shadow casting - Page 58

Left Join only returning one row

- by Adam

I am trying to join two tables. I would like all the columns from the product_category table (there are a total of 6 now) and count the number of products, CatCount, that are in each category from the products_has_product_category table. My query result is 1 row with the first category and a total count of 68, when I am looking for 6 rows with each individual category's count. <?php $result = mysql_query(" SELECT a.*, COUNT(b.category_id) AS CatCount FROM `product_category` a LEFT JOIN `products_has_product_category` b ON a.product_category_id = b.category_id "); while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) { echo ' <li class="ui-shadow" data-count-theme="d"> <a href="' . $row['product_category_ref_page'] . '.php" data-icon="arrow-r" data-iconpos="right">' . $row['product_category_name'] . '</a><span class="ui-li-count">' . $row['CatCount'] . '</span></li>'; } ?> I have been working on this for a couple of hours and would really appreciate any help on what I am doing wrong.

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C non-trivial constants

- by user525869

I want to make several constants in C with #define to speed up computation. Two of them are not simply trivial numbers, where one is a right shift, the other is a power. math.h in C gives the function pow() for doubles, whereas I need powers for integers, so I wrote my own function, ipow, so I wouldn't need to be casting everytime. My question is this: One of the #define constants I want to make is a power, say ipow(M, T), where M and T were also #define constants. ipow is a function in the actual code, so this actually seems to slows things down when I run the code (is it running ipow everytime the constant is mentioned?). However, when I ues the built in pow function and just do (int)pow(M,T), the code is sped up. I'm confused as to why this is, since the ipow and pow functions are just as fast. On a more general note, can I define constants using #define using functions inside the actual code? The above example has me confused on whether this speeds things up or actually slows things down.

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Inspire Geek Love with These Hilarious Geek Valentines

- by Eric Z Goodnight

Want to send some Geek Love to that special someone? Why not do it with these elementary school throwback valentines, and win their heart this upcoming Valentine’s day—the geek way! Read on to see the simple method to make your own custom Valentines, as well as download a set of eleven ready-made ones any geek guy or gal should be delighted get. It’s amore! How to Make Custom Valentines A size we’ve used for all of our Valentines is a 3” x 4” at 150 dpi. This is fairly low resolution for print, but makes a great graphic to email. With your new image open, Navigate to Edit > Fill and fill your background layer with a rich, red color (or whatever appeals to you.) By setting “Use” to “Foreground color as shown above, you’ll paint whatever foreground color you have in your color picker. Press to select the text tool. Set a few text objects, using whatever fonts appeal to you. Pixel fonts, like this one, are freely downloadable, and we’ve already shared a great list of Valentines fonts. Copy an image from the internet if you’re confident your sweetie won’t mind a bit of fair use of copyrighted imagery. If they do mind, find yourself some great Creative Commons images. to do a free transform on your image, sizing it to whatever dimensions work best for your design. Right click your newly added image layer in your panel and Choose “Blending Effects” to pick a Layer Style. “Stroke” with this setting adds a black line around your image. Also turning on “Outer Glow” with this setting puts a dark black shadow around the top and bottom (and sides, although they are hidden). Add some more text. Double entendre is recommended. Click and hold down on the “Rectangle Tool” to get the “Custom Shape Tool.” The custom shape tool has useful vector shapes built into it. Find the “Shape” dropdown in the menu to find the heart image. Click and drag to create a vector heart shape in your image. Your layers panel is where you can change the color, if it happens to use the wrong one at first. Click the color swatch in your panel, highlighted in blue above. will transform your vector heart. You can also use it to rotate, if you like. Add some details, like this Power or Standby symbol, which can be found in symbol fonts, taken from images online, or drawn by hand. Your Valentine is now ready to be saved as a JPG or PNG and sent to the object of your affection! Keep reading to see a list of 11 downloadable How-To Geek Valentines, including this one and the three from the header image. Download The HTG Set of Valentines Download the HTG Geek Valentines (ZIP) Download the HTG Geek Valentines (ZIP) When he’s not wooing ladies with Valentines cards, you can email the author at [email protected] with your Photoshop and Graphics questions. Your questions may be featured in a future How-To Geek article! Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Inspire Geek Love with These Hilarious Geek Valentines How to Integrate Dropbox with Pages, Keynote, and Numbers on iPad RGB? CMYK? Alpha? What Are Image Channels and What Do They Mean? How to Recover that Photo, Picture or File You Deleted Accidentally How To Colorize Black and White Vintage Photographs in Photoshop How To Get SSH Command-Line Access to Windows 7 Using Cygwin How to Kid Proof Your Computer’s Power and Reset Buttons Microsoft’s Windows Media Player Extension Adds H.264 Support Back to Google Chrome Android Notifier Pushes Android Notices to Your Desktop Dead Space 2 Theme for Chrome and Iron Carl Sagan and Halo Reach Mashup – We Humans are Capable of Greatness [Video] Battle the Necromorphs Once Again on Your Desktop with the Dead Space 2 Theme for Windows 7

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Write, Read and Update Oracle CLOBs with PL/SQL

- by robertphyatt

Fun with CLOBS! If you are using Oracle, if you have to deal with text that is over 4000 bytes, you will probably find yourself dealing with CLOBs, which can go up to 4GB. They are pretty tricky, and it took me a long time to figure out these lessons learned. I hope they will help some down-trodden developer out there somehow. Here is my original code, which worked great on my Oracle Express Edition: (for all examples, the first one writes a new CLOB, the next one Updates an existing CLOB and the final one reads a CLOB back) CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE PRC_WR_CLOB ( p_document IN VARCHAR2, p_id OUT NUMBER) IS lob_loc CLOB; BEGIN INSERT INTO TBL_CLOBHOLDERDDOC (CLOBHOLDERDDOC) VALUES (empty_CLOB()) RETURNING CLOBHOLDERDDOC, CLOBHOLDERDDOCID INTO lob_loc, p_id; DBMS_LOB.WRITE(lob_loc, LENGTH(UTL_RAW.CAST_TO_RAW(p_document)), 1, UTL_RAW.CAST_TO_RAW(p_document)); END; / CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE PRC_UD_CLOB ( p_document IN VARCHAR2, p_id IN NUMBER) IS lob_loc CLOB; BEGIN SELECT CLOBHOLDERDDOC INTO lob_loc FROM TBL_CLOBHOLDERDDOC WHERE CLOBHOLDERDDOCID = p_id FOR UPDATE; DBMS_LOB.WRITE(lob_loc, LENGTH(UTL_RAW.CAST_TO_RAW(p_document)), 1, UTL_RAW.CAST_TO_RAW(p_document)); END; / CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE PRC_RD_CLOB ( p_id IN NUMBER, p_clob OUT VARCHAR2) IS lob_loc CLOB; BEGIN SELECT CLOBHOLDERDDOC INTO lob_loc FROM TBL_CLOBHOLDERDDOC WHERE CLOBHOLDERDDOCID = p_id; p_clob := UTL_RAW.CAST_TO_VARCHAR2(DBMS_LOB.SUBSTR(lob_loc, DBMS_LOB.GETLENGTH(lob_loc), 1)); END; / As you can see, I had originally been casting everything back and forth between RAW formats using the UTL_RAW.CAST_TO_VARCHAR2() and UTL_RAW.CAST_TO_RAW() functions all over the place, but it had the nasty side effect of working great on my Oracle express edition on my developer box, but having all the CLOBs above a certain size display garbage when read back on the Oracle test database server . So...I kept working at it and came up with the following, which ALSO worked on my Oracle Express Edition on my developer box: CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE PRC_WR_CLOB ( p_document IN VARCHAR2, p_id OUT NUMBER) IS lob_loc CLOB; BEGIN INSERT INTO TBL_CLOBHOLDERDOC (CLOBHOLDERDOC) VALUES (empty_CLOB()) RETURNING CLOBHOLDERDOC, CLOBHOLDERDOCID INTO lob_loc, p_id; DBMS_LOB.WRITE(lob_loc, LENGTH(p_document), 1, p_document); END; / CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE PRC_UD_CLOB ( p_document IN VARCHAR2, p_id IN NUMBER) IS lob_loc CLOB; BEGIN SELECT CLOBHOLDERDOC INTO lob_loc FROM TBL_CLOBHOLDERDOC WHERE CLOBHOLDERDOCID = p_id FOR UPDATE; DBMS_LOB.WRITE(lob_loc, LENGTH(p_document), 1, p_document); END; / CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE PRC_RD_CLOB ( p_id IN NUMBER, p_clob OUT VARCHAR2) IS lob_loc CLOB; BEGIN SELECT CLOBHOLDERDOC INTO lob_loc FROM TBL_CLOBHOLDERDOC WHERE CLOBHOLDERDOCID = p_id; p_clob := DBMS_LOB.SUBSTR(lob_loc, DBMS_LOB.GETLENGTH(lob_loc), 1); END; / Unfortunately, by changing my code to what you see above, even though it kept working on my Oracle express edition, everything over a certain size just started truncating after about 7950 characters on the test server! Here is what I came up with in the end, which is actually the simplest solution and this time worked on both my express edition and on the database server (note that only the read function was changed to fix the truncation issue, and that I had Oracle worry about converting the CLOB into a VARCHAR2 internally): CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE PRC_WR_CLOB ( p_document IN VARCHAR2, p_id OUT NUMBER) IS lob_loc CLOB; BEGIN INSERT INTO TBL_CLOBHOLDERDDOC (CLOBHOLDERDDOC) VALUES (empty_CLOB()) RETURNING CLOBHOLDERDDOC, CLOBHOLDERDDOCID INTO lob_loc, p_id; DBMS_LOB.WRITE(lob_loc, LENGTH(p_document), 1, p_document); END; / CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE PRC_UD_CLOB ( p_document IN VARCHAR2, p_id IN NUMBER) IS lob_loc CLOB; BEGIN SELECT CLOBHOLDERDDOC INTO lob_loc FROM TBL_CLOBHOLDERDDOC WHERE CLOBHOLDERDDOCID = p_id FOR UPDATE; DBMS_LOB.WRITE(lob_loc, LENGTH(p_document), 1, p_document); END; / CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE PRC_RD_CLOB ( p_id IN NUMBER, p_clob OUT VARCHAR2) IS BEGIN SELECT CLOBHOLDERDDOC INTO p_clob FROM TBL_CLOBHOLDERDDOC WHERE CLOBHOLDERDDOCID = p_id; END; / I hope that is useful to someone!

