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  • Windows Server don't connect to network share

    - by user104775
    Windows Server don't connect to network share. Network share is work. Ping Blockquote Pinging 109.123.146.223 with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 109.123.146.223: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=63 Reply from 109.123.146.223: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=63 Reply from 109.123.146.223: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=63 Ping statistics for 109.123.146.223: Packets: Sent = 3, Received = 3, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms net view \shareaddress Blockquote System error 53 has occurred. The network path was not found. When network share was connected, I was got a error message: Blockquote \ "Mapped disk letter" refers to a location that is unavailable. It could be on a hard drive on this computer, or on a network. Check to make sure that the disk is properly inserted, or that you are connected to the Internet or your network, and then try again. If it still cannot be located, the information might have been moved to a different location Network share mounted via Group Policy. Any ideas?

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  • Win7 taskbar freezes on startup for about 1-2 mins

    - by Mike
    Running Win7 64-bit for about 4 months now. Never had this problem, didn't install anything new recently. When I boot up I can't do anything in the taskbar, it's frozen for about 1-2 minutes then everything is normal. I can right click on my desktop and move my mouse around. This randomly just started happening a couple days ago after a reboot. I have a 3.2ghz quad, SSD, 4 gig ram, etc. and it usually starts up quickly. After some troubleshooting (including running antivirus and Anti-Malware), it doesn't appear to be software related, but appears to be services related. I can boot up in safe mode and safe mode with networking just fine. I can also boot up normally with all my regular software loading at startup, BUT with all my services turned off. Now the odd part. When I run msconfig to disable all the services at startup and go through ticking them on 5-10 at a time or so and booting up it seems to be somewhat random. Ticking everything on from "Application Experience" halfway down to about "Quality Windows Audio Video Experience" and I can boot without the 1-2 min. freeze. Then I start ticking the stuff below that from a couple of Remote Accesses to Smart Card and Task Scheduler, etc. But the weird part is sometimes it will freeze sometimes it won't. I can't narrow it down. Then if it freezes, I'll boot up in safe mode and turn the ones I just turned on back off and I'll reboot normally but it will freeze again. Which makes no sense because that configuration just worked without freezing just before. I got frustrated enough that I backed up and wiped my hard drive (formatted and everything) and reinstalled Win7 but when I booted up, the freeze happened again. Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

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  • Role of MBR in the booting process

    - by pg4421
    I am new to stack overflow. So please correct me if my question seems irrelevant or stupid. I read here in Booting Process : The job of the primary boot loader is to find and load the secondary boot loader (stage 2). It does this by looking through the partition table for an active partition. When it finds an active partition, it scans the remaining partitions in the table to ensure that they're all inactive. When this is verified, the active partition's boot record is read from the device into RAM and executed. The question is that I am having a Hard disk which has two Operating System images windows and ubuntu and hence both partitions in which they reside are active. Then why do we have only one active partition always? (I know that active partition is one of the primary partition but then why we are giving special reference to one primary partition? ) I am confused a bit. Please solve my query. Thank you so much.

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  • Easiest way to find out if user has either Windows 7 or Vista (through telephone support)?

    - by Rabarberski
    If you have to provide some initial troubleshooting support by phone [or email], and you don't have access to the PC itself, what is the easiest and most foolproof question to find out if the 'dumb' user is using either Windows 7 or Windows Vista? For example: determining if the user has either Windows XP or Windows Vista/7 is easy. Just ask the user if the button at the left bottom corner is (a) either square with the word 'Start' on it, or (b) it is a round button. But how to determine the difference between Vista and 7? Edit: For all the existing answers the user has to type something, and do it correctly. Sometimes even that is already hard for a computer illiterate user. My XP example just requires looking. If it exists (although I am afraid it doesn't), I think a solution that is just based on something this is visually different between Vista and 7 would stand above all others. (Which makes Dan's suggestion to turn over the box and look at the label" not so stupid). Perhaps the small 'show desktop' rectangle at the right side of the task bar (was that present in Vista)?

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  • php mail() function painfully slow on local development machine

    - by Michael B
    Background: If you have set up a local apache server for development purposes you may have run into the problem where sendmail takes a long time (at least one minute) to send emails. This is extremely frustrating if you are trying to debug a problem with an email you have generated. There are several forum posts on the internet that discuss this problem. However, none of theme described what to do in enough detail for my limited knowledge. Here are the steps that worked for me: 1) find your hostname (in case you've forgotten it) using this command: :~$ cat /hosts/hostname myhostname 2) edit the file /etc/hosts and make sure the first line is the following: 127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost myhostname 3) edit the sendmail configuration file ( /etc/mail/sendmail.cf in Ubuntu) and Uncomment the line #O HostsFile=/etc/hosts 4) Restart the computer. The computer should boot up much faster now and the mail() function should return almost immediately. HOWEVER, the emails won't actually be sent unless you follow step 5. 5) You must new use the sendmail '-f' option whenever using the mail function. For example: mail('[email protected]', 'the subject', 'the message', null, '[email protected]'); My question for my fellow serverfaulters is: What further changes can be made so that I don't have to use the sendmail -f option? Although it's not very hard to add the -f option, it is a problem when your CMS (such as Drupal) does not use the -f option when sending mail. You would need to hack a core module to add this option.

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  • How to chain GRUB2 for Ubuntu 10.04 from Truecrypt & its bootloader (multi boot alongside Windows XP partition)?

