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  • heimdal kerberos in openldap issue

    - by Brian
    I think I posted this on the wrong 'sister site', so here it is. I'm having a bit of trouble getting Kerberos (Heimdal version) to work nicely with OpenLDAP. The kerberos database is being stored in LDAP itself. The KDC uses SASL EXTERNAL authentication as root to access the container ou. I created the database in LDAP fine using kadmin -l, but it won't let me use kadmin without the -l flag: root@rds0:~# kadmin -l kadmin> list * krbtgt/REALM kadmin/changepw kadmin/admin changepw/kerberos kadmin/hprop WELLKNOWN/ANONYMOUS WELLKNOWN/org.h5l.fast-cookie@WELLKNOWN:ORG.H5L default brian.empson brian.empson/admin host/rds0.example.net ldap/rds0.example.net host/localhost kadmin> exit root@rds0:~# kadmin kadmin> list * brian.empson/admin@REALM's Password: <----- With right password kadmin: kadm5_get_principals: Key table entry not found kadmin> list * brian.empson/admin@REALM's Password: <------ With wrong password kadmin: kadm5_get_principals: Already tried ENC-TS-info, looping kadmin> I can get tickets without a problem: root@rds0:~# klist Credentials cache: FILE:/tmp/krb5cc_0 Principal: brian.empson@REALM Issued Expires Principal Nov 11 14:14:40 2012 Nov 12 00:14:37 2012 krbtgt/REALM@REALM Nov 11 14:40:35 2012 Nov 12 00:14:37 2012 ldap/rds0.example.net@REALM But I can't seem to change my own password without kadmin -l: root@rds0:~# kpasswd brian.empson@REALM's Password: <---- Right password New password: Verify password - New password: Auth error : Authentication failed root@rds0:~# kpasswd brian.empson@REALM's Password: <---- Wrong password kpasswd: krb5_get_init_creds: Already tried ENC-TS-info, looping kadmin's logs are not helpful at all: 2012-11-11T13:48:33 krb5_recvauth: Key table entry not found 2012-11-11T13:51:18 krb5_recvauth: Key table entry not found 2012-11-11T13:53:02 krb5_recvauth: Key table entry not found 2012-11-11T14:16:34 krb5_recvauth: Key table entry not found 2012-11-11T14:20:24 krb5_recvauth: Key table entry not found 2012-11-11T14:20:44 krb5_recvauth: Key table entry not found 2012-11-11T14:21:29 krb5_recvauth: Key table entry not found 2012-11-11T14:21:46 krb5_recvauth: Key table entry not found 2012-11-11T14:23:09 krb5_recvauth: Key table entry not found 2012-11-11T14:45:39 krb5_recvauth: Key table entry not found The KDC reports that both accounts succeed in authenticating: 2012-11-11T14:48:03 AS-REQ brian.empson@REALM from IPv4:192.168.72.10 for kadmin/changepw@REALM 2012-11-11T14:48:03 Client sent patypes: REQ-ENC-PA-REP 2012-11-11T14:48:03 Looking for PK-INIT(ietf) pa-data -- brian.empson@REALM 2012-11-11T14:48:03 Looking for PK-INIT(win2k) pa-data -- brian.empson@REALM 2012-11-11T14:48:03 Looking for ENC-TS pa-data -- brian.empson@REALM 2012-11-11T14:48:03 Need to use PA-ENC-TIMESTAMP/PA-PK-AS-REQ 2012-11-11T14:48:03 sending 294 bytes to IPv4:192.168.72.10 2012-11-11T14:48:03 AS-REQ brian.empson@REALM from IPv4:192.168.72.10 for kadmin/changepw@REALM 2012-11-11T14:48:03 Client sent patypes: ENC-TS, REQ-ENC-PA-REP 2012-11-11T14:48:03 Looking for PK-INIT(ietf) pa-data -- brian.empson@REALM 2012-11-11T14:48:03 Looking for PK-INIT(win2k) pa-data -- brian.empson@REALM 2012-11-11T14:48:03 Looking for ENC-TS pa-data -- brian.empson@REALM 2012-11-11T14:48:03 ENC-TS Pre-authentication succeeded -- brian.empson@REALM using aes256-cts-hmac-sha1-96 2012-11-11T14:48:03 ENC-TS pre-authentication succeeded -- brian.empson@REALM 2012-11-11T14:48:03 AS-REQ authtime: 2012-11-11T14:48:03 starttime: unset endtime: 2012-11-11T14:53:00 renew till: unset 2012-11-11T14:48:03 Client supported enctypes: aes256-cts-hmac-sha1-96, aes128-cts-hmac-sha1-96, des3-cbc-sha1, arcfour-hmac-md5, using aes256-cts-hmac-sha1-96/aes256-cts-hmac-sha1-96 2012-11-11T14:48:03 sending 704 bytes to IPv4:192.168.72.10 2012-11-11T14:45:39 AS-REQ brian.empson/admin@REALM from IPv4:192.168.72.10 for kadmin/admin@REALM 2012-11-11T14:45:39 Client sent patypes: REQ-ENC-PA-REP 2012-11-11T14:45:39 Looking for PK-INIT(ietf) pa-data -- brian.empson/admin@REALM 2012-11-11T14:45:39 Looking for PK-INIT(win2k) pa-data -- brian.empson/admin@REALM 2012-11-11T14:45:39 Looking for ENC-TS pa-data -- brian.empson/admin@REALM 2012-11-11T14:45:39 Need to use PA-ENC-TIMESTAMP/PA-PK-AS-REQ 2012-11-11T14:45:39 sending 303 bytes to IPv4:192.168.72.10 2012-11-11T14:45:39 AS-REQ brian.empson/admin@REALM from IPv4:192.168.72.10 for kadmin/admin@REALM 2012-11-11T14:45:39 Client sent patypes: ENC-TS, REQ-ENC-PA-REP 2012-11-11T14:45:39 Looking for PK-INIT(ietf) pa-data -- brian.empson/admin@REALM 2012-11-11T14:45:39 Looking for PK-INIT(win2k) pa-data -- brian.empson/admin@REALM 2012-11-11T14:45:39 Looking for ENC-TS pa-data -- brian.empson/admin@REALM 2012-11-11T14:45:39 ENC-TS Pre-authentication succeeded -- brian.empson/admin@REALM using aes256-cts-hmac-sha1-96 2012-11-11T14:45:39 ENC-TS pre-authentication succeeded -- brian.empson/admin@REALM 2012-11-11T14:45:39 AS-REQ authtime: 2012-11-11T14:45:39 starttime: unset endtime: 2012-11-11T15:45:39 renew till: unset 2012-11-11T14:45:39 Client supported enctypes: aes256-cts-hmac-sha1-96, aes128-cts-hmac-sha1-96, des3-cbc-sha1, arcfour-hmac-md5, using aes256-cts-hmac-sha1-96/aes256-cts-hmac-sha1-96 2012-11-11T14:45:39 sending 717 bytes to IPv4:192.168.72.10 I wish I had more detailed logging messages, running kadmind in debug mode seems to almost work but it just kicks me back to the shell when I type in the correct password. GSSAPI via LDAP doesn't work either, but I suspect it's because some parts of kerberos aren't working either: root@rds0:~# ldapsearch -Y GSSAPI -H ldaps:/// -b "o=mybase" o=mybase SASL/GSSAPI authentication started ldap_sasl_interactive_bind_s: Other (e.g., implementation specific) error (80) additional info: SASL(-1): generic failure: GSSAPI Error: Unspecified GSS failure. Minor code may provide more information () root@rds0:~# ldapsearch -Y EXTERNAL -H ldapi:/// -b "o=mybase" o=mybase SASL/EXTERNAL authentication started SASL username: gidNumber=0+uidNumber=0,cn=peercred,cn=external,cn=auth SASL SSF: 0 # extended LDIF <snip> Would anyone be able to point me in the right direction?