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Challenge 19 – An Explanation of a Query

- by Dave Ballantyne

I have received a number of requests for an explanation of my winning query of TSQL Challenge 19. This involved traversing a hierarchy of employees and rolling a count of orders from subordinates up to superiors. The first concept I shall address is the hierarchyId , which is constructed within the CTE called cteTree. cteTree is a recursive cte that will expand the parent-child hierarchy of the personnel in the table @emp. One useful feature with a recursive cte is that data can be ‘passed’ from the parent to the child data. The hierarchyId column is similar to the hierarchyId data type that was introduced in SQL Server 2008 and represents the position of the person within the organisation. Let us start with a simplistic example Albert manages Bob and Eddie. Bob manages Carl and Dave. The hierarchyId will represent each person’s position in this relationship in a single field. In this simple example we could append the userID together into a varchar field as detailed below. This will enable us to select a branch of the tree by filtering using Where hierarchyId ‘1,2%’ to select Bob and all his subordinates. Naturally, this is not comprehensive enough to provide a full solution, but as opposed to concatenating the Id’s together into a varchar datatyped column, we can apply the same theory to a varbinary. By CASTing the ID’s into a datatype of varbinary(4) ,4 is used as 4 bytes of data are used to store an integer and building a hierarchyId from those. For example: The important point to bear in mind for later in the query is that the binary data generated is 'byte order comparable'. ie We can ORDER a dataset with it and the resulting data, will be in the order required. Now, would probably be a good time to download the example file and, after the cte ‘cteTree’, uncomment the line ‘select * from cteTree’. Mark this and all prior code and execute. This will show you how this theory directly relates to the actual challenge data. The only deviation from the above, is that instead of using the ID of an employee, I have used the row_number() ranking function to order each level by LastName,Firstname. This enables me to order by the HierarchyId in the final result set so that the result set is in the required order. Your output should be something like the below. Notice also the ‘Level’ Column that contains the depth that the employee is within the tree. I would encourage you to ‘play’ with the query, change the order in the row_number() or the length of the cast in the hierarchyId to see how that effects the outcome. The next cte, ‘cteTreeWithOrderCount’, is a join between cteTree and the @ord table, and COUNT’s the number of orders per employee. A LEFT JOIN is employed here to account for the occasion where an employee has made no sales. Executing a ‘Select * from cteTreeWithOrderCount’ will return the result set as below. The order here is unimportant as this is only a staging point of the data and only the final result set in a cte chain needs an Order by clause, unless TOP is utilised. cteExplode joins the above result set to the tally table (Nums) for Level Occurances. So, if level is 2 then 2 rows are required. This is done to expand the dataset, to create a new column (PathInc), which is the (n+1) integers contained within the heirarchyid. For example, with the data for Robert King as given above, the below 3 rows will be returned. From this you can see that the pathinc column now contains the values for Andrew Fuller and Steven Buchanan who are Robert King’s superiors within the tree. Finally cteSumUp, sums the orders for each person and their subordinates using the PathInc generated above, and the final select does the final simple mathematics and filters to restrict the result set to only the ‘original’ row per employee.

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Converting Openfire IM datetime values in SQL Server to / from VARCHAR(15) and DATETIME data types

- by Brian Biales

A client is using Openfire IM for their users, and would like some custom queries to audit user conversations (which are stored by Openfire in tables in the SQL Server database). Because Openfire supports multiple database servers and multiple platforms, the designers chose to store all date/time stamps in the database as 15 character strings, which get converted to Java Date objects in their code (Openfire is written in Java). I did some digging around, and, so I don't forget and in case someone else will find this useful, I will put the simple algorithms here for converting back and forth between SQL DATETIME and the Java string representation. The Java string representation is the number of milliseconds since 1/1/1970. SQL Server's DATETIME is actually represented as a float, the value being the number of days since 1/1/1900, the portion after the decimal point representing the hours/minutes/seconds/milliseconds... as a fractional part of a day. Try this and you will see this is true: SELECT CAST(0 AS DATETIME) and you will see it returns the date 1/1/1900. The difference in days between SQL Server's 0 date of 1/1/1900 and the Java representation's 0 date of 1/1/1970 is found easily using the following SQL: SELECT DATEDIFF(D, '1900-01-01', '1970-01-01') which returns 25567. There are 25567 days between these dates. So to convert from the Java string to SQL Server's date time, we need to convert the number of milliseconds to a floating point representation of the number of days since 1/1/1970, then add the 25567 to change this to the number of days since 1/1/1900. To convert to days, you need to divide the number by 1000 ms/s, then by 60 seconds/minute, then by 60 minutes/hour, then by 24 hours/day. Or simply divide by 1000*60*60*24, or 86400000. So, to summarize, we need to cast this string as a float, divide by 86400000 milliseconds/day, then add 25567 days, and cast the resulting value to a DateTime. Here is an example: DECLARE @tmp as VARCHAR(15) SET @tmp = '1268231722123' SELECT @tmp as JavaTime, CAST((CAST(@tmp AS FLOAT) / 86400000) + 25567 AS DATETIME) as SQLTime To convert from SQL datetime back to the Java time format is not quite as simple, I found, because floats of that size do not convert nicely to strings, they end up in scientific notation using the CONVERT function or CAST function. But I found a couple ways around that problem. You can convert a date to the number of seconds since 1/1/1970 very easily using the DATEDIFF function, as this value fits in an Int. If you don't need to worry about the milliseconds, simply cast this integer as a string, and then concatenate '000' at the end, essentially multiplying this number by 1000, and making it milliseconds since 1/1/1970. If, however, you do care about the milliseconds, you will need to use DATEPART to get the milliseconds part of the date, cast this integer to a string, and then pad zeros on the left to make sure this is three digits, and concatenate these three digits to the number of seconds string above. And finally, I discovered by casting to DECIMAL(15,0) then to VARCHAR(15), I avoid the scientific notation issue. So here are all my examples, pick the one you like best... First, here is the simple approach if you don't care about the milliseconds: DECLARE @tmp as VARCHAR(15) DECLARE @dt as DATETIME SET @dt = '2010-03-10 14:35:22.123' SET @tmp = CAST(DATEDIFF(s, '1970-01-01 00:00:00' , @dt) AS VARCHAR(15)) + '000' SELECT @tmp as JavaTime, @dt as SQLTime If you want to keep the milliseconds: DECLARE @tmp as VARCHAR(15) DECLARE @dt as DATETIME DECLARE @ms as int SET @dt = '2010-03-10 14:35:22.123' SET @ms as DATEPART(ms, @dt) SET @tmp = CAST(DATEDIFF(s, '1970-01-01 00:00:00' , @dt) AS VARCHAR(15)) + RIGHT('000' + CAST(@ms AS VARCHAR(3)), 3) SELECT @tmp as JavaTime, @dt as SQLTime Or, in one fell swoop: DECLARE @dt as DATETIME SET @dt = '2010-03-10 14:35:22.123' SELECT @dt as SQLTime , CAST(DATEDIFF(s, '1970-01-01 00:00:00' , @dt) AS VARCHAR(15)) + RIGHT('000' + CAST( DATEPART(ms, @dt) AS VARCHAR(3)), 3) as JavaTime And finally, a way to simply reverse the math used converting from Java date to SQL date. Note the parenthesis - watch out for operator precedence, you want to subtract, then multiply: DECLARE @dt as DATETIME SET @dt = '2010-03-10 14:35:22.123' SELECT @dt as SQLTime , CAST(CAST((CAST(@dt as Float) - 25567.0) * 86400000.0 as DECIMAL(15,0)) as VARCHAR(15)) as JavaTime Interestingly, I found that converting to SQL Date time can lose some accuracy, when I converted the time above to Java time then converted that back to DateTime, the number of milliseconds is 120, not 123. As I am not interested in the milliseconds, this is ok for me. But you may want to look into using DateTime2 in SQL Server 2008 for more accuracy.

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WCF RIA Services DomainContext Abstraction Strategies–Say That 10 Times!

- by dwahlin

The DomainContext available with WCF RIA Services provides a lot of functionality that can help track object state and handle making calls from a Silverlight client to a DomainService. One of the questions I get quite often in our Silverlight training classes (and see often in various forums and other areas) is how the DomainContext can be abstracted out of ViewModel classes when using the MVVM pattern in Silverlight applications. It’s not something that’s super obvious at first especially if you don’t work with delegates a lot, but it can definitely be done. There are various techniques and strategies that can be used but I thought I’d share some of the core techniques I find useful. To start, let’s assume you have the following ViewModel class (this is from my Silverlight Firestarter talk available to watch online here if you’re interested in getting started with WCF RIA Services): public class AdminViewModel : ViewModelBase { BookClubContext _Context = new BookClubContext(); public AdminViewModel() { if (!DesignerProperties.IsInDesignTool) { LoadBooks(); } } private void LoadBooks() { _Context.Load(_Context.GetBooksQuery(), LoadBooksCallback, null); } private void LoadBooksCallback(LoadOperation<Book> books) { Books = new ObservableCollection<Book>(books.Entities); } } Notice that BookClubContext is being used directly in the ViewModel class. There’s nothing wrong with that of course, but if other ViewModel objects need to load books then code would be duplicated across classes. Plus, the ViewModel has direct knowledge of how to load data and I like to make it more loosely-coupled. To do this I create what I call a “Service Agent” class. This class is responsible for getting data from the DomainService and returning it to a ViewModel. It only knows how to get and return data but doesn’t know how data should be stored and isn’t used with data binding operations. An example of a simple ServiceAgent class is shown next. Notice that I’m using the Action<T> delegate to handle callbacks from the ServiceAgent to the ViewModel object. Because LoadBooks accepts an Action<ObservableCollection<Book>>, the callback method in the ViewModel must accept ObservableCollection<Book> as a parameter. The callback is initiated by calling the Invoke method exposed by Action<T>: public class ServiceAgent { BookClubContext _Context = new BookClubContext(); public void LoadBooks(Action<ObservableCollection<Book>> callback) { _Context.Load(_Context.GetBooksQuery(), LoadBooksCallback, callback); } public void LoadBooksCallback(LoadOperation<Book> lo) { //Check for errors of course...keeping this brief var books = new ObservableCollection<Book>(lo.Entities); var action = (Action<ObservableCollection<Book>>)lo.UserState; action.Invoke(books); } } This can be simplified by taking advantage of lambda expressions. Notice that in the following code I don’t have a separate callback method and don’t have to worry about passing any user state or casting any user state (the user state is the 3rd parameter in the _Context.Load method call shown above). public class ServiceAgent { BookClubContext _Context = new BookClubContext(); public void LoadBooks(Action<ObservableCollection<Book>> callback) { _Context.Load(_Context.GetBooksQuery(), (lo) => { var books = new ObservableCollection<Book>(lo.Entities); callback.Invoke(books); }, null); } } A ViewModel class can then call into the ServiceAgent to retrieve books yet never know anything about the DomainContext object or even know how data is loaded behind the scenes: public class AdminViewModel : ViewModelBase { ServiceAgent _ServiceAgent = new ServiceAgent(); public AdminViewModel() { if (!DesignerProperties.IsInDesignTool) { LoadBooks(); } } private void LoadBooks() { _ServiceAgent.LoadBooks(LoadBooksCallback); } private void LoadBooksCallback(ObservableCollection<Book> books) { Books = books } } You could also handle the LoadBooksCallback method using a lambda if you wanted to minimize code just like I did earlier with the LoadBooks method in the ServiceAgent class. If you’re into Dependency Injection (DI), you could create an interface for the ServiceAgent type, reference it in the ViewModel and then inject in the object to use at runtime. There are certainly other techniques and strategies that can be used, but the code shown here provides an introductory look at the topic that should help get you started abstracting the DomainContext out of your ViewModel classes when using WCF RIA Services in Silverlight applications.

