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• Dell Latitude E6430 Docking Station + Dual Monitor + Laptop Screen Tri-Monitor setup

  - by Larry

  I have a company issued laptop and docking station as well as two monitors The specifications of the hardware are as follows; Laptop: Latitude E6430 BIOS: A02.00 Processor: i7-3720QM CPU @ 2.60 (8 CPUs) Memory: 4096MB RAM Page file: 1825MB used, 4793MB available DirectX 11 Display Driver/Chip: MVIDIA NVS 5200M DAC: Integrated RAMDAC Aprox Total Memory: 2376 (Above 3 details same for both displays) Current Display Mode (Display 1): 1600x900 Current Display Mode (Display 2): 1440x900 the docking station is a Dell Latitude E6420 Docking Station PR03X Port Replicator and I don't think the monitor model is particularly relevant to resolving this issue but they are both Acer V193Ws The story goes like this; the laptop works fine if I VGA one monitor into the laptop through the vga port on the back of the lefthand side of the laptop I can achieve dual monitor display fine (laptop screen + monitor) if I plug the laptop into the docking station and use the vga port in the back of the docking station I can dual monitor fine (laptop screen + monitor) if I plug the laptop into the docking station, the laptop's lefthand side VGA port no longer seems to function at all I've spoken to internal IT about this issue and they're going to get me some kind of VGA splitter or a DVI-VGA adapter to use with the docking station for the second Acer Monitor, but that isn't going to happen for a few days. So I guess what I'm wondering is; is there any way to continue to use the side VGA port on my laptop while using the docking station VGA port? and as a secondary 'followup' pending resolution of the initial issue with getting both monitors up and running (at the moment I have both monitors on my desk but am just using my laptop screen as one of my dual monitor display with one of the monitors [the one connected to dock]), is there any way to CONTINUE to use my laptop monitor to in effect have a triple monitor display (2 monitors + docked laptop)? I am wondering this because internal IT told me that they were aware of some issues with the particular display drivers in my box and triple monitor displays but weren't really going to look TOO much in-depth into that (which is perfectly understandable) since getting the adapter for the dual monitors up and running was the greater priority within their purview. So this is a two parter; Can I dual monitor using two vga cables with 1 docking station vga port and one laptop vga port? is there a setting that can be tweaked somewhere? because plugging the box into the station seems to make the side port stop working and... Is there any reasonably simple and cost-effective work around (e.g. I am find with shelling out maybe a few dollars out of my own pocket for some hardware or software to make my company box tri-display capable) but if this requires some extensive rebuild or new OSs or doing stuff to the BIOS I'd rather have a straight answer about this being untenable as a slight modification to a (once again) company laptop and stop wasting time looking into it Thanks! and please let me know if you guys need any more details (tech specs or something) to answer this question [EDIT] 2/10/2014 Just an update; turned out it really was just a hardware limitation issue. The old laptop just couldn't hack it. Got a new laptop with a better video card and different monitors from my company and am successfully using a triple display currently (2 monitors + laptop screen)

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• What would cause Memcached to Hang for 2+ seconds?

  - by Brad Dwyer

  I'm going nuts trying to scale memcached. From their site: Memcached operations are almost all O(1). Connecting to it and issuing a get or stat command should never lag. If connecting lags, you may be hitting the max connections limit. See ServerMaint for details on stats to monitor. If issuing commands lags, you can have a number of tuning problems. Most common are hardware problems, not enough RAM (swapping), network problems (bandwidth, dropped packets, half-duplex connections). On rare occasion OS bugs or memcached bugs can contribute. Well.. it is most certainly not performing like an O(1) operation for me. Under low to normal load on our site memcached response times for get and set ops are about 0.001 seconds. Not bad. But if we triple the load we get outliers that take 100x (or in rare cases 1000x!) that long. I even had one instance where it took 2.2442 seconds for memcached to store a value. Obviously this is killing our site. Here's the output of Memcached-getStats during one of the slow periods: [pid] => 18079 [uptime] => 8903 [threads] => 4 [time] => 1332795759 [pointer_size] => 32 [rusage_user_seconds] => 26 [rusage_user_microseconds] => 503872 [rusage_system_seconds] => 125 [rusage_system_microseconds] => 477008 [curr_items] => 42099 [total_items] => 422500 [limit_maxbytes] => 943718400 [curr_connections] => 84 [total_connections] => 4946 [connection_structures] => 178 [bytes] => 7259957 [cmd_get] => 1679091 [cmd_set] => 351809 [get_hits] => 1662048 [get_misses] => 17043 [evictions] => 0 [bytes_read] => 109388476 [bytes_written] => 3187646458 [version] => 1.4.13 So things that I have ruled out so far are: Hitting the max connections limit (curr_connections of 84 is well below the default of max of 1024) Swapping - the machine has 900M out of 1024M of memory dedicated to memcached on a dedicated machine. It only appears to be using about 7MB of data as per the bytes stat. How would I diagnose the other hardware problems? prstat doesn't really show a whole lot going on in terms of CPU or memory usage. Not sure how to figure out the network problems but as this is a dedicated server on the same private network as the web box I don't think it's a connectivity issue (ping is less than a millisecond between the boxes). Is there something else I'm missing here? It's driving me nuts. Edit: Also forgot to mention that I've tried both persistent and non-persistent connections with minimal-to-no impact.

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• Do hard drive enclosures fail/is it the HDD or enclosure?

  - by x0a

  I'm having a whole host of problems with an external hard drive that was working just fine a couple of hours ago. I've had this problem before once, and that was about 3 months ago, here's what I documented: So a couple of hours ago I turned off all my computers and shut off the power to all my devices in my room, then went and turned the power off at the main switch so I could change an outlet. A couple hours later, after I've already slowly turned everything back on, I go to my xbox to try and watch a movie and it can't seem to list any of the movies I've got. So I go to my desktop to find that my external hard drive isn't there.. even though it's on and connected. It's also stationary and hidden behind something so there's not a whole lot of tampering/physical wear to that external. I plug it into my laptop to try and see what's going on. It starts making this endless loud screeching noise. None of that clicking that's usually associated with hd damage. It's not listed in my computers, and it shows up in Disk Management as "uninitialized" asking me to choose between two different partition types. After carefully disconnecting it and connecting it back, it asks me to format it, which I cancel. I start googling about my issue, starting to accept the situation, torn as hell and helpless and just about ready to toss the thing. Suddenly the screeching stops, after almost 45 minutes of it going, and Disk Management lists the drive as "Online" and "Healthy". Explorer pops up with all my files! I'm still being really careful with it and weary and treating it as though it's in fragile shape. I've downloaded some S.M.A.R.T. software to read the values and everything is listed as "OK" . No reallocated sectors, no read errors, no seek errors. I also ran a quick self-test, which completed without error. Everything seems fine. It looks to be a perfectly healthy external hard drive. So what the hell was that about? Was it doing some sort of maintenance or self-test? How am I supposed to tell the difference? I would've undoubtedly killed the drive for sure if had it gone on a bit longer. I've got the same problem now, with one exception: it doesn't magically reappear after the screeching stops. Occasionally I manage to get some S.M.A.R.T. diagnostics information, which basically reads everything as fine. The only problem is that my HD isn't initializing (so I can't access anything in it). I'm able to successfully run a quick smart test but not an extended one (I've only tried it once but got conflicting indications as to whether it was actually making any progress or not (was stuck on Random read test). So, final question (if all else fails): Could the hard drive enclosure be failing rather than the HDD? Is this a likely possibility at all? How would I know?

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• Clarification On Write-Caching Policy, Its Underlying Options And How It Applies To Hard Drives And Solid-State Drives

  - by Boris_yo

  In last week after doing more research on subject matter, I have been wondering about what I have been neglecting all those years to understand write-caching policy, always leaving it on default setting. Write-caching policy improves writing performance and consists of write-back caching and write-cache buffer flushing. This is how I understand all the above, but correct me if I erred somewhere: Write-through cache / Write-through caching itself is not a part of write caching policy per se and it's when data is written to both cache and storage device so if Windows will need that data later again, it is retrieved from cache and not from storage device which means only improved read performance as there is no need for waiting for storage device to read required data again. Since data is still written to storage device, write performance isn't improved and represents no risk of data loss or corruption in case of power failure or system crash while only data in cache gets lost. This option seems to be enabled by default and is recommended for removable devices with no need to use function of "Safely Remove Hardware" on user's part. Write-back caching is similar to above but without writing data to storage device, periodically releasing data from cache and writing to storage device when it is idle. In my opinion this option improves both read and write performance but represents risk if power failure or system crash occurs with the outcome of not only losing data eventually to be written to storage device, but causing file inconsistencies or corrupted file system. Write-back caching cannot be enabled together with write-through caching and it is not recommended to be enabled if no backup power supply is availabe. Write-cache buffer flushing I reckon is similar to write-back caching but enables immediate release and writing of data from cache to storage device right before power outage occurs but I don't know if it applies also to occasional system crash. This option seem to be complementary to write-back cache reducing or potentially eliminating risk of data loss or corruption of file system. I have questions about relevance of last 2 options to today's modern SSDs in order to get best performance and with less wear on SSDs: I know that traditional hard drives come with onboard cache (I wonder what type of cache that is), but do SSDs also come with cache? Assuming they do, is this cache faster than their NAND flash and system RAM and worth taking the risk of utilizing it by enabling write-back cache? I read somewhere that generally storage device's cache is faster than RAM, but I want to be sure. Additionally I read that write-caching should be enabled since current data that is to be written later to NAND flash is kept for a while in cache and provided there is data that gets modified a lot before finally being written, holding of this data and its periodic release reduces its write times to SSD thereby reducing its wearing. Now regarding to write-cache buffer flushing, I heard that SSD controllers are so fast by themselves that enabling this option is not required, because they manage flushing. However, once again, I don't know if SSDs have their own onboard cache and whether or not it is faster than their NAND flash and system RAM because if it is, keeping this option enabled would make sense. Recently I have posted question about issue with my Intel 330 SSD 120GB which was main reason to do deeper research having suspicion of write-caching policy being the culprit of SSD's freezing issue assuming data being released is what causes freezes. Currently I have write-cache enabled and write-cache buffer flushing disabled because I believe SSD controller's management of write-cache flushing and Windows write-cache buffer flushing are conflicting with each other: Since I want to troubleshoot in small steps to finally determine the source of issue, I have decided to start with write-caching policy and the move to drivers, switching to AHCI later on and finally disabling DIPM (device initiated power management) through registry modification thanks to @TomWijsman

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• Vista 64-bit, DISK BOOT FAILURE

  - by weka

  So I have this Acer Aspire AX3200-U3600A with Windows Vista (64-bit). Every night I turn it off and turn it back on in the morning. Around three weeks ago, I did a fresh factory reimage. Good as new. Then around two days ago, when I turned it on, I noticed it was running extremly slow. As in, it would often freeze up while I had multiple applications open when it usually never froze up. So I decided to restart my computer. Big mistake. My computer froze right after I clicked shut-down. I waited a while. Nothing. Waited some minutes. Nope. I decided to shut it down by pressing the power button. Here is where the problems begin. When I turned it back on, I saw the Windows logo and loading bar and then it loaded to black. I turned it off again forcefully by power button and then once more... then I got: AMD Data Change... Update New Data to DMI! then later the screen clears and I get: AHCI Option ROM BIOS Revision: 01.05.92 Date: 02-19-2008 Copyright (c) 2006-2008 Phoenix Technologies, LTD Port 01: Reset Port Error!! Port 02: then the screen clears again but this time, this loads from the bottom: Nvidia Boot Agent 249.0542 (copyright stuff... blah blah) PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable. PXE-M0F: Exiting Nvidia Boot Agent DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER. So I try to go into Safe Mode. Well, first of all it doesn't load as fast. After it loads disk.sys from windows/drivers, it will wait a while (2-3 mins) THEN load. However it loads the Acer eRecovery Management Tool. I have three options: Reset computer to factory default, Restore computer from user's backup, or Exit. However, the top two options are gray and disabled where as the Exit is in blue and definitely clickable. So obviously safe mode is not there... A strong thing to note: In the beginning when all of this started, I did a Boot Windows Normal from pressing f8 and I got to my desktop! It logged me in. I could see the icons on my files. However my desktop was extremely slow as in when I clicked on the Start menu, it would wait a while, then load up the menu with JUST the gradient, no text or icons... so as you can see... it saw my HDD? Also, before anyone says, I have NO USB plugged in. My mouse and keyboard are not USB inputs, I assure you. And this came without a recovery CD AND when I went in BIOS, to change the BOOT ORDER, I did NOT see a CD-ROM option. And when I tried pressing ALT+F10 to get into Acer eRecovery Management, the top two options were disabled as well. But sometimes on start-up, I get: Windows has encountered a problem communicating with a device connected to your computer. This error can be caused by unplugging a removable storage device such as an external USB drive while the device is in use, or by faulty hardware such as a hard drive or CD-ROM drive that is failing. Make sure any removeable storage is properly connected and then restart your computer. If you continue to receive this error message, contact the hardware manufacturer. Status: 0xc00000e9 Info: An unexpected I/O error has occured. Then I tried Last Known Good Configuration Settings, that gives me a BSOD. What should I do/

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• how to adjust the size of the root partition on live arch linux system (/dev/mapper/arch_root-image)