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  • How to diagnose frequent segfaults

    - by Andreas Gohr
    My server is logging frequent segmentation faults to /var/log/kern.log in different tools. So far I've seen them in Perl, PHP and rsync. All installed software is up-to-date Debian packages. Here's an exerpt from the log file: Mar 2 01:07:54 gaz kernel: [ 5316.246303] imapsync[4533]: segfault at 8b ip 00007fb448c98fe6 sp 00007ffff571dd68 error 4 in libperl.so.5.10.1[7fb448bd7000+164000] Mar 2 01:17:42 gaz kernel: [ 5904.354307] php5-cgi[4441]: segfault at 2bb3dc8 ip 0000000002bb3dc8 sp 00007fffbeeaae48 error 15 Mar 2 02:54:05 gaz kernel: [11687.922316] php5-cgi[4495]: segfault at 2d7acf9 ip 0000000002d7acf9 sp 00007fff60c6eb18 error 15 Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390322] BUG: unable to handle kernel paging request at 00000000024b03f0 Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390341] IP: [<00000000024b03f0>] 0x24b03f0 Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390353] PGD 208c71067 PUD 21c811067 PMD 209329067 PTE 8000000211c88067 Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390365] Oops: 0011 [#1] SMP Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390373] last sysfs file: /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:12.0/host4/target4:0:0/4:0:0:0/block/sdb/stat Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390386] CPU 1 Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390392] Modules linked in: cpufreq_userspace cpufreq_stats cpufreq_powersave cpufreq_conservative xt_recent xt_tcpudp iptable_nat nf_nat nf_conntrack_ipv4 nf_defrag_ ipv4 ip6table_filter ip6_tables xt_DSCP xt_TCPMSS ipt_LOG ipt_REJECT iptable_mangle iptable_filter xt_multiport xt_state xt_limit xt_conntrack nf_conntrack_ftp nf_conntrack ip_tables x_tables loop snd _hda_codec_atihdmi snd_hda_intel snd_hda_codec snd_hwdep snd_pcm radeon snd_timer ttm snd drm_kms_helper soundcore drm snd_page_alloc i2c_algo_bit shpchp i2c_piix4 edac_core pcspkr k8temp evdev edac_m ce_amd pci_hotplug i2c_core button ext3 jbd mbcache dm_mod powernow_k8 aacraid 3w_9xxx 3w_xxxx raid10 raid456 async_raid6_recov async_pq raid6_pq async_xor xor async_memcpy async_tx raid1 raid0 md_mod sata_nv sata_sil sata_via sd_mod crc_t10dif ata_generic ahci pata_atiixp ohci_hcd libata r8169 mii thermal ehci_hcd processor thermal_sys scsi_mod usbcore nls_base [last unloaded: scsi_wait_scan] Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390566] Pid: 11482, comm: munin-limits Not tainted 2.6.32-5-amd64 #1 MS-7368 Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390576] RIP: 0010:[<00000000024b03f0>] [<00000000024b03f0>] 0x24b03f0 Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390586] RSP: 0018:ffff88021cc8dec0 EFLAGS: 00010286 Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390593] RAX: 000000001ddc1000 RBX: 0000000000000010 RCX: ffffffff810f9904 Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390600] RDX: 0000000000000000 RSI: ffffea0007688200 RDI: 0000000000000286 Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390608] RBP: 00000000ffffffea R08: 0000000000000025 R09: 7865542f30312e35 Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390615] R10: 000000d01cc8ddf8 R11: 0000000000000246 R12: ffff88021cc8def8 Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390622] R13: 0000000002295010 R14: 00000000022c9db0 R15: 0000000002488d78 Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390630] FS: 00007f3b3c8b2700(0000) GS:ffff880008d00000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390641] CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390648] CR2: 00000000024b03f0 CR3: 000000021c5d1000 CR4: 00000000000006e0 Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390656] DR0: 0000000000000000 DR1: 0000000000000000 DR2: 0000000000000000 Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390663] DR3: 0000000000000000 DR6: 00000000ffff0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400 Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390671] Process munin-limits (pid: 11482, threadinfo ffff88021cc8c000, task ffff88021bf59530) Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390681] Stack: Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390687] ffffffff810f1d4a ffff880208c63228 0000000000000000 00007fffc2dcecc0 Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390697] <0> 00000000024ba2b0 0000000002295010 ffffffff810f1e3d 0000000000000004 Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390712] <0> ffff88021bf59530 ffff88021c4edc00 ffffffff812fe0b6 ffff88021c4edc60 Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390732] Call Trace: Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390742] [<ffffffff810f1d4a>] ? vfs_fstatat+0x2c/0x57 Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390750] [<ffffffff810f1e3d>] ? sys_newstat+0x11/0x30 Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390760] [<ffffffff812fe0b6>] ? do_page_fault+0x2e0/0x2fc Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390768] [<ffffffff812fbf55>] ? page_fault+0x25/0x30 Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390777] [<ffffffff81010b42>] ? system_call_fastpath+0x16/0x1b Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390783] Code: Bad RIP value. Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390791] RIP [<00000000024b03f0>] 0x24b03f0 Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390799] RSP <ffff88021cc8dec0> Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.390805] CR2: 00000000024b03f0 Mar 2 10:50:08 gaz kernel: [40250.391051] ---[ end trace 1cc1473b539c7f6e ]--- Mar 2 11:42:20 gaz kernel: [43382.242301] php5-cgi[10963]: segfault at d81160 ip 0000000000d81160 sp 00007fff3adcb058 error 15 Mar 2 21:51:14 gaz kernel: [79916.418302] php5-cgi[20089]: segfault at 1c59dc8 ip 0000000001c59dc8 sp 00007fff9b877fb8 error 15 Mar 3 03:45:01 gaz kernel: [101143.334305] munin-update[22519] general protection ip:7f516dce204c sp:7fff6049a978 error:0 in libperl.so.5.10.1[7f516dc7d000+164000] Mar 3 11:22:37 gaz kernel: [128599.570307] php5-cgi[22888]: segfault at 36485a8 ip 00000000036485a8 sp 00007fff2d56e1c8 error 15 Mar 4 08:32:17 gaz kernel: [204779.842304] php5-cgi[22090]: segfault at 18 ip 0000000000689e5e sp 00007fff677a6a48 error 6 in php5-cgi[400000+6f9000] Mar 4 10:01:02 gaz kernel: [210104.434706] rsync[22236] general protection ip:7f14a07137f9 sp:7fff88f940b8 error:0 in libc-2.11.2.so[7f14a069d000+158000] Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262316] BUG: unable to handle kernel paging request at 00000000ffffff9c Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262331] IP: [<00000000ffffff9c>] 0xffffff9c Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262343] PGD 0 Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262350] Oops: 0010 [#2] SMP Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262359] last sysfs file: /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:12.0/host4/target4:0:0/4:0:0:0/block/sdb/stat Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262371] CPU 1 Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262378] Modules linked in: cpufreq_userspace cpufreq_stats cpufreq_powersave cpufreq_conservative xt_recent xt_tcpudp iptable_nat nf_nat nf_conntrack_ipv4 nf_defrag_ipv4 ip6table_filter ip6_tables xt_DSCP xt_TCPMSS ipt_LOG ipt_REJECT iptable_mangle iptable_filter xt_multiport xt_state xt_limit xt_conntrack nf_conntrack_ftp nf_conntrack ip_tables x_tables loop snd_hda_codec_atihdmi snd_hda_intel snd_hda_codec snd_hwdep snd_pcm radeon snd_timer ttm snd drm_kms_helper soundcore drm snd_page_alloc i2c_algo_bit shpchp i2c_piix4 edac_core pcspkr k8temp evdev edac_mce_amd pci_hotplug i2c_core button ext3 jbd mbcache dm_mod powernow_k8 aacraid 3w_9xxx 3w_xxxx raid10 raid456 async_raid6_recov async_pq raid6_pq async_xor xor async_memcpy async_tx raid1 raid0 md_mod sata_nv sata_sil sata_via sd_mod crc_t10dif ata_generic ahci pata_atiixp ohci_hcd libata r8169 mii thermal ehci_hcd processor thermal_sys scsi_mod usbcore nls_base [last unloaded: scsi_wait_scan] Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262552] Pid: 1960, comm: proxymap Tainted: G D 2.6.32-5-amd64 #1 MS-7368 Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262563] RIP: 0010:[<00000000ffffff9c>] [<00000000ffffff9c>] 0xffffff9c Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262573] RSP: 0018:ffff880209257e00 EFLAGS: 00010212 Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262580] RAX: ffff8801514eb780 RBX: ffffffff810efb2d RCX: 0000000000000000 Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262590] RDX: 0000000000000020 RSI: 0000000000000001 RDI: ffff8801514eb780 Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262600] RBP: 00000000ffffffe9 R08: 0000000000000000 R09: 0000000000000000 Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262611] R10: ffff880209257e78 R11: ffffffff81152c7c R12: 0000000000000001 Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262622] R13: 0000000000008001 R14: 0000000000000024 R15: 00000000ffffff9c Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262633] FS: 00007fca4de35700(0000) GS:ffff880008d00000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262644] CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262650] CR2: 00000000ffffff9c CR3: 00000001c9cbb000 CR4: 00000000000006e0 Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262661] DR0: 0000000000000000 DR1: 0000000000000000 DR2: 0000000000000000 Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262671] DR3: 0000000000000000 DR6: 00000000ffff0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400 Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262682] Process proxymap (pid: 1960, threadinfo ffff880209256000, task ffff88021c4b1c40) Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262693] Stack: Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262698] ffffffff810f8566 ffff880209257e78 ffff88021c7bf000 ffff88021c7bf0c8 Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262709] <0> 0000800000000000 ffff88021fc0f000 ffff880209257e78 00000000fffffffe Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262724] <0> ffffffff810e5881 ffff880209257f48 0000000000000286 ffff88021fc0f000 Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262743] Call Trace: Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262753] [<ffffffff810f8566>] ? do_filp_open+0xa7/0x94b Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262763] [<ffffffff810e5881>] ? virt_to_head_page+0x9/0x2a Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262771] [<ffffffff810f9904>] ? user_path_at+0x52/0x79 Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262779] [<ffffffff810cfec1>] ? get_unmapped_area+0xd7/0x139 Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262787] [<ffffffff811019d5>] ? alloc_fd+0x67/0x10c Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262795] [<ffffffff810eceaf>] ? do_sys_open+0x55/0xfc Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262804] [<ffffffff81010b42>] ? system_call_fastpath+0x16/0x1b Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262811] Code: Bad RIP value. Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262819] RIP [<00000000ffffff9c>] 0xffffff9c Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262828] RSP <ffff880209257e00> Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.262833] CR2: 00000000ffffff9c Mar 4 11:32:22 gaz kernel: [215584.263077] ---[ end trace 1cc1473b539c7f6f ]--- As you can see there are segfaults, a general protection fault and a Kernel Oops. My first guess was that there's a Hardware problem of some sort and I asked my Hoster (it's a rented root server) to do a full hardwarecheck - they did, but couldn't find any problem. I don't know what and how they checked but their support team is usually quite good. I ran memtester and cpuburn myself and couldn't find any error either. Unfortunately I have no reliable way to reproduce these segfaults, they seem to be more or less random. On a hunch I disabled the firewall of the system and ran one of the programs that segfaulted regularily (imapsync) and it seemed to take longer to segfault than before, so the problem might be related to the network stack. Or could just be a random thing. Here are the kernel specs: # uname -a Linux gaz 2.6.32-5-amd64 #1 SMP Wed Jan 12 03:40:32 UTC 2011 x86_64 GNU/Linux # cat /etc/debian_version 6.0 # lsmod Module Size Used by cpufreq_userspace 1992 0 cpufreq_stats 2659 0 cpufreq_powersave 902 0 cpufreq_conservative 5162 0 xt_recent 5977 0 xt_tcpudp 2319 0 iptable_nat 4299 0 nf_nat 13388 1 iptable_nat nf_conntrack_ipv4 9833 3 iptable_nat,nf_nat nf_defrag_ipv4 1139 1 nf_conntrack_ipv4 ip6table_filter 2384 0 ip6_tables 15075 1 ip6table_filter xt_DSCP 1995 0 xt_TCPMSS 2919 0 ipt_LOG 4518 0 ipt_REJECT 1953 0 iptable_mangle 2817 0 iptable_filter 2258 0 xt_multiport 2267 0 xt_state 1303 0 xt_limit 1782 0 xt_conntrack 2407 0 nf_conntrack_ftp 5537 0 nf_conntrack 46535 6 iptable_nat,nf_nat,nf_conntrack_ipv4,xt_state,xt_conntrack,nf_conntrack_ftp ip_tables 13899 3 iptable_nat,iptable_mangle,iptable_filter x_tables 12845 13 xt_recent,xt_tcpudp,iptable_nat,ip6_tables,xt_DSCP,xt_TCPMSS,ipt_LOG,ipt_REJECT,xt_multiport,xt_state,xt_limit,xt_conntrack,ip_tables loop 11799 0 radeon 573996 0 ttm 39986 1 radeon drm_kms_helper 20065 1 radeon snd_hda_codec_atihdmi 2251 1 drm 142359 3 radeon,ttm,drm_kms_helper snd_hda_intel 20019 0 i2c_algo_bit 4225 1 radeon pcspkr 1699 0 i2c_piix4 8328 0 snd_hda_codec 54244 2 snd_hda_codec_atihdmi,snd_hda_intel i2c_core 15712 5 radeon,drm_kms_helper,drm,i2c_algo_bit,i2c_piix4 snd_hwdep 5380 1 snd_hda_codec snd_pcm 60503 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec snd_timer 15582 1 snd_pcm snd 46446 5 snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_timer soundcore 4598 1 snd evdev 7352 3 snd_page_alloc 6249 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm k8temp 3283 0 edac_core 29261 0 edac_mce_amd 6433 0 shpchp 26264 0 pci_hotplug 21203 1 shpchp button 4650 0 ext3 106518 2 jbd 37085 1 ext3 mbcache 5050 1 ext3 dm_mod 53754 0 powernow_k8 10978 1 aacraid 59779 0 3w_9xxx 28684 0 3w_xxxx 20569 0 raid10 17809 0 raid456 44500 0 async_raid6_recov 5170 1 raid456 async_pq 3479 2 raid456,async_raid6_recov raid6_pq 77179 2 async_raid6_recov,async_pq async_xor 2478 3 raid456,async_raid6_recov,async_pq xor 4380 1 async_xor async_memcpy 1198 2 raid456,async_raid6_recov async_tx 1734 5 raid456,async_raid6_recov,async_pq,async_xor,async_memcpy raid1 18431 3 raid0 5517 0 md_mod 73824 7 raid10,raid456,raid1,raid0 sata_nv 19166 0 sata_sil 7412 0 sata_via 7928 0 sd_mod 29889 8 crc_t10dif 1276 1 sd_mod ata_generic 3047 0 ahci 32374 6 r8169 29229 0 mii 3210 1 r8169 thermal 11674 0 pata_atiixp 3489 0 libata 133632 6 sata_nv,sata_sil,sata_via,ata_generic,ahci,pata_atiixp ohci_hcd 19212 0 ehci_hcd 31151 0 processor 29935 1 powernow_k8 thermal_sys 11942 2 thermal,processor scsi_mod 122149 5 aacraid,3w_9xxx,3w_xxxx,sd_mod,libata usbcore 122034 3 ohci_hcd,ehci_hcd nls_base 6377 1 usbcore # free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 8166128 1228036 6938092 0 140412 782060 -/+ buffers/cache: 305564 7860564 Swap: 2102456 0 2102456 So, basically my questions are: How can I diagnose this further? Is there any data in the log above that could help me to isolate the troublemaker? Are there any known problems with the above hardware/software I overlooked when googling for it? Is there a way to prevent the kernel from autoloading modules (I probably don't need all these modules and one of them might be the culprit)