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Using Lambdas for return values in Rhino.Mocks

- by PSteele

In a recent StackOverflow question, someone showed some sample code they’d like to be able to use. The particular syntax they used isn’t supported by Rhino.Mocks, but it was an interesting idea that I thought could be easily implemented with an extension method. Background When stubbing a method return value, Rhino.Mocks supports the following syntax: dependency.Stub(s => s.GetSomething()).Return(new Order()); The method signature is generic and therefore you get compile-time type checking that the object you’re returning matches the return value defined by the “GetSomething” method. You could also have Rhino.Mocks execute arbitrary code using the “Do” method: dependency.Stub(s => s.GetSomething()).Do((Func<Order>) (() => new Order())); This requires the cast though. It works, but isn’t as clean as the original poster wanted. They showed a simple example of something they’d like to see: dependency.Stub(s => s.GetSomething()).Return(() => new Order()); Very clean, simple and no casting required. While Rhino.Mocks doesn’t support this syntax, it’s easy to add it via an extension method. The Rhino.Mocks “Stub” method returns an IMethodOptions<T>. We just need to accept a Func<T> and use that as the return value. At first, this would seem straightforward: public static IMethodOptions<T> Return<T>(this IMethodOptions<T> opts, Func<T> factory) { opts.Return(factory()); return opts; } And this would work and would provide the syntax the user was looking for. But the problem with this is that you loose the late-bound semantics of a lambda. The Func<T> is executed immediately and stored as the return value. At the point you’re setting up your mocks and stubs (the “Arrange” part of “Arrange, Act, Assert”), you may not want the lambda executing – you probably want it delayed until the method is actually executed and Rhino.Mocks plugs in your return value. So let’s make a few small tweaks: public static IMethodOptions<T> Return<T>(this IMethodOptions<T> opts, Func<T> factory) { opts.Return(default(T)); // required for Rhino.Mocks on non-void methods opts.WhenCalled(mi => mi.ReturnValue = factory()); return opts; } As you can see, we still need to set up some kind of return value or Rhino.Mocks will complain as soon as it intercepts a call to our stubbed method. We use the “WhenCalled” method to set the return value equal to the execution of our lambda. This gives us the delayed execution we’re looking for and a nice syntax for lambda-based return values in Rhino.Mocks. Technorati Tags: .NET,Rhino.Mocks,Mocking,Extension Methods

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Algorithm to Find the Aggregate Mass of "Granola Bar"-Like Structures?

- by Stuart Robbins

I'm a planetary science researcher and one project I'm working on is N-body simulations of Saturn's rings. The goal of this particular study is to watch as particles clump together under their own self-gravity and measure the aggregate mass of the clumps versus the mean velocity of all particles in the cell. We're trying to figure out if this can explain some observations made by the Cassini spacecraft during the Saturnian summer solstice when large structures were seen casting shadows on the nearly edge-on rings. Below is a screenshot of what any given timestep looks like. (Each particle is 2 m in diameter and the simulation cell itself is around 700 m across.) The code I'm using already spits out the mean velocity at every timestep. What I need to do is figure out a way to determine the mass of particles in the clumps and NOT the stray particles between them. I know every particle's position, mass, size, etc., but I don't know easily that, say, particles 30,000-40,000 along with 102,000-105,000 make up one strand that to the human eye is obvious. So, the algorithm I need to write would need to be a code with as few user-entered parameters as possible (for replicability and objectivity) that would go through all the particle positions, figure out what particles belong to clumps, and then calculate the mass. It would be great if it could do it for "each" clump/strand as opposed to everything over the cell, but I don't think I actually need it to separate them out. The only thing I was thinking of was doing some sort of N2 distance calculation where I'd calculate the distance between every particle and if, say, the closest 100 particles were within a certain distance, then that particle would be considered part of a cluster. But that seems pretty sloppy and I was hoping that you CS folks and programmers might know of a more elegant solution? Edited with My Solution: What I did was to take a sort of nearest-neighbor / cluster approach and do the quick-n-dirty N2 implementation first. So, take every particle, calculate distance to all other particles, and the threshold for in a cluster or not was whether there were N particles within d distance (two parameters that have to be set a priori, unfortunately, but as was said by some responses/comments, I wasn't going to get away with not having some of those). I then sped it up by not sorting distances but simply doing an order N search and increment a counter for the particles within d, and that sped stuff up by a factor of 6. Then I added a "stupid programmer's tree" (because I know next to nothing about tree codes). I divide up the simulation cell into a set number of grids (best results when grid size ˜7 d) where the main grid lines up with the cell, one grid is offset by half in x and y, and the other two are offset by 1/4 in ±x and ±y. The code then divides particles into the grids, then each particle N only has to have distances calculated to the other particles in that cell. Theoretically, if this were a real tree, I should get order N*log(N) as opposed to N2 speeds. I got somewhere between the two, where for a 50,000-particle sub-set I got a 17x increase in speed, and for a 150,000-particle cell, I got a 38x increase in speed. 12 seconds for the first, 53 seconds for the second, 460 seconds for a 500,000-particle cell. Those are comparable speeds to how long the code takes to run the simulation 1 timestep forward, so that's reasonable at this point. Oh -- and it's fully threaded, so it'll take as many processors as I can throw at it.

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eSTEP Newsletter November 2012

- by uwes

Dear Partners,We would like to inform you that the November '12 issue of our Newsletter is now available.The issue contains information to the following topics: News from CorpOracle Celebrates 25 Years of SPARC Innovation; IDC White Papers Finds Growing Customer Comfort with Oracle Solaris Operating System; Oracle Buys Instantis; Pillar Axiom OpenWorld Highlights; Announcement Oracle Solaris 11.1 Availability (data sheet, new features, FAQ's, corporate pages, internal blog, download links, Oracle shop); Announcing StorageTek VSM 6; Announcement Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.1 Availability (new features, FAQ's, cluster corp page, download site, shop for media); Announcement: Oracle Database Appliance 2.4 patch update becomes available Technical SectionOracle White papers on SPARC SuperCluster; Understanding Parallel Execution; With LTFS, Tape is Gaining Storage Ground with additional link to How to Create Oracle Solaris 11 Zones with Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center; Provisioning Capabilities of Oracle Enterprise Ops Center Manager 12c; Maximizing your SPARC T4 Oracle Solaris Application Performance with the following articles: SPARC T4 Servers Set World Record on Siebel CRM 8.1.1.4 Benchmark, SPARC T4-Based Highly Scalable Solutions Posts New World Record on SPECjEnterprise2010 Benchmark, SPARC T4 Server Delivers Outstanding Performance on Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g; Oracle SUN ZFS Storage Appliance Reference Architecture for VMware vSphere4; Why 4K? - George Wilson's ZFS Day Talk; Pillar Axiom 600 with connected subjects: Oracle Introduces Pillar Axiom Release 5 Storage System Software, Driving down the high cost of Storage, This Provisioning with Pilar Axiom 600, Pillar Axiom 600- System overview and architecture; Migrate to Oracle;s SPARC Systems; Top 5 Reasons to Migrate to Oracle's SPARC Systems Learning & EventsRecently delivered Techcasts: Learning Paths; Oracle Database 11g: Database Administration (New) - Learning Path; Webcast: Drill Down on Disaster Recovery; What are Oracle Users Doing to Improve Availability and Disaster Recovery; SAP NetWeaver and Oracle Exadata Database Machine ReferencesARTstor Selects Oracle’s Sun ZFS Storage 7420 Appliances To Support Rapidly Growing Digital Image Library, Scottish Widows Cuts Sales Administration 20%, Reduces Time to Prepare Reports by 75%, and Achieves Return on Investment in First Year, Oracle's CRM Cloud Service Powers Innovation: Applications on Demand; Technology on Demand, How toHow to Migrate Your Data to Oracle Solaris 11 Using Shadow Migration; Using svcbundle to Create SMF Manifests and Profiles in Oracle Solaris 11; How to prepare a Sun ZFS Storage Appliance to Serve as a Storage Devise with Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c; Command Summary: Basic Operations with the Image Packaging System In Oracle Solaris 11; How to Update to Oracle Solaris 11.1 Using the Image Packaging System, How to Migrate Oracle Database from Oracle Solaris 8 to Oracle Solaris 11; Setting Up, Configuring, and Using an Oracle WebLogic Server Cluster; Ease the Chaos with Automated Patching: Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c; Book excerpt: Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud Handbook You find the Newsletter on our portal under eSTEP News ---> Latest Newsletter. You will need to provide your email address and the pin below to get access. Link to the portal is shown below.URL: http://launch.oracle.com/PIN: eSTEP_2011Previous published Newsletters can be found under the Archived Newsletters section and more useful information under the Events, Download and Links tab. Feel free to explore and any feedback is appreciated to help us improve the service and information we deliver.Thanks and best regards,Partner HW Enablement EMEA

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Countdown of Top 10 Reasons to Never Ever Use a Pie Chart

- by Tony Wolfram

Pie charts are evil. They represent much of what is wrong with the poor design of many websites and software applications. They're also innefective, misleading, and innacurate. Using a pie chart as your graph of choice to visually display important statistics and information demonstrates either a lack of knowledge, laziness, or poor design skills. Figure 1: A floating, tilted, 3D pie chart with shadow trying (poorly)to show usage statistics within a graphics application. Of course, pie charts in and of themselves are not evil. This blog is really about designers making poor decisions for all the wrong reasons. In order for a pie chart to appear on a web page, somebody chose it over the other alternatives, and probably thought they were doing the right thing. They weren't. Using a pie chart is almost always a bad design decision. Figure 2: Pie Chart from an Oracle Reports User Guide A pie chart does not do the job of effectively displaying information in an elegant visual form. Being circular, they use up too much space while not allowing their labels to line up. Bar charts, line charts, and tables do a much better job. Expert designers, statisticians, and business analysts have documented their many failings, and strongly urge software and report designers not to use them. It's obvious to them that the pie chart has too many inherent defects to ever be used effectively. Figure 3: Demonstration of how comparing data between multiple pie charts is difficult. Yet pie charts are still used frequently in today's software applications, financial reports, and websites, often on the opening page as a symbol of how the data inside is represented. In an attempt to get a flashy colorful graphic to break up boring text, designers will often settle for a pie chart that looks like pac man, a colored spinning wheel, or a 3D floating alien space ship. Figure 4: Best use of a pie chart I've found yet. Why is the pie chart so popular? Through its constant use and iconic representation as the classic chart, the idea persists that it must be a good choice, since everyone else is still using it. Like a virus or an urban legend, no amount of vaccine or debunking will slow down the use of pie charts, which seem to be resistant to logic and common sense. Even the new iPad from Apple showcases the pie chart as one of its options. Figure 5: Screen shot of new iPad showcasing pie charts. Regardless of the futility in trying to rid the planet of this often used poor design choice, I now present to you my top 10 reasons why you should never, ever user a pie chart again. Number 10 - Pie Charts Just Don't Work When Comparing Data Number 9 - You Have A Better Option: The Sorted Horizontal Bar Chart Number 8 - The Pie Chart is Always Round Number 7 - Some Genius Will Make It 3D Number 6 - Legends and Labels are Hard to Align and Read Number 5 - Nobody Has Ever Made a Critical Decision Using a Pie Chart Number 4 - It Doesn't Scale Well to More Than 2 Items Number 3 - A Pie Chart Causes Distortions and Errors Number 2 - Everyone Else Uses Them: Debunking the "Urban Legend" of Pie Charts Number 1 - Pie Charts Make You Look Stupid and Lazy

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.Net Reflector 6.5 EAP now available

- by CliveT

With the release of CLR 4 being so close, we’ve been working hard on getting the new C# and VB language features implemented inside Reflector. The work isn’t complete yet, but we have some of the features working. Most importantly, there are going to be changes to the Reflector object model, and we though it would be useful for people to see the changes and have an opportunity to comment on them. Before going any further, we should tell you what the EAP contains that’s different from the released version. A number of bugs have been fixed, mainly bugs that were raised via the forum. This is slightly offset by the fact that this EAP hasn’t had a whole lot of testing and there may have been new bugs introduced during the development work we’ve been doing. The C# language writer has been changed to display in and out co- and contra-variance markers on interfaces and delegates, and to display default values for optional parameters in method definitions. We also concisely display values passed by reference into COM calls. However, we do not change callsites to display calls using named parameters; this looks like hard work to get right. The forthcoming version of the C# language introduces dynamic types and dynamic calls. The new version of Reflector should display a dynamic call rather than the generated C#: dynamic target = MyTestObject(); target.Hello("Mum"); We have a few bugs in this area where we are not casting to dynamic when necessary. These have been fixed on a branch and should make their way into the next EAP. To support the dynamic features, we’ve added the types IDynamicMethodReferenceExpression, IDynamicPropertyIndexerExpression, and IDynamicPropertyReferenceExpression to the object model. These types, based on the versions without “Dynamic” in the name, reflect the fact that we don’t have full information about the method that is going to be called, but only have its name (as a string). These interfaces are going to change – in an internal version, they have been extended to include information about which parameter positions use runtime types and which use compile time types. There’s also the interface, IDynamicVariableDeclaration, that can be used to determine if a particular variable is used at dynamic call sites as a target. A couple of these language changes have also been added to the Visual Basic language writer. The new features are exposed only when the optimization level is set to .NET 4. When the level is set this high, the other standard language writers will simply display a message to say that they do not handle such an optimization level. Reflector Pro now has 4.0 as an optional compilation target and we have done some work to get the pdb generation right for these new features. The EAP version of Reflector no longer installs the add-in on startup. The first time you run the EAP, it displays the integration options dialog. You can use the checkboxes to select the versions of Visual Studio into which you want to install the EAP version. Note that you can only have one version of Reflector Pro installed in Visual Studio; if you install into a Visual Studio that has another version installed, the previous version will be removed. Please try it out and send your feedback to the EAP forum.