    - by Rob
    I want Truecrypt to ask for password for Windows XP as usual but with the standard [ESC] option, on selecting that, i.e via Escape key, I want it to find the grub for the (unencrypted) Ubuntu install. I've installed Windows XP on the 120Gb hard drive of a Toshiba NB100 netbook then partitioned to make room for Ubuntu 10.04 and installed that after the Windows XP install. When I encrypt Windows XP, Truecrypt will overwrite the grub entry in the master boot record (MBR), I believe (?) and I won't be able to choose between XP and Ubuntu anymore. So I need to restore it back. I've searched fairly extensively for answers on Ubuntu forums and elsewhere but have not yet found a complete answer that covers all eventualities, scenarios and error messages, or otherwise they talk of legacy GRUB and not GRUB2. Ubuntu 10.04 uses GRUB2. My setup: Partitions: Windows XP, NTFS (to be encrypted with Truecrypt), 40Gb /boot (Ext4, 1Gb) Ubuntu swap, 4Gb Ubuntu / (root) - main filesystem (20gb) NTFS share, 55Gb I know that the Truecrypt boot loader replaces the GRUB when boot up because I've already tried it on another laptop. I want boot loader screen to look something like the usual: Truecrypt Enter password: (or [ESC] to skip) password is for WindowsXP and on pressing [ESC] for it to find the Ubuntu grub to boot from Thanks in advance for your help. The key area of the problem is how to instruct Truecrypt when escape key is pressed, and how the Grub/Ubuntu can be made visible to the truecrypt bootloader to find it, when the esc key is pressed. Also knowing as chaining.

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  • When buying hardware, what sites do you trust for information? [closed]

    - by Matt Dawdy
    I won't ask "what laptop should I buy" since the information is likely to change very quickly. However, I am about to buy a laptop, and I honestly don't know where to begin researching this based on my needs. I am hoping that asking about specific sites that do reviews/recommendations that this will still be on topic. I read the 6 guidelines for subjective questions and believe that this question scores favorably. I'm starting a new job in a few weeks, and they want to know what specific laptop to purchase. I'd like to get the most for their money and get a machine that will not need to be replaced in a year. When looking at a site like Dell, it's hard to get a full picture of the performance of a laptop. Does it work with a docking station, and if so, what kinds of video outs are on it? Will it work well when compiling several large projects in .Net? Has anyone had any issues with the machine getting flaky when dragging it from work to home and back all the time? etc. So, if people would enter in their preferred sites they use when researching hardware, and why they prefer that site (x is great for laptop comparisons, y is great for gaming machine reviews, etc) the I hope that this can be a question with valuable answers to others than just myself.

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  • Did Windows 7 Startup Repair trash My Documents?

    - by Metaphile
    Earlier today, I rebooted my computer. Partway through the boot process, it shut down suddenly. When I tried again, I was prompted to run Startup Repair, and I did. Afterwards, my computer booted normally and everything seemed to be in order. Then I noticed that my My Documents folder contains a mix of old and new files. On closer inspection, it appears that Windows has reverted my system to a previous state. Two things puzzle me: 1) According to Microsoft, "System Restore does not affect personal files, such as e-mail, documents, or photos [...]", yet many of my personal files have been affected. 2) Why were some things reverted, but not others? I had recently reorganized a bunch of files in My Documents. The reverted directory structure seems to be a hybrid of old a new, with a lot of new stuff missing. It's hard to say for sure, but it looks like the stuff that's missing would have been in conflict (two folders with the same name, for example), and Windows favored the old stuff. Is this normal behavior for Startup Repair/System Restore? To modify personal files, I mean? Is there a pattern to the mess it's made of My Documents?

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  • Automatic switching of network card when vm is moved

    - by spock
    I have two hosts in a pool and I used to be able to move the vm around and they will start without any problem. But after I played around with some network setting, which I don't remember what, I started getting "This VM needs storage that cannot be seen from that server" message. As you can tell I am a beginner with Xenserver. Here is the very simple environment: 2 host servers with their own local hard disk and network card. One is a Pool master. Problem: Power off a vm and move vm from one server to another, or clone one vm to the other server. It used to be able to start up right away. Now, I need to delete one of the network that does not belong to the server, then it will start. Otherwise, the above error msg popup. The two networks (one for each network card in each host) are in the Networking tab of the vm, as well as in the host's networking tab. I googled but all I got to empty the DVD drive, which is not the problem here. Thanks in advance!

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  • Windows 7 "freezes" (chills?), and then "unfreezes" for about 1 minute.

    - by gbc001
    Hi, I have an Acer Timeline 1810T netbook (4GB RAM) with Windows 7 x64. About once or twice a day, it "freezes" - the reason i put this in quotation marks is that it does not really freeze, as in you cant move mouse, etc. I can move my mouse and jump between different applications, but I cant use the applications for anything. So I can jump between notepad and Firefox, but I cant browse to a new web page. I have been trying to determine the source of this misery for a while now, and I suspect it has something to do with the hard drive - indirectly if not directly. Here are some screen shots of the resource monitor during a "freeze" and during normal operation: Freeze: http://imgur.com/Gcgq1.jpg Normal operation: imgur.com/mlHaI.jpg As you can see, CPU is fine during freeze, but the disk is going bananas.. Does anyone have an idea of what these reading mean, or about the problem in general? There seems to be no specific activity that sets this off - it can be during browsing, or during media playback with nothing else open. Very appreciative of any help!