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  • Unicast traffic between hosts on a switch leaving the switch by its uplink. Why?

    - by Rich Lafferty
    I have a weird thing happening on our network at my office which I can't quite get my head around. In particular I can't tell if it's a problem with a switch, or a problem with configuration. We have a Cisco SG300-52 switch (sw01) in the top of a rack in our server room, connected to another SG300-28 that acts as our core switch (core01). Both run layer 2 only, our firewalls do routing between VLANs. They have a dozen or so VLANs between them. Gi1 on sw01 is a trunk port connected to gi1 on core01. (Disclosure: There are other switches in our environment but I'm pretty sure I've isolated the problem down to these two. Happy to provide more info if necessary.) The behaviour I'm seeing is limited to one VLAN, vlan 12 -- or, at least, it's not happening on the other ones I checked (It's hard to guarantee the absence of packets), and it is: sw01 is forwarding, to core01, traffic which is between two hosts which are both plugged into sw01. (I noticed this because the IDS in our firewall gave a false positive on traffic which should not reach the firewall.) We noticed this mostly between our two dhcp/dns servers, net01 (10.12.0.10) and net02 (10.12.0.11). net01 is physical hardware and net02 is on a VMware ESX server. net01 is connected to gi44 on sw01 and net02's ESX server to gi11. [net01]----gi44-[sw01]-gi1----gi1-[core01] [net02]----gi11/ Let's see some interfaces! Remember, vlan 12 is the problem vlan. Of the others I explicitly verified that vlan 27 was not affected. Here's the two hosts' ports: esx01 contains net02. sw01#sh run int gi11 interface gigabitethernet11 description esx01 lldp med disable switchport trunk allowed vlan add 5-7,11-13,100 switchport trunk native vlan 27 ! sw01#sh run int gi44 interface gigabitethernet44 description net01-1 lldp med disable switchport mode access switchport access vlan 12 ! Here's the trunk on sw01. sw01#sh run int gi1 interface gigabitethernet1 description "trunk to core01" lldp med disable switchport trunk allowed vlan add 4-7,11-13,27,100 ! And the other end of the trunk on core01. interface gigabitethernet1 description sw01 macro description switch switchport trunk allowed vlan add 2-7,11-16,27,100 ! I have a monitor port on core01, thus: core01#sh run int gi12 interface gigabitethernet12 description "monitor port" port monitor GigabitEthernet 1 ! And the monitor port on core01 sees unicast traffic going between net01 and net02, both of which are on sw01! I've verified this with a monitor port on sw01 that sees the net01-net02 unicast traffic leaving via gi1 too. sw01 knows that both of those hosts are on ports that are not its trunk port: :) ratchet$ arp -a | grep net net02.2ndsiteinc.com (10.12.0.11) at 00:0C:29:1A:66:15 [ether] on eth0 net01.2ndsiteinc.com (10.12.0.10) at 00:11:43:D8:9F:94 [ether] on eth0 sw01#sh mac addr addr 00:0C:29:1A:66:15 Aging time is 300 sec Vlan Mac Address Port Type -------- --------------------- ---------- ---------- 12 00:0c:29:1a:66:15 gi11 dynamic sw01#sh mac addr addr 00:11:43:D8:9F:94 Aging time is 300 sec Vlan Mac Address Port Type -------- --------------------- ---------- ---------- 12 00:11:43:d8:9f:94 gi44 dynamic I also brought up an unused port on sw01 on vlan 12, but the unicast traffic was (as best as I could tell) not coming out that port. So it doesn't look like sw01 is pushing it out all its ports, just the right ports and also gi1! I've verified that sw01 is not filling up its address-table: sw01#sh mac addr count This may take some time. Capacity : 8192 Free : 7983 Used : 208 The full configs for both core01 and sw01 are available: core01, sw01. Finally, versions: sw01#sh ver SW version 1.1.2.0 ( date 12-Nov-2011 time 23:34:26 ) Boot version 1.0.0.4 ( date 08-Apr-2010 time 16:37:57 ) HW version V01 core01#sh ver SW version 1.1.2.0 ( date 12-Nov-2011 time 23:34:26 ) Boot version 1.1.0.6 ( date 11-May-2011 time 18:31:00 ) HW version V01 So my understanding is this: sw01 should take unicast traffic for net01 and send it only out net02's port, and vice versa; none of it should go out sw01's uplink. But core01, receiving traffic on gi1 for a host it knows is on gi1, is right in sending it out all of its ports. (That is: sw01 is misbehaving, but core01 is doing what it should given the circumstances.) My question is: Why is sw01 sending that unicast traffic out its uplink, gi1? (And pre-emptively: yes, I know SG300s leave much to be desired, and yes, we should have spanning-tree enabled, but that's where I'm at right now.)

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  • EC2 instance suddenly refusing SSH connections and won't respond to ping

    - by Chris