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Optimization and Saving/Loading

- by MrPlosion1243

I'm developing a 2D tile based game and I have a few questions regarding it. First I would like to know if this is the correct way to structure my Tile class: namespace TileGame.Engine { public enum TileType { Air, Stone } class Tile { TileType type; bool collidable; static Tile air = new Tile(TileType.Air); static Tile stone = new Tile(TileType.Stone); public Tile(TileType type) { this.type = type; collidable = true; } } } With this method I just say world[y, x] = Tile.Stone and this seems right to me but I'm not a very experienced coder and would like assistance. Now the reason I doubt this so much is because I like everything to be as optimized as possible and there is a major flaw in this that I need help overcoming. It has to do with saving and loading... well more on loading actually. The way it's done relies on the principle of casting an enumeration into a byte which gives you the corresponding number where its declared in the enumeration. Each TileType is cast as a byte and written out to a file. So TileType.Air would appear as 0 and TileType.Stone would appear as 1 in the file (well in byte form obviously). Loading in the file is alot different though because I can't just loop through all the bytes in the file cast them as a TileType and assign it: for(int x = 0; x < size.X; x++) { for(int y = 0; y < size.Y; y+) { world[y, x].Type = (TileType)byteReader.ReadByte(); } } This just wont work presumably because I have to actually say world[y, x] = Tile.Stone as apposed to world[y, x].Type = TileType.Stone. In order to be able to say that I need a gigantic switch case statement (I only have 2 tiles but you could imagine what it would look like with hundreds): Tile tile; for(int x = 0; x < size.X; x++) { for(int y = 0; y < size.Y; y+) { switch(byteReader.ReadByte()){ case 0: tile = Tile.Air; break; case 1: tile = Tile.Stone; break; } world[y, x] = tile; } } Now you can see how unoptimized this is and I don't know what to do. I would really just like to cast the byte as a TileType and use that but as said before I have to say world[y, x] = Tile.whatever and TileType can't be used this way. So what should I do? I would imagine I need to restructure my Tile class to fit the requirements but I don't know how I would do that. Please help! Thanks.

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Simple MVVM Walkthrough – Refactored

- by Sean Feldman

JR has put together a good introduction post into MVVM pattern. I love kick start examples that serve the purpose well. And even more than that I love examples that also can pass the real world projects check. So I took the sample code and refactored it slightly for a few aspects that a lot of developers might raise a brow. Michael has mentioned model (entity) visibility from view. I agree on that. A few other items that don’t settle are using property names as string (magical strings) and Saver class internal casting of a parameter (custom code for each Saver command). Fixing a property names usage is a straight forward exercise – leverage expressions. Something simple like this would do the initial job: class PropertyOf<T> { public static string Resolve(Expression<Func<T, object>> expression) { var member = expression.Body as MemberExpression; return member.Member.Name; } } With this, refactoring of properties names becomes an easy task, with confidence that an old property name string will not get left behind. An updated Invoice would look like this: public class Invoice : INotifyPropertyChanged { private int id; private string receiver; public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged; private void OnPropertyChanged(string propertyName) { if (PropertyChanged != null) { PropertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(propertyName)); } } public int Id { get { return id; } set { if (id != value) { id = value; OnPropertyChanged(PropertyOf<Invoice>.Resolve(x => x.Id)); } } } public string Receiver { get { return receiver; } set { receiver = value; OnPropertyChanged(PropertyOf<Invoice>.Resolve(x => x.Receiver)); } } } For the saver, I decided to change it a little so now it becomes a “view-model agnostic” command, one that can be used for multiple commands/view-models. Updated Saver code now accepts an action at construction time and executes that action. No more black magic internal class Command : ICommand { private readonly Action executeAction; public Command(Action executeAction) { this.executeAction = executeAction; } public bool CanExecute(object parameter) { return true; } public event EventHandler CanExecuteChanged; public void Execute(object parameter) { // no more black magic executeAction(); } } Change in InvoiceViewModel is instantiation of Saver command and execution action for the specific command. public ICommand SaveCommand { get { if (saveCommand == null) saveCommand = new Command(ExecuteAction); return saveCommand; } set { saveCommand = value; } } private void ExecuteAction() { DisplayMessage = string.Format("Thanks for creating invoice: {0} {1}", Invoice.Id, Invoice.Receiver); } This way internal knowledge of InvoiceViewModel remains in InvoiceViewModel and Command (ex-Saver) is view-model agnostic. Now the sample is not only a good introduction, but also has some practicality in it. My 5 cents on the subject. Sample code MvvmSimple2.zip

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Social Targeting: This One's Just for You

- by Mike Stiles

Think of social targeting in terms of the archery competition we just saw in the Olympics. If someone loaded up 5 arrows and shot them straight up into the air all at once, hoping some would land near the target, the world would have united in laughter. But sadly for hysterical YouTube video viewing, that’s not what happened. The archers sought to maximize every arrow by zeroing in on the spot that would bring them the most points. Marketers have always sought to do the same. But they can only work with the tools that are available. A firm grasp of the desired target does little good if the ad products aren’t there to deliver that target. On the social side, both Facebook and Twitter have taken steps to enhance targeting for marketers. And why not? As the demand to monetize only goes up, they’re quite motivated to leverage and deliver their incredible user bases in ways that make economic sense for advertisers. You could target keywords on Twitter with promoted accounts, and get promoted tweets into search. They would surface for your followers and some users that Twitter thought were like them. Now you can go beyond keywords and target Twitter users based on 350 interests in 25 categories. How does a user wind up in one of these categories? Twitter looks at that user’s tweets, they look at whom they follow, and they run data through some sort of Twitter secret sauce. The result is, you have a much clearer shot at Twitter users who are most likely to welcome and be responsive to your tweets. And beyond the 350 interests, you can also create custom segments that find users who resemble followers of whatever Twitter handle you give it. That means you can now use boring tweets to sell like a madman, right? Not quite. This ad product is still quality-based, meaning if you’re not putting out tweets that lead to interest and thus, engagement, that tweet will earn a low quality score and wind up costing you more under Twitter’s auction system to maintain. That means, as the old knight in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” cautions, “choose wisely” when targeting based on these interests and categories to make sure your interests truly do line up with theirs. On the Facebook side, they’re rolling out ad targeting that uses email addresses, phone numbers, game and app developers’ user ID’s, and eventually addresses for you bigger brands. Why? Because you marketers asked for it. Here you were with this amazing customer list but no way to reach those same customers should they be on Facebook. Now you can find and communicate with customers you gathered outside of social, and use Facebook to do it. Fair to say such users are a sensible target and will be responsive to your message since they’ve already bought something from you. And no you’re not giving your customer info to Facebook. They’ll use something called “hashing” to make sure you don’t see Facebook user data (beyond email, phone number, address, or user ID), and Facebook can’t see your customer data. The end result, social becomes far more workable and more valuable to marketers when it delivers on the promise that made it so exciting in the first place. That promise is the ability to move past casting wide nets to the masses and toward concentrating marketing dollars efficiently on the targets most likely to yield results.

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Four Easy Ways to Save a Rocky CRM Relationship

- by Divya Malik

Today, I am pleased to introduce our guest blogger Luke Christianson. Luke is an Application Sales rep based out of Minneapolis, MN. You can find him on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter. In any relationship, sooner or later, the excitement fades away. The honeymoon period gives way to the old routines you had, before you committed to each other and you eventually begin doing things apart from one another. I’m not talking about a marriage… Well, I guess I am.Commitment to a CRM tool and building a deep and lasting relationship is not much different than the basics of a traditional love story. After your controlled CRM pilot program, and maybe the National Sales Meeting where you couldn’t escape those three wonderful letters, CRM, you will soon find that if you haven’t designed an environment where it’s going to enable your reps to make more money, the relationship is doomed. . If you’re currently in a dysfunctional CRM relationship, here are 4 simple tips to re-engaging users and getting that spark back. Shadow a Sales Rep: Chances are you can find out exactly what is preventing your sales reps from using the application by simply watching how they go about their day. Sales reps are driven by money, not by additional administrative duties. Your system needs to be setup so that they can get the information they need quickly, facilitate making key updates and run their business out of one easy-to-use application. Increase your sales team’s productivity by 5% automatically: Cancel the weekly forecast calls with your reps and require them update their opportunities in CRM. Something else that I’ve seen work extremely well, is when you do Monthly or Quarterly reviews, do not let your sales reps bring anything into the room with them; no spreadsheets, notebooks, or computers. Everything they need to tell you should be able to be put into CRM and fully accessible by the Sales Manager at any time. Tool time: Make sure the tools that you have selected meet both your short-term goals and your long term goals. You need tools that can adapt like your business does. You probably can’t wait two months for an update to a picklist value or for the addition of a simple workflow rule. Do you feel the tools that are in place can create the experience you want for your users? and finally, if all else fails... Keep It Simple, Stupid: Do you really need to require 15 fields to create an Opportunity? Do you need to clutter the interface with different reports that don’t add daily value? Most CRM systems on the market today are flexible enough today that your admin could clean up most of the unnecessary interface ‘noise’ in a few hours. If they're not, see #3. Every strong relationship can be tedious at times, you’ll fight and eventually make amends, you may even threaten to upgrade to a newer model… But be patient and think about what you want to achieve and you’ll find a partner for life.