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  • Mobile app for sysadmins with monitoring and fixing tools(SSH, ping, traceroute) [closed]

    - by Roman
    I present a start-up company which is working on a new mobile tool for system administrators. Our team has released first several versions of Server Auditor which is now just a SSH terminal with special UI approach for touch devices and got quite good feedbacks, e.g. iOS and Android. Now we are thinking about adding extra features to make Server Auditor a tool number one for all system administrators and would like to know your opinion. Main question would you use a tool like Server Auditor with extra features described below: Fast problem fixing - preloaded recipes/snippets, e.g. clean logs, restart a process, reboot etc. Secure user data synchronisation(IP/DNS name, connection options, keys, snippets) across all your devices iPhone and Android. Built-in tools like ping, traceroute, whois System status integration - you can observe information about the system in a friendly way, e.g CPU load, hard drive and RAM usage etc. Monitoring tool integration. Your servers are watched by our Nagios-like system in the cloud and you get notified by push-notifications/SMS. Similar products are Server Density, CopperEgg. If we start to implement features from 1 to 5 when you will be ready to start use it or even potentially pay for it? Can you see any issues that would prevent you from using this kind of system? Thank you a lot for your time, we kindly appreciate it. Looking forward to hear your opinion

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  • Multi-petabyte scale out storage solution [closed]

    - by Alex Yuriev
    Let's say that I have a need to have a single-name space scale to multi-petabyte object store with a file system-like wrapper. What is currently out there that supports the following: Single name space that can take 1B files. Support for multiple entry points using NFS At least node level replication ( preferably node and file level replication ) Online software upgrades No "magic sauce" on the storage layer The following has been evaluated: Gluster & Lustre - just ick - fundamental lack of understanding of why online upgrades are mandatory. OneFS - we have it. It is smelling more and more like it hides a dead body under the hood. Other than MapR and zfs am I missing anything? P.S. Oh yes, I keep forgetting that the forums are for people to discuss if 2TB drive actually stores 2TB info. May bad. Seriously though - how the heck can "meets the following requirements" can be considered a "debate"? P.P.S. I did not throw an idiotic insult - i pointed out that this is actually an interesting question compared to a conversation about storage capacity of a 2TB hard drive. It is not a question of what works better - it is a question that asks did I miss any of the products that currently exist which fit the criteria where criteria is clearly outline. I got one answer below which included something that I have not looked at in a long time which looks quite a bit grown up compared to the time I briefly look at it before.

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  • Hp Pavilion dv6000 wont boot right and freezes

    - by MalwareManiac
    I have an hp pavilion dv6000 that was having windows issues recently including randomly freezing. I eventually concluded that the hard drive was bad (And I was correct as the bad drive started making funny noises and quit working soon after). So I replaced it with a known good drive and put windows on it and it worked for a few hours. After a few restarts startup didn't even make it to the login screen. It just stays at a lighted black screen until I restarted. After another restart it made it to windows but then froze after a few minutes. A few more restarts yielded one of these two results. Like I mentioned earlier I have a know good drive in it and I also replaced the memory that was in it with a know good stick along with running memtest with no errors. So What does that leave? a corrupted windows installation? Motherboard? CPU? Any ideas?

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  • Methods and practices for managing a network that has no internet connection

    - by FaultyJuggler
    Originally asked in Super User but realized this belongs here. Long story short, I am setting up a network with 32 servers of varying specs that will be used for testing and development. We will be using RedHat Linux, we also do not have a router as of yet and were looking into making one of the servers act as our router/DHCP etc. The small cluster will be on an isolated network with no internet. I can use external harddrives and discs to transfer anything from external sources into machines on the network, so this isn't a locked down secure network, it just won't have a direct connection to the outside world. I've worked on such setups before, but always long after they were setup. So I'm reaching out to see what everyone knows as far as how groups have handled initial setup and maintenance of such a situation. What is the best way to get them all configured and up to date? What are the best ways to automate updates, network wide installs, etc. With the only given that I have large multi-terabyte external hard drives that would be used to drop whatever files are needed onto a central server, how do i then distribute those files and install their contents? I've done perl scripting, some teammates have played with puppet, so we aren't completely in the dark, I just wanted to avoid reinventing the wheel since this is a common challenge.

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  • How to diagnose computer freezing problem

    - by reinierpost
    I have a laptop (a Medion from Aldi) that tends to hang quite often - so often, in fact, that several attempts to install Windows XP or Ubuntu on it have all failed. However, I am able to boot and run Ubuntu as found on the standard Ubuntu 10.10 installation image. I have done this two times thus far. The first time everything was running smoothly, until at some point the GUI (i.e. X) became unresponsive. The cursor kept moving with the mouse, but menus would no longer show and clicking things no longer produced any response. So I switched to the consoles (Ctrl-F1, Ctrl-F2, etc., which in this setup automatically run shells. The shells were still responsive, and the cd command would still work, but any command that invoked an executable (e.g. /bin/ls or cd /bin; ./find caused the shell to hang up uninterruptibly. My hypothesis was that all attempts at disk access were hanging up, but I didn't actually try a command like echo /proc/$$ or while read line; do echo $line; done < /var/log/syslog to verify this. Another possibility is that an essential system library is cached in memory and somehow failing to function properly. The second time I left the system running overnight and it didn't hang itself spontaneously. I'm not sure I have the patience to just twiddle with the running system until the condition reappears, and I'm, not sure what to do once it does. Clearly we can rule out a software cause. It seems disk access related, but clearly it's not permanent hard disk failure because the system will reboot just fine. What kind of hardware problem might produce these symptoms? Can it be a memory problem?