  - by leon

  Summary: I created a bootable usb drive with a live Bridge linux (ARCH based) on it. Everything works fine. The live system mounts a device called /dev/mapper/arch_root-image as its ext4 root partition (/ mount point). The problem is that I dont know how to control the size of this partition. This is not a Bridge specific issue (also happens with Archbang) Detail: My usb drive has a dos partition table with 2 ext2 partitions $ fdisk -l /dev/sdb Disk /dev/sdb: 29,8 GiB, 32006733824 bytes, 62513152 sectors Unités : secteur de 1 × 512 = 512 octets Taille de secteur (logique / physique) : 512 octets / 512 octets taille d'E/S (minimale / optimale) : 512 octets / 512 octets Type d'étiquette de disque : dos Identifiant de disque : 0x0007b7e2 Périphérique Amorçage Début Fin Blocs Id Système /dev/sdb1 * 2048 2002943 1000448 83 Linux /dev/sdb2 2002944 32258047 15127552 83 Linux sdb1 is approx 1GB and sdb2 is 14GB. The live system is on sdb1. sdb2 is empty. Now when I boot the live system, its filesystem looks like this: $ mount proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) sys on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) dev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,nosuid,relatime,size=505272k,nr_inodes=126318,mode=755) run on /run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,mode=755) /dev/sda1 on /run/archiso/bootmnt type ext2 (ro,relatime) cowspace on /run/archiso/cowspace type tmpfs (rw,relatime,size=772468k,mode=755) /dev/loop0 on /run/archiso/sfs/root-image type squashfs (ro,relatime) /dev/mapper/arch_root-image on / type ext4 (rw,relatime) securityfs on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev) devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000) tmpfs on /sys/fs/cgroup type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,mode=755) cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/systemd type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,xattr,release_agent=/usr/lib/systemd/systemd-cgroups-agent,name=systemd) pstore on /sys/fs/pstore type pstore (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,cpuset) cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu,cpuacct type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,cpuacct,cpu) cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/memory type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,memory) cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/devices type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,devices) cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,freezer) cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/net_cls type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,net_cls) cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,blkio) mqueue on /dev/mqueue type mqueue (rw,relatime) debugfs on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw,relatime) hugetlbfs on /dev/hugepages type hugetlbfs (rw,relatime) configfs on /sys/kernel/config type configfs (rw,relatime) systemd-1 on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type autofs (rw,relatime,fd=36,pgrp=1,timeout=300,minproto=5,maxproto=5,direct) tmpfs on /tmp type tmpfs (rw) tmpfs on /etc/pacman.d/gnupg type tmpfs (rw,relatime,mode=755) As we can see, the root partition is from the device /dev/mapper/arch_root-image and my problem is that the live system recognizes it as a 3.9GB drive $ df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/arch_root-image 3.9G 1.9G 2.1G 48% / dev 494M 0 494M 0% /dev run 503M 23M 481M 5% /run /dev/sda1 962M 590M 324M 65% /run/archiso/bootmnt cowspace 755M 32M 723M 5% /run/archiso/cowspace /dev/loop0 520M 520M 0 100% /run/archiso/sfs/root-image tmpfs 503M 132K 503M 1% /dev/shm tmpfs 503M 0 503M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup tmpfs 503M 360K 503M 1% /tmp tmpfs 503M 896K 503M 1% /etc/pacman.d/gnupg My question is how is this size controled? I suspect this is related to the content of the aitab file which is part of the Bridge iso image: $ cat aitab # <img> <mnt> <arch> <sfs_comp> <fs_type> <fs_size> root-image / i686 xz ext4 50% I have read https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/archiso#aitab but found no clue

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• Mysqld not starting due to apparent db corruption

  - by pitosalas

  I am very new at admining mysql, and bad for me, something caused the db to get clobbered. There are many error messages in the log that I am not sure how to safely proceed. Can you give some tips? Here's the log: 110107 15:07:15 mysqld started 110107 15:07:15 InnoDB: Database was not shut down normally! InnoDB: Starting crash recovery. InnoDB: Reading tablespace information from the .ibd files... InnoDB: Restoring possible half-written data pages from the doublewrite InnoDB: buffer... 110107 15:07:15 InnoDB: Starting log scan based on checkpoint at InnoDB: log sequence number 35 515914826. InnoDB: Doing recovery: scanned up to log sequence number 35 515915839 InnoDB: 1 transaction(s) which must be rolled back or cleaned up InnoDB: in total 1 row operations to undo InnoDB: Trx id counter is 0 1697553664 110107 15:07:15 InnoDB: Starting an apply batch of log records to the database... InnoDB: Progress in percents: 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 InnoDB: Apply batch completed InnoDB: Starting rollback of uncommitted transactions InnoDB: Rolling back trx with id 0 1697553198, 1 rows to undoInnoDB: Error: trying to access page number 3522914176 in space 0, InnoDB: space name ./ibdata1, InnoDB: which is outside the tablespace bounds. InnoDB: Byte offset 0, len 16384, i/o type 10 110107 15:07:15InnoDB: Assertion failure in thread 3086403264 in file fil0fil.c line 3922 InnoDB: We intentionally generate a memory trap. InnoDB: Submit a detailed bug report to http://bugs.mysql.com. InnoDB: If you get repeated assertion failures or crashes, even InnoDB: immediately after the mysqld startup, there may be InnoDB: corruption in the InnoDB tablespace. Please refer to InnoDB: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/Forcing_recovery.html InnoDB: about forcing recovery. mysqld got signal 11; This could be because you hit a bug. It is also possible that this binary or one of the libraries it was linked against is corrupt, improperly built, or misconfigured. This error can also be caused by malfunctioning hardware. We will try our best to scrape up some info that will hopefully help diagnose the problem, but since we have already crashed, something is definitely wrong and this may fail. key_buffer_size=0 read_buffer_size=131072 max_used_connections=0 max_connections=100 threads_connected=0 It is possible that mysqld could use up to key_buffer_size + (read_buffer_size + sort_buffer_size)*max_connections = 217599 K bytes of memory Hope that's ok; if not, decrease some variables in the equation. thd=(nil) Attempting backtrace. You can use the following information to find out where mysqld died. If you see no messages after this, something went terribly wrong... Cannot determine thread, fp=0xbffc55ac, backtrace may not be correct. Stack range sanity check OK, backtrace follows: 0x8139eec 0x83721d5 0x833d897 0x833db71 0x832aa38 0x835f025 0x835f7a3 0x830a77e 0x8326b57 0x831c825 0x8317b8d 0x82a9e66 0x8315732 0x834fc9a 0x828d7c3 0x81c29dd 0x81b5620 0x813d9fe 0x40fdf3 0x80d5ff1 New value of fp=(nil) failed sanity check, terminating stack trace! Please read http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/Using_stack_trace.html and follow instructions on how to resolve the stack trace. Resolved stack trace is much more helpful in diagnosing the problem, so please do resolve it The manual page at http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/Crashing.html contains information that should help you find out what is causing the crash. 110107 15:07:15 mysqld ended

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• Ubuntu Server, 2 Ethernet Devices, Same Gateway - Want to force internet traffic through 1 device (or at least allow it to work!)

  - by Chris Drumgoole

  I have a Ubuntu 10.04 Server with 2 ethernet devices, eth0 and eth1. eth0 has a static IP of 192.168.1.210 eth1 has a static IP if 192.168.1.211 The DHCP server (which also serves as the internet gateway) sits at 192.168.1.1. The issue I have right now is when I have both plugged in, I can connect to both IPs over SSH internally, but I can't connect to the internet from the server. If I unplug one of the devices (e.g. eth1), then it works, no problem. (Also, I get the same result when I run sudo ifconfig eth1 down). Question, how can I configure it so that I can have both devices eth0 and eth1 play nice on the same network, but allow internet access as well? (I am open to either enforcing all inet traffic going through a single device, or through both, I'm flexible). From my google searching, it seems I could have a unique (or not popular) problem, so haven't been able to find a solution. Is this something that people generally don't do? The reason I want to make use of both ethernet devices is because I want to run different local traffic services on on both to split the load, so to speak... Thanks in advance. UPDATE Contents of /etc/network/interfaces: # The loopback network interface auto lo iface lo inet loopback # The primary network interface auto eth0 iface eth0 inet dhcp # The secondary network interface #auto eth1 #iface eth1 inet dhcp (Note: above, I commented out the last 2 lines because I thought that was causing issues... but it didn't solve it) netstat -rn Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags MSS Window irtt Iface 192.168.1.0 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0 192.168.1.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0 0.0.0.0 192.168.1.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0 UPDATE 2 I made a change to the /etc/network/interfaces file as suggested by Kevin. Before I display the file contents and the route table, when I am logged into the server (through SSH), I can not ping an external server, so this is the same issue I was experiencing that led to me posting this question. I ran a /etc/init.d/networking restart after making the file changes. Contents of /etc/network/interfaces: # The loopback network interface auto lo iface lo inet loopback # The primary network interface auto eth0 iface eth0 inet dhcp address 192.168.1.210 netmask 255.255.255.0 gateway 192.168.1.1 # The secondary network interface auto eth1 iface eth1 inet dhcp address 192.168.1.211 netmask 255.255.255.0 ifconfig output eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 78:2b:cb:4c:02:7f inet addr:192.168.1.210 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::7a2b:cbff:fe4c:27f/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:6397 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:683 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:538881 (538.8 KB) TX bytes:85597 (85.5 KB) Interrupt:36 Memory:da000000-da012800 eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 78:2b:cb:4c:02:80 inet addr:192.168.1.211 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::7a2b:cbff:fe4c:280/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:5799 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:484436 (484.4 KB) TX bytes:1184 (1.1 KB) Interrupt:48 Memory:dc000000-dc012800 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:635 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:635 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:38154 (38.1 KB) TX bytes:38154 (38.1 KB) netstat -rn Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags MSS Window irtt Iface 192.168.1.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0 192.168.1.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth1 0.0.0.0 192.168.1.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth1 0.0.0.0 192.168.1.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0

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• MySQL crash. Unknown cause. Signal 11

  - by fortmac

  This is a database that I installed ~6 months ago and had been running fine. This is currently running in Ubuntu 12.04. Attempting to connect to MySQL causes this error: ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (111) Then theres: $ sudo mysqld which returns: 130702 15:38:54 [Note] Plugin 'FEDERATED' is disabled. 130702 15:38:54 InnoDB: The InnoDB memory heap is disabled 130702 15:38:54 InnoDB: Mutexes and rw_locks use GCC atomic builtins 130702 15:38:54 InnoDB: Compressed tables use zlib 1.2.3.4 130702 15:38:54 InnoDB: Initializing buffer pool, size = 128.0M 130702 15:38:54 InnoDB: Completed initialization of buffer pool 130702 15:38:54 InnoDB: highest supported file format is Barracuda. InnoDB: The log sequence number in ibdata files does not match InnoDB: the log sequence number in the ib_logfiles! 130702 15:38:54 InnoDB: Database was not shut down normally! InnoDB: Starting crash recovery. InnoDB: Reading tablespace information from the .ibd files... InnoDB: Restoring possible half-written data pages from the doublewrite InnoDB: buffer... 130702 15:38:55 InnoDB: Waiting for the background threads to start 130702 15:38:56 InnoDB: 1.1.8 started; log sequence number 5201901917 130702 15:38:56 [Note] Server hostname (bind-address): '127.0.0.1'; port: 3306 130702 15:38:56 [Note] - '127.0.0.1' resolves to '127.0.0.1'; 130702 15:38:56 [Note] Server socket created on IP: '127.0.0.1'. 130702 15:38:56 [Note] Event Scheduler: Loaded 0 events 130702 15:38:56 [Note] mysqld: ready for connections. Version: '5.5.28-0ubuntu0.12.04.3' socket: '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' port: 3306 (Ubuntu) 19:39:02 UTC - mysqld got signal 11 ; This could be because you hit a bug. It is also possible that this binary or one of the libraries it was linked against is corrupt, improperly built, or misconfigured. This error can also be caused by malfunctioning hardware. We will try our best to scrape up some info that will hopefully help diagnose the problem, but since we have already crashed, something is definitely wrong and this may fail. key_buffer_size=16777216 read_buffer_size=131072 max_used_connections=1 max_threads=151 thread_count=1 connection_count=1 It is possible that mysqld could use up to key_buffer_size + (read_buffer_size + sort_buffer_size)*max_threads = 346681 K bytes of memory Hope that's ok; if not, decrease some variables in the equation. Thread pointer: 0x7f9509e51530 Attempting backtrace. You can use the following information to find out where mysqld died. If you see no messages after this, something went terribly wrong... stack_bottom = 7f94f1d3de60 thread_stack 0x30000 mysqld(my_print_stacktrace+0x29)[0x7f95083427b9] mysqld(handle_fatal_signal+0x483)[0x7f9508209b43] /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0(+0xfcb0)[0x7f9506f5bcb0] mysqld(+0x320e1c)[0x7f9508113e1c] mysqld(_ZN4JOIN15alloc_func_listEv+0x9c)[0x7f950812391c] mysqld(_ZN4JOIN7prepareEPPP4ItemP10TABLE_LISTjS1_jP8st_orderS7_S1_S7_P13st_select_lexP18st_select_lex_unit+0x918)[0x7f9508124658] mysqld(_Z12mysql_selectP3THDPPP4ItemP10TABLE_LISTjR4ListIS1_ES2_jP8st_orderSB_S2_SB_yP13select_resultP18st_select_lex_unitP13st_select_lex+0x130)[0x7f950812d060] mysqld(_Z13handle_selectP3THDP3LEXP13select_resultm+0x17c)[0x7f9508132fbc] mysqld(+0x2f6714)[0x7f95080e9714] mysqld(_Z21mysql_execute_commandP3THD+0x16d8)[0x7f95080f1178] mysqld(_Z11mysql_parseP3THDPcjP12Parser_state+0x10f)[0x7f95080f5e0f] mysqld(_Z16dispatch_command19enum_server_commandP3THDPcj+0x1380)[0x7f95080f7260] mysqld(_Z24do_handle_one_connectionP3THD+0x1bd)[0x7f950819b80d] mysqld(handle_one_connection+0x50)[0x7f950819b870] /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0(+0x7e9a)[0x7f9506f53e9a] /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(clone+0x6d)[0x7f9506684cbd] Trying to get some variables. Some pointers may be invalid and cause the dump to abort. Query (7f94e0004b80): is an invalid pointer Connection ID (thread ID): 1 Status: NOT_KILLED The manual page at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/crashing.html contains information that should help you find out what is causing the crash. I'm at a loss. What other reports would be useful in diagnosing this? /var/log/mysql.err & /var/log/mysql.log are empty.