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eSTEP Newsletter November 2012

- by mseika

Dear Partners,We would like to inform you that the November '12 issue of our Newsletter is now available.The issue contains information to the following topics: News from CorpOracle Celebrates 25 Years of SPARC Innovation; IDC White Papers Finds Growing Customer Comfort with Oracle Solaris Operating System; Oracle Buys Instantis; Pillar Axiom OpenWorld Highlights; Announcement Oracle Solaris 11.1 Availability (data sheet, new features, FAQ's, corporate pages, internal blog, download links, Oracle shop); Announcing StorageTek VSM 6; Announcement Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.1 Availability (new features, FAQ's, cluster corp page, download site, shop for media); Announcement: Oracle Database Appliance 2.4 patch update becomes available Technical SectionOracle White papers on SPARC SuperCluster; Understanding Parallel Execution; With LTFS, Tape is Gaining Storage Ground with additional link to How to Create Oracle Solaris 11 Zones with Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center; Provisioning Capabilities of Oracle Enterprise Ops Center Manager 12c; Maximizing your SPARC T4 Oracle Solaris Application Performance with the following articles: SPARC T4 Servers Set World Record on Siebel CRM 8.1.1.4 Benchmark, SPARC T4-Based Highly Scalable Solutions Posts New World Record on SPECjEnterprise2010 Benchmark, SPARC T4 Server Delivers Outstanding Performance on Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g; Oracle SUN ZFS Storage Appliance Reference Architecture for VMware vSphere4; Why 4K? - George Wilson's ZFS Day Talk; Pillar Axiom 600 with connected subjects: Oracle Introduces Pillar Axiom Release 5 Storage System Software, Driving down the high cost of Storage, This Provisioning with Pilar Axiom 600, Pillar Axiom 600- System overview and architecture; Migrate to Oracle;s SPARC Systems; Top 5 Reasons to Migrate to Oracle's SPARC Systems Learning & EventsRecently delivered Techcasts: Learning Paths; Oracle Database 11g: Database Administration (New) - Learning Path; Webcast: Drill Down on Disaster Recovery; What are Oracle Users Doing to Improve Availability and Disaster Recovery; SAP NetWeaver and Oracle Exadata Database Machine ReferencesARTstor Selects Oracle’s Sun ZFS Storage 7420 Appliances To Support Rapidly Growing Digital Image Library, Scottish Widows Cuts Sales Administration 20%, Reduces Time to Prepare Reports by 75%, and Achieves Return on Investment in First Year, Oracle's CRM Cloud Service Powers Innovation: Applications on Demand; Technology on Demand, How toHow to Migrate Your Data to Oracle Solaris 11 Using Shadow Migration; Using svcbundle to Create SMF Manifests and Profiles in Oracle Solaris 11; How to prepare a Sun ZFS Storage Appliance to Serve as a Storage Devise with Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c; Command Summary: Basic Operations with the Image Packaging System In Oracle Solaris 11; How to Update to Oracle Solaris 11.1 Using the Image Packaging System, How to Migrate Oracle Database from Oracle Solaris 8 to Oracle Solaris 11; Setting Up, Configuring, and Using an Oracle WebLogic Server Cluster; Ease the Chaos with Automated Patching: Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c; Book excerpt: Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud HandbookYou find the Newsletter on our portal under eSTEP News ---> Latest Newsletter. You will need to provide your email address and the pin below to get access. Link to the portal is shown below.URL: http://launch.oracle.com/PIN: eSTEP_2011Previous published Newsletters can be found under the Archived Newsletters section and more useful information under the Events, Download and Links tab. Feel free to explore and any feedback is appreciated to help us improve the service and information we deliver.Thanks and best regards,Partner HW Enablement EMEA

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Identity in .NET 4.5–Part 3: (Breaking) changes

- by Your DisplayName here!

I recently started porting a private build of Thinktecture.IdentityModel to .NET 4.5 and noticed a number of changes. The good news is that I can delete large parts of my library because many features are now in the box. Along the way I found some other nice additions. ClaimsIdentity now has methods to query the claims collection, e.g. HasClaim(), FindFirst(), FindAll(). ClaimsPrincipal has those methods as well. But they work across all contained identities. Nice! ClaimsPrincipal.Current retrieves the ClaimsPrincipal from Thread.CurrentPrincipal. Combined with the above changes, no casting necessary anymore. SecurityTokenHandler now has read and write methods that work directly with strings. This makes it much easier to deal with non-XML tokens like SWT or JWT. A new session security token handler that uses the ASP.NET machine key to protect the cookie. This makes it easier to get started in web farm scenarios. No need for a custom service host factory or the federation behavior anymore. WCF can be switched into “WIF mode” with the useIdentityConfiguration switch (odd name though). Tooling has become better and the new test STS makes it very easy to get started. On the other hand – and that was kind of expected – to bring claims into the core framework, there are also some breaking changes for WIF code. If you want to migrate (and I would recommend that), most changes to your code are mechanical. The following is a brain dump of the changes I encountered. Assembly Microsoft.IdentityModel is gone. The new functionality is now in mscorlib, System.IdentityModel(.Services) and System.ServiceModel. All the namespaces have changed as well. No IClaimsPrincipal and IClaimsIdentity anymore. Configuration section has been split into <system.identityModel /> and <system.identityModel.services />. WCF configuration story has changed as well. Claim.ClaimType is now Claim.Type. ClaimCollection is now IEnumerable<Claim>. IsSessionMode is now IsReferenceMode. Bootstrap token handling is different now. ClaimsPrincipalHttpModule is gone. This is not really needed anymore, apart from maybe claims transformation (see here). Various factory methods on ClaimsPrincipal are gone (e.g. ClaimsPrincipal.CreateFromIdentity()). SecurityTokenHandler.ValidateToken now returns a ReadOnlyCollection<ClaimsIdentity>. Some lower level helper classes are gone or internal now (e.g. KeyGenerator). The WCF WS-Trust bindings are gone. I think this is a pity. They were *really* useful when doing work with WSTrustChannelFactory. Since WIF is part of the Windows operating system and also supported in future versions of .NET, there is no urgent need to migrate to the 4.5 claims model. But obviously, going forward, at some point you want to make the move.

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Entity System with C++ templates

- by tommaisey

I've been getting interested in the Entity/Component style of game programming, and I've come up with a design in C++ which I'd like a critique of. I decided to go with a fairly pure Entity system, where entities are simply an ID number. Components are stored in a series of vectors - one for each Component type. However, I didn't want to have to add boilerplate code for every new Component type I added to the game. Nor did I want to use macros to do this, which frankly scare me. So I've come up with a system based on templates and type hinting. But there are some potential issues I'd like to check before I spend ages writing this (I'm a slow coder!) All Components derive from a Component base class. This base class has a protected constructor, that takes a string parameter. When you write a new derived Component class, you must initialise the base with the name of your new class in a string. When you first instantiate a new DerivedComponent, it adds the string to a static hashmap inside Component mapped to a unique integer id. When you subsequently instantiate more Components of the same type, no action is taken. The result (I think) should be a static hashmap with the name of each class derived from Component that you instantiate at least once, mapped to a unique id, which can by obtained with the static method Component::getTypeId ("DerivedComponent"). Phew. The next important part is TypedComponentList<typename PropertyType>. This is basically just a wrapper to an std::vector<typename PropertyType> with some useful methods. It also contains a hashmap of entity ID numbers to slots in the array so we can find Components by their entity owner. Crucially TypedComponentList<> is derived from the non-template class ComponentList. This allows me to maintain a list of pointers to ComponentList in my main ComponentManager, which actually point to TypedComponentLists with different template parameters (sneaky). The Component manager has template functions such as: template <typename ComponentType> void addProperty (ComponentType& component, int componentTypeId, int entityId) and: template <typename ComponentType> TypedComponentList<ComponentType>* getComponentList (int componentTypeId) which deal with casting from ComponentList to the correct TypedComponentList for you. So to get a list of a particular type of Component you call: TypedComponentList<MyComponent>* list = componentManager.getComponentList<MyComponent> (Component::getTypeId("MyComponent")); Which I'll admit looks pretty ugly. Bad points of the design: If a user of the code writes a new Component class but supplies the wrong string to the base constructor, the whole system will fail. Each time a new Component is instantiated, we must check a hashed string to see if that component type has bee instantiated before. Will probably generate a lot of assembly because of the extensive use of templates. I don't know how well the compiler will be able to minimise this. You could consider the whole system a bit complex - perhaps premature optimisation? But I want to use this code again and again, so I want it to be performant. Good points of the design: Components are stored in typed vectors but they can also be found by using their entity owner id as a hash. This means we can iterate them fast, and minimise cache misses, but also skip straight to the component we need if necessary. We can freely add Components of different types to the system without having to add and manage new Component vectors by hand. What do you think? Do the good points outweigh the bad?

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Writing a method to 'transform' an immutable object: how should I approach this?

- by Prog

(While this question has to do with a concrete coding dilemma, it's mostly about what's the best way to design a function.) I'm writing a method that should take two Color objects, and gradually transform the first Color into the second one, creating an animation. The method will be in a utility class. My problem is that Color is an immutable object. That means that I can't do color.setRGB or color.setBlue inside a loop in the method. What I can do, is instantiate a new Color and return it from the method. But then I won't be able to gradually change the color. So I thought of three possible solutions: 1- The client code includes the method call inside a loop. For example: int duration = 1500; // duration of the animation in milliseconds int steps = 20; // how many 'cycles' the animation will take for(int i=0; i<steps; i++) color = transformColor(color, targetColor, duration, steps); And the method would look like this: Color transformColor(Color original, Color target, int duration, int steps){ int redDiff = target.getRed() - original.getRed(); int redAddition = redDiff / steps; int newRed = original.getRed() + redAddition; // same for green and blue .. Thread.sleep(duration / STEPS); // exception handling omitted return new Color(newRed, newGreen, newBlue); } The disadvantage of this approach is that the client code has to "do part of the method's job" and include a for loop. The method doesn't do it's work entirely on it's own, which I don't like. 2- Make a mutable Color subclass with methods such as setRed, and pass objects of this class into transformColor. Then it could look something like this: void transformColor(MutableColor original, Color target, int duration){ final int STEPS = 20; int redDiff = target.getRed() - original.getRed(); int redAddition = redDiff / steps; int newRed = original.getRed() + redAddition; // same for green and blue .. for(int i=0; i<STEPS; i++){ original.setRed(original.getRed() + redAddition); // same for green and blue .. Thread.sleep(duration / STEPS); // exception handling omitted } } Then the calling code would usually look something like this: // The method will usually transform colors of JComponents JComponent someComponent = ... ; // setting the Color in JComponent to be a MutableColor Color mutableColor = new MutableColor(someComponent.getForeground()); someComponent.setForeground(mutableColor); // later, transforming the Color in the JComponent transformColor((MutableColor)someComponent.getForeground(), new Color(200,100,150), 2000); The disadvantage is - the need to create a new class MutableColor, and also the need to do casting. 3- Pass into the method the actual mutable object that holds the color. Then the method could do object.setColor or similar every iteration of the loop. Two disadvantages: A- Not so elegant. Passing in the object that holds the color just to transform the color feels unnatural. B- While most of the time this method will be used to transform colors inside JComponent objects, other kinds of objects may have colors too. So the method would need to be overloaded to receive other types, or receive Objects and have instanceof checks inside.. Not optimal. Right now I think I like solution #2 the most, than solution #1 and solution #3 the least. However I'd like to hear your opinions and suggestions regarding this.