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  • Some Power Supply Cable Questions?

    - by jasondavis
    I am building a new PC and I haven't done this in a few years. It will have all the latest tech stuff. I got my PSU in the mail and I am looking over the cables (it has a lot) I thought it was a mudular PSU so I could only use the cables I need but instead it is a hybrid (some wires attached and some can be added/removed instead of all of then being removable). 1) So I am curious, I believe all my hard drives and optical drives are powered off of a sata power cable so does that mean I probably do not need any of the 4 pin molex cables? Or are these used for other things? 2) I know the 24-pin cable goes to my motherboard. 3) I have some 6-pin cables that are labeled pci-e which is new to me. I read these are for some grapghic cards and stuff. I have 2 grapghic cards but they do not require a seperate pci-e power wire be hooked to them. So are these pci-e wires just to power pci-express cards? Or for other things as well? 4) I have a 4pin ATX 12v wire, what is this for? 5) 8 pin EPS, what is this for?

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  • USB Drive that simultaneously connects to more than one computer

    - by user2499
    Background: I have a portable USB drive that I use to make sure I have access to common files whenever at home, work, travel etc for cases when I may not have Internet/Network access of any kind. There are some cases when I have to work simultaneously on a laptop and a desktop computer, and for those cases I usually have to unplug this USB hard drive and move it between the two. Question: dual-computer USB drive? Is there a USB-based solution that would enable me to use this portable drive between two computers simultaneously? If there is not a USB-based solution, does anyone have alternative suggestions, consistent with the underlying rationale? Rationale: Sometimes I have to work on a desktop computer with locked-down networking capabilities (such as at the local photocopy shop) and it can be difficult to get a network configuration that allows dual-computer access without breaking things, or accidentally making my USB drive visible to the entire network. Basically what I need is a very simply LAN that is guaranteed to work regardless of the rules or constraints set by the network administrator for wherever I happen to be at the time. See also: http://superuser.com/questions/99274/how-to-connect-two-computers-with-usb

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  • System requirements for running windows 8 (basic office use) in virtualbox (ubuntu as host os)

    - by Tor Thommesen
    I want to run windows 8 as a guest os with virtualbox on some thinkpad (haven't bought one yet) running Ubuntu 12.04. Apart from virtualizing windows 8 (mostly just for use with the office suite app) my needs are very modest, I don't need much more than emacs and a browser. What I'd like to know is what kind of specs will be necessary to run windows 8 well as a vm, using the office apps. It would be a shame to waste money on overpowered hardware. Are there any official guidelines from oracle or windows on this? Would this lenovo x220, for example, be sufficiently strong? The specs below were taken from this review. Intel Core i5-2520M dual-core processor (2.5GHz, 3MB cache, 3.2GHz Turbo frequency) Windows 7 Professional (64-bit) 12.5-inch Premium HD (1366 x 768) LED Backlit Display (IPS) Intel Integrated HD Graphics 4GB DDR3 (1333MHz) 320GB Hitachi Travelstar hard drive (Z7K320) Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6205 (Taylor Peak) 2x2 AGN wireless card Intel 82579LM Gigabit Ethernet 720p High Definition webcam Fingerprint reader 6-cell battery (63Wh) and optional slice battery (65Wh) Dimensions: 12 (L) x 8.2 (W) x 0.5-1.5 (H) inches with 6-cell battery Weight: 3.5 pounds with 6-cell battery 4.875 pounds with 6-cell battery and optional external battery slice Price as configured: $1,299.00 (starting at $979.00)

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  • Mac OS X: Applications not responding

    - by Robot55
    This happens to me several times a day. I'll quit an app, the window will close, but the app won't finish shutting down. It stays open in the dock, and right clicking and force quit show not responding. Force quit won't work. I can't shut the app down. Starting any other app when this happens causes that app to behave in exactly the same way: the icon opens in the dock, but the app is non-responsive and can't be forced to quit. Can't access terminal when this happens, because it locks up just like all the apps. While I haven't tried to open every app, I think any app I try to open when this is happening will lock up. If I relaunch Finder, it too locks up and then the only thing left is to hold down the power button for a hard reboot. Any app that is running while this is happening will continue to run normally unless I try to shut it down. Repairing disk permissions has no effect. I also did a time machine and a full restore on a brand new MbP - and sure enough, after restore, the new MbP suffers form the same problem. Creating a new user has no effect. Any thoughts? Please help MacBook Pro 15" AG 2.53ghz i5 cpu 8gb RAM 500gb HD (over 200gb free)

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  • Linux Server partitioning

    - by user1717735
    There's a lot of infos about this out there, but there's also a lot of contradictory infos… That's why i need some advices about it. So far, on the servers i had home for test (or even "home production") purposes i didn't really care about partitioning and i configured all in / + a swap partition, over RAID 0. Nevertheless, this pattern can't apply to production servers. I have found a good starting point here, but also it depends on what the servers will be used for… So basically, i have a server on which there will be apache, php, mysql. It will have to handle file uploads (up to 2GB) and has 2*2TB hard drive. I plan to set : / 100GB, /var 1000GB (apache files and mysql files will be here), /tmp 800GB (handles the php tmp file) /home 96GB swap 4GB All of this if of course over RAID 1. But actually, it's not a big deal if I lose data being uploaded, so would it be interesting mounting /tmp over raid 0 while maintaining the rest over raid 1? Sounds complicated…

