does anyone know whether it defrags every single time, or only if its analysis reveals a fragmentation percentage over a set threshold? If the latter, what is this threshold and can it be changed, maybe via a Registry edit? Thanks for reading through (my first query on this wonderful site!) and for any helpful replies. Also, if you're answering question #3, please keep in mind that any speed increases post defragging with 3rd party utils vis-à-vis Windows' inbuilt program should not include pre-Vista (preferably pre-Win7) examples. Further, examples of programs that made your system boot faster won't help in this case, since this is a non-system drive (although one that'll still be used daily).

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• Hour-long shutdown duration "shutting down hyper-v virtual machine management service"

  - by icelava

  I have a Windows 2008 R2 server that is a Hyper-V host (Dell PowerEdge T300). Today for the first time I encountered an odd situation; i lost connection with one of the guest machines but logging on physically it seems the guest OS is still running but no longer contactable via the network. I tried to shut down the guest machine (Windows XP) but it would not shut down, getting stuck in a "Not responding" dialog box that cannot be dismissed. I used the Hyper-V management console to reset the machine and it could not get out of resetting state. I tried to save another Windows 2003 guest machine, and it would be progress with its Saving state (0%). The other running Windows 2003 guest was stuck in the logon dialog. My first suspicion is perhaps one of the Windows update patches this week (10 Nov 2011) may something to do with it, which was still pending a system restart. Well, since I could not do anything with Hyper-V i proceeded with the Windows Update restart, and now it is stuck half an hour at "Shutting down hyper-v virtual machine management service" Prior to restarting I did not observe any hard disk errors reported in the system event log; doubt it is a disk-related condition. Shall I force a hard reboot? UPDATE Ok so i left it hanging over an hour while attending to other matters, and thankfully the host cleanly restarted. I can operate the guest machines fine now. Phew. Hyper-V must have been crawling for some reason. The VMs have been observed to become slow in the past when the host has been up for a long duration (two weeks to a month), but never this slow. Would love to know what types of performance monitoring items i can observe to give a hint why this can happen. UPDATE 2012-02-13 In the months ever since, Hyper-V has stalled into this state another two times. It appears so randomly and without any error event logs to hint what is causing it enter this "drunkard" state. Just an Hyper-V management service timeout. Log Name: System Source: Service Control Manager Date: 13/2/2012 9:16:48 AM Event ID: 7043 Task Category: None Level: Error Keywords: Classic User: N/A Computer: elune Description: The Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management service did not shut down properly after receiving a preshutdown control. Event Xml: <Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event"> <System> <Provider Name="Service Control Manager" Guid="{555908d1-a6d7-4695-8e1e-26931d2012f4}" EventSourceName="Service Control Manager" /> <EventID Qualifiers="49152">7043</EventID> <Version>0</Version> <Level>2</Level> <Task>0</Task> <Opcode>0</Opcode> <Keywords>0x8080000000000000</Keywords> <TimeCreated SystemTime="2012-02-13T01:16:48.882901900Z" /> <EventRecordID>567844</EventRecordID> <Correlation /> <Execution ProcessID="764" ThreadID="8484" /> <Channel>System</Channel> <Computer>elune</Computer> <Security /> </System> <EventData> <Data Name="param1">Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management</Data> </EventData> </Event> The only means out of it is to restart the system.

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• File server share access intermittent/slow/machine unstable: win2k8r2

  - by Jack B.

  I have a file server running Win2k8R2 on an older HP DL380G4. It has nothing set up on it other than file sharing. All drivers/firmware/updates installed. The file server is used as a dump for a bunch of test machines - so essentially a lot of small files are being written to it. It was working fine until it started showing the following symptoms: Shares became either very slow/intermittent or could not access them at all. Logging in the the server, you could use it like normal but windows would start freezing and eventually you had to hard reboot it because nothing was responsive. After rebooting, it would work fine for 20min-2hours and then degrade into this broken state again. Some info after investigation: HP Raid Config utility shows the Raid array as functioning properly (RAID5 btw). Event log shows a bunch of DoS attacks from the test machines, saying it has disconnected the connection a. AFAIK (not part of my job) the test machines haven't changed the way they log information to this server or the amount of them hasn't increased. b. Nothing is infected, this server was scanned fully, and the test machines are re-imaged almost daily. Nothing in performance monitor shows as anything being pegged at maximum (CPU/HD/Network/RAM) I installed MS Network Monitor and it is showing a lot of traffic The server was using one gigabit Ethernet connection, I connected the second one as well with the same results. Forgot to add - one of the commonly written to dirs on the share has over 16k subdirs in it, with a crapton of small files within those dirs. Some of the OS instability was slow access to the drive which has this directory - perfmon doesn't show much activity on the HD though so I'm not sure if this crowded dir is the cause. Here is one important fact: I ran into this issue 2-3 months ago, couldn't figure it out, but I had a spare identical machine so I swapped them out (thought it was related to the machine), and now I have the same issue. Also, the computer will be stable if I turn off file sharing. So is the server just getting DoS'd by the test machines? I've never dealt with such an issue. Is instability in the server's OS common when getting DoS'd? Is there anything I can do to confirm this before telling the owners of the test machines to optimize their traffic? (I'm not sure what they'll be able to do). Is there something within Win2k8R2 that can balance the traffic across the two NICs? Any help would be appreciated. Update: Another thought - the drive with the share is RAID5 across 6 SCSI320 300GB HDs. They are near full capacity about 100GB from 1TB left. Could the amount of tiny files could be causing some weirdness with the parity in this array? I think I've read something about this in the past but I'm no expert on RAID.

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• Trying to connect phpMyAdmin to remote mySQL server ( 2002: can't connect )

  - by Malcolm Jones

  Trying to get phpMyAdmin to talk to a remote mySQL server. The config is below and there is already a user set up in mySQL DB to be able to log in from the specified host that PMA sits on. Hosting is provided by Rackspace (Rightscale) and both cloud servers behind the same firewall. [config.inc.php] <?php $cfg['blowfish_secret'] = ''; $i = 0; $i++; $cfg['Servers'][$i]['host'] = 'XX.XX.XX.XX'; // MySQL hostname or IP address $cfg['Servers'][$i]['port'] = ''; // MySQL port - leave blank for default port $cfg['Servers'][$i]['socket'] = ''; // Path to the socket - leave blank for default socket $cfg['Servers'][$i]['connect_type'] = 'tcp'; // How to connect to MySQL server ('tcp' or 'socket') $cfg['Servers'][$i]['extension'] = 'mysql'; // The php MySQL extension to use ('mysql' or 'mysqli') $cfg['Servers'][$i]['compress'] = FALSE; // Use compressed protocol for the MySQL connection // (requires PHP >= 4.3.0) $cfg['Servers'][$i]['controluser'] = ''; // MySQL control user settings // (this user must have read-only $cfg['Servers'][$i]['controlpass'] = ''; // access to the "mysql/user" // and "mysql/db" tables). // The controluser is also // used for all relational // features (pmadb) $cfg['Servers'][$i]['auth_type'] = 'config'; // Authentication method (config, http or cookie based)? $cfg['Servers'][$i]['user'] = 'USERNAME'; // MySQL user $cfg['Servers'][$i]['password'] = 'PASSWORD'; // MySQL password (only needed // with 'config' auth_type) $cfg['Servers'][$i]['only_db'] = ''; // If set to a db-name, only // this db is displayed in left frame // It may also be an array of db-names, where sorting order is relevant. $cfg['Servers'][$i]['hide_db'] = ''; // Database name to be hidden from listings $cfg['Servers'][$i]['verbose'] = ''; // Verbose name for this host - leave blank to show the hostname $cfg['Servers'][$i]['pmadb'] = ''; // Database used for Relation, Bookmark and PDF Features // (see scripts/create_tables.sql) // - leave blank for no support // DEFAULT: 'phpmyadmin' $cfg['Servers'][$i]['bookmarktable'] = ''; // Bookmark table // - leave blank for no bookmark support // DEFAULT: 'pma_bookmark' $cfg['Servers'][$i]['relation'] = ''; // table to describe the relation between links (see doc) // - leave blank for no relation-links support // DEFAULT: 'pma_relation' $cfg['Servers'][$i]['table_info'] = ''; // table to describe the display fields // - leave blank for no display fields support // DEFAULT: 'pma_table_info' $cfg['Servers'][$i]['table_coords'] = ''; // table to describe the tables position for the PDF schema // - leave blank for no PDF schema support // DEFAULT: 'pma_table_coords' $cfg['Servers'][$i]['pdf_pages'] = ''; // table to describe pages of relationpdf // - leave blank if you don't want to use this // DEFAULT: 'pma_pdf_pages' $cfg['Servers'][$i]['column_info'] = ''; // table to store column information // - leave blank for no column comments/mime types // DEFAULT: 'pma_column_info' $cfg['Servers'][$i]['history'] = ''; // table to store SQL history // - leave blank for no SQL query history // DEFAULT: 'pma_history' $cfg['Servers'][$i]['verbose_check'] = TRUE; // set to FALSE if you know that your pma_* tables // are up to date. This prevents compatibility // checks and thereby increases performance. $cfg['Servers'][$i]['AllowRoot'] = TRUE; // whether to allow root login $cfg['Servers'][$i]['AllowDeny']['order'] // Host authentication order, leave blank to not use = ''; $cfg['Servers'][$i]['AllowDeny']['rules'] // Host authentication rules, leave blank for defaults = array(); Please let me know if you need anymore info. -- Malcolm

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• Why are USB 2.0 devices crashing my system?

  - by BenAlabaster

  Background on the machine I'm having a problem with: The machine was inherited and appears to be circa 2003 (there's a date stamp on the power supply which leads me to this conclusion). I've got it set up as a Skype terminal for my 2 year old to keep in touch with her grandparents and other members of the family - which everyone loves. It has a generic baby-ATX motherboard with no identifying markings. CPU-Z identifies the motherboard model as VT8601 but doesn't provide me with any manufacturer name. There's one stamp on the motherboard that says "Rev.B". On board it has 10/100 LAN, 2 x USB 1.0, VGA, PS/2 for KB and mouse, parallel port, 2 x serial ports, 2 x IDE, 1 x floppy, 2 x SDRAM slots, 1 x CPU housing that is seating a 1.3GHz Intel Celeron CPU, 3 x PCI, 1 x AGP - although you can only use 2 of the PCI slots if you use the AGP slot due to the physical layout of the board. It's got 768Mb PC133 SDRAM - 1 x 512Mb & 1 x 256Mb installed as well as a D-LINK WDA-2320 54G Wi-Fi network card and a generic USB 2.0 expansion board containing 3 x external + 1 x internal USB connectors. All this is sitting in a slimline case. I don't know the wattage of the PSU, but can post this later if this proves to be helpful. The motherboard is running a version of Award BIOS for which I don't have the version number to hand but can again post this later if it would be helpful. It has an 80Gb Western Digital hard drive freshly formatted and built with Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3 and all current patches. In addition to Windows XP, the only other software it's running is Skype 4.1 (4.2 crashes the machine as soon as it starts up). It's got a Daytek MV150 15" touch screen running through the VGA and COM1 with the most current drivers from the Daytek website and the most current version of ELO-Touchsystems drivers for the touch component. The webcam is a Logitech Webcam C200 with the latest drivers from the Logitech website. The problem If I hook any USB 2.0 devices to this machine, it hangs the whole machine and I have to hard boot it to get it back up. Workarounds found I can plug the same devices into the on board USB 1.0 connectors and everything works fine, albeit at reduced performance. I've tried 3 different kinds of USB thumb drives, 3 different makes/models of webcams and my iPhone all with the same effect. They're recognized and don't hang the machine when I hook them to the USB 1.0 but if I hook them to the USB 2.0 ports, the machine hangs within a couple of seconds of recognizing the devices were connected. Attempted solutions I've tried disabling all the on board devices that I'm not using - such as the on board LAN, the second COM port, the AGP connector etc. through the BIOS in an (perhaps misguided or futile) attempt to reduce the power consumption... I don't think it had any effect but it didn't do any harm. I was wondering if the PSU wattage just isn't enough to drive the USB 2.0 devices; I've seen this suggested but haven't found any confirmation that this could really be an issue - nor have I found a way to work around this issue - if indeed it is one. Any ideas? The only thing I haven't done which I only just thought of while writing this essay is trying the USB 2.0 card in a different PCI slot, or re-ordering the wi-fi and USB cards in the slots... although I'm not sure if this will make any difference. I've installed the USB card in another machine and it works without issue, so it's not a problem with the USB card itself. Other thoughts Perhaps this is an incompatibility between the USB 2.0 card and the BIOS, would re-flashing the BIOS with a newer version help? Do I need to be able to identify the manufacturer of the motherboard in order to be able to find a BIOS edition specific for this motherboard or will any version of Award BIOS function in its place? Question Does anyone have any ideas that could help me get my USB 2.0 devices hooked up to this machine?