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CentOS 5.5 : Postfix, Dovecot & MySQL

- by GruffTech

I'm hoping someone has seen this issue before because I'm at quite a loss. We're building a new outbound smtp server for our clients that features anti-spam scanning and virus scanning for outbound emails, something we had not previously done. So with CentOS 5.5 x64, Installed and patched completely. Postfix & Dovecot both installed via base repo. [grufftech@outgoing postfix]# rpm -qa | grep postfix postfix-2.3.3-2.1.el5_2 [grufftech@outgoing postfix]# rpm -qa | grep dovecot dovecot-1.0.7-7.el5 [grufftech@outgoing ~]# dovecot --build-options Build options: ioloop=poll notify=inotify ipv6 openssl SQL drivers: mysql postgresql Passdb: checkpassword ldap pam passwd passwd-file shadow sql Userdb: checkpassword ldap passwd prefetch passwd-file sql static /etc/dovecot.conf auth default { mechanisms = plain login digest-md5 cram-md5 passdb sql { args = /etc/dovecot-mysql.conf } userdb sql { args = /etc/dovecot-mysql.conf } userdb prefetch { } user = nobody socket listen { master { path = /var/run/dovecot/auth-master mode = 0660 user = postfix group = postfix } client { path = /var/spool/postfix/private/auth mode = 0660 user = postfix group = postfix } } } All the server is doing is auth for postfix, so no reason to have imap / pop / dict. /etc/dovecot-mysql.conf driver = mysql connect = host=10.0.32.159 dbname=mail user=****** password=******** default_pass_scheme = plain user_query = select 1 password_query = select password from users where username = '%n' and domain = '%d' So drop in my configuration, (which is working on another server identical to this one.) [grufftech@outgoing ~]# /etc/init.d/dovecot start Starting Dovecot Imap: [ OK ] Sweet. Booted up nicely, thats good.... (incoming problem in 3....2....1....) May 21 08:09:01 outgoing dovecot: Dovecot v1.0.7 starting up May 21 08:09:02 outgoing dovecot: auth-worker(default): mysql: Connect failed to 10.0.32.159 (mail): Can't connect to MySQL server on '10.0.32.159' (13) - waiting for 1 seconds before retry well what the crap. went and checked permissions on my MySQL database, and its fine. [grufftech@outgoing ~]# mysql vpopmail -h 10.0.32.159 -u ****** -p Enter password: Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g. Your MySQL connection id is 127828558 Server version: 4.1.22 Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer. mysql>\q So! My server can talk to my database server. but dovecot, for whatever reason, isn't able to. I've fiddled with it for the last six hours, grabbed slightly-older copies of the RPM (ones that matched our production server exactly) to test those, copied configs, searched google, searched server fault, chatted in IRC, banged my head against the table, I've done it all. Surely I'm doing something wrong or forgetting something, can anyone tell me what the elephant in the room is? This stuff is supposed to work.

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Linux Mint 10 LXDE computer to act as LTSP Server without luck

- by Rautamiekka

So I've tried to make our screen-broken HP laptop to also serve as LTSP Server in addition to various other tasks, without luck, which may be cuz I'm running LM10 LXDE while the instructions are for Ubuntu. Excuse my ignorance. The entire output from Terminal after installing LTSP stuff along with a Server kernel and a load of other packages: administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ sudo lt ltrace ltsp-build-client ltsp-chroot ltspfs ltspfsmounter ltsp-info ltsp-localapps ltsp-update-image ltsp-update-kernels ltsp-update-sshkeys administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ sudo ltsp-update-sshkeys administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ sudo ltsp-update-kernels find: `/opt/ltsp/': No such file or directory administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ sudo ltsp-build-client /usr/share/ltsp/plugins/ltsp-build-client/common/010-chroot-tagging: line 3: /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/ltsp_chroot: No such file or directory error: LTSP client installation ended abnormally administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ sudo ltsp-update-image Cannot determine assigned port. Assigning to port 2000. mkdir: cannot create directory `/opt/ltsp/i386/etc/ltsp': No such file or directory /usr/sbin/ltsp-update-image: 274: cannot create /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/ltsp/update-kernels.conf: Directory nonexistent /usr/sbin/ltsp-update-image: 274: cannot create /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/ltsp/update-kernels.conf: Directory nonexistent Regenerating kernel... chroot: failed to run command `/usr/share/ltsp/update-kernels': No such file or directory Done. Configuring inetd... Done. Updating pxelinux default configuration...Done. Skipping invalid chroot: /opt/ltsp/i386 chroot: failed to run command `test': No such file or directory administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ sudo ltsp-chroot chroot: failed to run command `/bin/bash': No such file or directory administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ bash administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ exit exit administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ sudo ls /opt/ltsp i386 administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ sudo ls /opt/ltsp/i386/ administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ sudo ltsp-build-client NOTE: Root directory /opt/ltsp/i386 already exists, this will lead to problems, please remove it before trying again. Exiting. error: LTSP client installation ended abnormally administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ sudo rm -rv /opt/ltsp/i386 removed directory: `/opt/ltsp/i386' administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ sudo ltsp-build-client /usr/share/ltsp/plugins/ltsp-build-client/common/010-chroot-tagging: line 3: /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/ltsp_chroot: No such file or directory error: LTSP client installation ended abnormally administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ aptitude search ltsp p fts-ltsp-ldap - LDAP LTSP module for the TFTP/Fuse supplicant p ltsp-client - LTSP client environment p ltsp-client-core - LTSP client environment (core) p ltsp-cluster-accountmanager - Account creation and management daemon for LTSP p ltsp-cluster-control - Web based thin-client configuration management p ltsp-cluster-lbagent - LTSP loadbalancer agent offers variables about the state of the ltsp server p ltsp-cluster-lbserver - LTSP loadbalancer server returns the optimal ltsp server to terminal p ltsp-cluster-nxloadbalancer - Minimal NX loadbalancer for ltsp-cluster p ltsp-cluster-pxeconfig - LTSP-Cluster symlink generator p ltsp-controlaula - Classroom management tool with ltsp clients p ltsp-docs - LTSP Documentation p ltsp-livecd - starts an LTSP live server on an Ubuntu livecd session p ltsp-manager - Ubuntu LTSP server management GUI i A ltsp-server - Basic LTSP server environment i ltsp-server-standalone - Complete LTSP server environment i A ltspfs - Fuse based remote filesystem for LTSP thin clients p ltspfsd - Fuse based remote filesystem hooks for LTSP thin clients p ltspfsd-core - Fuse based remote filesystem daemon for LTSP thin clients p python-ltsp - provides ltsp related functions administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ sudo aptitude purge ltsp-server ltsp-server-standalone ltspfs The following packages will be REMOVED: debconf-utils{u} debootstrap{u} dhcp3-server{u} gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio{u} ldm-server{u} libpulse-browse0{u} ltsp-server{p} ltsp-server-standalone{p} ltspfs{p} nbd-server{u} openbsd-inetd{u} pulseaudio{u} pulseaudio-esound-compat{u} pulseaudio-module-x11{u} pulseaudio-utils{u} squashfs-tools{u} tftpd-hpa{u} 0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 17 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 0B of archives. After unpacking 6,996kB will be freed. Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] (Reading database ... 158454 files and directories currently installed.) Removing ltsp-server-standalone ... Purging configuration files for ltsp-server-standalone ... Removing ltsp-server ... Purging configuration files for ltsp-server ... dpkg: warning: while removing ltsp-server, directory '/var/lib/tftpboot/ltsp' not empty so not removed. dpkg: warning: while removing ltsp-server, directory '/var/lib/tftpboot' not empty so not removed. Processing triggers for man-db ... (Reading database ... 158195 files and directories currently installed.) Removing debconf-utils ... Removing debootstrap ... Removing dhcp3-server ... * Stopping DHCP server dhcpd3 [ OK ] Removing gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio ... Removing ldm-server ... Removing pulseaudio-module-x11 ... Removing pulseaudio-esound-compat ... Removing pulseaudio ... * PulseAudio configured for per-user sessions Removing pulseaudio-utils ... Removing libpulse-browse0 ... Processing triggers for man-db ... Processing triggers for ureadahead ... ureadahead will be reprofiled on next reboot Processing triggers for libc-bin ... ldconfig deferred processing now taking place (Reading database ... 157944 files and directories currently installed.) Removing ltspfs ... Processing triggers for man-db ... (Reading database ... 157932 files and directories currently installed.) Removing nbd-server ... Stopping Network Block Device server: nbd-server. Removing openbsd-inetd ... * Stopping internet superserver inetd [ OK ] Removing squashfs-tools ... Removing tftpd-hpa ... tftpd-hpa stop/waiting Processing triggers for ureadahead ... Processing triggers for man-db ... administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ sudo aptitude purge ~c The following packages will be REMOVED: dhcp3-server{p} libpulse-browse0{p} nbd-server{p} openbsd-inetd{p} pulseaudio{p} tftpd-hpa{p} 0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 6 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 0B of archives. After unpacking 0B will be used. Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] (Reading database ... 157881 files and directories currently installed.) Removing dhcp3-server ... Purging configuration files for dhcp3-server ... Removing libpulse-browse0 ... Purging configuration files for libpulse-browse0 ... Removing nbd-server ... Purging configuration files for nbd-server ... Removing openbsd-inetd ... Purging configuration files for openbsd-inetd ... Removing pulseaudio ... Purging configuration files for pulseaudio ... Removing tftpd-hpa ... Purging configuration files for tftpd-hpa ... Processing triggers for ureadahead ... administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ sudo aptitude install ltsp-server-standalone The following NEW packages will be installed: debconf-utils{a} debootstrap{a} ldm-server{a} ltsp-server{a} ltsp-server-standalone ltspfs{a} nbd-server{a} openbsd-inetd{a} squashfs-tools{a} The following packages are RECOMMENDED but will NOT be installed: dhcp3-server pulseaudio-esound-compat tftpd-hpa 0 packages upgraded, 9 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 0B/498kB of archives. After unpacking 2,437kB will be used. Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] Preconfiguring packages ... Selecting previously deselected package openbsd-inetd. (Reading database ... 157868 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking openbsd-inetd (from .../openbsd-inetd_0.20080125-4ubuntu2_i386.deb) ... Processing triggers for man-db ... Processing triggers for ureadahead ... Setting up openbsd-inetd (0.20080125-4ubuntu2) ... * Stopping internet superserver inetd [ OK ] * Starting internet superserver inetd [ OK ] Selecting previously deselected package ldm-server. (Reading database ... 157877 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking ldm-server (from .../ldm-server_2%3a2.1.3-0ubuntu1_all.deb) ... Selecting previously deselected package debconf-utils. Unpacking debconf-utils (from .../debconf-utils_1.5.32ubuntu3_all.deb) ... Selecting previously deselected package debootstrap. Unpacking debootstrap (from .../debootstrap_1.0.23ubuntu1_all.deb) ... Selecting previously deselected package nbd-server. Unpacking nbd-server (from .../nbd-server_1%3a2.9.14-2ubuntu1_i386.deb) ... Selecting previously deselected package squashfs-tools. Unpacking squashfs-tools (from .../squashfs-tools_1%3a4.0-8_i386.deb) ... Selecting previously deselected package ltsp-server. GNU nano 2.2.4 File: /etc/ltsp/ltsp-update-image.conf # Configuration file for ltsp-update-image # By default, do not compress the image # as it's reported to make it unstable NO_COMP="-noF -noD -noI -no-exports" [ Switched to /etc/ltsp/ltsp-update-image.conf ] administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ ls /opt/ firefox/ ltsp/ mint-flashplugin/ administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ ls /opt/ltsp/i386/ administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ ls /opt/ltsp/ i386 administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ sudo ltsp ltsp-build-client ltsp-chroot ltspfs ltspfsmounter ltsp-info ltsp-localapps ltsp-update-image ltsp-update-kernels ltsp-update-sshkeys administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ sudo ltsp-build-client NOTE: Root directory /opt/ltsp/i386 already exists, this will lead to problems, please remove it before trying again. Exiting. error: LTSP client installation ended abnormally administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ ^C administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ sudo aptitude purge ltsp ltspfs ltsp-server ltsp-server-standalone administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ sudo aptitude purge ltsp-server The following packages will be REMOVED: ltsp-server{p} 0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 0B of archives. After unpacking 1,073kB will be freed. The following packages have unmet dependencies: ltsp-server-standalone: Depends: ltsp-server but it is not going to be installed. The following actions will resolve these dependencies: Remove the following packages: 1) ltsp-server-standalone Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?] The following packages will be REMOVED: debconf-utils{u} debootstrap{u} ldm-server{u} ltsp-server{p} ltsp-server-standalone{a} ltspfs{u} nbd-server{u} openbsd-inetd{u} squashfs-tools{u} 0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 9 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 0B of archives. After unpacking 2,437kB will be freed. Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] (Reading database ... 158244 files and directories currently installed.) Removing ltsp-server-standalone ... (Reading database ... 158240 files and directories currently installed.) Removing ltsp-server ... Purging configuration files for ltsp-server ... dpkg: warning: while removing ltsp-server, directory '/var/lib/tftpboot/ltsp' not empty so not removed. dpkg: warning: while removing ltsp-server, directory '/var/lib/tftpboot' not empty so not removed. Processing triggers for man-db ... (Reading database ... 157987 files and directories currently installed.) Removing debconf-utils ... Removing debootstrap ... Removing ldm-server ... Removing ltspfs ... Removing nbd-server ... Stopping Network Block Device server: nbd-server. Removing openbsd-inetd ... * Stopping internet superserver inetd [ OK ] Removing squashfs-tools ... Processing triggers for man-db ... Processing triggers for ureadahead ... administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ sudo aptitude purge ~c The following packages will be REMOVED: ltsp-server-standalone{p} nbd-server{p} openbsd-inetd{p} 0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 3 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 0B of archives. After unpacking 0B will be used. Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] (Reading database ... 157871 files and directories currently installed.) Removing ltsp-server-standalone ... Purging configuration files for ltsp-server-standalone ... Removing nbd-server ... Purging configuration files for nbd-server ... Removing openbsd-inetd ... Purging configuration files for openbsd-inetd ... Processing triggers for ureadahead ... administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ sudo rm -rv /var/lib/t teamspeak-server/ tftpboot/ transmission-daemon/ administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ sudo rm -rv /var/lib/tftpboot removed `/var/lib/tftpboot/ltsp/i386/pxelinux.cfg/default' removed directory: `/var/lib/tftpboot/ltsp/i386/pxelinux.cfg' removed directory: `/var/lib/tftpboot/ltsp/i386' removed directory: `/var/lib/tftpboot/ltsp' removed directory: `/var/lib/tftpboot' administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ sudo find / -name "ltsp" /opt/ltsp administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ sudo rm -rv /opt/ltsp removed directory: `/opt/ltsp/i386' removed directory: `/opt/ltsp' administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ sudo aptitude install ltsp-server-standalone The following NEW packages will be installed: debconf-utils{a} debootstrap{a} ldm-server{a} ltsp-server{a} ltsp-server-standalone ltspfs{a} nbd-server{a} openbsd-inetd{a} squashfs-tools{a} The following packages are RECOMMENDED but will NOT be installed: dhcp3-server pulseaudio-esound-compat tftpd-hpa 0 packages upgraded, 9 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 0B/498kB of archives. After unpacking 2,437kB will be used. Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] Preconfiguring packages ... Selecting previously deselected package openbsd-inetd. (Reading database ... 157868 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking openbsd-inetd (from .../openbsd-inetd_0.20080125-4ubuntu2_i386.deb) ... Processing triggers for man-db ... GNU nano 2.2.4 New Buffer GNU nano 2.2.4 File: /etc/ltsp/dhcpd.conf # # Default LTSP dhcpd.conf config file. # authoritative; subnet 192.168.2.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 { range 192.168.2.70 192.168.2.79; option domain-name "jarvinen"; option domain-name-servers 192.168.2.254; option broadcast-address 192.168.2.255; option routers 192.168.2.254; # next-server 192.168.0.1; # get-lease-hostnames true; option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0; option root-path "/opt/ltsp/i386"; if substring( option vendor-class-identifier, 0, 9 ) = "PXEClient" { filename "/ltsp/i386/pxelinux.0"; } else { filename "/ltsp/i386/nbi.img"; } } [ Wrote 22 lines ] administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ sudo service dhcp3-server start * Starting DHCP server dhcpd3 [ OK ] administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ sudo ltsp-build-client /usr/share/ltsp/plugins/ltsp-build-client/common/010-chroot-tagging: line 3: /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/ltsp_chroot: No such file or directory error: LTSP client installation ended abnormally administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ sudo cat /usr/share/ltsp/plugins/ltsp-build-client/common/010-chroot-tagging case "$MODE" in after-install) echo LTSP_CHROOT=$ROOT >> $ROOT/etc/ltsp_chroot ;; esac administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ cd $ROOT/etc/ltsp_chroot bash: cd: /etc/ltsp_chroot: No such file or directory administrator@rauta-mint-turion ~ $ cd $ROOT/etc/ administrator@rauta-mint-turion /etc $ ls acpi chatscripts emacs group insserv.conf.d logrotate.conf mysql php5 rc6.d smbnetfs.conf UPower adduser.conf ConsoleKit environment group- iproute2 logrotate.d nanorc phpmyadmin rc.local snmp usb_modeswitch.conf alternatives console-setup esound grub.d issue lsb-base nbd-server pm rcS.d sound usb_modeswitch.d anacrontab cron.d firefox gshadow issue.net lsb-base-logging.sh ndiswrapper pnm2ppa.conf request-key.conf ssh ushare.conf apache2 cron.daily firefox-3.5 gshadow- java lsb-release netscsid.conf polkit-1 resolvconf ssl vga apm cron.hourly firestarter gtk-2.0 java-6-sun ltrace.conf network popularity-contest.conf resolv.conf sudoers vim apparmor cron.monthly fonts gtkmathview kbd ltsp NetworkManager ppp rmt sudoers.d vlc apparmor.d crontab foomatic gufw kernel lxdm networks printcap rpc su-to-rootrc vsftpd.conf apport cron.weekly fstab hal kernel-img.conf magic nsswitch.conf profile rsyslog.conf sweeprc w3m apt crypttab ftpusers hdparm.conf kerneloops.conf magic.mime ntp.conf profile.d rsyslog.d sysctl.conf wgetrc at.deny cups fuse.conf host.conf kompozer mailcap obex-data-server protocols samba sysctl.d wildmidi auto-apt dbconfig-common gai.conf hostname ldap mailcap.order ODBCDataSources psiconv sane.d teamspeak-server wodim.conf avahi dbus-1 gamin hosts ld.so.cache manpath.config odbc.ini pulse screenrc terminfo wpa_supplicant bash.bashrc debconf.conf gconf hosts.allow ld.so.conf menu openal purple securetty thunderbird X11 bash_completion debian_version gdb hosts.deny ld.so.conf.d menu-methods openoffice python security timezone xdg bash_completion.d default gdm hp legal mime.types opt python2.6 sensors3.conf transmission-daemon xml bindresvport.blacklist defoma ghostscript ifplugd lftp.conf mke2fs.conf pam.conf python2.7 sensors.d ts.conf xulrunner-1.9.2 blkid.conf deluser.conf gimp inetd.conf libpaper.d modprobe.d pam.d python3.1 services ucf.conf zsh_command_not_found blkid.tab depmod.d gnome init libreoffice modules pango rc0.d sgml udev bluetooth dhcp gnome-system-tools init.d linuxmint motd papersize rc1.d shadow ufw bonobo-activation dhcp3 gnome-vfs-2.0 initramfs-tools locale.alias mplayer passwd rc2.d shadow- updatedb.conf ca-certificates dictionaries-common gnome-vfs-mime-magic inputrc localtime mtab passwd- rc3.d shells update-manager ca-certificates.conf doc-base gre.d insserv logcheck mtab.fuselock pcmcia rc4.d skel update-motd.d calendar dpkg groff insserv.conf login.defs mtools.conf perl rc5.d smb2www update-notifier administrator@rauta-mint-turion /etc $ cd ltsp/ administrator@rauta-mint-turion /etc/ltsp $ ls dhcpd.conf ltsp-update-image.conf administrator@rauta-mint-turion /etc/ltsp $ cat dhcpd.conf # # Default LTSP dhcpd.conf config file. # authoritative; subnet 192.168.2.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 { range 192.168.2.70 192.168.2.79; option domain-name "jarvinen"; option domain-name-servers 192.168.2.254; option broadcast-address 192.168.2.255; option routers 192.168.2.254; # next-server 192.168.0.1; # get-lease-hostnames true; option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0; option root-path "/opt/ltsp/i386"; if substring( option vendor-class-identifier, 0, 9 ) = "PXEClient" { filename "/ltsp/i386/pxelinux.0"; } else { filename "/ltsp/i386/nbi.img"; } } administrator@rauta-mint-turion /etc/ltsp $