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  • Can't login to Windows server 2008 (as any user, not even locally, not in safe mode but I have right credentials)

    - by Saix
    Just from nowhere I can't login to my Windows server 2008 machine. All the services like FTP server or webserver (which I'm actually not using, just remote desktop and FTP) are running. Whatever credentials I try (even/especialy administrator), it always says Unknown Username or bad password. I have already tried hard turn off/on and safe mode without luck. Also I already tried type in login name as SERVER NAME\user or Workgroup\user (every case sensitive scenario), still says I have wrong login. Usually we are using remote desktop to access the machine but local access over KVM doesn't work either. Now I'm lock out of any control or any way to do something. There's just logon screen preceding by ctrl+alt+del to login alert. Without me able to login I can't actually try to fix anything. Can't find much more on Internet except the SERVER NAME\user thing. Reinstall would be the last resort but I can't let things this way for much longer anyway. This server is vital. If it would be any help, I think automatic Windows updates are turned off and there were no updates or newly installed software for last couple years and just few soft restarts, non of them recently. It happened during it's runtime while all other services were still up and running, so this couldn't be just some Windows nasty screw up during boot or something. What could have possibly changed? What are my options now?

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  • 100% CPU use when new usb device plugged in - services.exe / Windows Server 2003

    - by Will3265
    On my server I am trying to install a new usb drive but all that happens is that the system starts using huge amounts of processor cycles with services.exe. On closer inspection with process explorer there is a thread called umpnpmgr.dll using most of the services.exe processor time. I left it for a half hour and still nothing happened. Rebooted and tried again, same result. Tried a different usb drive, then a flash drive but still same issue. Tried updating driver but it said the update function was already in action. I have used process explorer to kill the thread now so the server can still perform its intended functions. Any device that was previously installed before this began happening will still work but any device new to the system will not. My question(s) is/are: Is there a way to manually install the device into the registry so Windows thinks it is a previously installed device? Or can this problem be repaired through anything other than a reinstall? To do a reinstall would mean backing up large amounts of data which is hard with a usb drive and insufficient space on all other network machines. Any help would be greatly appreciated. William

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  • DirectShow: Video-Preview and Image (with working code)