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• Issues Converting Plain Text Into Microsoft Word Bulleted Lists

  - by user787832

  I'm a programmer. I hate status reports. I found a way to live with it. While I am working in my IDE ( Visual Slickedit ) I keep a plain text file open in one of the file/buffer tabs. As I finish things I just jot down a quick note into that file. At the end of the week that becomes my weekly status report. Example entries: The Datatables.net plugin runs very slowly in IE 8 with more than 2,000 records. I changed the way I did the server side code to process the data to make less work for the plugin to get decent performance for the IE 8 users. I made a class to wrap data from the new data collection objects into the legacy data holder objects. This will let the new database code be backward compatible with the legacy code until we can replace it. I found the bug reported by Jane. The software is fine. The database we use for the test site has data that is corrupted in a way it wouldn't be for production site At the end of the month I go back to each weekly *.txt file and paste all of the entries into a MS Word file for a monthly report. I give the monthly report to a liason to the contracting company who has to compile everyone's monthly reports into a single MS Word 2007 document. His problem, soon to be my problem, comes when he highlights my paragraphs like the ones above to put bullets in front of my paragraphs. When he highlights my notes to put bullets in front of them with MS Word 2007, Word rearranges the text a bit and the new line chars/carriage returns stagger the text so the text is no longer in neat chunks. This: I found the bug reported by Jane. The software is fine. The database we use for the test site has data that is corrupted in a way it wouldn't be for production site Becomes This: I found the bug reported by Jane. The software is fine. The database we use for the test site has data that is corrupted in a way it wouldn't be for production site I tried turning word wrap on in my IDE for the text files I put my status notes in. It just puts some kind of newline character in anyway. Searching/Replacing those chars in the text files has the result of destroying the paragraphs. Once my notes are pasted into MS Word, Word automatically translates them into paragraph breaks. Searching/Replacing them there has similar results. Blank lines separating the notes disappears. One big mess. What I would like is to be able to keep adding my status notes to a text file as I am now, but do something different when I paste the notes into MS Word such that my liason can select the text, hit the bulleting command and NOT have the staggered text as shown above. Any ideas? Thanks much in advance Steve

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• MySQL reserves too much RAM

  - by Buddy

  I have a cheap VPS with 128Mb RAM and 256Mb burst. MySQL starts and reserves about 110Mb, but uses not more than 20Mb of them. My VPS Control Panel shows, that I use 127Mb (I also running nginx and sphinx), I know, that it shows reserved RAM, but when I reach over 128Mb, my VPS reboots automatically every 4 hours. So I want to force MySQL to reserve less RAM. How can i do that? I did some tweaks with my.conf but it helped not so much. top output: PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 1 root 15 0 2156 668 572 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.03 init 11311 root 15 0 11212 356 228 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 vzctl 11312 root 18 0 3712 1484 1248 S 0.0 0.6 0:00.01 bash 11347 root 18 0 2284 916 732 R 0.0 0.3 0:00.00 top 13978 root 17 -4 2248 552 344 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 udevd 14262 root 15 0 1812 564 472 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.03 syslogd 14293 sphinx 15 0 11816 1172 672 S 0.0 0.4 0:00.07 searchd 14305 root 25 0 7192 1036 636 S 0.0 0.4 0:00.00 sshd 14321 root 25 0 2832 836 668 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.00 xinetd 15389 root 18 0 3708 1300 1132 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.00 mysqld_safe 15441 mysql 15 0 113m 16m 4440 S 0.0 6.4 0:00.15 mysqld 15489 root 21 0 13056 1456 340 S 0.0 0.6 0:00.00 nginx 15490 nginx 18 0 13328 2388 992 S 0.0 0.9 0:00.06 nginx 15507 nginx 25 0 19520 5888 4244 S 0.0 2.2 0:00.00 php-cgi 15508 nginx 18 0 19636 4876 2748 S 0.0 1.9 0:00.12 php-cgi 15509 nginx 15 0 19668 4872 2716 S 0.0 1.9 0:00.11 php-cgi 15518 root 18 0 4492 1116 568 S 0.0 0.4 0:00.01 crond MySQL tuner: >> MySQLTuner 1.0.1 - Major Hayden <[email protected]> >> Bug reports, feature requests, and downloads at http://mysqltuner.com/ >> Run with '--help' for additional options and output filtering Please enter your MySQL administrative login: root Please enter your MySQL administrative password: -------- General Statistics -------------------------------------------------- [--] Skipped version check for MySQLTuner script [OK] Currently running supported MySQL version 5.0.77 [OK] Operating on 32-bit architecture with less than 2GB RAM -------- Storage Engine Statistics ------------------------------------------- [--] Status: -Archive -BDB -Federated +InnoDB -ISAM -NDBCluster [--] Data in InnoDB tables: 1M (Tables: 1) [OK] Total fragmented tables: 0 -------- Performance Metrics ------------------------------------------------- [--] Up for: 38m 43s (37 q [0.016 qps], 20 conn, TX: 4M, RX: 3K) [--] Reads / Writes: 100% / 0% [--] Total buffers: 28.1M global + 832.0K per thread (100 max threads) [OK] Maximum possible memory usage: 109.4M (42% of installed RAM) [OK] Slow queries: 0% (0/37) [OK] Highest usage of available connections: 1% (1/100) [OK] Key buffer size / total MyISAM indexes: 128.0K/64.0K [OK] Query cache efficiency: 42.1% (8 cached / 19 selects) [OK] Query cache prunes per day: 0 [!!] Temporary tables created on disk: 27% (3 on disk / 11 total) [!!] Thread cache is disabled [OK] Table cache hit rate: 57% (8 open / 14 opened) [OK] Open file limit used: 1% (12/1K) [OK] Table locks acquired immediately: 100% (22 immediate / 22 locks) [!!] Connections aborted: 10% [OK] InnoDB data size / buffer pool: 1.5M/8.0M -------- Recommendations ----------------------------------------------------- General recommendations: MySQL started within last 24 hours - recommendations may be inaccurate Enable the slow query log to troubleshoot bad queries When making adjustments, make tmp_table_size/max_heap_table_size equal Reduce your SELECT DISTINCT queries without LIMIT clauses Set thread_cache_size to 4 as a starting value Your applications are not closing MySQL connections properly Variables to adjust: tmp_table_size (> 32M) max_heap_table_size (> 16M) thread_cache_size (start at 4) I think if I do what MySQLtuner says, MySQL will use more RAM.

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• Trying to prevent Windows from hibernating/sleeping automatically

  - by user328821

  My Dell XPS 8700 (Win 7) suddenly began putting itself to sleep at 6pm daily, even if I'm typing. I don't know what caused this to occur, except possibly a windows update that took place in the middle of the night. I initially went into settings for power and saw 2 plans set up, one from Dell and the other window's Power saver plan. I set both to never for sleep and hibernate yet it still occurred. I have current drivers and a fairly new UPS that has software to set to shutdown only after power loss. Dell is of little help, can anyone point me in the right direction? I did do the powerdfg -energy program and came up with this: Power Efficiency Diagnostics Report Scan Time 2014-05-08T19:21:48Z Scan Duration 60 seconds System Manufacturer Dell Inc. System Product Name XPS 8700 BIOS Date 08/23/2013 BIOS Version A04 OS Build 7601 Platform Role PlatformRoleDesktop Plugged In true Process Count 115 Thread Count 1631 Report GUID {097caf99-039b-44c3-b154-d797bfbfdfcc} Analysis Results Errors Power Policy:Sleep timeout is disabled (Plugged In) The computer is not configured to automatically sleep after a period of inactivity. System Availability Requests:System Required Request The device or driver has made a request to prevent the system from automatically entering sleep. Requesting Driver Instance HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_0899&SUBSYS_102805B7&REV_1000\4&220b1bbc&0&0001 Requesting Driver Device Realtek High Definition Audio CPU Utilization:Processor utilization is high The average processor utilization during the trace was high. The system will consume less power when the average processor utilization is very low. Review processor utilization for individual processes to determine which applications and services contribute the most to total processor utilization. Average Utilization (%) 9.48 Warnings Platform Timer Resolution:Platform Timer Resolution The default platform timer resolution is 15.6ms (15625000ns) and should be used whenever the system is idle. If the timer resolution is increased, processor power management technologies may not be effective. The timer resolution may be increased due to multimedia playback or graphical animations. Current Timer Resolution (100ns units) 10000 Maximum Timer Period (100ns units) 156001 Platform Timer Resolution:Outstanding Kernel Timer Request A kernel component or device driver has requested a timer resolution smaller than the platform maximum timer resolution. Requested Period 10000 Request Count 2 Platform Timer Resolution:Outstanding Timer Request A program or service has requested a timer resolution smaller than the platform maximum timer resolution. Requested Period 10000 Requesting Process ID 8672 Requesting Process Path \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe Platform Timer Resolution:Outstanding Timer Request A program or service has requested a timer resolution smaller than the platform maximum timer resolution. Requested Period 100000 Requesting Process ID 1212 Requesting Process Path \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Windows\System32\svchost.exe Power Policy:802.11 Radio Power Policy is Maximum Performance (Plugged In) The current power policy for 802.11-compatible wireless network adapters is not configured to use low-power modes. CPU Utilization:Individual process with significant processor utilization. This process is responsible for a significant portion of the total processor utilization recorded during the trace. Process Name audiodg.exe PID 1304 Average Utilization (%) 4.73 Module Average Module Utilization (%) \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Windows\System32\msvcrt.dll 1.88 \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Windows\System32\MaxxAudioAPO5064.dll 1.77 \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Windows\System32\AudioEng.dll 0.80 CPU Utilization:Individual process with significant processor utilization. This process is responsible for a significant portion of the total processor utilization recorded during the trace. Process Name thunderbird.exe PID 6036 Average Utilization (%) 0.35 Module Average Module Utilization (%) \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Thunderbird\xul.dll 0.16 \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Thunderbird\mozjs.dll 0.05 \SystemRoot\System32\win32k.sys 0.03 CPU Utilization:Individual process with significant processor utilization. This process is responsible for a significant portion of the total processor utilization recorded during the trace. Process Name dwm.exe PID 1340 Average Utilization (%) 0.25 Module Average Module Utilization (%) \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Windows\System32\dwmcore.dll 0.08 \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Windows\System32\nvwgf2umx.dll 0.05 \SystemRoot\system32\ntoskrnl.exe 0.03 CPU Utilization:Individual process with significant processor utilization. This process is responsible for a significant portion of the total processor utilization recorded during the trace.

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• Windows 8.1 Update 1 Disk Usage 100%

  - by Gookjin Jeong

  Background Information / Computer Specs I have a 14-inch Samsung Series 5 Ultra. Core i5 CPU, 750GB HDD, 8GB RAM, Intel HD Graphics 4000. I've had the computer for about 1.5 years with no major problems. Problem The issue appeared at the beginning of April this year, when I updated the OS to Windows 8.1 Update 1 (not from 8 to 8.1). After being on continually (except for at night, when I put it on sleep mode) for about 48 hours, the disk usage as seen by Task Manager hits 100%. When this happens, everything from opening/closing applications to typing and even bringing up the start screen by pressing the Windows key becomes extremely slow. The only way to make the disk usage decrease is to restart the computer. Then the problem repeats. I've used my current laptop (as well as my previous laptops) this way -- putting it on sleep mode at night and restarting it only when Windows needs to install updates -- for a long time. So I know the 100% disk usage is not due to the way I use the computer. The thing that causes the spike varies. Sometimes it's System, sometimes it's one of the various applications I installed (e.g. Chrome, Evernote, Spotify, Wunderlist, iTunes, etc.), and sometimes it's Antimalware Service Executable, etc. Tried Solutions I think I tried almost every solution out there for this problem: Running the check disk command (chkdsk /b /f /v /scan c:) from Admin Command Prompt Running Windows Memory Diagnostic Disabling Superfetch and Windows Search from services.msc Running "Fix problems with Windows Update" from Control Panel -- Troubleshooting Updating and rolling back the graphics driver (Intel HD 4000) Disabling "Use hardware acceleration when available" from Chrome settings Disabling Intel Rapid Storage Technology Running the SFC /SCANNOW command as recommended here Running a quick scan & a full scan from Windows Defender (no threats found) Taking the hard drive out and putting it back Refreshing the computer, from the Update and recovery -- Recovery option in Windows settings NONE of the above worked for me. I was about to give up but then noticed that one of the main culprits of the disk usage spike, as shown in the "Disk Activity" section of the Resource Monitor, was C:\System (pagefile.sys). I googled around and found that one of the recommended solutions was to disable pagefile. I then went to **Control Panel -- System and Security -- System -- Advanced system settings -- Advanced tab -- Performance settings -- Advanced tab -- "Change" under Virtual memory and discovered that the number for "Currently allocated" at the bottom was 1280MB, although the number for "Recommended" was 4533MB. I immediately changed it to 4533MB and checked my family members' computers to see what the numbers were like. All of theirs had a currently allocated space that was only slightly smaller than the recommended space. See screenshot below: This might fix the problem. I'll have to wait a couple more days.But if it doesn't, what in the world should I do next? I'm guessing the hard drive isn't failing because This computer is less than 2 years old; and Speccy says that the status of the HDD is good. Update 5/27/2014 The "4533MB" solution did not work. I had to reboot the computer about 30 minutes ago because the disk usage again hit 100%. When I opened Resource Monitor the C:\System (pagefile.sys) again was shown to be the culprit. I have now disabled pagefile entirely via the same window shown above in the screenshot. The number for "currently allocated" is now 0MB. Will update again in a couple days, or if the problem occurs again, whichever comes sooner.