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• Lockdown users on Windows Server 2012

  - by el.severo

  I set up a Active Directory on a server machine with Windows Server 2012 and I'd like to create some users with limitations like Windows Steady State does in Windows XP (locally). Seen already the Windows SteadyState Handbook (with Windows Server 2008), but I'd like to know if anyone has tried this before, the limitations are the following: 1. Prevent locked or roaming user profiles that cannot be found on the computer from logging on 2. Do not cache copies of locked or roaming user profiles for users who have previously logged on to this computer 3. Do not allow Windows to compute and store passwords using LAN Manager Hash values 4. Do not store usernames or passwords used to log on to the Windows Live ID or the domain 5. Prevent users from creating folders and files on drive C:\ 6. Lock profile to prevent the user from making permanent changes 7. Remove the Control Panel, Printer and Network Settings from the Classic Start menu 8. Remove the Favorites icon 9. Remove the My Network Places icon 10. Remove the Frequently Used Program list 11. Remove the Shared documents folder from My Computer 12. Remove control Panel icon 13. Remove the Set Program Access and Defaults icon 14. Remove the Network Connection(Connect To)icon 15. Remove the Printers and Faxes icon 16. Remove the Run icon 17. Prevent access to Windows Explorer features: Folder Options, Customize Toolbar, and the Notification Area 18. Prevent access to the taskbar 19. Prevent access to the command prompt 20. Prevent access to the registry editor 21. Prevent access to the Task Manager 22. Prevent access to Microsoft Management Console utilities 23. Prevent users from adding or removing printers 24. Prevent users from locking the computer 25. Prevent password changes (also requires the Control Panel icon to be removed) 26. Disable System Tools and other management programs 27. Prevent users from saving files to the desktop 28. Hide A Drive 29. Hide B Drive 30. Hide C Drive 31. Prevent changes to Internet Explorer registry settings 32. Empty the Temporary Internet Files folder when Internet Explorer is closed 33. Remove Internet Options 34. Remove General tab in Internet Options 35. Remove Security tab in Internet Options 36. Remove Privacy tab in Internet Options 37. Remove Content tab in Internet Options 38. Remove Connections tab in Internet Options 39. Remove Programs tab in Internet Options 40. Remove Advanced tab in Internet Options 41. Set a home page (Internet Explorer) 42. Restrict the possibility to change desktop image 43. Restrict the possibility to change wallpaper 44. Restrict usb flash drives Any suggestions for this? UPDATE: As @Dan suggested me I'd like to specify that would be applied to a educational scenario where students can login from a computer and want to add some restrictions to them.

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• Hard drive write speed - finding a lighter antivirus?

  - by Shingetsu

  I recently have been getting a lot of system lag here (for example, the mouse and the display in general take about 15 seconds to react in the worst cases). After a lot of monitoring the resources, I found that the problem mainly happens when too much Disk I/O is being done. Three culprits have been identified: My browser had the highest write I/O with 35,000,000 I/O Write Bytes. Steam had the highest read I/O (when IDLE!!!) with 106,000,000 I/O Read Bytes. My antivirus (in both cases I will soon mention) was the runner up in both cases with: 30,000,000ish write and 80,000,000ish read. The first AV I had was Avast! which I had liked on my previous system. After noticing it taking so much I/O I switched to Panda (supposing it wouldn't use TOO much during idle phase). However it only used a bit less I/O. Just a lot less memory and cpu and somewhat more network. My browser at the moment is Maxthon 3 (which I like a lot). Before this I was running chrome which had similar data and much higher cpu when running in the background was enabled. I'm not going to be running steam all the time and there aren't many alternatives to it. I like my browser very much, but I AM willing to switch if there's an obvious problem (I'm in programming, however I'm not a very good sysadmin, especially not when it comes to windows). Finally, my system almost stops lagging when I turn off the antivirus (and preferably steam) (some remains but once in every 5-6 hours for a few seconds so it isn't a big problem). My question (has a few parts): Is it possible to configure steam to lower it's I/O usage? (and maybe network while we're at it?) Which antivirus (very preferably free) uses lowest I/O while idle (I leave PC alone during active scans so that isn't a problem). Is there an obvious problem with my current browser and, if so, is there a way to fix it or should I switch and, if so, to what? (P.S. I've been on FFox for some time too). Info on system: Windows 7 (32 bit T_T, I am getting a new one in a few months but I want to keep using system during that time though). Hard Drive (main) is a Raid0. (Also have an external 1TB one which contains steam (and steam alone). As such it doesn't get used by much anything other than steam and isn't a very large problem. However steam still uses some I/O of registry) CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU [email protected] RAM: 6GB (3.25GB usable) (this and CPU have little effect as shown in next section) Additional info: Memory usage during problematic times: 44% CPU usage during problematic times: 35% Page File: main drive: system managed. 1TB drive: none. The current system I'm using is about 6 years old and is mainly a place holder while I await the new one in a few months. Final words: this is my 1st post on Super User (this question wouldn't feel right on Stack Overflow where I usually stay). If it doesn't have it's place here please tell me. If anything is wrong with it, same. Edit Technically I'm looking for a live thread detection program with minimal IO usage. I already have good active scan capability: Kaspersky (the free scanner uses the paid database) and MalwareBytes. Edit 2 Noticed another one, it seems that windows media player has been using stuff even when off! Turning it off and restarting now. If the problem is fixed I'll tell you guys. The reason I didn't notice it before was because I didn't have resource manager in front of me at the MOMENT of the problem. Now I did and it was at the very top of the list!

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• Multi-tenant ASP.NET MVC – Introduction

  - by zowens

  I’ve read a few different blogs that talk about multi-tenancy and how to resolve some of the issues surrounding multi-tenancy. What I’ve come to realize is that these implementations overcomplicate the issues and give only a muddy implementation! I’ve seen some really illogical code out there. I have recently been building a multi-tenancy framework for internal use at eagleenvision.net. Through this process, I’ve realized a few different techniques to make building multi-tenant applications actually quite easy. I will be posting a few different entries over the issue and my personal implementation. In this first post, I will discuss what multi-tenancy means and how my implementation will be structured.   So what’s the problem? Here’s the deal. Multi-tenancy is basically a technique of code-reuse of web application code. A multi-tenant application is an application that runs a single instance for multiple clients. Here the “client” is different URL bindings on IIS using ASP.NET MVC. The problem with different instances of the, essentially, same application is that you have to spin up different instances of ASP.NET. As the number of running instances of ASP.NET grows, so does the memory footprint of IIS. Stack Exchange shifted its architecture to multi-tenancy March. As the blog post explains, multi-tenancy saves cost in terms of memory utilization and physical disc storage. If you use the same code base for many applications, multi-tenancy just makes sense. You’ll reduce the amount of work it takes to synchronize the site implementations and you’ll thank your lucky stars later for choosing to use one application for multiple sites. Multi-tenancy allows the freedom of extensibility while relying on some pre-built code.   You’d think this would be simple. I have actually seen a real lack of reference material on the subject in terms of ASP.NET MVC. This is somewhat surprising given the number of users of ASP.NET MVC. However, I will certainly fill the void ;). Implementing a multi-tenant application takes a little thinking. It’s not straight-forward because the possibilities of implementation are endless. I have yet to see a great implementation of a multi-tenant MVC application. The only one that comes close to what I have in mind is Rob Ashton’s implementation (all the entries are listed on this page). There’s some really nasty code in there… something I’d really like to avoid. He has also written a library (MvcEx) that attempts to aid multi-tenant development. This code is even worse, in my honest opinion. Once I start seeing Reflection.Emit, I have to assume the worst :) In all seriousness, if his implementation makes sense to you, use it! It’s a fine implementation that should be given a look. At least look at the code. I will reference MvcEx going forward as a comparison to my implementation. I will explain why my approach differs from MvcEx and how it is better or worse (hopefully better).   Core Goals of my Multi-Tenant Implementation The first, and foremost, goal is to use Inversion of Control containers to my advantage. As you will see throughout this series, I pass around containers quite frequently and rely on their use heavily. I will be using StructureMap in my implementation. However, you could probably use your favorite IoC tool instead. <RANT> However, please don’t be stupid and abstract your IoC tool. Each IoC is powerful and by abstracting the capabilities, you’re doing yourself a real disservice. Who in the world swaps out IoC tools…? No one!</RANT> (It had to be said.) I will outline some of the goodness of StructureMap as we go along. This is really an invaluable tool in my tool belt and simple to use in my multi-tenant implementation. The second core goal is to represent a tenant as easily as possible. Just as a dependency container will be a first-class citizen, so will a tenant. This allows us to easily extend and use tenants. This will also allow different ways of “plugging in” tenants into your application. In my implementation, there will be a single dependency container for a single tenant. This will enable isolation of the dependencies of the tenant. The third goal is to use composition as a means to delegate “core” functions out to the tenant. More on this later.   Features In MvcExt, “Modules” are a code element of the infrastructure. I have simplified this concept and have named this “Features”. A feature is a simple element of an application. Controllers can be specified to have a feature and actions can have “sub features”. Each tenant can select features it needs and the other features will be hidden to the tenant’s users. My implementation doesn’t require something to be a feature. A controller can be common to all tenants. For example, (as you will see) I have a “Content” controller that will return the CSS, Javascript and Images for a tenant. This is common logic to all tenants and shouldn’t be hidden or considered a “feature”; Content is a core component.   Up next My next post will be all about the code. I will reveal some of the foundation to the way I do multi-tenancy. I will have posts dedicated to Foundation, Controllers, Views, Caching, Content and how to setup the tenants. Each post will be in-depth about the issues and implementation details, while adhering to my core goals outlined in this post. As always, comment with questions of DM me on twitter or send me an email.

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• Integrate SharePoint 2010 with Team Foundation Server 2010

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Our client is using a brand new shiny installation of SharePoint 2010, so we need to integrate our upgraded Team Foundation Server 2010 instance into it. In order to do that you need to run the Team Foundation Server 2010 install on the SharePoint 2010 server and choose to install only the “Extensions for SharePoint Products and Technologies”. We want out upgraded Team Project Collection to create any new portal in this SharePoint 2010 server farm. There a number of goodies above and beyond a solution file that requires the install, with the main one being the TFS2010 client API. These goodies allow proper integration with the creation and viewing of Work Items from SharePoint a new feature with TFS 2010. This works in both SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010 with the level of integration dependant on the version of SharePoint that you are running. There are three levels of integration with “SharePoint Services 3.0” or “SharePoint Foundation 2010” being the lowest. This level only offers reporting services framed integration for reporting along with Work Item Integration and document management. The highest is Microsoft Office SharePoint Services (MOSS) Enterprise with Excel Services integration providing some lovely dashboards. Figure: Dashboards take the guessing out of Project Planning and estimation. Plus writing these reports would be boring!   The Extensions that you need are on the same installation media as the main TFS install and the only difference is the options you pick during the install. Figure: Installing the TFS 2010 Extensions for SharePoint Products and Technologies onto SharePoint 2010   Annoyingly you may need to reboot a couple of times, but on this server the process was MUCH smother than on our internal server. I think this was mostly to do with this being a clean install. Once it is installed you need to run the configuration. This will add all of the Solution and Templates that are needed for SharePoint to work properly with TFS. Figure: This is where all the TFS 2010 goodies are added to your SharePoint 2010 server and the TFS 2010 object model is installed.   Figure: All done, you have everything installed, but you still need to configure it Now that we have the TFS 2010 SharePoint Extensions installed on our SharePoint 2010 server we need to configure them both so that they will talk happily to each other. Configuring the SharePoint 2010 Managed path for Team Foundation Server 2010 In order for TFS to automatically create your project portals you need a wildcard managed path setup. This is where TFS will create the portal during the creation of a new Team project. To find the managed paths page for any application you need to first select the “Managed web applications”  link from the SharePoint 2010 Central Administration screen. Figure: Find the “Manage web applications” link under the “Application Management” section. On you are there you will see that the “Managed Paths” are there, they are just greyed out and selecting one of the applications will enable it to be clicked. Figure: You need to select an application for the SharePoint 2010 ribbon to activate.   Figure: You need to select an application before you can get to the Managed Paths for that application. Now we need to add a managed path for TFS 2010 to create its portals under. I have gone for the obvious option of just calling the managed path “TFS02” as the TFS 2010 server is the second TFS server that the client has installed, TFS 2008 being the first. This links the location to the server name, and as you can’t have two projects of the same name in two separate project collections there is unlikely to be any conflicts. Figure: Add a “tfs02” wildcard inclusion path to your SharePoint site. Configure the Team Foundation Server 2010 connection to SharePoint 2010 In order to have you new TFS 2010 Server talk to and create sites in SharePoint 2010 you need to tell the TFS server where to put them. As this TFS 2010 server was installed in out-of-the-box mode it has a SharePoint Services 3.0 (the free one) server running on the same box. But we want to change that so we can use the external SharePoint 2010 instance. Just open the “Team Foundation Server Administration Console” and navigate to the “SharePoint Web Applications” section. Here you click “Add” and enter the details for the Managed path we just created. Figure: If you have special permissions on your SharePoint you may need to add accounts to the “Service Accounts” section.    Before we can se this new SharePoint 2010 instance to be the default for our upgraded Team Project Collection we need to configure SharePoint to take instructions from our TFS server. Configure SharePoint 2010 to connect to Team Foundation Server 2010 On your SharePoint 2010 server open the Team Foundation Server Administration Console and select the “Extensions for SharePoint Products and Technologies” node. Here we need to “grant access” for our TFS 2010 server to create sites. Click the “Grant access” link and  fill out the full URL to the  TFS server, for example http://servername.domain.com:8080/tfs, and if need be restrict the path that TFS sites can be created on. Remember that when the users create a new team project they can change the default and point it anywhere they like as long as it is an authorised SharePoint location. Figure: Grant access for your TFS 2010 server to create sites in SharePoint 2010 Now that we have an authorised location for our team project portals to be created we need to tell our Team Project Collection that this is where it should stick sites by default for any new Team Projects created. Configure the Team Foundation Server 2010 Team Project Collection to create new sites in SharePoint 2010 Back on out TFS 2010 server we need to setup the defaults for our upgraded Team Project Collection to the new SharePoint 2010 integration we have just set up. On the TFS 2010 server open up the “Team Foundation Server Administration Console” again and navigate to the “Team Project Collections” node. Once you are there you will see a list of all of your TPC’s and in our case we have a DefaultCollection as well as out named and Upgraded collection for TFS 2008. If you select the “SharePoint Site” tab we can see that it is not currently configured. Figure: Our new Upgrade TFS2008 Team Project Collection does not have SharePoint configured Select to “Edit Default Site Location” and select the new integration point that we just set up for SharePoint 2010. Once you have selected the “SharePoint Web Application” (the thing we just configured) then it will give you an example based on that configuration point and the name of the Team Project Collection that we are configuring. Figure: Set the default location for new Team Project Portals to be created for this Team Project Collection This is where the reason for configuring the Extensions on the SharePoint 2010 server before doing this last bit becomes apparent. TFS 2010 is going to create a site at our http://sharepointserver/tfs02/ location called http://sharepointserver/tfs02/[TeamProjectCollection], or whatever we had specified, and it would have had difficulty doing this if we had not given it permission first. Figure: If there is no Team Project Collection site at this location the TFS 2010 server is going to create one This will create a nice Team Project Collection parent site to contain the Portals for any new Team Projects that are created. It is with noting that it will not create portals for existing Team Projects as this process is run during the Team Project Creation wizard. Figure: Just a basic parent site to host all of your new Team Project Portals as sub sites   You will need to add all of the users that will be creating Team Projects to be Administrators of this site so that they will not get an error during the Project Creation Wizard. You may also want to customise this as a proper portal to your projects if you are going to be having lots of them, but it is really just a default placeholder so you have a top level site that you can backup and point at. You have now integrated SharePoint 2010 and team Foundation Server 2010! You can now go forth and multiple your Team Projects for this Team Project Collection or you can continue to add portals to your other Collections.   Technorati Tags: TFS 2010,Sharepoint 2010,VS ALM