    - by xsl
    Questions / Issues If someone can recommend me a good free hosting site I can provide the whole project file. As mentioned in the text below the TakePicture() method is not working properly on the HTC HD 2 device. It would be nice if someone could look at the code below and tell me if it is right or wrong what I'm doing. Introduction I recently asked a question about displaying a video preview, taking camera image and rotating a video stream with DirectShow. The tricky thing about the topic is, that it's very hard to find good examples and the documentation and the framework itself is very hard to understand for someone who is new to windows programming and C++ in general. Nevertheless I managed to create a class that implements most of this features and probably works with most mobile devices. Probably because the DirectShow implementation depends a lot on the device itself. I could only test it with the HTC HD and HTC HD2, which are known as quite incompatible. HTC HD Working: Video preview, writing photo to file Not working: Set video resolution (CRASH), set photo resolution (LOW quality) HTC HD 2 Working: Set video resolution, set photo resolution Problematic: Video Preview rotated Not working: Writing photo to file To make it easier for others by providing a working example, I decided to share everything I have got so far below. I removed all of the error handling for the sake of simplicity. As far as documentation goes, I can recommend you to read the MSDN documentation, after that the code below is pretty straight forward. void Camera::Init() { CreateComObjects(); _captureGraphBuilder->SetFiltergraph(_filterGraph); InitializeVideoFilter(); InitializeStillImageFilter(); } Dipslay a video preview (working with any tested handheld): void Camera::DisplayVideoPreview(HWND windowHandle) { IVideoWindow *_vidWin; _filterGraph->QueryInterface(IID_IMediaControl,(void **) &_mediaControl); _filterGraph->QueryInterface(IID_IVideoWindow, (void **) &_vidWin); _videoCaptureFilter->QueryInterface(IID_IAMVideoControl, (void**) &_videoControl); _captureGraphBuilder->RenderStream(&PIN_CATEGORY_PREVIEW, &MEDIATYPE_Video, _videoCaptureFilter, NULL, NULL); CRect rect; long width, height; GetClientRect(windowHandle, &rect); _vidWin->put_Owner((OAHWND)windowHandle); _vidWin->put_WindowStyle(WS_CHILD | WS_CLIPSIBLINGS); _vidWin->get_Width(&width); _vidWin->get_Height(&height); height = rect.Height(); _vidWin->put_Height(height); _vidWin->put_Width(rect.Width()); _vidWin->SetWindowPosition(0,0, rect.Width(), height); _mediaControl->Run(); } HTC HD2: If set SetPhotoResolution() is called FindPin will return E_FAIL. If not, it will create a file full of null bytes. HTC HD: Works void Camera::TakePicture(WCHAR *fileName) { CComPtr<IFileSinkFilter> fileSink; CComPtr<IPin> stillPin; CComPtr<IUnknown> unknownCaptureFilter; CComPtr<IAMVideoControl> videoControl; _imageSinkFilter.QueryInterface(&fileSink); fileSink->SetFileName(fileName, NULL); _videoCaptureFilter.QueryInterface(&unknownCaptureFilter); _captureGraphBuilder->FindPin(unknownCaptureFilter, PINDIR_OUTPUT, &PIN_CATEGORY_STILL, &MEDIATYPE_Video, FALSE, 0, &stillPin); _videoCaptureFilter.QueryInterface(&videoControl); videoControl->SetMode(stillPin, VideoControlFlag_Trigger); } Set resolution: Works great on HTC HD2. HTC HD won't allow SetVideoResolution() and only offers one low resolution photo resolution: void Camera::SetVideoResolution(int width, int height) { SetResolution(true, width, height); } void Camera::SetPhotoResolution(int width, int height) { SetResolution(false, width, height); } void Camera::SetResolution(bool video, int width, int height) { IAMStreamConfig *config; config = NULL; if (video) { _captureGraphBuilder->FindInterface(&PIN_CATEGORY_PREVIEW, &MEDIATYPE_Video, _videoCaptureFilter, IID_IAMStreamConfig, (void**) &config); } else { _captureGraphBuilder->FindInterface(&PIN_CATEGORY_STILL, &MEDIATYPE_Video, _videoCaptureFilter, IID_IAMStreamConfig, (void**) &config); } int resolutions, size; VIDEO_STREAM_CONFIG_CAPS caps; config->GetNumberOfCapabilities(&resolutions, &size); for (int i = 0; i < resolutions; i++) { AM_MEDIA_TYPE *mediaType; if (config->GetStreamCaps(i, &mediaType, reinterpret_cast<BYTE*>(&caps)) == S_OK ) { int maxWidth = caps.MaxOutputSize.cx; int maxHeigth = caps.MaxOutputSize.cy; if(maxWidth == width && maxHeigth == height) { VIDEOINFOHEADER *info = reinterpret_cast<VIDEOINFOHEADER*>(mediaType->pbFormat); info->bmiHeader.biWidth = maxWidth; info->bmiHeader.biHeight = maxHeigth; info->bmiHeader.biSizeImage = DIBSIZE(info->bmiHeader); config->SetFormat(mediaType); DeleteMediaType(mediaType); break; } DeleteMediaType(mediaType); } } } Other methods used to build the filter graph and create the COM objects: void Camera::CreateComObjects() { CoInitialize(NULL); CoCreateInstance(CLSID_CaptureGraphBuilder, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER, IID_ICaptureGraphBuilder2, (void **) &_captureGraphBuilder); CoCreateInstance(CLSID_FilterGraph, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER, IID_IGraphBuilder, (void **) &_filterGraph); CoCreateInstance(CLSID_VideoCapture, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC, IID_IBaseFilter, (void**) &_videoCaptureFilter); CoCreateInstance(CLSID_IMGSinkFilter, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC, IID_IBaseFilter, (void**) &_imageSinkFilter); } void Camera::InitializeVideoFilter() { _videoCaptureFilter->QueryInterface(&_propertyBag); wchar_t deviceName[MAX_PATH] = L"\0"; GetDeviceName(deviceName); CComVariant comName = deviceName; CPropertyBag propertyBag; propertyBag.Write(L"VCapName", &comName); _propertyBag->Load(&propertyBag, NULL); _filterGraph->AddFilter(_videoCaptureFilter, L"Video Capture Filter Source"); } void Camera::InitializeStillImageFilter() { _filterGraph->AddFilter(_imageSinkFilter, L"Still image filter"); _captureGraphBuilder->RenderStream(&PIN_CATEGORY_STILL, &MEDIATYPE_Video, _videoCaptureFilter, NULL, _imageSinkFilter); } void Camera::GetDeviceName(WCHAR *deviceName) { HRESULT hr = S_OK; HANDLE handle = NULL; DEVMGR_DEVICE_INFORMATION di; GUID guidCamera = { 0xCB998A05, 0x122C, 0x4166, 0x84, 0x6A, 0x93, 0x3E, 0x4D, 0x7E, 0x3C, 0x86 }; di.dwSize = sizeof(di); handle = FindFirstDevice(DeviceSearchByGuid, &guidCamera, &di); StringCchCopy(deviceName, MAX_PATH, di.szLegacyName); } Full header file: #ifndef __CAMERA_H__ #define __CAMERA_H__ class Camera { public: void Init(); void DisplayVideoPreview(HWND windowHandle); void TakePicture(WCHAR *fileName); void SetVideoResolution(int width, int height); void SetPhotoResolution(int width, int height); private: CComPtr<ICaptureGraphBuilder2> _captureGraphBuilder; CComPtr<IGraphBuilder> _filterGraph; CComPtr<IBaseFilter> _videoCaptureFilter; CComPtr<IPersistPropertyBag> _propertyBag; CComPtr<IMediaControl> _mediaControl; CComPtr<IAMVideoControl> _videoControl; CComPtr<IBaseFilter> _imageSinkFilter; void GetDeviceName(WCHAR *deviceName); void InitializeVideoFilter(); void InitializeStillImageFilter(); void CreateComObjects(); void SetResolution(bool video, int width, int height); }; #endif

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  • Dealing with external processes