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• File server share access intermittent/slow/machine unstable: win2k8r2

  - by Jack B.

  I have a file server running Win2k8R2 on an older HP DL380G4. It has nothing set up on it other than file sharing. All drivers/firmware/updates installed. The file server is used as a dump for a bunch of test machines - so essentially a lot of small files are being written to it. It was working fine until it started showing the following symptoms: Shares became either very slow/intermittent or could not access them at all. Logging in the the server, you could use it like normal but windows would start freezing and eventually you had to hard reboot it because nothing was responsive. After rebooting, it would work fine for 20min-2hours and then degrade into this broken state again. Some info after investigation: HP Raid Config utility shows the Raid array as functioning properly (RAID5 btw). Event log shows a bunch of DoS attacks from the test machines, saying it has disconnected the connection a. AFAIK (not part of my job) the test machines haven't changed the way they log information to this server or the amount of them hasn't increased. b. Nothing is infected, this server was scanned fully, and the test machines are re-imaged almost daily. Nothing in performance monitor shows as anything being pegged at maximum (CPU/HD/Network/RAM) I installed MS Network Monitor and it is showing a lot of traffic The server was using one gigabit Ethernet connection, I connected the second one as well with the same results. Forgot to add - one of the commonly written to dirs on the share has over 16k subdirs in it, with a crapton of small files within those dirs. Some of the OS instability was slow access to the drive which has this directory - perfmon doesn't show much activity on the HD though so I'm not sure if this crowded dir is the cause. Here is one important fact: I ran into this issue 2-3 months ago, couldn't figure it out, but I had a spare identical machine so I swapped them out (thought it was related to the machine), and now I have the same issue. Also, the computer will be stable if I turn off file sharing. So is the server just getting DoS'd by the test machines? I've never dealt with such an issue. Is instability in the server's OS common when getting DoS'd? Is there anything I can do to confirm this before telling the owners of the test machines to optimize their traffic? (I'm not sure what they'll be able to do). Is there something within Win2k8R2 that can balance the traffic across the two NICs? Any help would be appreciated. Update: Another thought - the drive with the share is RAID5 across 6 SCSI320 300GB HDs. They are near full capacity about 100GB from 1TB left. Could the amount of tiny files could be causing some weirdness with the parity in this array? I think I've read something about this in the past but I'm no expert on RAID.

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• File server share access intermittent/slow/machine unstable: win2kr2

  - by Jack B.

  I have a file server running Win2k8R2 on an older HP DL380G4. It has nothing set up on it other than file sharing. All drivers/firmware/updates installed. The file server is used as a dump for a bunch of test machines - so essentially a lot of small files are being written to it. It was working fine until it started showing the following symptoms: Shares became either very slow/intermittent or could not access them at all. Logging in the the server, you could use it like normal but windows would start freezing and eventually you had to hard reboot it because nothing was responsive. After rebooting, it would work fine for 20min-2hours and then degrade into this broken state again. Some info after investigation: HP Raid Config utility shows the Raid array as functioning properly (RAID5 btw). Event log shows a bunch of DoS attacks from the test machines, saying it has disconnected the connection a. AFAIK (not part of my job) the test machines haven't changed the way they log information to this server or the amount of them hasn't increased. b. Nothing is infected, this server was scanned fully, and the test machines are re-imaged almost daily. Nothing in performance monitor shows as anything being pegged at maximum (CPU/HD/Network/RAM) I installed MS Network Monitor and it is showing a lot of traffic The server was using one gigabit Ethernet connection, I connected the second one as well with the same results. Forgot to add - one of the commonly written to dirs on the share has over 16k subdirs in it, with a crapton of small files within those dirs. Some of the OS instability was slow access to the drive which has this directory - perfmon doesn't show much activity on the HD though so I'm not sure if this crowded dir is the cause. Here is one important fact: I ran into this issue 2-3 months ago, couldn't figure it out, but I had a spare identical machine so I swapped them out (thought it was related to the machine), and now I have the same issue. Also, the computer will be stable if I turn off file sharing. So is the server just getting DoS'd by the test machines? I've never dealt with such an issue. Is instability in the server's OS common when getting DoS'd? Is there anything I can do to confirm this before telling the owners of the test machines to optimize their traffic? (I'm not sure what they'll be able to do). Is there something within Win2k8R2 that can balance the traffic across the two NICs? Any help would be appreciated. Update: Another thought - the drive with the share is RAID5 across 6 SCSI320 300GB HDs. They are near full capacity about 100GB from 1TB left. Could the amount of tiny files could be causing some weirdness with the parity in this array? I think I've read something about this in the past but I'm no expert on RAID.

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• Ajax Control Toolkit December 2013 Release

  - by Stephen.Walther

  Today, we released a new version of the Ajax Control Toolkit that contains several important bug fixes and new features. The new release contains a new Tabs control that has been entirely rewritten in jQuery. You can download the December 2013 release of the Ajax Control Toolkit at http://Ajax.CodePlex.com. Alternatively, you can install the latest version directly from NuGet: The Ajax Control Toolkit and jQuery The Ajax Control Toolkit now contains two controls written with jQuery: the ToggleButton control and the Tabs control.  The goal is to rewrite the Ajax Control Toolkit to use jQuery instead of the Microsoft Ajax Library gradually over time. The motivation for rewriting the controls in the Ajax Control Toolkit to use jQuery is to modernize the toolkit. We want to continue to accept new controls written for the Ajax Control Toolkit contributed by the community. The community wants to use jQuery. We want to make it easy for the community to submit bug fixes. The community understands jQuery. Using the Ajax Control Toolkit with a Website that Already uses jQuery But what if you are already using jQuery in your website?  Will adding the Ajax Control Toolkit to your website break your existing website?  No, and here is why. The Ajax Control Toolkit uses jQuery.noConflict() to avoid conflicting with an existing version of jQuery in a page.  The version of jQuery that the Ajax Control Toolkit uses is represented by a variable named actJQuery.  You can use actJQuery side-by-side with an existing version of jQuery in a page without conflict.Imagine, for example, that you add jQuery to an ASP.NET page using a <script> tag like this: <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="WebForm1.aspx.cs" Inherits="TestACTDec2013.WebForm1" %> <!DOCTYPE html> <html > <head runat="server"> <title></title> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <div> <script src="Scripts/jquery-2.0.3.min.js"></script> <ajaxToolkit:ToolkitScriptManager runat="server" /> <ajaxToolkit:TabContainer runat="server"> <ajaxToolkit:TabPanel runat="server"> <HeaderTemplate> Tab 1 </HeaderTemplate> <ContentTemplate> <h1>First Tab</h1> </ContentTemplate> </ajaxToolkit:TabPanel> <ajaxToolkit:TabPanel runat="server"> <HeaderTemplate> Tab 2 </HeaderTemplate> <ContentTemplate> <h1>Second Tab</h1> </ContentTemplate> </ajaxToolkit:TabPanel> </ajaxToolkit:TabContainer> </div> </form> </body> </html> The page above uses the Ajax Control Toolkit Tabs control (TabContainer and TabPanel controls).  The Tabs control uses the version of jQuery that is currently bundled with the Ajax Control Toolkit (jQuery version 1.9.1). The page above also includes a <script> tag that references jQuery version 2.0.3.  You might need that particular version of jQuery, for example, to use a particular jQuery plugin. The two versions of jQuery in the page do not create a conflict. This fact can be demonstrated by entering the following two commands in the JavaScript console window: actJQuery.fn.jquery $.fn.jquery Typing actJQuery.fn.jquery will display the version of jQuery used by the Ajax Control Toolkit and typing $.fn.jquery (or jQuery.fn.jquery) will show the version of jQuery used by other jQuery plugins in the page.      Preventing jQuery from Loading Twice So by default, the Ajax Control Toolkit will not conflict with any existing version of jQuery used in your application. However, this does mean that if you are already using jQuery in your application then jQuery will be loaded twice. For performance reasons, you might want to avoid loading the jQuery library twice. By taking advantage of the <remove> element in the AjaxControlToolkit.config file, you can prevent the Ajax Control Toolkit from loading its version of jQuery. <ajaxControlToolkit> <scripts> <remove name="jQuery.jQuery.js" /> </scripts> <controlBundles> <controlBundle> <control name="TabContainer" /> <control name="TabPanel" /> </controlBundle> </controlBundles> </ajaxControlToolkit> Be careful here:  the name of the script being removed – jQuery.jQuery.js – is case-sensitive. If you remove jQuery then it is your responsibility to add the exact same version of jQuery back into your application.  You can add jQuery back using a <script> tag like this: <script src="Scripts/jquery-1.9.1.min.js"></script>     Make sure that you add the <script> tag before the server-side <form> tag or the Ajax Control Toolkit won’t detect the presence of jQuery. Alternatively, you can use the ToolkitScriptManager like this: <ajaxToolkit:ToolkitScriptManager runat="server"> <Scripts> <asp:ScriptReference Name="jQuery.jQuery.js" /> </Scripts> </ajaxToolkit:ToolkitScriptManager> The Ajax Control Toolkit is tested against the particular version of jQuery that is bundled with the Ajax Control Toolkit. Currently, the Ajax Control Toolkit uses jQuery version 1.9.1. If you attempt to use a different version of jQuery with the Ajax Control Toolkit then you will get the exception jQuery 1.9.1 is required in your JavaScript console window: If you need to use a different version of jQuery in the same page as the Ajax Control Toolkit then you should not use the <remove> element. Instead, allow the Ajax Control Toolkit to load its version of jQuery side-by-side with the other version of jQuery. Lots of Bug Fixes As usual, we implemented several important bug fixes with this release. The bug fixes concerned the following three controls: Tabs control – In the course of rewriting the Tabs control to use jQuery, we fixed several bugs related to the Tabs control. AjaxFileUpload control – We resolved an issue concerning the AjaxFileUpload and the TMP directory. HTMLEditor control – We updated the HTMLEditor control to use the new Ajax Control Toolkit bundling and minification framework. Summary I would like to thank the Superexpert team for their hard work on this release. Many long hours of coding and testing went into making this release possible.