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• Installing Lubuntu 14.04.1 forcepae fails

  - by Rantanplan

  I tried to install Lubuntu 14.04.1 from a CD. First, I chose Try Lubuntu without installing which gave: ERROR: PAE is disabled on this Pentium M (PAE can potentially be enabled with kernel parameter "forcepae" ... Following the description on https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PAE, I used forcepae and tried Try Lubuntu without installing again. That worked fine. dmesg | grep -i pae showed: [ 0.000000] Kernel command line: file=/cdrom/preseed/lubuntu.seed boot=casper initrd=/casper/initrd.lz quiet splash -- forcepae [ 0.008118] PAE forced! On the live-CD session, I tried installing Lubuntu double clicking on the install button on the desktop. Here, the CD starts running but then stops running and nothing happens. Next, I rebooted and tried installing Lubuntu directly from the boot menu screen using forcepae again. After a while, I receive the following error message: The installer encountered an unrecoverable error. A desktop session will now be run so that you may investigate the problem or try installing again. Hitting Enter brings me to the desktop. For what errors should I search? And how? Finally, I rebooted once more and tried Check disc for defects with forcepae option; no errors have been found. Now, I am wondering how to find the error or whether it would be better to follow advice c in https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PAE: "Move the hard disk to a computer on which the processor has PAE capability and PAE flag (that is, almost everything else than a Banias). Install the system as usual but don't add restricted drivers. After the install move the disk back." Thanks for some hints! Perhaps some of the following can help: On Lubuntu 12.04: cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 13 model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.50GHz stepping : 6 microcode : 0x17 cpu MHz : 600.000 cache size : 2048 KB fdiv_bug : no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 2 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr mce cx8 mtrr pge mca cmov clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss tm pbe up bts est tm2 bogomips : 1284.76 clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 32 bits physical, 32 bits virtual power management: uname -a Linux humboldt 3.2.0-67-generic #101-Ubuntu SMP Tue Jul 15 17:45:51 UTC 2014 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux lsb_release -a No LSB modules are available. Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 12.04.5 LTS Release: 12.04 Codename: precise cpuid eax in eax ebx ecx edx 00000000 00000002 756e6547 6c65746e 49656e69 00000001 000006d6 00000816 00000180 afe9f9bf 00000002 02b3b001 000000f0 00000000 2c04307d 80000000 80000004 00000000 00000000 00000000 80000001 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 80000002 20202020 20202020 65746e49 2952286c 80000003 6e655020 6d756974 20295228 7270204d 80000004 7365636f 20726f73 30352e31 007a4847 Vendor ID: "GenuineIntel"; CPUID level 2 Intel-specific functions: Version 000006d6: Type 0 - Original OEM Family 6 - Pentium Pro Model 13 - Stepping 6 Reserved 0 Brand index: 22 [not in table] Extended brand string: " Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.50GHz" CLFLUSH instruction cache line size: 8 Feature flags afe9f9bf: FPU Floating Point Unit VME Virtual 8086 Mode Enhancements DE Debugging Extensions PSE Page Size Extensions TSC Time Stamp Counter MSR Model Specific Registers MCE Machine Check Exception CX8 COMPXCHG8B Instruction SEP Fast System Call MTRR Memory Type Range Registers PGE PTE Global Flag MCA Machine Check Architecture CMOV Conditional Move and Compare Instructions FGPAT Page Attribute Table CLFSH CFLUSH instruction DS Debug store ACPI Thermal Monitor and Clock Ctrl MMX MMX instruction set FXSR Fast FP/MMX Streaming SIMD Extensions save/restore SSE Streaming SIMD Extensions instruction set SSE2 SSE2 extensions SS Self Snoop TM Thermal monitor 31 reserved TLB and cache info: b0: unknown TLB/cache descriptor b3: unknown TLB/cache descriptor 02: Instruction TLB: 4MB pages, 4-way set assoc, 2 entries f0: unknown TLB/cache descriptor 7d: unknown TLB/cache descriptor 30: unknown TLB/cache descriptor 04: Data TLB: 4MB pages, 4-way set assoc, 8 entries 2c: unknown TLB/cache descriptor On Lubuntu 14.04.1 live-CD with forcepae: cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 13 model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.50GHz stepping : 6 microcode : 0x17 cpu MHz : 600.000 cache size : 2048 KB physical id : 0 siblings : 1 core id : 0 cpu cores : 1 apicid : 0 initial apicid : 0 fdiv_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 2 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss tm pbe bts est tm2 bogomips : 1284.68 clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 36 bits physical, 32 bits virtual power management: uname -a Linux lubuntu 3.13.0-32-generic #57-Ubuntu SMP Tue Jul 15 03:51:12 UTC 2014 i686 i686 i686 GNU/Linux lsb_release -a No LSB modules are available. Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS Release: 14.04 Codename: trusty cpuid CPU 0: vendor_id = "GenuineIntel" version information (1/eax): processor type = primary processor (0) family = Intel Pentium Pro/II/III/Celeron/Core/Core 2/Atom, AMD Athlon/Duron, Cyrix M2, VIA C3 (6) model = 0xd (13) stepping id = 0x6 (6) extended family = 0x0 (0) extended model = 0x0 (0) (simple synth) = Intel Pentium M (Dothan B1) / Celeron M (Dothan B1), 90nm miscellaneous (1/ebx): process local APIC physical ID = 0x0 (0) cpu count = 0x0 (0) CLFLUSH line size = 0x8 (8) brand index = 0x16 (22) brand id = 0x16 (22): Intel Pentium M, .13um feature information (1/edx): x87 FPU on chip = true virtual-8086 mode enhancement = true debugging extensions = true page size extensions = true time stamp counter = true RDMSR and WRMSR support = true physical address extensions = false machine check exception = true CMPXCHG8B inst. = true APIC on chip = false SYSENTER and SYSEXIT = true memory type range registers = true PTE global bit = true machine check architecture = true conditional move/compare instruction = true page attribute table = true page size extension = false processor serial number = false CLFLUSH instruction = true debug store = true thermal monitor and clock ctrl = true MMX Technology = true FXSAVE/FXRSTOR = true SSE extensions = true SSE2 extensions = true self snoop = true hyper-threading / multi-core supported = false therm. monitor = true IA64 = false pending break event = true feature information (1/ecx): PNI/SSE3: Prescott New Instructions = false PCLMULDQ instruction = false 64-bit debug store = false MONITOR/MWAIT = false CPL-qualified debug store = false VMX: virtual machine extensions = false SMX: safer mode extensions = false Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology = true thermal monitor 2 = true SSSE3 extensions = false context ID: adaptive or shared L1 data = false FMA instruction = false CMPXCHG16B instruction = false xTPR disable = false perfmon and debug = false process context identifiers = false direct cache access = false SSE4.1 extensions = false SSE4.2 extensions = false extended xAPIC support = false MOVBE instruction = false POPCNT instruction = false time stamp counter deadline = false AES instruction = false XSAVE/XSTOR states = false OS-enabled XSAVE/XSTOR = false AVX: advanced vector extensions = false F16C half-precision convert instruction = false RDRAND instruction = false hypervisor guest status = false cache and TLB information (2): 0xb0: instruction TLB: 4K, 4-way, 128 entries 0xb3: data TLB: 4K, 4-way, 128 entries 0x02: instruction TLB: 4M pages, 4-way, 2 entries 0xf0: 64 byte prefetching 0x7d: L2 cache: 2M, 8-way, sectored, 64 byte lines 0x30: L1 cache: 32K, 8-way, 64 byte lines 0x04: data TLB: 4M pages, 4-way, 8 entries 0x2c: L1 data cache: 32K, 8-way, 64 byte lines extended feature flags (0x80000001/edx): SYSCALL and SYSRET instructions = false execution disable = false 1-GB large page support = false RDTSCP = false 64-bit extensions technology available = false Intel feature flags (0x80000001/ecx): LAHF/SAHF supported in 64-bit mode = false LZCNT advanced bit manipulation = false 3DNow! PREFETCH/PREFETCHW instructions = false brand = " Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.50GHz" (multi-processing synth): none (multi-processing method): Intel leaf 1 (synth) = Intel Pentium M (Dothan B1), 90nm

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• Top Tweets SOA Partner Community – March 2012