    - by Jesse Aldridge
    I've been working on a gui app that needs to manage external processes. Working with external processes leads to a lot of issues that can make a programmer's life difficult. I feel like maintenence on this app is taking an unacceptably long time. I've been trying to list the things that make working with external processes difficult so that I can come up with ways of mitigating the pain. This kind of turned into a rant which I thought I'd post here in order to get some feedback and to provide some guidance to anybody thinking about sailing into these very murky waters. Here's what I've got so far: Output from the child can get mixed up with output from the parent. This can make both outputs misleading and hard to read. It can be hard to tell what came from where. It becomes harder to figure out what's going on when things are asynchronous. Here's a contrived example: import textwrap, os, time from subprocess import Popen test_path = 'test_file.py' with open(test_path, 'w') as file: file.write(textwrap.dedent(''' import time for i in range(3): print 'Hello %i' % i time.sleep(1)''')) proc = Popen('python -B "%s"' % test_path) for i in range(3): print 'Hello %i' % i time.sleep(1) os.remove(test_path) I guess I could have the child process write its output to a file. But it can be annoying to have to open up a file every time I want to see the result of a print statement. If I have code for the child process I could add a label, something like print 'child: Hello %i', but it can be annoying to do that for every print. And it adds some noise to the output. And of course I can't do it if I don't have access to the code. I could manually manage the process output. But then you open up a huge can of worms with threads and polling and stuff like that. A simple solution is to treat processes like synchronous functions, that is, no further code executes until the process completes. In other words, make the process block. But that doesn't work if you're building a gui app. Which brings me to the next problem... Blocking processes cause the gui to become unresponsive. import textwrap, sys, os from subprocess import Popen from PyQt4.QtGui import * from PyQt4.QtCore import * test_path = 'test_file.py' with open(test_path, 'w') as file: file.write(textwrap.dedent(''' import time for i in range(3): print 'Hello %i' % i time.sleep(1)''')) app = QApplication(sys.argv) button = QPushButton('Launch process') def launch_proc(): # Can't move the window until process completes proc = Popen('python -B "%s"' % test_path) proc.communicate() button.connect(button, SIGNAL('clicked()'), launch_proc) button.show() app.exec_() os.remove(test_path) Qt provides a process wrapper of its own called QProcess which can help with this. You can connect functions to signals to capture output relatively easily. This is what I'm currently using. But I'm finding that all these signals behave suspiciously like goto statements and can lead to spaghetti code. I think I want to get sort-of blocking behavior by having the 'finished' signal from QProcess call a function containing all the code that comes after the process call. I think that should work but I'm still a bit fuzzy on the details... Stack traces get interrupted when you go from the child process back to the parent process. If a normal function screws up, you get a nice complete stack trace with filenames and line numbers. If a subprocess screws up, you'll be lucky if you get any output at all. You end up having to do a lot more detective work everytime something goes wrong. Speaking of which, output has a way of disappearing when dealing external processes. Like if you run something via the windows 'cmd' command, the console will pop up, execute the code, and then disappear before you have a chance to see the output. You have to pass the /k flag to make it stick around. Similar issues seem to crop up all the time. I suppose both problems 3 and 4 have the same root cause: no exception handling. Exception handling is meant to be used with functions, it doesn't work with processes. Maybe there's some way to get something like exception handling for processes? I guess that's what stderr is for? But dealing with two different streams can be annoying in itself. Maybe I should look into this more... Processes can hang and stick around in the background without you realizing it. So you end up yelling at your computer cuz it's going so slow until you finally bring up your task manager and see 30 instances of the same process hanging out in the background. Also, hanging background processes can interefere with other instances of the process in various fun ways, such as causing permissions errors by holding a handle to a file or someting like that. It seems like an easy solution to this would be to have the parent process kill the child process on exit if the child process didn't close itself. But if the parent process crashes, cleanup code might not get called and the child can be left hanging. Also, if the parent waits for the child to complete, and the child is in an infinite loop or something, you can end up with two hanging processes. This problem can tie in to problem 2 for extra fun, causing your gui to stop responding entirely and force you to kill everything with the task manager. F***ing quotes Parameters often need to be passed to processes. This is a headache in itself. Especially if you're dealing with file paths. Say... 'C:/My Documents/whatever/'. If you don't have quotes, the string will often be split at the space and interpreted as two arguments. If you need nested quotes you can use ' and ". But if you need to use more than two layers of quotes, you have to do some nasty escaping, for example: "cmd /k 'python \'path 1\' \'path 2\''". A good solution to this problem is passing parameters as a list rather than as a single string. Subprocess allows you to do this. Can't easily return data from a subprocess. You can use stdout of course. But what if you want to throw a print in there for debugging purposes? That's gonna screw up the parent if it's expecting output formatted a certain way. In functions you can print one string and return another and everything works just fine. Obscure command-line flags and a crappy terminal based help system. These are problems I often run into when using os level apps. Like the /k flag I mentioned, for holding a cmd window open, who's idea was that? Unix apps don't tend to be much friendlier in this regard. Hopefully you can use google or StackOverflow to find the answer you need. But if not, you've got a lot of boring reading and frusterating trial and error to do. External factors. This one's kind of fuzzy. But when you leave the relatively sheltered harbor of your own scripts to deal with external processes you find yourself having to deal with the "outside world" to a much greater extent. And that's a scary place. All sorts of things can go wrong. Just to give a random example: the cwd in which a process is run can modify it's behavior. There are probably other issues, but those are the ones I've written down so far. Any other snags you'd like to add? Any suggestions for dealing with these problems?