    My instance was running fine and this morning I was able to access a Ruby on Rails app hosted on it. An hour later I suddenly wasn't able to access my site, my SSH connection attempts were refused and the server wasn't even responding to ping. I didn't change anything on my system during that hour and reboots aren't fixing it. I've never had any problems connecting or pinging the system before. Can someone please help? This is on my production system! OS: CentOS 5 AMI ID: ami-10b55379 Type: m1.small [] ~% ssh -v *****@meeteor.com OpenSSH_5.2p1, OpenSSL 0.9.8l 5 Nov 2009 debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh_config debug1: Connecting to meeteor.com [184.73.235.191] port 22. debug1: connect to address 184.73.235.191 port 22: Connection refused ssh: connect to host meeteor.com port 22: Connection refused [] ~% ping meeteor.com PING meeteor.com (184.73.235.191): 56 data bytes Request timeout for icmp_seq 0 Request timeout for icmp_seq 1 Request timeout for icmp_seq 2 ^C --- meeteor.com ping statistics --- 4 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100.0% packet loss [] ~% ========= System Log ========= Restarting system. Linux version 2.6.16-xenU ([email protected]) (gcc version 4.0.1 20050727 (Red Hat 4.0.1-5)) #1 SMP Mon May 28 03:41:49 SAST 2007 BIOS-provided physical RAM map: Xen: 0000000000000000 - 000000006a400000 (usable) 980MB HIGHMEM available. 727MB LOWMEM available. NX (Execute Disable) protection: active IRQ lockup detection disabled Built 1 zonelists Kernel command line: root=/dev/sda1 ro 4 Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done. Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support... done. Initializing CPU#0 PID hash table entries: 4096 (order: 12, 65536 bytes) Xen reported: 2599.998 MHz processor. Dentry cache hash table entries: 131072 (order: 7, 524288 bytes) Inode-cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 262144 bytes) Software IO TLB disabled vmalloc area: ee000000-f53fe000, maxmem 2d7fe000 Memory: 1718700k/1748992k available (1958k kernel code, 20948k reserved, 620k data, 144k init, 1003528k highmem) Checking if this processor honours the WP bit even in supervisor mode... Ok. Calibrating delay using timer specific routine.. 5202.30 BogoMIPS (lpj=26011526) Mount-cache hash table entries: 512 CPU: L1 I Cache: 64K (64 bytes/line), D cache 64K (64 bytes/line) CPU: L2 Cache: 1024K (64 bytes/line) Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK. Brought up 1 CPUs migration_cost=0 Grant table initialized NET: Registered protocol family 16 Brought up 1 CPUs xen_mem: Initialising balloon driver. highmem bounce pool size: 64 pages VFS: Disk quotas dquot_6.5.1 Dquot-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order 0, 4096 bytes) Initializing Cryptographic API io scheduler noop registered io scheduler anticipatory registered (default) io scheduler deadline registered io scheduler cfq registered i8042.c: No controller found. RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 4096K size 1024 blocksize Xen virtual console successfully installed as tty1 Event-channel device installed. netfront: Initialising virtual ethernet driver. mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice md: md driver 0.90.3 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27 md: bitmap version 4.39 NET: Registered protocol family 2 Registering block device major 8 IP route cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 262144 bytes) TCP established hash table entries: 262144 (order: 9, 2097152 bytes) TCP bind hash table entries: 65536 (order: 7, 524288 bytes) TCP: Hash tables configured (established 262144 bind 65536) TCP reno registered TCP bic registered NET: Registered protocol family 1 NET: Registered protocol family 17 NET: Registered protocol family 15 Using IPI No-Shortcut mode md: Autodetecting RAID arrays. md: autorun ... md: ... autorun DONE. kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. VFS: Mounted root (ext3 filesystem) readonly. Freeing unused kernel memory: 144k freed *************************************************************** *************************************************************** ** WARNING: Currently emulating unsupported memory accesses ** ** in /lib/tls glibc libraries. The emulation is ** ** slow. To ensure full performance you should ** ** install a 'xen-friendly' (nosegneg) version of ** ** the library, or disable tls support by executing ** ** the following as root: ** ** mv /lib/tls /lib/tls.disabled ** ** Offending process: init (pid=1) ** *************************************************************** *************************************************************** Pausing... 5Pausing... 4Pausing... 3Pausing... 2Pausing... 1Continuing... INIT: version 2.86 booting Welcome to CentOS release 5.4 (Final) Press 'I' to enter interactive startup. Setting clock : Fri Oct 1 14:35:26 EDT 2010 [ OK ] Starting udev: [ OK ] Setting hostname localhost.localdomain: [ OK ] No devices found Setting up Logical Volume Management: [ OK ] Checking filesystems Checking all file systems. [/sbin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /] fsck.ext3 -a /dev/sda1 /dev/sda1: clean, 275424/1310720 files, 1161123/2621440 blocks [ OK ] Remounting root filesystem in read-write mode: [ OK ] Mounting local filesystems: [ OK ] Enabling local filesystem quotas: [ OK ] Enabling /etc/fstab swaps: [ OK ] INIT: Entering runlevel: 4 Entering non-interactive startup Starting background readahead: [ OK ] Applying ip6tables firewall rules: modprobe: FATAL: Module ip6_tables not found. ip6tables-restore v1.3.5: ip6tables-restore: unable to initializetable 'filter' Error occurred at line: 3 Try `ip6tables-restore -h' or 'ip6tables-restore --help' for more information. [FAILED] Applying iptables firewall