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• From Binary to Data Structures

  - by Cédric Menzi

  Table of Contents Introduction PE file format and COFF header COFF file header BaseCoffReader Byte4ByteCoffReader UnsafeCoffReader ManagedCoffReader Conclusion History This article is also available on CodeProject Introduction Sometimes, you want to parse well-formed binary data and bring it into your objects to do some dirty stuff with it. In the Windows world most data structures are stored in special binary format. Either we call a WinApi function or we want to read from special files like images, spool files, executables or may be the previously announced Outlook Personal Folders File. Most specifications for these files can be found on the MSDN Libarary: Open Specification In my example, we are going to get the COFF (Common Object File Format) file header from a PE (Portable Executable). The exact specification can be found here: PECOFF PE file format and COFF header Before we start we need to know how this file is formatted. The following figure shows an overview of the Microsoft PE executable format. Source: Microsoft Our goal is to get the PE header. As we can see, the image starts with a MS-DOS 2.0 header with is not important for us. From the documentation we can read "...After the MS DOS stub, at the file offset specified at offset 0x3c, is a 4-byte...". With this information we know our reader has to jump to location 0x3c and read the offset to the signature. The signature is always 4 bytes that ensures that the image is a PE file. The signature is: PE\0\0. To prove this we first seek to the offset 0x3c, read if the file consist the signature. So we need to declare some constants, because we do not want magic numbers.   private const int PeSignatureOffsetLocation = 0x3c; private const int PeSignatureSize = 4; private const string PeSignatureContent = "PE";   Then a method for moving the reader to the correct location to read the offset of signature. With this method we always move the underlining Stream of the BinaryReader to the start location of the PE signature.   private void SeekToPeSignature(BinaryReader br) { // seek to the offset for the PE signagure br.BaseStream.Seek(PeSignatureOffsetLocation, SeekOrigin.Begin); // read the offset int offsetToPeSig = br.ReadInt32(); // seek to the start of the PE signature br.BaseStream.Seek(offsetToPeSig, SeekOrigin.Begin); }   Now, we can check if it is a valid PE image by reading of the next 4 byte contains the content PE.   private bool IsValidPeSignature(BinaryReader br) { // read 4 bytes to get the PE signature byte[] peSigBytes = br.ReadBytes(PeSignatureSize); // convert it to a string and trim \0 at the end of the content string peContent = Encoding.Default.GetString(peSigBytes).TrimEnd('\0'); // check if PE is in the content return peContent.Equals(PeSignatureContent); }   With this basic functionality we have a good base reader class to try the different methods of parsing the COFF file header. COFF file header The COFF header has the following structure: Offset Size Field 0 2 Machine 2 2 NumberOfSections 4 4 TimeDateStamp 8 4 PointerToSymbolTable 12 4 NumberOfSymbols 16 2 SizeOfOptionalHeader 18 2 Characteristics If we translate this table to code, we get something like this:   [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential, CharSet = CharSet.Unicode)] public struct CoffHeader { public MachineType Machine; public ushort NumberOfSections; public uint TimeDateStamp; public uint PointerToSymbolTable; public uint NumberOfSymbols; public ushort SizeOfOptionalHeader; public Characteristic Characteristics; } BaseCoffReader All readers do the same thing, so we go to the patterns library in our head and see that Strategy pattern or Template method pattern is sticked out in the bookshelf. I have decided to take the template method pattern in this case, because the Parse() should handle the IO for all implementations and the concrete parsing should done in its derived classes.   public CoffHeader Parse() { using (var br = new BinaryReader(File.Open(_fileName, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.Read))) { SeekToPeSignature(br); if (!IsValidPeSignature(br)) { throw new BadImageFormatException(); } return ParseInternal(br); } } protected abstract CoffHeader ParseInternal(BinaryReader br);   First we open the BinaryReader, seek to the PE signature then we check if it contains a valid PE signature and rest is done by the derived implementations. Byte4ByteCoffReader The first solution is using the BinaryReader. It is the general way to get the data. We only need to know which order, which data-type and its size. If we read byte for byte we could comment out the first line in the CoffHeader structure, because we have control about the order of the member assignment.   protected override CoffHeader ParseInternal(BinaryReader br) { CoffHeader coff = new CoffHeader(); coff.Machine = (MachineType)br.ReadInt16(); coff.NumberOfSections = (ushort)br.ReadInt16(); coff.TimeDateStamp = br.ReadUInt32(); coff.PointerToSymbolTable = br.ReadUInt32(); coff.NumberOfSymbols = br.ReadUInt32(); coff.SizeOfOptionalHeader = (ushort)br.ReadInt16(); coff.Characteristics = (Characteristic)br.ReadInt16(); return coff; }   If the structure is as short as the COFF header here and the specification will never changed, there is probably no reason to change the strategy. But if a data-type will be changed, a new member will be added or ordering of member will be changed the maintenance costs of this method are very high. UnsafeCoffReader Another way to bring the data into this structure is using a "magically" unsafe trick. As above, we know the layout and order of the data structure. Now, we need the StructLayout attribute, because we have to ensure that the .NET Runtime allocates the structure in the same order as it is specified in the source code. We also need to enable "Allow unsafe code (/unsafe)" in the project's build properties. Then we need to add the following constructor to the CoffHeader structure.   [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential, CharSet = CharSet.Unicode)] public struct CoffHeader { public CoffHeader(byte[] data) { unsafe { fixed (byte* packet = &data[0]) { this = *(CoffHeader*)packet; } } } }   The "magic" trick is in the statement: this = *(CoffHeader*)packet;. What happens here? We have a fixed size of data somewhere in the memory and because a struct in C# is a value-type, the assignment operator = copies the whole data of the structure and not only the reference. To fill the structure with data, we need to pass the data as bytes into the CoffHeader structure. This can be achieved by reading the exact size of the structure from the PE file.   protected override CoffHeader ParseInternal(BinaryReader br) { return new CoffHeader(br.ReadBytes(Marshal.SizeOf(typeof(CoffHeader)))); }   This solution is the fastest way to parse the data and bring it into the structure, but it is unsafe and it could introduce some security and stability risks. ManagedCoffReader In this solution we are using the same approach of the structure assignment as above. But we need to replace the unsafe part in the constructor with the following managed part:   [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential, CharSet = CharSet.Unicode)] public struct CoffHeader { public CoffHeader(byte[] data) { IntPtr coffPtr = IntPtr.Zero; try { int size = Marshal.SizeOf(typeof(CoffHeader)); coffPtr = Marshal.AllocHGlobal(size); Marshal.Copy(data, 0, coffPtr, size); this = (CoffHeader)Marshal.PtrToStructure(coffPtr, typeof(CoffHeader)); } finally { Marshal.FreeHGlobal(coffPtr); } } }     Conclusion We saw that we can parse well-formed binary data to our data structures using different approaches. The first is probably the clearest way, because we know each member and its size and ordering and we have control about the reading the data for each member. But if add member or the structure is going change by some reason, we need to change the reader. The two other solutions use the approach of the structure assignment. In the unsafe implementation we need to compile the project with the /unsafe option. We increase the performance, but we get some security risks.

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• WiX 3 Tutorial: Generating file/directory fragments with Heat.exe

  - by Mladen Prajdic

  In previous posts I’ve shown you our SuperForm test application solution structure and how the main wxs and wxi include file look like. In this post I’ll show you how to automate inclusion of files to install into your build process. For our SuperForm application we have a single exe to install. But in the real world we have 10s or 100s of different files from dll’s to resource files like pictures. It all depends on what kind of application you’re building. Writing a directory structure for so many files by hand is out of the question. What we need is an automated way to create this structure. Enter Heat.exe. Heat is a command line utility to harvest a file, directory, Visual Studio project, IIS website or performance counters. You might ask what harvesting means? Harvesting is converting a source (file, directory, …) into a component structure saved in a WiX fragment (a wxs) file. There are 2 options you can use: Create a static wxs fragment with Heat and include it in your project. The pro of this is that you can add or remove components by hand. The con is that you have to do the pro part by hand. Automation always beats manual labor. Run heat command line utility in a pre-build event of your WiX project. I prefer this way. By always recreating the whole fragment you don’t have to worry about missing any new files you add. The con of this is that you’ll include files that you otherwise might not want to. There is no perfect solution so pick one and deal with it. I prefer using the second way. A neat way of overcoming the con of the second option is to have a post-build event on your main application project (SuperForm.MainApp in our case) to copy the files needed to be installed in a special location and have the Heat.exe read them from there. I haven’t set this up for this tutorial and I’m simply including all files from the default SuperForm.MainApp \bin directory. Remember how we created a System Environment variable called SuperFormFilesDir? This is where we’ll use it for the first time. The command line text that you have to put into the pre-build event of your WiX project looks like this: "$(WIX)bin\heat.exe" dir "$(SuperFormFilesDir)" -cg SuperFormFiles -gg -scom -sreg -sfrag -srd -dr INSTALLLOCATION -var env.SuperFormFilesDir -out "$(ProjectDir)Fragments\FilesFragment.wxs" After you install WiX you’ll get the WIX environment variable. In the pre/post-build events environment variables are referenced like this: $(WIX). By using this you don’t have to think about the installation path of the WiX. Remember: for 32 bit applications Program files folder is named differently between 32 and 64 bit systems. $(ProjectDir) is obviously the path to your project and is a Visual Studio built in variable. You can view all Heat.exe options by running it without parameters but I’ll explain some that stick out the most. dir "$(SuperFormFilesDir)": tell Heat to harvest the whole directory at the set location. That is the location we’ve set in our System Environment variable. –cg SuperFormFiles: the name of the Component group that will be created. This name is included in out Feature tag as is seen in the previous post. -dr INSTALLLOCATION: the directory reference this fragment will fall under. You can see the top level directory structure in the previous post. -var env.SuperFormFilesDir: the name of the variable that will replace the SourceDir text that would otherwise appear in the fragment file. -out "$(ProjectDir)Fragments\FilesFragment.wxs": the full path and name under which the fragment file will be saved. If you have source control you have to include the FilesFragment.wxs into your project but remove its source control binding. The auto generated FilesFragment.wxs for our test app looks like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><Wix xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/2006/wi"> <Fragment> <ComponentGroup Id="SuperFormFiles"> <ComponentRef Id="cmp5BB40DB822CAA7C5295227894A07502E" /> <ComponentRef Id="cmpCFD331F5E0E471FC42A1334A1098E144" /> <ComponentRef Id="cmp4614DD03D8974B7C1FC39E7B82F19574" /> <ComponentRef Id="cmpDF166522884E2454382277128BD866EC" /> </ComponentGroup> </Fragment> <Fragment> <DirectoryRef Id="INSTALLLOCATION"> <Component Id="cmp5BB40DB822CAA7C5295227894A07502E" Guid="{117E3352-2F0C-4E19-AD96-03D354751B8D}"> <File Id="filDCA561ABF8964292B6BC0D0726E8EFAD" KeyPath="yes" Source="$(env.SuperFormFilesDir)\SuperForm.MainApp.exe" /> </Component> <Component Id="cmpCFD331F5E0E471FC42A1334A1098E144" Guid="{369A2347-97DD-45CA-A4D1-62BB706EA329}"> <File Id="filA9BE65B2AB60F3CE41105364EDE33D27" KeyPath="yes" Source="$(env.SuperFormFilesDir)\SuperForm.MainApp.pdb" /> </Component> <Component Id="cmp4614DD03D8974B7C1FC39E7B82F19574" Guid="{3443EBE2-168F-4380-BC41-26D71A0DB1C7}"> <File Id="fil5102E75B91F3DAFA6F70DA57F4C126ED" KeyPath="yes" Source="$(env.SuperFormFilesDir)\SuperForm.MainApp.vshost.exe" /> </Component> <Component Id="cmpDF166522884E2454382277128BD866EC" Guid="{0C0F3D18-56EB-41FE-B0BD-FD2C131572DB}"> <File Id="filF7CA5083B4997E1DEC435554423E675C" KeyPath="yes" Source="$(env.SuperFormFilesDir)\SuperForm.MainApp.vshost.exe.manifest" /> </Component> </DirectoryRef> </Fragment></Wix> The $(env.SuperFormFilesDir) will be replaced at build time with the directory where the files to be installed are located. There is nothing too complicated about this. In the end it turns out that this sort of automation is great! There are a few other ways that Heat.exe can compose the wxs file but this is the one I prefer. It just seems the clearest. Play with its options to see what can it do. It’s one awesome little tool.   WiX 3 tutorial by Mladen Prajdic navigation WiX 3 Tutorial: Solution/Project structure and Dev resources WiX 3 Tutorial: Understanding main wxs and wxi file WiX 3 Tutorial: Generating file/directory fragments with Heat.exe

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• Week in Geek: USDA Chooses Microsoft for Cloud Services Edition