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  • Authoritative sources about Database vs. Flatfile decision

    - by FastAl
    <tldr>looking for a reference to a book or other undeniably authoritative source that gives reasons when you should choose a database vs. when you should choose other storage methods. I have provided an un-authoritative list of reasons about 2/3 of the way down this post.</tldr> I have a situation at my company where a database is being used where it would be better to use another solution (in this case, an auto-generated piece of source code that contains a static lookup table, searched by binary sort). Normally, a database would be an OK solution even though the problem does not require a database, e.g, none of the elements of ACID are needed, as it is read-only data, updated about every 3-5 years (also requiring other sourcecode changes), and fits in memory, and can be keyed into via binary search (a tad faster than db, but speed is not an issue). The problem is that this code runs on our enterprise server, but is shared with several PC platforms (some disconnected, some use a central DB, etc.), and parts of it are managed by multiple programming units, parts by the DBAs, parts even by mathematicians in another department, etc. These hit their own platform’s version of their databases (containing their own copy of the static data). What happens is that every implementation, every little change, something different goes wrong. There are many other issues as well. I can’t even use a flatfile, because one mode of running on our enterprise server does not have permission to read files (only databases, and of course, its own literal storage, e.g., in-source table). Of course, other parts of the system use databases in proper, less obscure manners; there is no problem with those parts. So why don’t we just change it? I don’t have administrative ability to force a change. But I’m affected because sometimes I have to help fix the problems, but mostly because it causes outages and tons of extra IT time by other programmers and d*mmit that makes me mad! The reason neither management, nor the designers of the system, can see the problem is that they propose a solution that won’t work: increase communication; implement more safeguards and standards; etc. But every time, in a different part of the already-pared-down but still multi-step processes, a few different diligent, hard-working, top performing IT personnel make a unique subtle error that causes it to fail, sometimes after the last round of testing! And in general these are not single-person failures, but understandable miscommunications. And communication at our company is actually better than most. People just don't think that's the case because they haven't dug into the matter. However, I have it on very good word from somebody with extensive formal study of sociology and psychology that the relatively small amount of less-than-proper database usage in this gigantic cross-platform multi-source, multi-language project is bureaucratically un-maintainable. Impossible. No chance. At least with Human Beings in the loop, and it can’t be automated. In addition, the management and developers who could change this, though intelligent and capable, don’t understand the rigidity of this ‘how humans are’ issue, and are not convincible on the matter. The reason putting the static data in sourcecode will solve the problem is, although the solution is less sexy than a database, it would function with no technical drawbacks; and since the sharing of sourcecode already works very well, you basically erase any database-related effort from this section of the project, along with all the drawbacks of it that are causing problems. OK, that’s the background, for the curious. I won’t be able to convince management that this is an unfixable sociological problem, and that the real solution is coding around these limits of human nature, just as you would code around a bug in a 3rd party component that you can’t change. So what I have to do is exploit the unsuitableness of the database solution, and not do it using logic, but rather authority. I am aware of many reasons, and posts on this site giving reasons for one over the other; I’m not looking for lists of reasons like these (although you can add a comment if I've miss a doozy): WHY USE A DATABASE? instead of flatfile/other DB vs. file: if you need... Random Read / Transparent search optimization Advanced / varied / customizable Searching and sorting capabilities Transaction/rollback Locks, semaphores Concurrency control / Shared users Security 1-many/m-m is easier Easy modification Scalability Load Balancing Random updates / inserts / deletes Advanced query Administrative control of design, etc. SQL / learning curve Debugging / Logging Centralized / Live Backup capabilities Cached queries / dvlp & cache execution plans Interleaved update/read Referential integrity, avoid redundant/missing/corrupt/out-of-sync data Reporting (from on olap or oltp db) / turnkey generation tools [Disadvantages:] Important to get right the first time - professional design - but only b/c it's meant to last s/w & h/w cost Usu. over a network, speed issue (best vs. best design vs. local=even then a separate process req's marshalling/netwk layers/inter-p comm) indicies and query processing can stand in the way of simple processing (vs. flatfile) WHY USE FLATFILE: If you only need... Sequential Row processing only Limited usage append only (no reading, no master key/update) Only Update the record you're reading (fixed length recs only) Too big to fit into memory If Local disk / read-ahead network connection Portability / small system Email / cut & Paste / store as document by novice - simple format Low design learning curve but high cost later WHY USE IN-MEMORY/TABLE (tables, arrays, etc.): if you need... Processing a single db/ff record that was imported Known size of data Static data if hardcoding the table Narrow, unchanging use (e.g., one program or proc) -includes a class that will be shared, but encapsulates its data manipulation Extreme speed needed / high transaction frequency Random access - but search is dependent on implementation Following are some other posts about the topic: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1499239/database-vs-flat-text-file-what-are-some-technical-reasons-for-choosing-one-over http://stackoverflow.com/questions/332825/are-flat-file-databases-any-good http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2356851/database-vs-flat-files http://stackoverflow.com/questions/514455/databases-vs-plain-text/514530 What I’d like to know is if anybody could recommend a hard, authoritative source containing these reasons. I’m looking for a paper book I can buy, or a reputable website with whitepapers about the issue (e.g., Microsoft, IBM), not counting the user-generated content on those sites. This will have a greater change to elicit a change that I’m looking for: less wasted programmer time, and more reliable programs. Thanks very much for your help. You win a prize for reading such a large post!

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