rules: [ OK ] Loading additional iptables modules: ip_conntrack_netbios_ns [ OK ] Bringing up loopback interface: [ OK ] Bringing up interface eth0: Determining IP information for eth0... done. [ OK ] Starting auditd: [FAILED] Starting irqbalance: [ OK ] Starting portmap: [ OK ] FATAL: Module lockd not found. Starting NFS statd: [ OK ] Starting RPC idmapd: FATAL: Module sunrpc not found. FATAL: Error running install command for sunrpc Error: RPC MTAB does not exist. Starting system message bus: [ OK ] Starting Bluetooth services:[ OK ] [ OK ] Can't open RFCOMM control socket: Address family not supported by protocol Mounting other filesystems: [ OK ] Starting PC/SC smart card daemon (pcscd): [ OK ] Starting hidd: Can't open HIDP control socket: Address family not supported by protocol [FAILED] Starting autofs: Starting automount: automount: test mount forbidden or incorrect kernel protocol version, kernel protocol version 5.00 or above required. [FAILED] [FAILED] Starting sshd: [ OK ] Starting cups: [ OK ] Starting sendmail: [ OK ] Starting sm-client: [ OK ] Starting console mouse services: no console device found[FAILED] Starting crond: [ OK ] Starting xfs: [ OK ] Starting anacron: [ OK ] Starting atd: [ OK ] % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed 100 390 100 390 0 0 58130 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 58130 100 390 100 390 0 0 56984 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 0 Starting yum-updatesd: [ OK ] Starting Avahi daemon... [ OK ] Starting HAL daemon: [ OK ] Starting OSSEC: [ OK ] Starting smartd: [ OK ] c CentOS release 5.4 (Final) Kernel 2.6.16-xenU on an i686 domU-12-31-39-00-C4-97 login: INIT: Id "2" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes INIT: Id "3" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes INIT: Id "4" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes INIT: Id "5" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes INIT: Id "6" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes

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  • Open source CMS for a university department

    - by Greg Kuperberg
    I realize that this type of question gets asked over and over again. Nonetheless, I want to ask a more specific version. I'm in a university math department. Long ago our sysadmins (or just one at the time) switched to a web content management system. At the time, Zope looked like an informed choice. We have used Zope for years, but at least in my opinion, it has always been a controversial decision. At the time I didn't understand why it was so important to have a web CMS. Now I see that it certainly is important, but I don't know that it should be Zope. The good (even necessary) features of Zope for us are: It's free and Linux-based. It is a true CMS and not something else (e.g. wiki or blog) It lets you write HTML and scripts. What I really don't like about Zope is that the outcome of using it is all-or-nothing in a lot of ways. At least in convenient use, it ends up dividing the enterprise into superusers who can do everything, and lusers who can't do anything (except write their own home pages in plain HTML). It has a huge user manual, which end users won't have time to read. Somehow with the access permissions, the simple thing to do is to let a few admins access all of the source and data and that's it. Since this is a math department, the user base varies from real novices to people who understand computers reasonably well. But as it stands, any change that involves Zope has to go through the sysadmins. When the sysadmins are in a hurry, sometimes they will also just add plain HTML pages to the web site instead of using the Zope framework. It doesn't help matters that Zope is fairly disk-intensive and fairly hype-intensive. Not to dwell on Zope too much, but I am wondering what is the right web CMS for a mixed user base of terminal novices, quick studies, and experienced users. Some users might want intermediate permissions, e.g. read permission but not write permission, or permission to change some subset of the pages or see some subset of the database tables. Also it should be Linux-based and open source and a little bit scalable, and of course widely used and well-supported is a good idea. I might guess that the answer is Drupal just because that was the general answer before, but I don't know if it is the right type of CMS for this purpose. (But note that Python is a relatively popular language in a math department, among other reasons because Sage is based on Python.) I can see that I didn't completely define the question and that people are guessing what type of site it is. It is the UC Davis Math Department. The main structure of the site is not suitable for a wiki and it is also not the same thing as a course environment like Moodle. Rather, the site is mostly structured as a generic medium-small enterprise. Some components of the site could be a wiki, Moodle, LaTeX plugin, Request Tracker, etc. However, the main issue is not these components. The main issue is that it would be better to decentralize management of the site. Right now, everything that is in the Zope CMS has to go through the sysadmins. Every other user in the department either has to put in a request to them, or write their own web pages with no help from Zope. There are two main reasons for this: (1) Other people in the department don't have time to read the Zope manual. (2) It's a hassle to set up intermediate permissions in Zope. However, there are other people in the department who know how to write computer programs and use markup languages. I wouldn't want a solution that assumes that users either can't be trusted with much more than drag-and-drop, or that they are IT professionals who sleep with documentation manuals. I'm wondering if Plone/Zope still has this quality, since certainly Zope by itself does. But I also wonder sometimes if common-sense flexibility is unfashionable these days, and that things in general have be either mindlessly easy or incredibly powerful.