  - by Asian Angel

  This week we learned how to create geeky LED holiday lights with old bottles, dig deeper in Windows Defrag via the command prompt, use Google Chrome’s drag/drop feature to upload files easier, find great gift recommendations by looking through the How-To Geek holiday gift guide, and have fun adding Merry Christmas fonts to our computers. Photo by ntr23. Random Geek Links It has been a busy week, so we have extra news link goodness with information that is good for you to know. USDA making the move to Microsoft The U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced that it has chosen Microsoft to host things like e-mail, instant messaging, and collaboration through the software giant’s Business Productivity Online Suite. Google says it was cut off from USDA project bid Google is claiming that it was not given a chance to bid on a cloud-computing project for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, for which the contract was awarded to rival Microsoft. Apache is being forced into a Java Fork When Oracle rolled over Apache and Google’s objections to its Java plans in December, the scene was set for Apache to leave and, eventually, force a Java code fork. Tumblr explains daylong outage After experiencing an outage that started on Sunday afternoon and stretched through most of the day yesterday, Tumblr has explained what happened. Google demos Chrome OS, launches pilot program During a press briefing this week in San Francisco, Google launched the Chrome application store and demonstrated Chrome OS, its browser-centric netbook operating system. Don’t expect Spotify in U.S. this holiday season As of last week, Spotify had yet to sign a single licensing deal with a major label, after spending more than a year negotiating, multiple music sources told CNET. December 2010 Patch Tuesday will come with most bulletins ever According to the Microsoft Security Response Center, Microsoft will issue 17 Security Bulletins addressing 40 vulnerabilities on Tuesday, December 14. It will also host a webcast to address customer questions the following day. Hacker plants back door in Symbian firmware Indian hacker Atul Alex has had a look at the firmware for Symbian S60 smartphones and come up with a back door for it. PC quarantines raise tough complexities The concept of quarantining PCs to prevent widespread infection is “interesting, but difficult to implement, with far too many problems”, said security experts. Symantec: DDoS attacks hard to defend It has surfaced that the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on Visa and MasterCard Web sites on Wednesday were carried out by a toolkit known as low orbit ion cannon (LOIC). Web Sockets and the risks of unfinished standards Enthusiasm for a promising new standard called Web Sockets has quickly cooled in some quarters as a potential security problem led some browser makers to hastily postpone support. Internet Explorer 9 to get tracking protection Microsoft is making changes to Internet Explorer 9’s security features that will better enable users to keep sites from tracking their activity across browsing sessions. NASA sold PCs with sensitive data NASA failed to remove sensitive data from computers that it sold, according to an audit report released this week. Cybercrooks create fake Amazon receipts The bad guys have created yet another online scam, this one involving fake Amazon receipts. World of Warcraft character move fees waived Until December 22, Blizzard will allow free realm transfers from 25 highly populated servers to alleviate log-in queues or performance issues. (The free transfers are one-way and one-time only.) SpaceX Dragon reaches orbit atop a Falcon with a fiery tail The Space Exploration Technologies corporation has become the first nongovernmental entity to put a vehicle into low Earth orbit. Geek Video of the Week If birds have wings, then why are the Angry Birds using slingshots? Photo by Dorkly Bits. Wait… Birds have Wings, Why are the Angry Ones Using Slingshots? Sysadmin Geek Tips How To Setup Email Alerts on Linux Using Gmail or SMTP Linux machines may require administrative intervention in countless ways, but without manually logging into them how would you know about it? Here’s how to setup emails to get notified when your machines want some tender love and attention. Random TinyHacker Links Red Panda Webcam Support Firefox and the Knoxville Zoo’s Red Panda program. Christmas Icons (Icons we like) Superb set of holiday icons by lgp85 at deviantArt. Download the .zip and use as .png or convert to .ico at Convertico.com or with tiny app Imagicon. Super User Questions Enjoy reading the great answers to this week’s popular questions from Super User Useful USB boot disks? DVD/CD burning .zip: is it more reliable, faster, longer lasting to burn a zip of files rather than the files as a folder? What are other ways to backup my files if I do not have an external drive? Anti virus what is the difference between these all? How can I block all Facebook elements/content? How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Have you had a busy week between work and preparing for the holidays? Get caught up on your HTG reading with our hottest articles of the week. 20 Windows Keyboard Shortcuts You Might Not Know The 50 Best Registry Hacks that Make Windows Better LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology HTG Explains: Which Linux File System Should You Choose? How to Use and Customize Google Chrome Web Apps One Year Ago on How-To Geek This week’s batch of retro geeky goodness is all about customizing Windows 7. ClassicShell Adds Classic Start Menu and Explorer Features to Windows 7 Get an Aero-Styled Classic Start Menu in Windows 7 Customize the Windows 7 Logon Screen Get the Classic Style Network Activity Indicator Back in Windows 7 How To Enable Check Boxes for Items In Windows 7 The Geek Note We would like you to join us in welcoming Jason Fitzpatrick to the writing staff here at How-To Geek. He started with us this past week, so take some time to read through his articles about the Wii, Kindle, & PlayStation 2 Peripherals and leave a friendly comment to say “Hi”! Got a great tip to share? Make sure to send it in to us at [email protected]. Photo by real00. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The 50 Best Registry Hacks that Make Windows Better The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like) LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor Our Favorite Tech: What We’re Thankful For at How-To Geek Settle into Orbit with the Voyage Theme for Chrome and Iron Awesome Safari Compass Icons Set Escape from the Exploding Planet Wallpaper Move Your Tumblr Blog to WordPress Pytask is an Easy to Use To-Do List Manager for Your Ubuntu System Snowy Christmas House Personas Theme for Firefox

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• Oracle Enhances Oracle Social Cloud with Next-Generation User Experience

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Today’s enterprise must meet the technology standards of today’s consumer. According to a recent IDG Enterprise report, enterprises that invest in consumerized, easy-to-use technologies experience a 56 percent increase in employee productivity and a 46 percent increase in customer satisfaction. In order to deliver that simple and intuitive experience across even the most advanced social management capabilities, Oracle today introduced Social Station, an innovative new workspace within Oracle Social Cloud’s Social Relationship Management (SRM) platform. With Social Station, users benefit from a personalized and intuitive user experience that helps increase both the productivity and performance of social business practices. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} News Facts Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Oracle today introduced Social Station, an innovative new workspace within Oracle Social Cloud’s Social Relationship Management (SRM) platform that helps organizations socially enable the way they do business. With an advanced yet intuitive user interface, Social Station delivers a compelling user experience that improves productivity and helps users more easily deliver on social objectives. To help users quickly and easily build out and configure their social workspaces, Social Station provides drag-and-drop capabilities that allow users to personalize their workspace with different social modules. With a new Custom Analytics module that mixes and matches more than 120 metrics with thousands of customizable reporting options, users can customize their view of social data and access constantly refreshed updates that support real-time understanding. One-click sharing capabilities and annotation functionality within the new Custom Analytics module also drives productivity by improving sharing and collaboration across teams, departments, and executives. Multiview layout capabilities further allows visibility into social insights by offering users the flexibility to monitor conversations by network, stream, metric, graph type, date range, and relative time period. Social Station also includes an Enhanced Calendar module that provides a clear visual representation of content, posts, networks, and views, helping users easily and efficiently understand information and toggle between various functions and views. To support different user personas and social business needs, Oracle plans to continue building out Social Station with additional modules, including content curation, influencer engagement, and command center creation. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• Using Unity – Part 1

  - by nmarun

  I have been going through implementing some IoC pattern using Unity and so I decided to share my learnings (I know that’s not an English word, but you get the point). Ok, so I have an ASP.net project named ProductWeb and a class library called ProductModel. In the model library, I have a class called Product: 1: public class Product 2: { 3: public string Name { get; set; } 4: public string Description { get; set; } 5:  6: public Product() 7: { 8: Name = "iPad"; 9: Description = "Not just a reader!"; 10: } 11:  12: public string WriteProductDetails() 13: { 14: return string.Format("Name: {0} Description: {1}", Name, Description); 15: } 16: } In the Page_Load event of the default.aspx, I’ll need something like: 1: Product product = new Product(); 2: productDetailsLabel.Text = product.WriteProductDetails(); Now, let’s go ‘Unity’fy this application. I assume you have all the bits for the pattern. If not, get it from here. I found this schematic representation of Unity pattern from the above link. This image might not make much sense to you now, but as we proceed, things will get better. The first step to implement the Inversion of Control pattern is to create interfaces that your types will implement. An IProduct interface is added to the ProductModel project. 1: public interface IProduct 2: { 3: string WriteProductDetails(); 4: } Let’s make our Product class to implement the IProduct interface. The application will compile and run as before despite the changes made. Add the following references to your web project: Microsoft.Practices.Unity Microsoft.Practices.Unity.Configuration Microsoft.Practices.Unity.StaticFactory Microsoft.Practices.ObjectBuilder2 We need to add a few lines to the web.config file. The line below tells what version of Unity pattern we’ll be using. 1: <configSections> 2: <section name="unity" type="Microsoft.Practices.Unity.Configuration.UnityConfigurationSection, Microsoft.Practices.Unity.Configuration, Version=1.2.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/> 3: </configSections> Add another block with the same name as the section name declared above – ‘unity’. 1: <unity> 2: <typeAliases> 3: <!--Custom object types--> 4: <typeAlias alias="IProduct" type="ProductModel.IProduct, ProductModel"/> 5: <typeAlias alias="Product" type="ProductModel.Product, ProductModel"/> 6: </typeAliases> 7: <containers> 8: <container name="unityContainer"> 9: <types> 10: <type type="IProduct" mapTo="Product"/> 11: </types> 12: </container> 13: </containers> 14: </unity> From the Unity Configuration schematic shown above, you see that the ‘unity’ block has a ‘typeAliases’ and a ‘containers’ segment. The typeAlias element gives a ‘short-name’ for a type. This ‘short-name’ can be used to point to this type any where in the configuration file (web.config in our case, but all this information could be coming from an external xml file as well). The container element holds all the mapping information. This container is referenced through its name attribute in the code and you can have multiple of these container elements in the containers segment. The ‘type’ element in line 10 basically says: ‘When Unity requests to resolve the alias IProduct, return an instance of whatever the short-name of Product points to’. This is the most basic piece of Unity pattern and all of this is accomplished purely through configuration. So, in future you have a change in your model, all you need to do is - implement IProduct on the new model class and - either add a typeAlias for the new type and point the mapTo attribute to the new alias declared - or modify the mapTo attribute of the type element to point to the new alias (as the case may be). Now for the calling code. It’s a good idea to store your unity container details in the Application cache, as this is rarely bound to change and also adds for better performance. The Global.asax.cs file comes for our rescue: 1: protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) 2: { 3: // create and populate a new Unity container from configuration 4: IUnityContainer unityContainer = new UnityContainer(); 5: UnityConfigurationSection section = (UnityConfigurationSection)ConfigurationManager.GetSection("unity"); 6: section.Containers["unityContainer"].Configure(unityContainer); 7: Application["UnityContainer"] = unityContainer; 8: } 9:  10: protected void Application_End(object sender, EventArgs e) 11: { 12: Application["UnityContainer"] = null; 13: } All this says is: create an instance of UnityContainer() and read the ‘unity’ section from the configSections segment of the web.config file. Then get the container named ‘unityContainer’ and store it in the Application cache. In my code-behind file, I’ll make use of this UnityContainer to create an instance of the Product type. 1: public partial class _Default : Page 2: { 3: private IUnityContainer unityContainer; 4: protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) 5: { 6: unityContainer = Application["UnityContainer"] as IUnityContainer; 7: if (unityContainer == null) 8: { 9: productDetailsLabel.Text = "ERROR: Unity Container not populated in Global.asax.<p />"; 10: } 11: else 12: { 13: IProduct productInstance = unityContainer.Resolve<IProduct>(); 14: productDetailsLabel.Text = productInstance.WriteProductDetails(); 15: } 16: } 17: } Looking the ‘else’ block, I’m asking the unityContainer object to resolve the IProduct type. All this does, is to look at the matching type in the container, read its mapTo attribute value, get the full name from the alias and create an instance of the Product class. Fabulous!! I’ll go more in detail in the next blog. The code for this blog can be found here.