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Solaris ldap Authentication

- by Tman

Hi everyone Iv been having a trouble trying to get my Solaris 10 server to authenticate against an eDir server.im managed to Set up my linux(RHeL,SLES) servers to authenticate against the ldap Server.which works fine. Here is my configuration Files. ldapclient list: NS_LDAP_FILE_VERSION= 2.0 NS_LDAP_BINDDN= cn=proxyuser,o=AEDev NS_LDAP_BINDPASSWD= {NS1}ecfa88f3a945c22222233 NS_LDAP_SERVERS= 192.168.0.19 NS_LDAP_SEARCH_BASEDN= ou=auth,o=AEDev NS_LDAP_AUTH= simple NS_LDAP_SEARCH_SCOPE= sub NS_LDAP_CACHETTL= 0 NS_LDAP_CREDENTIAL_LEVEL= anonymous NS_LDAP_SERVICE_SEARCH_DESC= group:ou=Groups,ou=auth,o=AEDev NS_LDAP_SERVICE_SEARCH_DESC= shadow:ou=users,ou=auth,o=AEDev?sub?objectClass=shadowAccount NS_LDAP_SERVICE_SEARCH_DESC= passwd:ou=auth,o=AEDev?sub?objectClass=posixAccount NS_LDAP_BIND_TIME= 10 NS_LDAP_SERVICE_AUTH_METHOD= pam_ldap:simple getent passwd works fine: root:x:0:0:Super-User:/:/sbin/sh daemon:x:1:1::/: bin:x:2:2::/usr/bin: sys:x:3:3::/: adm:x:4:4:Admin:/var/adm: lp:x:71:8:Line Printer Admin:/usr/spool/lp: uucp:x:5:5:uucp Admin:/usr/lib/uucp: nuucp:x:9:9:uucp Admin:/var/spool/uucppublic:/usr/lib/uucp/uucico smmsp:x:25:25:SendMail Message Submission Program:/: listen:x:37:4:Network Admin:/usr/net/nls: gdm:x:50:50:GDM Reserved UID:/: webservd:x:80:80:WebServer Reserved UID:/: postgres:x:90:90:PostgreSQL Reserved UID:/:/usr/bin/pfksh svctag:x:95:12:Service Tag UID:/: nobody:x:60001:60001:NFS Anonymous Access User:/: noaccess:x:60002:60002:No Access User:/: nobody4:x:65534:65534:SunOS 4.x NFS Anonymous Access User:/: tlla:x:2012:100::/home/tlla: test:x:2011:100::/home/test: thato:x:2010:100::/home/thato: pam.conf login auth sufficient pam_unix_auth.so.1 #server_policy login auth sufficient /usr/lib/security/pam_ldap.so.1 try_first_pass login auth required pam_dial_auth.so.1 rlogin auth sufficient pam_rhosts_auth.so.1 rlogin auth requisite pam_authtok_get.so.1 rlogin auth required pam_dhkeys.so.1 rlogin auth required pam_unix_cred.so.1 rlogin auth sufficient pam_unix_auth.so.1 rlogin auth sufficient /usr/lib/security/pam_ldap.so.1 try_first_pass rsh auth sufficient pam_rhosts_auth.so.1 rsh auth required pam_unix_cred.so.1 rsh auth sufficient pam_unix_auth.so.1 #server_policy rsh auth sufficient /usr/lib/security/pam_ldap.so.1 try_first_pass other auth requisite pam_authtok_get.so.1 other auth required pam_dhkeys.so.1 other auth required pam_unix_cred.so.1 other auth sufficient pam_unix_auth.so.1 other auth sufficient /usr/lib/security/pam_ldap.so.1 try_first_pass passwd auth required pam_passwd_auth.so.1 passwd auth sufficient pam_unix_auth.so.1 ssh account sufficient pam_unix.so.1 ssh account sufficient /usr/lib/security/pam_ldap.so.1 try_first_pass other account requisite pam_roles.so.1 other account sufficient pam_unix_account.so.1 other account sufficient /usr/lib/security/pam_ldap.so.1 try_first_pass other password required pam_dhkeys.so.1 other password requisite pam_authtok_get.so.1 other password requisite pam_authtok_check.so.1 other password required pam_authtok_store.so.1 other password sufficient pam_unix.so.1 other password sufficient /usr/lib/security/pam_ldap.so.1 try_first_pass Local Authentication Works But LDAP Authentication Doesn't Work.