  - by JuergenKress

  Send your tweets @soacommunity #soacommunity and follow us at http://twitter.com/soacommunity SOA Community ?SOA Community Newsletter February 2012 wp.me/p10C8u-o0 Marc ?Reading through the #OFM 11.1.1.6 , patchset 5 documentation. What is the best way to upgrade your whole dev…prd street. SOA Community Thanks for the successful and super interesting #sbidays ! Wonderful discussions around the Integration, case management and security tracks Torsten Winterberg Schon den neuen Opitz Technology-Blog gebookmarked? The Cattle Crew bit.ly/yLPwBD wird ab sofort regelmäßig Erkenntnisse posten. OTNArchBeat ? Unit Testing Asynchronous BPEL Processes Using soapUI | @DanielAmadei bit.ly/x9NsS9 Rolando Carrasco ?Video de Human Task en BPM 11g. Por @edwardo040. bit.ly/wki9CA cc @OracleBPM @OracleSOA @soacommunity View video Marcel Mertin SOA Security Hands-On by Dirk Krafzig and Mamoon Yunus at #sbidays is also great! SOA Community Workshop day #sbidays #BPMN2.0 by Volker Stiehl from #SAP great training – now I can model & execute in #bpmsuite #soacommunity Simone Geib ?Just updated our advanced #soasuite #otn page with a number of very interesting @orclateamsoa blog posts: bit.ly/advancedsoasui… OTNArchBeat ? Start Small, Grow Fast: SOA Best Practices article by @biemond, @rluttikhuizen, @demed bit.ly/yem9Zv Steffen Miller ? Nice new features in SOA Suite Business Rules #PS5 Testing rules with scenarios and output validation bit.ly/zj64Q3 @SOACOMMUNITY OTNArchBeat ? Reply SOA Blackbelt training by David Shaffer, April 30th–May 4th 2012 bit.ly/xGdC24 OTNArchBeat ? What have BPM, big data, social tools, and business models got in common? | Andy Mulholland bit.ly/xUkOGf SOA Community ? Live hacking at #sbidays – cheaper shopping, bias cracking, payment systems, secure your SOA! pic.twitter.com/y7YaIdug SOA Community Future #BPM & #ACM solutions can make use of ontology’s, based on #sqarql #sbidays pic.twitter.com/xLb1Z5zs Simone Geib ? @soacommunity: SOA Blackbelt training by David Shaffer, April 30th–May 4th 2012 wp.me/p10C8u-nX Biemond Changing your ADF Connections in Enterprise Manager with PS5: With Patch Set 5 of Fusion Middleware you can fina… bit.ly/zF7Rb1 Marc ? HUGE (!) CPU and Heap improvement on Oracle Fusion Middleware tinyurl.com/762drzp @wlscommunity @soacommunity #OSB #SOA #WLS SOA Community ?Networking @ SOA & BPM Partner Community blogs.oracle.com/soacommunity/e… #soacommunity #otn #opn #oracle SOA Community ?Published the SOA Partner Community newsletter February edition – READ it. Not yet a member? oracle.com/goto/emea/soa #soacommunity #otn #opn AMIS, Oracle & Java Blog by Lucas Jellema: "Book Review: Do More with SOA Integration: Best of Packt (december 2011, various authors)" bit.ly/wq633E Jon petter hjulstad @SOASimone Excellent summary! Lots of new features! Simone Geib ?Do you want to know what’s new in #soasuite #PS5? Go to bit.ly/xBX06f and let me know what you think SOA Community ? Unit Testing Asynchronous BPEL Processes Using soapUI oracle.com/technetwork/ar… #soacommunity #soa #otn #oracle #bpel Retweeted by SOA Community View media Retweeted by SOA Community Eric Elzinga ? Oracle Fusion Middleware Partner Community Forum Malage, The Overview, bit.ly/AA9BKd #ofmforum SOA&Cloud Symposium ? The February issue of the Service Technology Magazine is now published. servicetechmag.com SOA Community ? Oracle SOA Suite 11g Database Growth Management – must read! oracle.com/technetwork/da… #soacommunity #soa #purging demed ? Have you exposed internal processes to mobile devices using #oraclesoa? Interested in an article? DM me! #osb #rest #multichannel #mobile orclateamsoa ? A-Team SOA Blog: Enhanced version of Thread Dump Analyzer (TDA A-Team) ow.ly/1hpk7l SOA Community Reply BPM Suite #PS5 (11.1.1.6) available for download soacommunity.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/soa… Send us your feedback! #soacommunity #bpmsuite #opn SOA Community ? SOA Suite #PS5 (11.1.1.6) available for download soacommunity.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/soa… Send us your feedback! #soacommunity #soasuite SOA Community BPM Suite #PS5 1(1.1.1.6) available for download. List of new BPM features blogs.oracle.com/soacommunity/e… #soacommunity #bpm #bpmsuite #opn OracleBlogs BPM in Utilties Industry ow.ly/1hC3fp Retweeted by SOA Community OTNArchBeat ? Demystifying Oracle Enterprise Gateway | Naresh Persaud bit.ly/xtDNe2 OTNArchBeat ? Architect’s Guide to Big Data; Test BPEL Processes Using SoapUI; Development Debate bit.ly/xbDYSo Frank Nimphius ? Finished my book review of "Do More with SOA Integration: Best of Packt ". Here are my review comments: bit.ly/x2k9OZ Lucas Jellema ? That is my one stop-and-go download center for #PS5 : edelivery.oracle.com/EPD/Download/g… Lucas Jellema ? Interesting piece of documentation: Fusion Applications Extensibility Guide – docs.oracle.com/cd/E15586_01/f… source for design time @ run time inspira Lucas Jellema ? Strongly improved support for testing Business Rules at Design Time in #PS5 see docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/u… Lucas Jellema ? SOA Suite 11gR1 PS5: new BPEL Component testing – docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/d… Lucas Jellema ? PS5 available for CEP (Complex Event Processing) – a personal favorite of mine : oracle.com/technetwork/mi… Lucas Jellema ?What’s New in Fusion Developer’s Guide 11gR1 PS5: docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/w… Lucas Jellema ? BPMN Correlation (FMW 11gR1 PS5): docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/d… Lucas Jellema ? Modifying running BPM Process instances (FMW 11gR1 PS5): docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/d… Lucas Jellema ? SOA Suite 11gR1 PS5 – new aggregation pattern: docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/d… routing multiple messages to same instance Melvin van der Kuijl ? Automating Testing of SOA Composite Applications in PS5. docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/d… Cato Aune ? SOA suite PS5 Enterprise Deployment Guide is available in ePub docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/c… . Much better than pdf on Galaxy Note SOA Community ?JDeveloper 11.1.1.6 is available for download bit.ly/wGYrwE #soacommunity SOA Community ? Your first experience #PS5 – let us know @soacommunity – send us your tweets and blog posts! #soacommunity Jon petter hjulstad ? WLS 10.3.6 New features, ex better logging of jdbc use: docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/w… Heidi Buelow ? Get it now! RT @soacommunity: BPM Suite PS5 11.1.1.6 available for download bit.ly/AgagT5 #bpm #soacommunity Jon petter hjulstad ?SOA Suite PS5 EDG contains OSB! docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/c… Jon petter hjulstad ? Testing Oracle Rules from JDeveloper is easier in PS5: docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/u… Biemond® ? What’s New in Oracle Service Bus 11.1.1.6.0 oracle.com/technetwork/mi… Jon petter hjulstad ? Adminguide New and Changed Features for PS5, ex GridLink data sources: docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/c… Retweeted by SOA Community Andreas Koop ? Unbelievable! #OFM Doc Lib growth from 11gPS4->11gPS5 by 1.2G! View media SOA Community ?ODI PS5 is available oracle.com/technetwork/mi… #odi #soacommunity 22 Feb View media SOA Community Service Bus 11g Development Cookbook soacommunity.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/ser… #osb #soacommunity #ace #opn View media For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA Partner Community for registration please visit  www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Technorati Tags: soacommunity,twitter,Oracle,SOA Community,Jürgen Kress,OPN,SOA,BPM

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• DropDownList and SelectListItem Array Item Updates in MVC

  - by Rick Strahl

  So I ran into an interesting behavior today as I deployed my first MVC 4 app tonight. I have a list form that has a filter drop down that allows selection of categories. This list is static and rarely changes so rather than loading these items from the database each time I load the items once and then cache the actual SelectListItem[] array in a static property. However, when we put the site online tonight we immediately noticed that the drop down list was coming up with pre-set values that randomly changed. Didn't take me long to trace this back to the cached list of SelectListItem[]. Clearly the list was getting updated - apparently through the model binding process in the selection postback. To clarify the scenario here's the drop down list definition in the Razor View:@Html.DropDownListFor(mod => mod.QueryParameters.Category, Model.CategoryList, "All Categories") where Model.CategoryList gets set with:[HttpPost] [CompressContent] public ActionResult List(MessageListViewModel model) { InitializeViewModel(model); busEntry entryBus = new busEntry(); var entries = entryBus.GetEntryList(model.QueryParameters); model.Entries = entries; model.DisplayMode = ApplicationDisplayModes.Standard; model.CategoryList = AppUtils.GetCachedCategoryList(); return View(model); } The AppUtils.GetCachedCategoryList() method gets the cached list or loads the list on the first access. The code to load up the list is housed in a Web utility class. The method looks like this:/// <summary> /// Returns a static category list that is cached /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public static SelectListItem[] GetCachedCategoryList() { if (_CategoryList != null) return _CategoryList; lock (_SyncLock) { if (_CategoryList != null) return _CategoryList; var catBus = new busCategory(); var categories = catBus.GetCategories().ToList(); // Turn list into a SelectItem list var catList= categories .Select(cat => new SelectListItem() { Text = cat.Name, Value = cat.Id.ToString() }) .ToList(); catList.Insert(0, new SelectListItem() { Value = ((int)SpecialCategories.AllCategoriesButRealEstate).ToString(), Text = "All Categories except Real Estate" }); catList.Insert(1, new SelectListItem() { Value = "-1", Text = "--------------------------------" }); _CategoryList = catList.ToArray(); } return _CategoryList; } private static SelectListItem[] _CategoryList ; This seemed normal enough to me - I've been doing stuff like this forever caching smallish lists in memory to avoid an extra trip to the database. This list is used in various places throughout the application - for the list display and also when adding new items and setting up for notifications etc.. Watch that ModelBinder! However, it turns out that this code is clearly causing a problem. It appears that the model binder on the [HttpPost] method is actually updating the list that's bound to and changing the actual entry item in the list and setting its selected value. If you look at the code above I'm not setting the SelectListItem.Selected value anywhere - the only place this value can get set is through ModelBinding. Sure enough when stepping through the code I see that when an item is selected the actual model - model.CategoryList[x].Selected - reflects that. This is bad on several levels: First it's obviously affecting the application behavior - nobody wants to see their drop down list values jump all over the place randomly. But it's also a problem because the array is getting updated by multiple ASP.NET threads which likely would lead to odd crashes from time to time. Not good! In retrospect the modelbinding behavior makes perfect sense. The actual items and the Selected property is the ModelBinder's way of keeping track of one or more selected values. So while I assumed the list to be read-only, the ModelBinder is actually updating it on a post back producing the rather surprising results. Totally missed this during testing and is another one of those little - "Did you know?" moments. So, is there a way around this? Yes but it's maybe not quite obvious. I can't change the behavior of the ModelBinder, but I can certainly change the way that the list is generated. Rather than returning the cached list, I can return a brand new cloned list from the cached items like this:/// <summary> /// Returns a static category list that is cached /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public static SelectListItem[] GetCachedCategoryList() { if (_CategoryList != null) { // Have to create new instances via projection // to avoid ModelBinding updates to affect this // globally return _CategoryList .Select(cat => new SelectListItem() { Value = cat.Value, Text = cat.Text }) .ToArray(); } …}  The key is that newly created instances of SelectListItems are returned not just filtered instances of the original list. The key here is 'new instances' so that the ModelBinding updates do not update the actual static instance. The code above uses LINQ and a projection into new SelectListItem instances to create this array of fresh instances. And this code works correctly - no more cross-talk between users. Unfortunately this code is also less efficient - it has to reselect the items and uses extra memory for the new array. Knowing what I know now I probably would have not cached the list and just take the hit to read from the database. If there is even a possibility of thread clashes I'm very wary of creating code like this. But since the method already exists and handles this load in one place this fix was easy enough to put in. Live and learn. It's little things like this that can cause some interesting head scratchers sometimes…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in MVC  ASP.NET  .NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• 17 new features in Visual Studio 2010

  - by vik20000in

  Visual studio 2010 has been released to RTM a few days back. This release of Visual studio 2010 comes with a big number of improvements on many fronts. In this post I will try and point out some of the major improvements in Visual Studio 2010. 1)      Visual studio IDE Improvement. Visual studio IDE has been rewritten in WPF. The look and feel of the studio has been improved for improved readability. Start page has been redesigned and template so that anyone can change the start page as they wish. 2)      Multiple Monitor - Support for Multiple Monitor was already there in Visual studio. But in this edition it has been improved as much that we can now place the document, design and code window outside the IDE in another monitor. 3)      ZOOM in Code Editor – Making the editors in WPF has made significant improvement for them. The best one that I like is the ZOOM feature. We can now zoom in the code editor with the help of the ctrl + Mouse scroll. The zoom feature does not work on the Design surface or windows with icon like solution view and toolbox. 4)      Box Selection - Another Important improvement in the Visual studio 2010 is the box selection. We can select a rectangular by holding down the Alt Key and selecting with mouse.  Now in the rectangular selection we can insert text, Paste same code in different line etc. This is helpful if you want to convert a number of variables from public to private etc… 5)      New Improved Search – One of the best productivity improvements in Visual studio 2010 is its new search as you type support. This has been done in the Navigate To window which can be brought up by pressing (Ctrl + ,). The navigate To windows also take help of the Camel casing and will be able to search with the help of camel casing when character is entered in upper case. For example we can search AOH for AddOrederHeader. 6)      Call Hierarchy – This feature is only available to the Visual C# and Visual C++ editor. The call hierarchy windows displays the calls made to and from (yes both to and from) a selected method property or a constructor. The call hierarchy also shows the implementation of interface and the overrides of virtual or abstract methods. This window is very helpful in understanding the code flow, and evaluating the effect of making changes. The best part is it is available at design time and not at runtime only like a debugger. 7)      Highlighting references – One of the very cool stuff in Visual Studio 2010 is the fact if you select a variable then all the use of that variable will be highlighted alongside. This should work for all the result of symbols returned by Find all reference. This also works for Name of class, objects variable, properties and methods. We can also use the Ctrl + Shift + Down Arrow or Up Arror to move through them. 8)      Generate from usage - The Generate from usage feature lets you use classes and members before you define them. You can generate a stub for any undefined class, constructor, method, property, field, or enum that you want to use but have not yet defined. You can generate new types and members without leaving your current location in code, This minimizes interruption to your workflow.9)      IntelliSense Suggestion Mode - IntelliSense now provides two alternatives for IntelliSense statement completion, completion mode and suggestion mode. Use suggestion mode for situations where classes and members are used before they are defined. In suggestion mode, when you type in the editor and then commit the entry, the text you typed is inserted into the code. When you commit an entry in completion mode, the editor shows the entry that is highlighted on the members list. When an IntelliSense window is open, you can press CTRL+ALT+SPACEBAR to toggle between completion mode and suggestion mode. 10)   Application Lifecycle Management – A client application for management of application lifecycle like version control, work item tracking, build automation, team portal etc is available for free (this is not available for express edition.). 11)   Start Page – The start page has been redesigned with WPF for new functionality and look. Tabbed areas are provided for content from different source including MSDN. Once you open some project the start page closes automatically. The list of recent project also lets you remove project from the list. And above all the start page is customizable enough to be changed as per individual requirement. 12)   Extension Manager – Visual Studio 2010 has provided good ways to be extended. We can also use MEF to extend most of the features of Visual Studio. The new extension manager now can go the visual studio gallery and install the extension without even opening any explorer. 13)   Code snippets – Visual studio 2010 for HTML, Jscript and Asp.net also. 14)   Improved Intelligence for JavaScript has been improved vastly (around 2-5 times). Intelligence now also shows the XML documentation comment on the go. 15)   Web Deployment – Web Deployment has been vastly improved. We can package and publish the web application in one click. Three major supported deployment scenarios are Web packages, one click deployment and Web configuration Transformation. 16)   SharePoint - Visual Studio 2010 also brings vastly improved development experience for SharePoint. We can create, edit, debug, package, deploy and activate SharePoint project from within Visual Studio. Deployment of Site is as easy as hitting F5. 17)   Azure – Visual Studio 2010 also comes with handy improvement for developing on windows Azure environment. Vikram

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• SQL Azure Reporting Limited CTP Arrived