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• Mulit-tenant ASP.NET MVC – Controllers

  - by zowens

  Part I – Introduction Part II – Foundation   The time has come to talk about controllers in a multi-tenant ASP.NET MVC architecture. This is actually the most critical design decision you will make when dealing with multi-tenancy with MVC. In my design, I took into account the design goals I mentioned in the introduction about inversion of control and what a tenant is to my design. Be aware that this is only one way to achieve multi-tenant controllers.   The Premise MvcEx (which is a sample written by Rob Ashton) utilizes dynamic controllers. Essentially a controller is “dynamic” in that multiple action results can be placed in different “controllers” with the same name. This approach is a bit too complicated for my design. I wanted to stick with plain old inheritance when dealing with controllers. The basic premise of my controller design is that my main host defines a set of universal controllers. It is the responsibility of the tenant to decide if the tenant would like to utilize these core controllers. This can be done either by straight usage of the controller or inheritance for extension of the functionality defined by the controller. The controller is resolved by a StructureMap container that is attached to the tenant, as discussed in Part II.   Controller Resolution I have been thinking about two different ways to resolve controllers with StructureMap. One way is to use named instances. This is a really easy way to simply pull the controller right out of the container without a lot of fuss. I ultimately chose not to use this approach. The reason for this decision is to ensure that the controllers are named properly. If a controller has a different named instance that the controller type, then the resolution has a significant disconnect and there are no guarantees. The final approach, the one utilized by the sample, is to simply pull all controller types and correlate the type with a controller name. This has a bit of a application start performance disadvantage, but is significantly more approachable for maintainability. For example, if I wanted to go back and add a “ControllerName” attribute, I would just have to change the ControllerFactory to suit my needs.   The Code The container factory that I have built is actually pretty simple. That’s really all we need. The most significant method is the GetControllersFor method. This method makes the model from the Container and determines all the concrete types for IController.  The thing you might notice is that this doesn’t depend on tenants, but rather containers. You could easily use this controller factory for an application that doesn’t utilize multi-tenancy. public class ContainerControllerFactory : IControllerFactory { private readonly ThreadSafeDictionary<IContainer, IDictionary<string, Type>> typeCache; public ContainerControllerFactory(IContainerResolver resolver) { Ensure.Argument.NotNull(resolver, "resolver"); this.ContainerResolver = resolver; this.typeCache = new ThreadSafeDictionary<IContainer, IDictionary<string, Type>>(); } public IContainerResolver ContainerResolver { get; private set; } public virtual IController CreateController(RequestContext requestContext, string controllerName) { var controllerType = this.GetControllerType(requestContext, controllerName); if (controllerType == null) return null; var controller = this.ContainerResolver.Resolve(requestContext).GetInstance(controllerType) as IController; // ensure the action invoker is a ContainerControllerActionInvoker if (controller != null && controller is Controller && !((controller as Controller).ActionInvoker is ContainerControllerActionInvoker)) (controller as Controller).ActionInvoker = new ContainerControllerActionInvoker(this.ContainerResolver); return controller; } public void ReleaseController(IController controller) { if (controller != null && controller is IDisposable) ((IDisposable)controller).Dispose(); } internal static IEnumerable<Type> GetControllersFor(IContainer container) { Ensure.Argument.NotNull(container); return container.Model.InstancesOf<IController>().Select(x => x.ConcreteType).Distinct(); } protected virtual Type GetControllerType(RequestContext requestContext, string controllerName) { Ensure.Argument.NotNull(requestContext, "requestContext"); Ensure.Argument.NotNullOrEmpty(controllerName, "controllerName"); var container = this.ContainerResolver.Resolve(requestContext); var typeDictionary = this.typeCache.GetOrAdd(container, () => GetControllersFor(container).ToDictionary(x => ControllerFriendlyName(x.Name))); Type found = null; if (typeDictionary.TryGetValue(ControllerFriendlyName(controllerName), out found)) return found; return null; } private static string ControllerFriendlyName(string value) { return (value ?? string.Empty).ToLowerInvariant().Without("controller"); } } One thing to note about my implementation is that we do not use namespaces that can be utilized in the default ASP.NET MVC controller factory. This is something that I don’t use and have no desire to implement and test. The reason I am not using namespaces in this situation is because each tenant has its own namespaces and the routing would not make sense in this case.   Because we are using IoC, dependencies are automatically injected into the constructor. For example, a tenant container could implement it’s own IRepository and a controller could be defined in the “main” project. The IRepository from the tenant would be injected into the main project’s controller. This is quite a useful feature.   Again, the source code is on GitHub here.   Up Next Up next is the view resolution. This is a complicated issue, so be prepared. I hope that you have found this series useful. If you have any questions about my implementation so far, send me an email or DM me on Twitter. I have had a lot of great conversations about multi-tenancy so far and I greatly appreciate the feedback!

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, February 22, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, February 22, 2010New ProjectsAVDB: System to keep track of orders and the inventory of televisions, DVDs, VCRs etcBooky: Booky is an online Bookmark Management Tool. Gear Up for Lord of the Rings Online (lotro): Windows utility for checking what your LOTRO character currently has equipped and figuring out gear you should get to improve your stats.GotSharp Extensions: GotSharp Extensions is a set of helpful classes and extension methods that can make your coding experience easier and cleaner. Halfwit: A minimalist WPF Twitter client.HOA Starter Kit: A community subdivision website starter kit. First draft.Lua For Irony: Project to define the Lua language using the Irony (http://irony.codeplex.com/) development kit. This work is based heavily on the work done for V...MimeCloud: Scalable .NET Digital Asset & Media Management: MimeCloud is a scalable digital asset library & media management toolset. Founded by Alex Norcliffe and Peter Miller Written by people who have b...Parallel Mandelbrot Set solver: Solving the Mandelbrot set using the Parallel class in .NET 4.0. Showing the resulting image in a WPF application. The solution file requires VS 2010.Pomogad - Pomodoro Windows Gadget: Você usa Pomodoro Technique? Não sabe o que é? Veja aqui http://www.pomodorotechnique.com Agora que você já sabe, que tal usar essa técnica? E p...PostCrap - flyweight .NET AOP post compiler: PostCrap is a flyweight attribute based aspect injection .NET post compiler It is written in C# and uses Mono.Cecil to modify assemblies and injec...Software + Service Reference Demo Kit: MS China Developer and Platform Evangelism team created an End-2-End demo for Software + Service. Yet Another SharePoint Tool: YEAST provides you with a simple to integrate approach to generating SharePoint solution packages as part of a Visual Studio project. Zen Coding Visual Studio Plugin: Zen Coding for Visual Studio is plugin for HTML and CSS hi-speed codingNew Releases.Net MSBuild Google Closure Compiler Task: .Net MSBuild Google Closure Compiler Task 1.1: - Corrected issue with regular expression source file and renamingdotNails: dotNails_0.5.9: NOTE - the latest source code has been moved to google code to take advantage of Mercurial source control - http://code.google.com/p/dotnails/sourc...EasyWFUnit: EasyWFUnit-2.2: Release 2.2 of EasyWFUnit, an extension library to support unit testing of Windows Workflow, includes a revised WinForm GUI Test Builder that utili...Fluent Ribbon Control Suite: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite BETA2 (for .NET 4.0RC): Includes Fluent.dll (with .pdb and .xml) and test application compiled with .NET 4.0 RC.FolderSize: FolderSize.Win32.1.0.3.0: FolderSize.Win32.1.0.3.0 A simple utility intended to be used to scan harddrives for the folders that take most place and display this to the user...Fusion Charts Free for SharePoint: 1.3: Fix release for issue #11833 : Feature Must Be Activated on Root of Web Application.GotSharp Extensions: 1.0: First release, containing only a few extension methods for the System.String and System.IO.Stream classes, and a Range utility class.Jeremy's Experimental Repository: FluentValidation with IoC Sample: Sample code for the blog post Using FluentValidation with an IoC containerMiniTwitter: 1.08: MiniTwitter 1.08 更新内容 修正 自動更新が CodePlex の変更で動いていなかった問題を修正 自動更新に失敗すると落ちるバグを修正 通知領域アイコン右クリックで表示されるメニューが消えないバグを修正 変更 ハッシュタグの抽出条件を変更 API のエンドポイ...MSTS Editors & Tools: Simis Editor v0.3: Simis Editor v0.3 Enabled Edit > Undo and Edit > Redo. Undoing/redoing back to last saved state is identified as saved (no prompt on exit, etc.)....Parallel Mandelbrot Set solver: Alpha 1: First releaseParallelTasks: ParallelTasks 2.0 beta1: ParallelTasks 2.0 is a total re-write of the original version. Featuring improved performance and stability and a more consistent API.Personal Expense Tracker: Personal Expense Tracker v0.1 beta: This is the first beta release. Please provide me with your feedback.PostCrap - flyweight .NET AOP post compiler: PostCrap 1.0 AOP source and binaries: PostCrap 1.0 source and binaries (the unit test project contains sample interceptor attributes for exception handling & logging)Protoforma | Tactica Adversa: Skilful 0.1.3.276: AlphaRawr: Rawr 2.3.10: - More improvements to the default filters - Further improvement on avoiding useless gem swaps from the Optimizer. - Normal/Heroic ICC items shou...Reusable Library: v1.0.2: A collection of reusable abstractions for enterprise application developer.Sem.Sync: 2010-02-21 - Synchronization Manager - Beta: This release is not tested very well, so you should use this version only to evaluate new features. - Changed way of handling source-ids in order ...Survey - web survey & form engine: Survey 1.1.0: Release Survey v. 1.1.0.0 Major changes: - layout & graphics completely overhauled - several technical changes & repairs (e.g. matrix question iss...Yet Another SharePoint Tool: Version 1: Version 1Zeta Resource Editor: Release 2010-02-21: New source code release.Most Popular ProjectsWBFS ManagerRawrAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)Image Resizer Powertoy Clone for WindowsASP.NETDotNetNuke® Community EditionMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesMost Active ProjectsDinnerNow.netRawrBlogEngine.NETNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleSharpyjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesSharePoint ContribInfoServicepatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryPHPExcel

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• Tips on installing Visual Studio 2010 SP1

  - by Jon Galloway

  Visual Studio SP1 went up on MSDN downloads (here) on March 8, and will be released publicly on March 10 here. Release announcements: Soma: Visual Studio 2010 enhancements Jason Zander: Announcing Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 I started on this post with tips on installing VS2010 SP1 when I realized I’ve been writing these up for Visual Studio and .NET framework SP releases for a while (e.g. VS2008 / .NET 3.5 SP1 post, VS2005 SP1 post). Looking back the years of Visual Studio SP installs (and remembering when we’d get up to SP6 for a Visual Studio release), I’m happy to see that it just keeps getting easier. Service Packs are a lot less finicky about requiring beta software to be uninstalled, install more quickly, and are just generally a lot less scary. If I can’t have a jetpack, at least my future provided me faster, easier service packs. Disclaimer: These tips are just general things I've picked up over the years. I don't have any inside knowledge here. If you see anything wrong, be sure to let me know in the comments. You may want to check the readme file before installing - it's short, and it's in that new-fangled HTML format. On with the tips! Before starting, uninstall Visual Studio features you don't use Visual Studio service packs (and other Microsoft service packs as well) install patches for the specific features you’ve got installed. This is a big reason to always do a custom install when you first install Visual Studio, but it’s not difficult to update your existing installation. Here’s the quick way to do that: Tap the windows key and type “add or remove programs” and press enter (or click on the “Add or remove programs” link if you must).   Type “Visual Studio 2010” in the search box in the upper right corner, click on the Visual Studio program (the one with the VS infinity looking logo) and click on Uninstall/Change. Click on Add or Remove Features The next part’s up to you – what features do you actually use? I’ve been doing primarily ASP.NET MVC development in C# lately, so I selected Visual C# and Visual Web Developer. Remember that you can install features later if needed, and can also install the express versions if you want. Selecting everything just because it’s there - or you paid for it – means that you install updates for everything, every time. When you’ve made your changes, click on the Update button to uninstall unused features. Shut down all instances of Visual Studio It probably goes without saying that you should close a program down before installing it, partly to avoid the file-in-use-reboot-after-install horror. Additional "hunch / works on my machine" quality tip: On one computer I saw a note in the setup log about Visual Studio a prompt for user input to close Visual Studio, although I never saw the prompt. Just to  be sure, I'd personally open up Task Manager and kill any devenv.exe processes I saw running, as it couldn't hurt. Use the web installer I use the Web Installers whenever possible. There’s no point in downloading the DVD unless you’re doing multiple installs or won’t have internet access. The DVD IS is 1.5GB, since it needs to be able to service every possible supported installation option on both x86 and x64. The web installer is 776 KB (smaller than calc.exe), so you can start the installation right away. Like other web installers, the real benefit is that it only installs the updates you need (hence the reason for step 1 – uninstalling unused components). Instead of 1.5GB, my download was roughly 530MB. If you’re installing from MSDN (this link takes you right to the Visual Studio installs), select the first one on the list: The first step in the installation process is to analyze the machine configuration and tell you what needs to be installed. Since I've trimmed down my features, that's a pretty short list. The time's not far off where I may not install SQL Server on my dev machines, just using SQL Server Compact - that would shorten the list further. When I hit next, you can see that the download size has shrunk considerably. When I start the install, note that the installation begins while other components are downloading - another benefit of the web install. On my mid-range desktop machine, the install took 25 minutes. What if it takes longer? According to Heath Stewart (Visual Studio installer guru), average SP1 installs take roughly 45 minutes. An installation which takes hours to complete may be a sign of a problem: see his post Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 installing for over 2 hours could be a sign of a problem. Why so long? Yes, even 25 minutes is a while. Heath's got another blog post explaining why the update can take longer than the initial install (see: A patch may take as long or longer to install than the target product) which explains all the additional steps and complexities a patch needs to deal with, as well as some mitigation steps that deployment authors can take to mitigate the impact. Other things to know about Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Installs over Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Beta That's nice. Previous Visual Studio versions did a number of annoying things when you installed SP's over beta's - fail with weird errors, get part way through and tell you needed to cancel and uninstall first, etc. I've installed this on two machines that had random beta stuff installed without tears. That Readme file you didn't read I mentioned the readme file earlier (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=210711 ). Some interesting things I picked up in there: 2.1.3. Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 installation may fail when a USB drive or other removeable drive is connected 2.1.4. Visual Studio must be restarted after Visual Studio 2010 SP1 tooling for SQL Server Compact (Compact) 4.0 is installed 2.2.1. If Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 is uninstalled, Visual Studio 2010 must be reinstalled to restore certain components 2.2.2. If Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 is uninstalled, Visual Studio 2010 must be reinstalled before SP1 can be installed again 2.4.3.1. Async CTP If you installed the pre-SP1 version of Async CTP but did not uninstall it before you installed Visual Studio 2010 SP1, then your computer will be in a state in which the version of the C# compiler in the .NET Framework does not match the C# compiler in Visual Studio. To resolve this issue: After you install Visual Studio 2010 SP1, reinstall the SP1 version of the Async CTP from here. Hardware acceleration for Visual Studio is disabled on Windows XP Visual Studio 2010 SP1 disables hardware acceleration when running on Windows XP (only on XP). You can turn it back on in the Visual Studio options, under Environment / General, as shown below. See Jason Zander's post titled Performance Troubleshooting Article and VS2010 SP1 Change.