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SSSD Authentication

- by user24089

I just built a test server running OpenSuSE 12.1 and am trying to learn how configure sssd, but am not sure where to begin to look for why my config cannot allow me to authenticate. server:/etc/sssd # cat sssd.conf [sssd] config_file_version = 2 reconnection_retries = 3 sbus_timeout = 30 services = nss,pam domains = test.local [nss] filter_groups = root filter_users = root reconnection_retries = 3 [pam] reconnection_retries = 3 # Section created by YaST [domain/mose.cc] access_provider = ldap ldap_uri = ldap://server.test.local ldap_search_base = dc=test,dc=local ldap_schema = rfc2307bis id_provider = ldap ldap_user_uuid = entryuuid ldap_group_uuid = entryuuid ldap_id_use_start_tls = True enumerate = False cache_credentials = True chpass_provider = krb5 auth_provider = krb5 krb5_realm = TEST.LOCAL krb5_kdcip = server.test.local server:/etc # cat ldap.conf base dc=test,dc=local bind_policy soft pam_lookup_policy yes pam_password exop nss_initgroups_ignoreusers root,ldap nss_schema rfc2307bis nss_map_attribute uniqueMember member ssl start_tls uri ldap://server.test.local ldap_version 3 pam_filter objectClass=posixAccount server:/etc # cat nsswitch.conf passwd: compat sss group: files sss hosts: files dns networks: files dns services: files protocols: files rpc: files ethers: files netmasks: files netgroup: files publickey: files bootparams: files automount: files ldap aliases: files shadow: compat server:/etc # cat krb5.conf [libdefaults] default_realm = TEST.LOCAL clockskew = 300 [realms] TEST.LOCAL = { kdc = server.test.local admin_server = server.test.local database_module = ldap default_domain = test.local } [logging] kdc = FILE:/var/log/krb5/krb5kdc.log admin_server = FILE:/var/log/krb5/kadmind.log default = SYSLOG:NOTICE:DAEMON [dbmodules] ldap = { db_library = kldap ldap_kerberos_container_dn = cn=krbContainer,dc=test,dc=local ldap_kdc_dn = cn=Administrator,dc=test,dc=local ldap_kadmind_dn = cn=Administrator,dc=test,dc=local ldap_service_password_file = /etc/openldap/ldap-pw ldap_servers = ldaps://server.test.local } [domain_realm] .test.local = TEST.LOCAL [appdefaults] pam = { ticket_lifetime = 1d renew_lifetime = 1d forwardable = true proxiable = false minimum_uid = 1 clockskew = 300 external = sshd use_shmem = sshd } If I log onto the server as root I can su into an ldap user, however if I try to console locally or ssh remotely I am unable to authenticate. getent doesn't show the ldap entries for users, Im not sure if I need to look at LDAP, nsswitch, or what: server:~ # ssh localhost -l test Password: Password: Password: Permission denied (publickey,keyboard-interactive). server:~ # su test test@server:/etc> id uid=1000(test) gid=100(users) groups=100(users) server:~ # tail /var/log/messages Nov 24 09:36:44 server login[14508]: pam_sss(login:auth): system info: [Client not found in Kerberos database] Nov 24 09:36:44 server login[14508]: pam_sss(login:auth): authentication failure; logname=LOGIN uid=0 euid=0 tty=/dev/ttyS1 ruser= rhost= user=test Nov 24 09:36:44 server login[14508]: pam_sss(login:auth): received for user test: 4 (System error) Nov 24 09:36:44 server login[14508]: FAILED LOGIN SESSION FROM /dev/ttyS1 FOR test, System error server:~ # vi /etc/pam.d/common-auth auth required pam_env.so auth sufficient pam_unix2.so auth required pam_sss.so use_first_pass server:~ # vi /etc/pam.d/sshd auth requisite pam_nologin.so auth include common-auth account requisite pam_nologin.so account include common-account password include common-password session required pam_loginuid.so session include common-session session optional pam_lastlog.so silent noupdate showfailed

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libpam-ldapd not looking for secondary groups

- by Jorge Suárez de Lis

I'm migrating from libpam-ldap to libpam-ldapd. I'm having some trouble gathering the secondary groups from LDAP. On libpam-ldap, I had this on the /etc/ldap.conf file: nss_schema rfc2307bis nss_base_passwd ou=People,ou=CITIUS,dc=inv,dc=usc,dc=es nss_base_shadow ou=People,ou=CITIUS,dc=inv,dc=usc,dc=es nss_base_group ou=Groups,ou=CITIUS,dc=inv,dc=usc,dc=es nss_map_attribute uniqueMember member The mapping is there because I'm using groupOfNames instead of groupOfUniqueNames LDAP class for groups, so the attribute naming the members is named member instead of uniqueMember. Now, I want to do the same using libpam-ldapd but I can't get it to work. Here's the relevant part of my /etc/nslcd.conf: base passwd ou=People,ou=CITIUS,dc=inv,dc=usc,dc=es base shadow ou=People,ou=CITIUS,dc=inv,dc=usc,dc=es base group ou=Groups,ou=CITIUS,dc=inv,dc=usc,dc=es map group uniqueMember member And this is the debug output from nslcd, when a user is authenticated: nslcd: [8b4567] DEBUG: connection from pid=12090 uid=0 gid=0 nslcd: [8b4567] DEBUG: nslcd_passwd_byuid(4004) nslcd: [8b4567] DEBUG: myldap_search(base="ou=People,ou=CITIUS,dc=inv,dc=usc,dc=es", filter="(&(objectClass=posixAccount)(uidNumber=4004))") nslcd: [8b4567] DEBUG: ldap_initialize(ldap://172.16.54.31/) nslcd: [8b4567] DEBUG: ldap_set_rebind_proc() nslcd: [8b4567] DEBUG: ldap_set_option(LDAP_OPT_PROTOCOL_VERSION,3) nslcd: [8b4567] DEBUG: ldap_set_option(LDAP_OPT_DEREF,0) nslcd: [8b4567] DEBUG: ldap_set_option(LDAP_OPT_TIMELIMIT,10) nslcd: [8b4567] DEBUG: ldap_set_option(LDAP_OPT_TIMEOUT,10) nslcd: [8b4567] DEBUG: ldap_set_option(LDAP_OPT_NETWORK_TIMEOUT,10) nslcd: [8b4567] DEBUG: ldap_set_option(LDAP_OPT_REFERRALS,LDAP_OPT_ON) nslcd: [8b4567] DEBUG: ldap_set_option(LDAP_OPT_RESTART,LDAP_OPT_ON) nslcd: [8b4567] DEBUG: ldap_simple_bind_s("uid=ubuntu,ou=Applications,ou=CITIUS,dc=inv,dc=usc,dc=es","*****") (uri="ldap://172.16.54.31/") nslcd: [8b4567] connected to LDAP server ldap://172.16.54.31/ nslcd: [8b4567] DEBUG: ldap_result(): end of results nslcd: [7b23c6] DEBUG: connection from pid=15906 uid=0 gid=2000 nslcd: [7b23c6] DEBUG: nslcd_pam_authc("jorge.suarez","","su","***") nslcd: [7b23c6] DEBUG: myldap_search(base="ou=People,ou=CITIUS,dc=inv,dc=usc,dc=es", filter="(&(objectClass=posixAccount)(uid=jorge.suarez))") nslcd: [7b23c6] DEBUG: ldap_initialize(ldap://172.16.54.31/) nslcd: [7b23c6] DEBUG: ldap_set_rebind_proc() nslcd: [7b23c6] DEBUG: ldap_set_option(LDAP_OPT_PROTOCOL_VERSION,3) nslcd: [7b23c6] DEBUG: ldap_set_option(LDAP_OPT_DEREF,0) nslcd: [7b23c6] DEBUG: ldap_set_option(LDAP_OPT_TIMELIMIT,10) nslcd: [7b23c6] DEBUG: ldap_set_option(LDAP_OPT_TIMEOUT,10) nslcd: [7b23c6] DEBUG: ldap_set_option(LDAP_OPT_NETWORK_TIMEOUT,10) nslcd: [7b23c6] DEBUG: ldap_set_option(LDAP_OPT_REFERRALS,LDAP_OPT_ON) nslcd: [7b23c6] DEBUG: ldap_set_option(LDAP_OPT_RESTART,LDAP_OPT_ON) nslcd: [7b23c6] DEBUG: ldap_simple_bind_s("uid=ubuntu,ou=Applications,ou=CITIUS,dc=inv,dc=usc,dc=es","*****") (uri="ldap://172.16.54.31/") nslcd: [7b23c6] connected to LDAP server ldap://172.16.54.31/ nslcd: [7b23c6] DEBUG: ldap_initialize(ldap://172.16.54.31/) nslcd: [7b23c6] DEBUG: ldap_set_rebind_proc() nslcd: [7b23c6] DEBUG: ldap_set_option(LDAP_OPT_PROTOCOL_VERSION,3) nslcd: [7b23c6] DEBUG: ldap_set_option(LDAP_OPT_DEREF,0) nslcd: [7b23c6] DEBUG: ldap_set_option(LDAP_OPT_TIMELIMIT,10) nslcd: [7b23c6] DEBUG: ldap_set_option(LDAP_OPT_TIMEOUT,10) nslcd: [7b23c6] DEBUG: ldap_set_option(LDAP_OPT_NETWORK_TIMEOUT,10) nslcd: [7b23c6] DEBUG: ldap_set_option(LDAP_OPT_REFERRALS,LDAP_OPT_ON) nslcd: [7b23c6] DEBUG: ldap_set_option(LDAP_OPT_RESTART,LDAP_OPT_ON) nslcd: [7b23c6] DEBUG: ldap_simple_bind_s("uid=jorge.suarez,ou=People,ou=CITIUS,dc=inv,dc=usc,dc=es","*****") (uri="ldap://172.16.54.31/") nslcd: [7b23c6] connected to LDAP server ldap://172.16.54.31/ nslcd: [7b23c6] DEBUG: myldap_search(base="uid=jorge.suarez,ou=People,ou=CITIUS,dc=inv,dc=usc,dc=es", filter="(objectClass=posixAccount)") nslcd: [7b23c6] DEBUG: ldap_unbind() nslcd: [3c9869] DEBUG: connection from pid=15906 uid=0 gid=2000 nslcd: [3c9869] DEBUG: nslcd_pam_sess_o("jorge.suarez","uid=jorge.suarez,ou=People,ou=CITIUS,dc=inv,dc=usc,dc=es","su","/dev/pts/7","","jorge.suarez") It seems to me that it won't even try to look for groups. What I am doing wrong? I can't see anything relevant to my problem information on the docs. I'm probably not understanding how the map option works.

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