  - by Shaun

  It’s about 3 months later when I registered the SQL Azure Reporting CTP on the Microsoft Connect after TechED 2010 China. Today when I checked my mailbox I found that the SQL Azure team had just accepted my request and sent the activation code over to me. So let’s have a look on the new SQL Azure Reporting.   Concept The SQL Azure Reporting provides cloud-based reporting as a service, built on SQL Server Reporting Services and SQL Azure technologies. Cloud-based reporting solutions such as SQL Azure Reporting provide many benefits, including rapid provisioning, cost-effective scalability, high availability, and reduced management overhead for report servers; and secure access, viewing, and management of reports. By using the SQL Azure Reporting service, we can do: Embed the Visual Studio Report Viewer ADO.NET Ajax control or Windows Form control to view the reports deployed on SQL Azure Reporting Service in our web or desktop application. Leverage the SQL Azure Reporting SOAP API to manage and retrieve the report content from any kinds of application. Use the SQL Azure Reporting Service Portal to navigate and view the reports deployed on the cloud. Since the SQL Azure Reporting was built based on the SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Service, we can use any tools we are familiar with, such as the SQL Server Integration Studio, Visual Studio Report Viewer. The SQL Azure Reporting Service runs as a remote SQL Server Reporting Service just on the cloud rather than on a server besides us.   Establish a New SQL Azure Reporting Let’s move to the windows azure deveploer portal and click the Reporting item from the left side navigation bar. If you don’t have the activation code you can click the Sign Up button to send a requirement to the Microsoft Connect. Since I already recieved the received code mail I clicked the Provision button. Then after agree the terms of the service I will select the subscription for where my SQL Azure Reporting CTP should be provisioned. In this case I selected my free Windows Azure Pass subscription. Then the final step, paste the activation code and enter the password of our SQL Azure Reporting Service. The user name of the SQL Azure Reporting will be generated by SQL Azure automatically. After a while the new SQL Azure Reporting Server will be shown on our developer portal. The Reporting Service URL and the user name will be shown as well. We can reset the password from the toolbar button.   Deploy Report to SQL Azure Reporting If you are familiar with SQL Server Reporting Service you will find this part will be very similar with what you know and what you did before. Firstly we open the SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio and create a new Report Server Project. Then we will create a shared data source where the report data will be retrieved from. This data source can be SQL Azure but we can use local SQL Server or other database if it opens the port up. In this case we use a SQL Azure database located in the same data center of our reporting service. In the Credentials tab page we entered the user name and password to this SQL Azure database. The SQL Azure Reporting CTP only available at the North US Data Center now so that the related SQL Server and hosted service might be better to select the same data center to avoid the external data transfer fee. Then we create a very simple report, just retrieve all records from a table named Members and have a table in the report to list them. In the data source selection step we choose the shared data source we created before, then enter the T-SQL to select all records from the Member table, then put all fields into the table columns. The report will be like this as following In order to deploy the report onto the SQL Azure Reporting Service we need to update the project property. Right click the project node from the solution explorer and select the property item. In the Target Server URL item we will specify the reporting server URL of our SQL Azure Reporting. We can go back to the developer portal and select the reporting node from the left side, then copy the Web Service URL and paste here. But notice that we need to append “/reportserver” after pasted. Then just click the Deploy menu item in the context menu of the project, the Visual Studio will compile the report and then upload to the reporting service accordingly. In this step we will be prompted to input the user name and password of our SQL Azure Reporting Service. We can get the user name from the developer portal, just next to the Web Service URL in the SQL Azure Reporting page. And the password is the one we specified when created the reporting service. After about one minute the report will be deployed succeed.   View the Report in Browser SQL Azure Reporting allows us to view the reports which deployed on the cloud from a standard browser. We copied the Web Service URL from the reporting service main page and appended “/reportserver” in HTTPS protocol then we will have the SQL Azure Reporting Service login page. After entered the user name and password of the SQL Azure Reporting Service we can see the directories and reports listed. Click the report will launch the Report Viewer to render the report.   View Report in a Web Role with the Report Viewer The ASP.NET and Windows Form Report Viewer works well with the SQL Azure Reporting Service as well. We can create a ASP.NET Web Role and added the Report Viewer control in the default page. What we need to change to the report viewer are Change the Processing Mode to Remote. Specify the Report Server URL under the Server Remote category to the URL of the SQL Azure Reporting Web Service URL with “/reportserver” appended. Specify the Report Path to the report which we want to display. The report name should NOT include the extension name. For example my report was in the SqlAzureReportingTest project and named MemberList.rdl then the report path should be /SqlAzureReportingTest/MemberList. And the next one is to specify the SQL Azure Reporting Credentials. We can use the following class to wrap the report server credential. 1: private class ReportServerCredentials : IReportServerCredentials 2: { 3: private string _userName; 4: private string _password; 5: private string _domain; 6:  7: public ReportServerCredentials(string userName, string password, string domain) 8: { 9: _userName = userName; 10: _password = password; 11: _domain = domain; 12: } 13:  14: public WindowsIdentity ImpersonationUser 15: { 16: get 17: { 18: return null; 19: } 20: } 21:  22: public ICredentials NetworkCredentials 23: { 24: get 25: { 26: return null; 27: } 28: } 29:  30: public bool GetFormsCredentials(out Cookie authCookie, out string user, out string password, out string authority) 31: { 32: authCookie = null; 33: user = _userName; 34: password = _password; 35: authority = _domain; 36: return true; 37: } 38: } And then in the Page_Load method, pass it to the report viewer. 1: protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) 2: { 3: ReportViewer1.ServerReport.ReportServerCredentials = new ReportServerCredentials( 4: "<user name>", 5: "<password>", 6: "<sql azure reporting web service url>"); 7: } Finally deploy it to Windows Azure and enjoy the report.   Summary In this post I introduced the SQL Azure Reporting CTP which had just available. Likes other features in Windows Azure, the SQL Azure Reporting is very similar with the SQL Server Reporting. As you can see in this post we can use the existing and familiar tools to build and deploy the reports and display them on a website. But the SQL Azure Reporting is just in the CTP stage which means It is free. There’s no support for it. Only available at the North US Data Center. You can get more information about the SQL Azure Reporting CTP from the links following SQL Azure Reporting Limited CTP at MSDN SQL Azure Reporting Samples at TechNet Wiki You can download the solutions and the projects used in this post here.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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• Agile Awakenings and the Rules of Agile

  - by Robert May

  For those that care, you can read my history of management and technology to understand why I think I’m qualified to talk about this at all.  It’s boring, so feel free to skip it. Awakenings I first started to play around with the idea of “agile” in 2004 or 2005.  I found a book on the Rational Unified Process that I thought was good, and attempted to implement parts of it.  I thought I was agile, but really, it wasn’t.   I still didn’t understand the concept of a team.  I still wanted to tell the team what to do and how to get it done.  I still thought I was smarter than the team. After that job, I started work on another project and began helping that team.  The first few months were really rough.  We were implementing Scrum, which was relatively new to everyone on the team, and, quite frankly, I was doing a poor job of it.  I was trying to micro-manage every aspect of the teams work, and we were all miserable. The moment of change came when the senior architect bailed on the project.  His comment to me was: “This isn’t Agile.  Where are the stand-ups?  Where are the stories?”  He was dead on, and I finally woke up.  I finally realized that I was the problem!  I wasn’t trusting the team.  I wasn’t helping the team.  I was being a manager. Like many (most?), I was claiming to be Agile and use Scrum, but I wasn’t in fact following the rules Scrum.  Since then, I’ve done a lot of studying, hands on practice, coaching of many different teams, and other learning around Scrum, and I have discovered that Scrum has some rules that must be followed for success, even though the process is about continuous improvement. I’ve been practicing Scrum right for about 4 years now and have helped multiple teams implement it successfully, so what you’re about to get is based on experience, rather than just theory. The Rules of Scrum In my experience, what I’ve found is that most companies that claim to be doing Scrum or Agile are actually NOT doing either.  This stems largely because they think that they can “adopt the rules of Agile that fit their organization.”  Sadly, many of them think that this means they can adopt iterations (sprints) and not much else.  Either that, or they think they can do whatever they want, or were doing before, and call it Scrum.  This is simply not true. Here are some rules that must be followed for you to really be doing Scrum.  I’ll go into detail on each one of these posts in future blog posts and update links here.  My intent is that this will help other teams implementing scrum to see more success. Agile does not allow you to do whatever you want A Product Owner is required A ScrumMaster is required The team must function as a Team, and QA must be part of the team Support from upper management is required A prioritized product backlog is required A prioritized sprint backlog is required Release planning is required Complete spring planning is required Showcases are required Velocity must be measured Retrospectives are required Daily stand-ups are required Visibility is absolutely required For now, I think that’s enough, although I reserve the right to add more.  If you’re breaking any of these rules, you’re probably not doing Scrum.  There are exceptions to these rules, but until you have practiced Scrum for a while, you don’t know what those exceptions are. Breaking the Rules Many teams break these rules because they are the ones that expose the most pain.  Scrum is not Advil.  It’s not intended to mask the pain, its intended to cure it.  Let me explain that analogy a bit more.  Recently, my 7 year old son broke his arm, quite severely (see the X-Ray to the right).  That caused him a great deal of pain.  We went first to one doctor, and after viewing the X-Ray, they determined that there was no way that they’d cast the arm at their location.  It was simply too bad of a break for them to deal with.  They did, however, give him some Advil for the pain and put a splint on his arm to stabilize the broken bones.  Within minutes, he was feeling much better.  Had we been stupid, we could have gone home and he’d have been just as happy as ever . . . until the pain medication wore off or one of his siblings touched the splint.  Then, all of that pain would come right back to the top.  Sure, he could make it go away by just taking more Advil and moving the splint out of the way, but that wasn’t going to fix the problem permanently. We ended up in an emergency room with a doctor who could fix his arm.  However, we were warned that the fix was going to be VERY painful, and it was.  Even with heavy sedation (Propofol), my son was in enough pain that he squirmed and wiggled trying to get his arm away from the doctor.  He had to endure this pain in order to have a functional arm. But the setting wasn’t the end.  He had to have several casts, had to have it re-broken once, since the first setting didn’t take and finally was given a clean bill of health. Agile implementation is much like this story.  Agile was developed as a result of people recognizing that the development methodologies that were currently in place simply were ineffective.  However, the fix to the broken development that’s been festering for many years is not painless.  Many people start Agile thinking that things will be wonderful.  They won’t!  Agile is about visibility, and often, it brings great pain to surface.  It causes all of the missed deadlines, the cowboy coders, the coasters, the micro-managers, the lazy, and all of the other problems that are really part of your development process now to become painfully visible to EVERYONE.  Many people don’t like this exposure.  Agile will make the pain better, but not if you remove the cast (the rules above) prematurely and start breaking the rules that expose the most pain.  The healing will take time and is not instant (like Advil).  Figuring out what the true source of pain and fixing it is very valuable to you, your team, and your company.  Remember as you’re doing this that Agile isn’t the source of the pain, it’s really just exposing it.  Find the source. My recommendation is that ALL of these rules are followed for a minimum of six months, and preferably for an entire year, before you decide to break any of these rules.  Get a few good releases under your belt.  Figure out what your velocity is and start firing as a team.  Chances are, after you see agile really in action, you won’t want to break the rules because you’ll see their value. More Reading Jean Tabaka recently published a list of 78 Things I Have Learned in 6 Years of Agile Coaching.  Highly recommended. Technorati Tags: Agile,Scrum,Rules

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• Remote Desktop to Your Azure Virtual Machine

  - by Shaun

  The Windows Azure Team had just published their new development portal this week and the SDK 1.3. Within this new release there are a lot of cool feature available. The one I’m looking forward to is Remote Desktop Access to your running Windows Azure Virtual Machine.   Configuration Remote Desktop Access It would be very simple to make the azure service enable the remote desktop access. First of all let’s create a new windows azure project from the Visual Studio. In this example I just created a normal MVC 2 web role without any modifications. Then we right-click the azure project node in the solution explorer window and select “Publish”. Then let’s select the “Deploy your Windows Azure project to Windows Azure” on the top radio button. And then select the credential, deployment service/slot, storage and label as susal. You must have the Management API Certificates uploaded to your Windows Azure account, and install the certification on you machine before in order to use this one-click deployment feature. If you are familiar with this dialog you will notice that there’s a linkage named “Configure Remote Desktop connections”. Here is where you need to make this service enable the remote desktop feature. After clicked this link we will set the configuration of the remote desktop access authorization information. There are 4 steps we need to do to configure our access. Certificates: We need either create or select a certificate file in order to encypt the access cerdenticals. In this example I will use the certificate file for my Management API. Username: The remote desktop user name to access the virtual machine. Password: The password for the access. Expiration: The access cerdentals would be expired after 1 month by default but we can amend here. After that we clicked the OK button to back to the publish dialog.   The next step is to back to the new windows azure portal and navigate to the hosted services list. I created a new hosted service and upload the certificate file onto this service. The user name and password access to the azure machine must be encrypted from the local machine, and then send to the windows azure platform, then decrypted on the azure side by the same file. This is why we need to upload the certificate file onto azure. We navigated to the “Hosted Services, Storage Accounts & CDN"” from the left panel and created a new hosted service named “SDK13” and selected the “Certificates” node. Then we clicked the “Add Certificates” button. Then we select the local certificate file and the password to install it into this azure service.   The final step would be back to our Visual Studio and in the pulish dialog just click the OK button. The Visual Studio will upload our package and the configuration into our service with the remote desktop settings.   Remote Desktop Access to Azure Virtual Machine All things had been done, let’s have a look back on the Windows Azure Development Portal. If I selected the web role that I had just published we can see on the toolbar there’s a section named “Remote Access”. In this section the Enable checkbox had been checked which means this role has the Remote Desktop Access feature enabled. If we want to modify the access cerdentals we can simply click the Configure button. Then we can update the user name, password, certificates and the expiration date.   Let’s select the instance node under the web role. In this case I just created one instance for demo. We can see that when we selected the instance node, the Connect button turned enabled. After clicked this button there will be a RDP file downloaded. This is a Remote Desctop configuration file that we can use to access to our azure virtual machine. Let’s download it to our local machine and execute. We input the user name and password we specified when we published our application to azure and then click OK. There might be some certificates warning dislog appeared. This is because the certificates we use to encryption is not signed by a trusted provider. Just select OK in these cases as we know the certificate is safty to us. Finally, the virtual machine of Windows Azure appeared.   A Quick Look into the Azure Virtual Machine Let’s just have a very quick look into our virtual machine. There are 3 disks available for us: C, D and E. Disk C: Store the local resource, diagnosis information, etc. Disk D: System disk which contains the OS, IIS, .NET Frameworks, etc. Disk E: Sotre our application code. The IIS which hosting our webiste on Azure. The IP configuration of the azure virtual machine.   Summary In this post I covered one of the new feature of the Azure SDK 1.3 – Remote Desktop Access. We can set the access per service and all of the instances of this service could be accessed through the remote desktop tool. With this feature we can deep into the virtual machines of our instances to see the inner information such as the system event, IIS log, system information, etc. But we should pay attention to modify the system settings. 2 reasons from what I know for now: 1. If we have more than one instances against our service we should ensure that all system settings we modifed are applied to all instances/virtual machines. Otherwise, as the machines are under the azure load balance proxy our application process may doesn’t work due to the defferent settings between the instances. 2. When the virtual machine encounted some problem and need to be translated to another physical machine all settings we made would be disappeared.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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• Cloud MBaaS : The Next Big Thing in Enterprise Mobility