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• C# 4: The Curious ConcurrentDictionary

  - by James Michael Hare

  In my previous post (here) I did a comparison of the new ConcurrentQueue versus the old standard of a System.Collections.Generic Queue with simple locking.  The results were exactly what I would have hoped, that the ConcurrentQueue was faster with multi-threading for most all situations.  In addition, concurrent collections have the added benefit that you can enumerate them even if they're being modified. So I set out to see what the improvements would be for the ConcurrentDictionary, would it have the same performance benefits as the ConcurrentQueue did?  Well, after running some tests and multiple tweaks and tunes, I have good and bad news. But first, let's look at the tests.  Obviously there's many things we can do with a dictionary.  One of the most notable uses, of course, in a multi-threaded environment is for a small, local in-memory cache.  So I set about to do a very simple simulation of a cache where I would create a test class that I'll just call an Accessor.  This accessor will attempt to look up a key in the dictionary, and if the key exists, it stops (i.e. a cache "hit").  However, if the lookup fails, it will then try to add the key and value to the dictionary (i.e. a cache "miss").  So here's the Accessor that will run the tests: 1: internal class Accessor 2: { 3: public int Hits { get; set; } 4: public int Misses { get; set; } 5: public Func<int, string> GetDelegate { get; set; } 6: public Action<int, string> AddDelegate { get; set; } 7: public int Iterations { get; set; } 8: public int MaxRange { get; set; } 9: public int Seed { get; set; } 10:  11: public void Access() 12: { 13: var randomGenerator = new Random(Seed); 14:  15: for (int i=0; i<Iterations; i++) 16: { 17: // give a wide spread so will have some duplicates and some unique 18: var target = randomGenerator.Next(1, MaxRange); 19:  20: // attempt to grab the item from the cache 21: var result = GetDelegate(target); 22:  23: // if the item doesn't exist, add it 24: if(result == null) 25: { 26: AddDelegate(target, target.ToString()); 27: Misses++; 28: } 29: else 30: { 31: Hits++; 32: } 33: } 34: } 35: } Note that so I could test different implementations, I defined a GetDelegate and AddDelegate that will call the appropriate dictionary methods to add or retrieve items in the cache using various techniques. So let's examine the three techniques I decided to test: Dictionary with mutex - Just your standard generic Dictionary with a simple lock construct on an internal object. Dictionary with ReaderWriterLockSlim - Same Dictionary, but now using a lock designed to let multiple readers access simultaneously and then locked when a writer needs access. ConcurrentDictionary - The new ConcurrentDictionary from System.Collections.Concurrent that is supposed to be optimized to allow multiple threads to access safely. So the approach to each of these is also fairly straight-forward.  Let's look at the GetDelegate and AddDelegate implementations for the Dictionary with mutex lock: 1: var addDelegate = (key,val) => 2: { 3: lock (_mutex) 4: { 5: _dictionary[key] = val; 6: } 7: }; 8: var getDelegate = (key) => 9: { 10: lock (_mutex) 11: { 12: string val; 13: return _dictionary.TryGetValue(key, out val) ? val : null; 14: } 15: }; Nothing new or fancy here, just your basic lock on a private object and then query/insert into the Dictionary. Now, for the Dictionary with ReadWriteLockSlim it's a little more complex: 1: var addDelegate = (key,val) => 2: { 3: _readerWriterLock.EnterWriteLock(); 4: _dictionary[key] = val; 5: _readerWriterLock.ExitWriteLock(); 6: }; 7: var getDelegate = (key) => 8: { 9: string val; 10: _readerWriterLock.EnterReadLock(); 11: if(!_dictionary.TryGetValue(key, out val)) 12: { 13: val = null; 14: } 15: _readerWriterLock.ExitReadLock(); 16: return val; 17: }; And finally, the ConcurrentDictionary, which since it does all it's own concurrency control, is remarkably elegant and simple: 1: var addDelegate = (key,val) => 2: { 3: _concurrentDictionary[key] = val; 4: }; 5: var getDelegate = (key) => 6: { 7: string s; 8: return _concurrentDictionary.TryGetValue(key, out s) ? s : null; 9: };                    Then, I set up a test harness that would simply ask the user for the number of concurrent Accessors to attempt to Access the cache (as specified in Accessor.Access() above) and then let them fly and see how long it took them all to complete.  Each of these tests was run with 10,000,000 cache accesses divided among the available Accessor instances.  All times are in milliseconds. 1: Dictionary with Mutex Locking 2: --------------------------------------------------- 3: Accessors Mostly Misses Mostly Hits 4: 1 7916 3285 5: 10 8293 3481 6: 100 8799 3532 7: 1000 8815 3584 8:  9:  10: Dictionary with ReaderWriterLockSlim Locking 11: --------------------------------------------------- 12: Accessors Mostly Misses Mostly Hits 13: 1 8445 3624 14: 10 11002 4119 15: 100 11076 3992 16: 1000 14794 4861 17:  18:  19: Concurrent Dictionary 20: --------------------------------------------------- 21: Accessors Mostly Misses Mostly Hits 22: 1 17443 3726 23: 10 14181 1897 24: 100 15141 1994 25: 1000 17209 2128 The first test I did across the board is the Mostly Misses category.  The mostly misses (more adds because data requested was not in the dictionary) shows an interesting trend.  In both cases the Dictionary with the simple mutex lock is much faster, and the ConcurrentDictionary is the slowest solution.  But this got me thinking, and a little research seemed to confirm it, maybe the ConcurrentDictionary is more optimized to concurrent "gets" than "adds".  So since the ratio of misses to hits were 2 to 1, I decided to reverse that and see the results. So I tweaked the data so that the number of keys were much smaller than the number of iterations to give me about a 2 to 1 ration of hits to misses (twice as likely to already find the item in the cache than to need to add it).  And yes, indeed here we see that the ConcurrentDictionary is indeed faster than the standard Dictionary here.  I have a strong feeling that as the ration of hits-to-misses gets higher and higher these number gets even better as well.  This makes sense since the ConcurrentDictionary is read-optimized. Also note that I tried the tests with capacity and concurrency hints on the ConcurrentDictionary but saw very little improvement, I think this is largely because on the 10,000,000 hit test it quickly ramped up to the correct capacity and concurrency and thus the impact was limited to the first few milliseconds of the run. So what does this tell us?  Well, as in all things, ConcurrentDictionary is not a panacea.  It won't solve all your woes and it shouldn't be the only Dictionary you ever use.  So when should we use each? Use System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary when: You need a single-threaded Dictionary (no locking needed). You need a multi-threaded Dictionary that is loaded only once at creation and never modified (no locking needed). You need a multi-threaded Dictionary to store items where writes are far more prevalent than reads (locking needed). And use System.Collections.Concurrent.ConcurrentDictionary when: You need a multi-threaded Dictionary where the writes are far more prevalent than reads. You need to be able to iterate over the collection without locking it even if its being modified. Both Dictionaries have their strong suits, I have a feeling this is just one where you need to know from design what you hope to use it for and make your decision based on that criteria.

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• AutoMapper MappingFunction from Source Type of NameValueCollection

  - by REA_ANDREW

  I have had a situation arise today where I need to construct a complex type from a source of a NameValueCollection.  A little while back I submitted a patch for the Agatha Project to include REST (JSON and XML) support for the service contract.  I realized today that as useful as it is, it did not actually support true REST conformance, as REST should support GET so that you can use JSONP from JavaScript directly meaning you can query cross domain services.  My original implementation for POX and JSON used the POST method and this immediately rules out JSONP as from reading, JSONP only works with GET Requests. This then raised another issue.  The current operation contract of Agatha and one of its main benefits is that you can supply an array of Request objects in a single request, limiting the about of server requests you need to make.  Now, at the present time I am thinking that this will not be the case for the REST imlementation but will yield the benefits of the fact that : The same Request objects can be used for SOAP and RST (POX, JSON) The construct of the JavaScript functions will be simpler and more readable It will enable the use of JSONP for cross domain REST Services The current contract for the Agatha WcfRequestProcessor is at time of writing the following: [ServiceContract] public interface IWcfRequestProcessor { [OperationContract(Name = "ProcessRequests")] [ServiceKnownType("GetKnownTypes", typeof(KnownTypeProvider))] [TransactionFlow(TransactionFlowOption.Allowed)] Response[] Process(params Request[] requests); [OperationContract(Name = "ProcessOneWayRequests", IsOneWay = true)] [ServiceKnownType("GetKnownTypes", typeof(KnownTypeProvider))] void ProcessOneWayRequests(params OneWayRequest[] requests); }   My current proposed solution, and at the very early stages of my concept is as follows: [ServiceContract] public interface IWcfRestJsonRequestProcessor { [OperationContract(Name="process")] [ServiceKnownType("GetKnownTypes", typeof(KnownTypeProvider))] [TransactionFlow(TransactionFlowOption.Allowed)] [WebGet(UriTemplate = "process/{name}/{*parameters}", BodyStyle = WebMessageBodyStyle.WrappedResponse, ResponseFormat = WebMessageFormat.Json)] Response[] Process(string name, NameValueCollection parameters); [OperationContract(Name="processoneway",IsOneWay = true)] [ServiceKnownType("GetKnownTypes", typeof(KnownTypeProvider))] [WebGet(UriTemplate = "process-one-way/{name}/{*parameters}", BodyStyle = WebMessageBodyStyle.WrappedResponse, ResponseFormat = WebMessageFormat.Json)] void ProcessOneWayRequests(string name, NameValueCollection parameters); }   Now this part I have not yet implemented, it is the preliminart step which I have developed which will allow me to take the name of the Request Type and the NameValueCollection and construct the complex type which is that of the Request which I can then supply to a nested instance of the original IWcfRequestProcessor  and work as it should normally.  To give an example of some of the urls which you I envisage with this method are: http://www.url.com/service.svc/json/process/getweather/?location=london http://www.url.com/service.svc/json/process/getproductsbycategory/?categoryid=1 http://www.url.om/service.svc/json/process/sayhello/?name=andy Another reason why my direction has gone to a single request for the REST implementation is because of restrictions which are imposed by browsers on the length of the url.  From what I have read this is on average 2000 characters.  I think that this is a very acceptable usage limit in the context of using 1 request, but I do not think this is acceptable for accommodating multiple requests chained together.  I would love to be corrected on that one, I really would but unfortunately from what I have read I have come to the conclusion that this is not the case. The mapping function So, as I say this is just the first pass I have made at this, and I am not overly happy with the try catch for detecting types without default constructors.  I know there is a better way but for the minute, it escapes me.  I would also like to know the correct way for adding mapping functions and not using the anonymous way that I have used.  To achieve this I have used recursion which I am sure is what other mapping function use. As you do have to go as deep as the complex type is. public static object RecurseType(NameValueCollection collection, Type type, string prefix) { try { var returnObject = Activator.CreateInstance(type); foreach (var property in type.GetProperties()) { foreach (var key in collection.AllKeys) { if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(prefix) || key.Length > prefix.Length) { var propertyNameToMatch = String.IsNullOrEmpty(prefix) ? key : key.Substring(property.Name.IndexOf(prefix) + prefix.Length + 1); if (property.Name == propertyNameToMatch) { property.SetValue(returnObject, Convert.ChangeType(collection.Get(key), property.PropertyType), null); } else if(property.GetValue(returnObject,null) == null) { property.SetValue(returnObject, RecurseType(collection, property.PropertyType, String.Concat(prefix, property.PropertyType.Name)), null); } } } } return returnObject; } catch (MissingMethodException) { //Quite a blunt way of dealing with Types without default constructor return null; } }   Another thing is performance, I have not measured this in anyway, it is as I say the first pass, so I hope this can be the start of a more perfected implementation.  I tested this out with a complex type of three levels, there is no intended logical meaning to the properties, they are simply for the purposes of example.  You could call this a spiking session, as from here on in, now I know what I am building I would take a more TDD approach.  OK, purists, why did I not do this from the start, well I didn’t, this was a brain dump and now I know what I am building I can. The console test and how I used with AutoMapper is as follows: static void Main(string[] args) { var collection = new NameValueCollection(); collection.Add("Name", "Andrew Rea"); collection.Add("Number", "1"); collection.Add("AddressLine1", "123 Street"); collection.Add("AddressNumber", "2"); collection.Add("AddressPostCodeCountry", "United Kingdom"); collection.Add("AddressPostCodeNumber", "3"); AutoMapper.Mapper.CreateMap<NameValueCollection, Person>() .ConvertUsing(x => { return(Person) RecurseType(x, typeof(Person), null); }); var person = AutoMapper.Mapper.Map<NameValueCollection, Person>(collection); Console.WriteLine(person.Name); Console.WriteLine(person.Number); Console.WriteLine(person.Address.Line1); Console.WriteLine(person.Address.Number); Console.WriteLine(person.Address.PostCode.Country); Console.WriteLine(person.Address.PostCode.Number); Console.ReadLine(); }   Notice the convention that I am using and that this method requires you do use.  Each property is prefixed with the constructed name of its parents combined.  This is the convention used by AutoMapper and it makes sense. I can also think of other uses for this including using with ASP.NET MVC ModelBinders for creating a complex type from the QueryString which is itself is a NameValueCollection. Hope this is of some help to people and I would welcome any code reviews you could give me. References: Agatha : http://code.google.com/p/agatha-rrsl/ AutoMapper : http://automapper.codeplex.com/   Cheers for now, Andrew   P.S. I will have the proposed solution for a more complete REST implementation for AGATHA very soon. 