  - by shiju

  In this blog post, I will take a look at Cloud Mobile Backend as a Service (MBaaS) and how we can leverage Cloud based Mobile Backend as a Service for building enterprise mobile apps. Today, mobile apps are incredibly significant in both consumer and enterprise space and the demand for the mobile apps is unbelievably increasing in day to day business. An enterprise can’t survive in business without a proper mobility strategy. A better mobility strategy and faster delivery of your mobile apps will give you an extra mileage for your business and IT strategy. So organizations and mobile developers are looking for different strategy for meeting this demand and adopting different development strategy for their mobile apps. Some developers are adopting hybrid mobile app development platforms, for delivering their products for multiple platforms, for fast time-to-market. Others are adopting a Mobile enterprise application platform (MEAP) such as Kony for their enterprise mobile apps for fast time-to-market and better business integration. The Challenges of Enterprise Mobility The real challenge of enterprise mobile apps, is not about creating the front-end environment or developing front-end for multiple platforms. The most important thing of enterprise mobile apps is to expose your enterprise data to mobile devices where the real pain is your business data might be residing in lot of different systems including legacy systems, ERP systems etc., and these systems will be deployed with lot of security restrictions. Exposing your data from the on-premises servers, is not a easy thing for most of the business organizations. Many organizations are spending too much time for their front-end development strategy, but they are really lacking for building a strategy on their back-end for exposing the business data to mobile apps. So building a REST services layer and mobile back-end services, on the top of legacy systems and existing middleware systems, is the key part of most of the enterprise mobile apps, where multiple mobile platforms can easily consume these REST services and other mobile back-end services for building mobile apps. For some mobile apps, we can’t predict its user base, especially for products where customers can gradually increase at any time. And for today’s mobile apps, faster time-to-market is very critical so that spending too much time for mobile app’s scalability, will not be worth. The real power of Cloud is the agility and on-demand scalability, where we can scale-up and scale-down our applications very easily. It would be great if we could use the power of Cloud to mobile apps. So using Cloud for mobile apps is a natural fit, where we can use Cloud as the storage for mobile apps and hosting mechanism for mobile back-end services, where we can enjoy the full power of Cloud with greater level of on-demand scalability and operational agility. So Cloud based Mobile Backend as a Service is great choice for building enterprise mobile apps, where enterprises can enjoy the massive scalability power of their mobile apps, provided by public cloud vendors such as Microsoft Windows Azure. Mobile Backend as a Service (MBaaS) We have discussed the key challenges of enterprise mobile apps and how we can leverage Cloud for hosting mobile backend services. MBaaS is a set of cloud-based, server-side mobile services for multiple mobile platforms and HTML5 platform, which can be used as a backend for your mobile apps with the scalability power of Cloud. The information below provides the key features of a typical MBaaS platform: Cloud based storage for your application data. Automatic REST API services on the application data, for CRUD operations. Native push notification services with massive scalability power. User management services for authenticate users. User authentication via Social accounts such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter. Scheduler services for periodically sending data to mobile devices. Native SDKs for multiple mobile platforms such as Windows Phone and Windows Store, Android, Apple iOS, and HTML5, for easily accessing the mobile services from mobile apps, with better security.  Typically, a MBaaS platform will provide native SDKs for multiple mobile platforms so that we can easily consume the server-side mobile services. MBaaS based REST APIs can use for integrating to enterprise backend systems. We can use the same mobile services for multiple platform so hat we can reuse the application logic to multiple mobile platforms. Public cloud vendors are building the mobile services on the top of their PaaS offerings. Windows Azure Mobile Services is a great platform for a MBaaS offering that is leveraging Windows Azure Cloud platform’s PaaS capabilities. Hybrid mobile development platform Titanium provides their own MBaaS services. LoopBack is a new MBaaS service provided by Node.js consulting firm StrongLoop, which can be hosted on multiple cloud platforms and also for on-premises servers. The Challenges of MBaaS Solutions If you are building your mobile apps with a new data storage, it will be very easy, since there is not any integration challenges you have to face. But most of the use cases, you have to extract your application data in which stored in on-premises servers which might be under VPNs and firewalls. So exposing these data to your MBaaS solution with a proper security would be a big challenge. The capability of your MBaaS vendor is very important as you have to interact with your legacy systems for many enterprise mobile apps. So you should be very careful about choosing for MBaaS vendor. At the same time, you should have a proper strategy for mobilizing your application data which stored in on-premises legacy systems, where your solution architecture and strategy is more important than platforms and tools.  Windows Azure Mobile Services Windows Azure Mobile Services is an MBaaS offerings from Windows Azure cloud platform. IMHO, Microsoft Windows Azure is the best PaaS platform in the Cloud space. Windows Azure Mobile Services extends the PaaS capabilities of Windows Azure, to mobile devices, which can be used as a cloud backend for your mobile apps, which will provide global availability and reach for your mobile apps. Windows Azure Mobile Services provides storage services, user management with social network integration, push notification services and scheduler services and provides native SDKs for all major mobile platforms and HTML5. In Windows Azure Mobile Services, you can write server-side scripts in Node.js where you can enjoy the full power of Node.js including the use of NPM modules for your server-side scripts. In the previous section, we had discussed some challenges of MBaaS solutions. You can leverage Windows Azure Cloud platform for solving many challenges regarding with enterprise mobility. The entire Windows Azure platform can play a key role for working as the backend for your mobile apps where you can leverage the entire Windows Azure platform for your mobile apps. With Windows Azure, you can easily connect to your on-premises systems which is a key thing for mobile backend solutions. Another key point is that Windows Azure provides better integration with services like Active Directory, which makes Windows Azure as the de facto platform for enterprise mobility, for enterprises, who have been leveraging Microsoft ecosystem for their application and IT infrastructure. Windows Azure Mobile Services  is going to next evolution where you can expect some exciting features in near future. One area, where Windows Azure Mobile Services should definitely need an improvement, is about the default storage mechanism in which currently it is depends on SQL Server. IMHO, developers should be able to choose multiple default storage option when creating a new mobile service instance. Let’s say, there should be a different storage providers such as SQL Server storage provider and Table storage provider where developers should be able to choose their choice of storage provider when creating a new mobile services project. I have been used Windows Azure and Windows Azure Mobile Services as the backend for production apps for mobile, where it performed very well. MBaaS Over MEAP Recently, many larger enterprises has been adopted Mobile enterprise application platform (MEAP) for their mobile apps. I haven’t worked on any production MEAP solution, but I heard that developers are really struggling with MEAP in different way. The learning curve for a proprietary MEAP platform is very high. I am completely against for using larger proprietary ecosystem for mobile apps. For enterprise mobile apps, I highly recommend to use native iOS/Android/Windows Phone or HTML5  for front-end with a cloud hosted MBaaS solution as the middleware. A MBaaS service can be consumed from multiple mobile apps where REST APIs are using to integrating with enterprise backend systems. Enterprise mobility should start with exposing REST APIs on the enterprise backend systems and these REST APIs can host on Cloud where we can enjoy the power of Cloud for our services. If you are having REST APIs for your enterprise data, then you can easily build mobile frontends for multiple platforms.   You can follow me on Twitter @shijucv

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• A Guided Tour of Complexity

  - by JoshReuben

  I just re-read Complexity – A Guided Tour by Melanie Mitchell , protégé of Douglas Hofstadter ( author of “Gödel, Escher, Bach”) http://www.amazon.com/Complexity-Guided-Tour-Melanie-Mitchell/dp/0199798109/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339744329&sr=8-1 here are some notes and links:   Evolved from Cybernetics, General Systems Theory, Synergetics some interesting transdisciplinary fields to investigate: Chaos Theory - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory – small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for chaotic systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible. System Dynamics / Cybernetics - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Dynamics – study of how feedback changes system behavior Network Theory - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_theory – leverage Graph Theory to analyze symmetric  / asymmetric relations between discrete objects Algebraic Topology - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebraic_topology – leverage abstract algebra to analyze topological spaces There are limits to deterministic systems & to computation. Chaos Theory definitely applies to training an ANN (artificial neural network) – different weights will emerge depending upon the random selection of the training set. In recursive Non-Linear systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlinear_system – output is not directly inferable from input. E.g. a Logistic map: Xt+1 = R Xt(1-Xt) Different types of bifurcations, attractor states and oscillations may occur – e.g. a Lorenz Attractor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenz_system Feigenbaum Constants http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feigenbaum_constants express ratios in a bifurcation diagram for a non-linear map – the convergent limit of R (the rate of period-doubling bifurcations) is 4.6692016 Maxwell’s Demon - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon - the Second Law of Thermodynamics has only a statistical certainty – the universe (and thus information) tends towards entropy. While any computation can theoretically be done without expending energy, with finite memory, the act of erasing memory is permanent and increases entropy. Life & thought is a counter-example to the universe’s tendency towards entropy. Leo Szilard and later Claude Shannon came up with the Information Theory of Entropy - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory) whereby Shannon entropy quantifies the expected value of a message’s information in bits in order to determine channel capacity and leverage Coding Theory (compression analysis). Ludwig Boltzmann came up with Statistical Mechanics - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_mechanics – whereby our Newtonian perception of continuous reality is a probabilistic and statistical aggregate of many discrete quantum microstates. This is relevant for Quantum Information Theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_information and the Physics of Information - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_information. Hilbert’s Problems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert's_problems pondered whether mathematics is complete, consistent, and decidable (the Decision Problem – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entscheidungsproblem – is there always an algorithm that can determine whether a statement is true).  Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del's_incompleteness_theorems  proved that mathematics cannot be both complete and consistent (e.g. “This statement is not provable”). Turing through the use of Turing Machines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine symbol processors that can prove mathematical statements) and Universal Turing Machines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Turing_machine Turing Machines that can emulate other any Turing Machine via accepting programs as well as data as input symbols) that computation is limited by demonstrating the Halting Problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem (is is not possible to know when a program will complete – you cannot build an infinite loop detector). You may be used to thinking of 1 / 2 / 3 dimensional systems, but Fractal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal systems are defined by self-similarity & have non-integer Hausdorff Dimensions !!!  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fractals_by_Hausdorff_dimension – the fractal dimension quantifies the number of copies of a self similar object at each level of detail – eg Koch Snowflake - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_snowflake Definitions of complexity: size, Shannon entropy, Algorithmic Information Content (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_information_theory - size of shortest program that can generate a description of an object) Logical depth (amount of info processed), thermodynamic depth (resources required). Complexity is statistical and fractal. John Von Neumann’s other machine was the Self-Reproducing Automaton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_machine  . Cellular Automata http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_automaton are alternative form of Universal Turing machine to traditional Von Neumann machines where grid cells are locally synchronized with their neighbors according to a rule. Conway’s Game of Life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life demonstrates various emergent constructs such as “Glider Guns” and “Spaceships”. Cellular Automatons are not practical because logical ops require a large number of cells – wasteful & inefficient. There are no compilers or general program languages available for Cellular Automatons (as far as I am aware). Random Boolean Networks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_network are extensions of cellular automata where nodes are connected at random (not to spatial neighbors) and each node has its own rule –> they demonstrate the emergence of complex  & self organized behavior. Stephen Wolfram’s (creator of Mathematica, so give him the benefit of the doubt) New Kind of Science http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science proposes the universe may be a discrete Finite State Automata http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite-state_machine whereby reality emerges from simple rules. I am 2/3 through this book. It is feasible that the universe is quantum discrete at the plank scale and that it computes itself – Digital Physics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_physics – a simulated reality? Anyway, all behavior is supposedly derived from simple algorithmic rules & falls into 4 patterns: uniform , nested / cyclical, random (Rule 30 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_30) & mixed (Rule 110 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110 localized structures – it is this that is interesting). interaction between colliding propagating signal inputs is then information processing. Wolfram proposes the Principle of Computational Equivalence - http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PrincipleofComputationalEquivalence.html - all processes that are not obviously simple can be viewed as computations of equivalent sophistication. Meaning in information may emerge from analogy & conceptual slippages – see the CopyCat program: http://cognitrn.psych.indiana.edu/rgoldsto/courses/concepts/copycat.pdf Scale Free Networks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale-free_network have a distribution governed by a Power Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law - much more common than Normal Distribution). They are characterized by hubs (resilience to random deletion of nodes), heterogeneity of degree values, self similarity, & small world structure. They grow via preferential attachment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferential_attachment – tipping points triggered by positive feedback loops. 2 theories of cascading system failures in complex systems are Self-Organized Criticality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organized_criticality and Highly Optimized Tolerance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_optimized_tolerance. Computational Mechanics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_mechanics – use of computational methods to study phenomena governed by the principles of mechanics. This book is a great intuition pump, but does not cover the more mathematical subject of Computational Complexity Theory – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_complexity_theory I am currently reading this book on this subject: http://www.amazon.com/Computational-Complexity-Christos-H-Papadimitriou/dp/0201530821/ref=pd_sim_b_1   stay tuned for that review!

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• Using a "white list" for extracting terms for Text Mining

  - by [email protected]

  In Part 1 of my post on "Generating cluster names from a document clustering model" (part 1, part 2, part 3), I showed how to build a clustering model from text documents using Oracle Data Miner, which automates preparing data for text mining. In this process we specified a custom stoplist and lexer and relied on Oracle Text to identify important terms.  However, there is an alternative approach, the white list, which uses a thesaurus object with the Oracle Text CTXRULE index to allow you to specify the important terms. INTRODUCTIONA stoplist is used to exclude, i.e., black list, specific words in your documents from being indexed. For example, words like a, if, and, or, and but normally add no value when text mining. Other words can also be excluded if they do not help to differentiate documents, e.g., the word Oracle is ubiquitous in the Oracle product literature. One problem with stoplists is determining which words to specify. This usually requires inspecting the terms that are extracted, manually identifying which ones you don't want, and then re-indexing the documents to determine if you missed any. Since a corpus of documents could contain thousands of words, this could be a tedious exercise. Moreover, since every word is considered as an individual token, a term excluded in one context may be needed to help identify a term in another context. For example, in our Oracle product literature example, the words "Oracle Data Mining" taken individually are not particular helpful. The term "Oracle" may be found in nearly all documents, as with the term "Data." The term "Mining" is more unique, but could also refer to the Mining industry. If we exclude "Oracle" and "Data" by specifying them in the stoplist, we lose valuable information. But it we include them, they may introduce too much noise. Still, when you have a broad vocabulary or don't have a list of specific terms of interest, you rely on the text engine to identify important terms, often by computing the term frequency - inverse document frequency metric. (This is effectively a weight associated with each term indicating its relative importance in a document within a collection of documents. We'll revisit this later.) The results using this technique is often quite valuable. As noted above, an alternative to the subtractive nature of the stoplist is to specify a white list, or a list of terms--perhaps multi-word--that we want to extract and use for data mining. The obvious downside to this approach is the need to specify the set of terms of interest. However, this may not be as daunting a task as it seems. For example, in a given domain (Oracle product literature), there is often a recognized glossary, or a list of keywords and phrases (Oracle product names, industry names, product categories, etc.). Being able to identify multi-word terms, e.g., "Oracle Data Mining" or "Customer Relationship Management" as a single token can greatly increase the quality of the data mining results. The remainder of this post and subsequent posts will focus on how to produce a dataset that contains white list terms, suitable for mining. CREATING A WHITE LIST We'll leverage the thesaurus capability of Oracle Text. Using a thesaurus, we create a set of rules that are in effect our mapping from single and multi-word terms to the tokens used to represent those terms. For example, "Oracle Data Mining" becomes "ORACLEDATAMINING." First, we'll create and populate a mapping table called my_term_token_map. All text has been converted to upper case and values in the TERM column are intended to be mapped to the token in the TOKEN column. TERM                                TOKEN DATA MINING                         DATAMINING ORACLE DATA MINING                  ORACLEDATAMINING 11G                                 ORACLE11G JAVA                                JAVA CRM                                 CRM CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT    CRM ... Next, we'll create a thesaurus object my_thesaurus and a rules table my_thesaurus_rules: CTX_THES.CREATE_THESAURUS('my_thesaurus', FALSE); CREATE TABLE my_thesaurus_rules (main_term     VARCHAR2(100),                                  query_string  VARCHAR2(400)); We next populate the thesaurus object and rules table using the term token map. A cursor is defined over my_term_token_map. As we iterate over  the rows, we insert a synonym relationship 'SYN' into the thesaurus. We also insert into the table my_thesaurus_rules the main term, and the corresponding query string, which specifies synonyms for the token in the thesaurus. DECLARE   cursor c2 is     select token, term     from my_term_token_map; BEGIN   for r_c2 in c2 loop     CTX_THES.CREATE_RELATION('my_thesaurus',r_c2.token,'SYN',r_c2.term);     EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'insert into my_thesaurus_rules values                        (:1,''SYN(' || r_c2.token || ', my_thesaurus)'')'     using r_c2.token;   end loop; END; We are effectively inserting the token to return and the corresponding query that will look up synonyms in our thesaurus into the my_thesaurus_rules table, for example:     'ORACLEDATAMINING'        SYN ('ORACLEDATAMINING', my_thesaurus)At this point, we create a CTXRULE index on the my_thesaurus_rules table: create index my_thesaurus_rules_idx on        my_thesaurus_rules(query_string)        indextype is ctxsys.ctxrule; In my next post, this index will be used to extract the tokens that match each of the rules specified. We'll then compute the tf-idf weights for each of the terms and create a nested table suitable for mining.

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• LLBLGen Pro v3.1 released!

  - by FransBouma

  Yesterday we released LLBLGen Pro v3.1! Version 3.1 comes with new features and enhancements, which I'll describe briefly below. v3.1 is a free upgrade for v3.x licensees. What's new / changed? Designer Extensible Import system. An extensible import system has been added to the designer to import project data from external sources. Importers are plug-ins which import project meta-data (like entity definitions, mappings and relational model data) from an external source into the loaded project. In v3.1, an importer plug-in for importing project elements from existing LLBLGen Pro v3.x project files has been included. You can use this importer to create source projects from which you import parts of models to build your actual project with. Model-only relationships. In v3.1, relationships of the type 1:1, m:1 and 1:n can be marked as model-only. A model-only relationship isn't required to have a backing foreign key constraint in the relational model data. They're ideal for projects which have to work with relational databases where changes can't always be made or some relationships can't be added to (e.g. the ones which are important for the entity model, but are not allowed to be added to the relational model for some reason). Custom field ordering. Although fields in an entity definition don't really have an ordering, it can be important for some situations to have the entity fields in a given order, e.g. when you use compound primary keys. Field ordering can be defined using a pop-up dialog which can be opened through various ways, e.g. inside the project explorer, model view and entity editor. It can also be set automatically during refreshes based on new settings. Command line relational model data refresher tool, CliRefresher.exe. The command line refresh tool shipped with v2.6 is now available for v3.1 as well Navigation enhancements in various designer elements. It's now easier to find elements like entities, typed views etc. in the project explorer from editors, to navigate to related entities in the project explorer by right clicking a relationship, navigate to the super-type in the project explorer when right-clicking an entity and navigate to the sub-type in the project explorer when right-clicking a sub-type node in the project explorer. Minor visual enhancements / tweaks LLBLGen Pro Runtime Framework Entity creation is now up to 30% faster and takes 5% less memory. Creating an entity object has been optimized further by tweaks inside the framework to make instantiating an entity object up to 30% faster. It now also takes up to 5% less memory than in v3.0 Prefetch Path node merging is now up to 20-25% faster. Setting entity references required the creation of a new relationship object. As this relationship object is always used internally it could be cached (as it's used for syncing only). This increases performance by 20-25% in the merging functionality. Entity fetches are now up to 20% faster. A large number of tweaks have been applied to make entity fetches up to 20% faster than in v3.0. Full WCF RIA support. It's now possible to use your LLBLGen Pro runtime framework powered domain layer in a WCF RIA application using the VS.NET tools for WCF RIA services. WCF RIA services is a Microsoft technology for .NET 4 and typically used within silverlight applications. SQL Server DQE compatibility level is now per instance. (Usable in Adapter). It's now possible to set the compatibility level of the SQL Server Dynamic Query Engine (DQE) per instance of the DQE instead of the global setting it was before. The global setting is still available and is used as the default value for the compatibility level per-instance. You can use this to switch between CE Desktop and normal SQL Server compatibility per DataAccessAdapter instance. Support for COUNT_BIG aggregate function (SQL Server specific). The aggregate function COUNT_BIG has been added to the list of available aggregate functions to be used in the framework. Minor changes / tweaks I'm especially pleased with the import system, as that makes working with entity models a lot easier. The import system lets you import from another LLBLGen Pro v3 project any entity definition, mapping and / or meta-data like table definitions. This way you can build repository projects where you store model fragments, e.g. the building blocks for a customer-order system, a user credential model etc., any model you can think of. In most projects, you'll recognize that some parts of your new model look familiar. In these cases it would have been easier if you would have been able to import these parts from projects you had pre-created. With LLBLGen Pro v3.1 you can. For example, say you have an Oracle schema called CRM which contains the bread 'n' butter customer-order-product kind of model. You create an entity model from that schema and save it in a project file. Now you start working on another project for another customer and you have to use SQL Server. You also start using model-first development, so develop the entity model from scratch as there's no existing database. As this customer also requires some CRM like entity model, you import the entities from your saved Oracle project into this new SQL Server targeting project. Because you don't work with Oracle this time, you don't import the relational meta-data, just the entities, their relationships and possibly their inheritance hierarchies, if any. As they're now entities in your project you can change them a bit to match the new customer's requirements. This can save you a lot of time, because you can re-use pre-fab model fragments for new projects. In the example above there are no tables yet (as you work model first) so using the forward mapping capabilities of LLBLGen Pro v3 creates the tables, PK constraints, Unique Constraints and FK constraints for you. This way you can build a nice repository of model fragments which you can re-use in new projects.

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• Migrating SQL Server Databases – The DBA’s Checklist (Part 1)

  - by Sadequl Hussain

  It is a fact of life: SQL Server databases change homes. They move from one instance to another, from one version to the next, from old servers to new ones.  They move around as an organisation’s data grows, applications are enhanced or new versions of the database software are released. If not anything else, servers become old and unreliable and databases eventually need to find a new home. Consider the following scenarios: 1.     A new  database application is rolled out in a production server from the development or test environment 2.     A copy of the production database needs to be installed in a test server for troubleshooting purposes 3.     A copy of the development database is regularly refreshed in a test server during the system development life cycle 4.     A SQL Server is upgraded to a newer version. This can be an in-place upgrade or a side-by-side migration 5.     One or more databases need to be moved between different instances as part of a consolidation strategy. The instances can be running the same or different version of SQL Server 6.     A database has to be restored from a backup file provided by a third party application vendor 7.     A backup of the database is restored in the same or different instance for disaster recovery 8.     A database needs to be migrated within the same instance: a.     Files are moved from direct attached storage to storage area network b.    The same database is copied under a different name for another application Migrating SQL Server database applications is a complex topic in itself. There are a number of components that can be involved: jobs, DTS or SSIS packages, logins or linked servers are only few pieces of the puzzle. However, in this article we will focus only on the central part of migration: the installation of the database itself. Unless it is an in-place upgrade, typically the database is taken from a source server and installed in a destination instance.  Most of the time, a full backup file is used for the rollout. The backup file is either provided to the DBA or the DBA takes the backup and restores it in the target server. Sometimes the database is detached from the source and the files are copied to and attached in the destination. Regardless of the method of copying, moving, refreshing, restoring or upgrading the physical database, there are a number of steps the DBA should follow before and after it has been installed in the destination. It is these post database installation steps we are going to discuss below. Some of these steps apply in almost every scenario described above while some will depend on the type of objects contained within the database.  Also, the principles hold regardless of the number of databases involved. Step 1:  Make a copy of data and log files when attaching and detaching When detaching and attaching databases, ensure you have made copies of the data and log files if the destination is running a newer version of SQL Server. This is because once attached to a newer version, the database cannot be detached and attached back to an older version. Trying to do so will give you a message like the following: Server: Msg 602, Level 21, State 50, Line 1 Could not find row in sysindexes for database ID 6, object ID 1, index ID 1. Run DBCC CHECKTABLE on sysindexes. Connection Broken If you try to backup the attached database and restore it in the source, it will still fail. Similarly, if you are restoring the database in a newer version, it cannot be backed up or detached and put back in an older version of SQL. Unlike detach and attach method though, you do not lose the backup file or the original database here. When detaching and attaching a database, it is important you keep all the log files available along with the data files. It is possible to attach a database without a log file and SQL Server can be instructed to create a new log file, however this does not work if the database was detached when the primary file group was read-only. You will need all the log files in such cases. Step 2: Change database compatibility level Once the database has been restored or attached to a newer version of SQL Server, change the database compatibility level to reflect the newer version unless there is a compelling reason not to do so. When attaching or restoring from a previous version of SQL, the database retains the older version’s compatibility level.  The only time you would want to keep a database with an older compatibility level is when the code within your database is no longer supported by SQL Server. For example, outer joins with *= or the =* operators were still possible in SQL 2000 (with a warning message), but not in SQL 2005 anymore. If your stored procedures or triggers are using this form of join, you would want to keep the database with an older compatibility level.  For a list of compatibility issues between older and newer versions of SQL Server databases, refer to the Books Online under the sp_dbcmptlevel topic. Application developers and architects can help you in deciding whether you should change the compatibility level or not. You can always change the compatibility mode from the newest to an older version if necessary. To change the compatibility level, you can either use the database’s property from the SQL Server Management Studio or use the sp_dbcmptlevel stored procedure.   Bear in mind that you cannot run the built-in reports for databases from SQL Server Management Studio if you keep the database with an older compatibility level. The following figure shows the error message I received when trying to run the “Disk Usage by Top Tables” report against a database. This database was hosted in a SQL Server 2005 system and still had a compatibility mode 80 (SQL 2000).     Continues…

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