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• Install Ubuntu Netbook Edition with Wubi Installer

  - by Matthew Guay

  Ubuntu is one of the most popular versions of Linux, and their Netbook Remix edition is especially attractive for netbook owners.  Here we’ll look at how you can easily try out Ubuntu on your netbook without a CD/DVD drive. Netbooks, along with the growing number of thin, full powered laptops, lack a CD/DVD drive.  Installing software isn’t much of a problem since most programs, whether free or for-pay, are available for download.  Operating systems, however, are usually installed from a disk.  You can easily install Windows 7 from a flash drive with our tutorial, but installing Ubuntu from a USB flash drive is more complicated.  However, using Wubi, a Windows installer for Ubuntu, you can easily install it directly on your netbook and even uninstall it with only a few clicks. Getting Started Download and run the Wubi installer for Ubuntu (link below).  In the installer, select the drive you where you wish to install Ubuntu, the size of the installation (this is the amount dedicated to Ubuntu; under 20Gb should be fine), language, username, and desired password.  Also, from the Desktop environment menu, select Ubuntu Netbook to install the netbook edition.  Click Install when your settings are correct. Wubi will automatically download the selected version of Ubuntu and install it on your computer. Windows Firewall may ask if you want to unblock Wubi; select your network and click Allow access. The download will take around an hour on broadband, depending on your internet connection speed.  Once the download is completed, it will automatically install to your computer.  If you’d prefer to have everything downloaded before you start the install, download the ISO of Ubuntu Netbook edition (link below) and save it in the same folder as Wubi. Then, when you run Wubi, select the netbook edition as before and click Install.  Wubi will verify that your download is valid, and will then proceed to install from the downloaded ISO.  This install will only take about 10 minutes. Once the install is finished you will be asked to reboot your computer.  Save anything else you’re working on, and then reboot to finish setting up Ubuntu on your netbook. When your computer reboots, select Ubuntu at the boot screen.  Wubi leaves the default OS as Windows 7, so if you don’t select anything it will boot into Windows 7 after a few seconds. Ubuntu will automatically finish the install when you boot into it the first time.  This took about 12 minutes in our test. When the setup is finished, your netbook will reboot one more time.  Remember again to select Ubuntu at the boot screen.  You’ll then see a second boot screen; press your Enter key to select the default.   Ubuntu only took less than a minute to boot in our test.  When you see the login screen, select your name and enter your password you setup in Wubi.  Now you’re ready to start exploring Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Using Ubuntu Netbook Remix Ubuntu Netbook Remix offers a simple, full-screen interface to take the best advantage of netbooks’ small screens.  Pre-installed applications are displayed in the application launcher, and are organized by category.  Click once to open an application. The first screen on the application launcher shows your favorite programs.  If you’d like to add another application to the favorites pane, click the plus sign beside its icon. Your files from Windows are still accessible from Ubuntu Netbook Remix.  From the home screen, select Files & Folders on the left menu, and then click the icon that says something like 100GB Filesystem under the Volumes section. Now you’ll be able to see all of your files from Windows.  Your user files such as documents, music, and pictures should be located in Documents and Settings in a folder with your user name. You can also easily install a variety of free applications via the Software Installer. Connecting to the internet is also easy, as Ubuntu Netbook Remix automatically recognized the WiFi adaptor on our test netbook, a Samsung N150.  To connect to a wireless network, click the wireless icon on the top right of the screen and select the network’s name from the list. And, if you’d like to customize your screen, right-click on the application launcher and select Change desktop background. Choose a background picture you’d like. Now you’ll see it through your application launcher.  Nice! Most applications are opened full-screen.  You can close them by clicking the x on the right of the program’s name. You can also switch to other applications from their icons on the top left.  Open the home screen by clicking the Ubuntu logo in the far left. Changing Boot Options By default, Wubi will leave Windows as the default operating system, and will give you 10 seconds at boot to choose to boot into Ubuntu.  To change this, boot into Windows and enter Advanced system settings in your start menu search. In this dialog, click Settings under Startup and Recovery. From this dialog, you can select the default operating system and the time to display list of operating systems.  You can enter a lower number to make the boot screen appear for less time. And if you’d rather make Ubuntu the default operating system, select it from the drop-down list.   Uninstalling Ubuntu Netbook Remix If you decide you don’t want to keep Ubuntu Netbook Remix on your computer, you can uninstall it just like you uninstall any normal application.  Boot your computer into Windows, open Control Panel, click Uninstall a Program, and enter ubuntu in the search box.  Select it, and click Uninstall. Click Uninstall at the prompt.  Ubuntu uninstalls very quickly, and removes the entry from the bootloader as well, so your computer is just like it was before you installed it.   Conclusion Ubuntu Netbook Remix offers an attractive Linux interface for netbooks.  We enjoyed trying it out, and found it much more user-friendly than most Linux distros.  And with the Wubi installer, you can install it risk-free and try it out on your netbook.  Or, if you’d like to try out another alternate netbook operating system, check out our article on Jolicloud, another new OS for netbooks. Links Download Wubi Installer for Windows Download Ubuntu Netbook Edition Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Easily Install Ubuntu Linux with Windows Using the Wubi InstallerInstall VMware Tools on Ubuntu Edgy EftHow to install Spotify in Ubuntu 9.10 using WineInstalling PHP5 and Apache on UbuntuInstalling PHP4 and Apache on Ubuntu TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Explorer++ is a Worthy Windows Explorer Alternative Error Goblin Explains Windows Error Codes Twelve must-have Google Chrome plugins Cool Looking Skins for Windows Media Player 12 Move the Mouse Pointer With Your Face Movement Using eViacam Boot Windows Faster With Boot Performance Diagnostics

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• Microsoft TypeScript : A Typed Superset of JavaScript

  - by shiju

  JavaScript is gradually becoming a ubiquitous programming language for the web, and the popularity of JavaScript is increasing day by day. Earlier, JavaScript was just a language for browser. But now, we can write JavaScript apps for browser, server and mobile. With the advent of Node.js, you can build scalable, high performance apps on the server with JavaScript. But many developers, especially developers who are working with static type languages, are hating the JavaScript language due to the lack of structuring and the maintainability problems of JavaScript. Microsoft TypeScript is trying to solve some problems of JavaScript when we are building scalable JavaScript apps. Microsoft TypeScript TypeScript is Microsoft's solution for writing scalable JavaScript programs with the help of Static Types, Interfaces, Modules and Classes along with greater tooling support. TypeScript is a typed superset of JavaScript that compiles to plain JavaScript. This would be more productive for developers who are coming from static type languages. You can write scalable JavaScript  apps in TypeScript with more productive and more maintainable manner, and later you can compiles to plain JavaScript which will be run on any browser and any OS. TypeScript will work with browser based JavaScript apps and JavaScript apps that following CommonJS specification. You can use TypeScript for building HTML 5 apps, Node.JS apps, WinRT apps. TypeScript is providing better tooling support with Visual Studio, Sublime Text, Vi, Emacs. Microsoft has open sourced its TypeScript languages on CodePlex at http://typescript.codeplex.com/    Install TypeScript You can install TypeScript compiler as a Node.js package via the NPM or you can install as a Visual Studio 2012 plug-in which will enable you better tooling support within the Visual Studio IDE. Since TypeScript is distributed as a Node.JS package, and it can be installed on other OS such as Linux and MacOS. The following command will install TypeScript compiler via an npm package for node.js npm install –g typescript TypeScript provides a Visual Studio 2012 plug-in as MSI file which will install TypeScript and also provides great tooling support within the Visual Studio, that lets the developers to write TypeScript apps with greater productivity and better maintainability. You can download the Visual Studio plug-in from here Building JavaScript  apps with TypeScript You can write typed version of JavaScript programs with TypeScript and then compiles it to plain JavaScript code. The beauty of the TypeScript is that it is already JavaScript and normal JavaScript programs are valid TypeScript programs, which means that you can write normal  JavaScript code and can use typed version of JavaScript whenever you want. TypeScript files are using extension .ts and this will be compiled using a compiler named tsc. The following is a sample program written in  TypeScript greeter.ts 1: class Greeter { 2: greeting: string; 3: constructor (message: string) { 4: this.greeting = message; 5: } 6: greet() { 7: return "Hello, " + this.greeting; 8: } 9: } 10:   11: var greeter = new Greeter("world"); 12:   13: var button = document.createElement('button') 14: button.innerText = "Say Hello" 15: button.onclick = function() { 16: alert(greeter.greet()) 17: } 18:   19: document.body.appendChild(button) .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } The above program is compiling with the TypeScript compiler as shown in the below picture The TypeScript compiler will generate a JavaScript file after compiling the TypeScript program. If your TypeScript programs having any reference to other TypeScript files, it will automatically generate JavaScript files for the each referenced files. The following code block shows the compiled version of plain JavaScript  for the above greeter.ts greeter.js 1: var Greeter = (function () { 2: function Greeter(message) { 3: this.greeting = message; 4: } 5: Greeter.prototype.greet = function () { 6: return "Hello, " + this.greeting; 7: }; 8: return Greeter; 9: })(); 10: var greeter = new Greeter("world"); 11: var button = document.createElement('button'); 12: button.innerText = "Say Hello"; 13: button.onclick = function () { 14: alert(greeter.greet()); 15: }; 16: document.body.appendChild(button); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Tooling Support with Visual Studio TypeScript is providing a plug-in for Visual Studio which will provide an excellent support for writing TypeScript  programs within the Visual Studio. The following screen shot shows the Visual Studio template for TypeScript apps   The following are the few screen shots of Visual Studio IDE for TypeScript apps. Summary TypeScript is Microsoft's solution for writing scalable JavaScript apps which will solve lot of problems involved in larger JavaScript apps. I hope that this solution will attract lot of developers who are really looking for writing maintainable structured code in JavaScript, without losing any productivity. TypeScript lets developers to write JavaScript apps with the help of Static Types, Interfaces, Modules and Classes and also providing better productivity. I am a passionate developer on Node.JS and would definitely try to use TypeScript for building Node.JS apps on the Windows Azure cloud. I am really excited about to writing Node.JS apps by using TypeScript, from my favorite development IDE Visual Studio. You can follow me on twitter at @shijucv

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