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  • Crossover LAN connection between Ubuntu And Windows 7 is not working

    - by brett
    my question is closely related to: How do I connect Ubuntu 10.04 and Windows 7 with an Ethernet cable? What I am after is: Windows 7-------wireless-----\ Wifi router Ubuntu 10.04----wireless-----/ Windows 7-------wireless-----\ | cross_over_cable Wifi router | Ubuntu 10.04----wireless-----/ What I did was On Windows edit system32\drivers\etc\hosts Add the following line: 192.168.253.2 my_ubuntu_computer_name_&-wired //?not sure if this is right On Ubuntu: sudo gedit /etc/hosts Add the following line: 192.168.253.1 my_pc_computer_name&-wired //?not sure if this is right and then Ubuntu 12.04 as the host Right click on the Network Manager applet, click Edit Connections... In the Wired tab, click Auto eth0, then click Edit... In the IPv4 Settings tab, change Method: to Shared to other computers. Click Apply and enter your password when it asks you. Close everything and reboot. Plug the Ethernet cable into both computers. But, I can connect to my windows network folders from ubuntu via wifi I can't connect to my ubuntu network folders from windows via wifi(in fact this bit was working before - so my wifi connection is worse) my ubuntu Auto Ethernet seems to be on From Ubuntu eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:11:2f:f3:43:8d inet addr:10.42.0.1 Bcast:10.42.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::211:2fff:fef3:438d/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:172 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:27279 (27.2 KB) Interrupt:19 Base address:0xe400 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:1147 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:1147 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:94380 (94.3 KB) TX bytes:94380 (94.3 KB) wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:03:c9:e9:6f:bf inet addr:10.1.1.7 Bcast:10.1.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::203:c9ff:fee9:6fbf/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:13186 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:12187 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:1598882 (1.5 MB) TX bytes:1189555 (1.1 MB) From Windows: Windows IP Configuration Ethernet adapter Bluetooth Network Connection: Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : Wireless LAN adapter Wireless Network Connection: Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : BoB Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::ecf7:c445:3725:b9c1%12 IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 10.1.1.4 Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0 Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 10.1.1.1 Tunnel adapter Local Area Connection* 15: Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : IPv6 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 2001:0:4137:9e76:1423:3ae3:f5fe:fefb Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::1423:3ae3:f5fe:fefb%23 Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : :: Tunnel adapter isatap.BoB: Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : BoB Tunnel adapter isatap.{D0C8EBA1-335D-4620-8570-6C36E8786D72}: Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :

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  • A free standing ASP.NET Pager Web Control

    - by Rick Strahl
    Paging in ASP.NET has been relatively easy with stock controls supporting basic paging functionality. However, recently I built an MVC application and one of the things I ran into was that I HAD TO build manual paging support into a few of my pages. Dealing with list controls and rendering markup is easy enough, but doing paging is a little more involved. I ended up with a small but flexible component that can be dropped anywhere. As it turns out the task of creating a semi-generic Pager control for MVC was fairly easily. Now I’m back to working in Web Forms and thought to myself that the way I created the pager in MVC actually would also work in ASP.NET – in fact quite a bit easier since the whole thing can be conveniently wrapped up into an easily reusable control. A standalone pager would provider easier reuse in various pages and a more consistent pager display regardless of what kind of 'control’ the pager is associated with. Why a Pager Control? At first blush it might sound silly to create a new pager control – after all Web Forms has pretty decent paging support, doesn’t it? Well, sort of. Yes the GridView control has automatic paging built in and the ListView control has the related DataPager control. The built in ASP.NET paging has several issues though: Postback and JavaScript requirements If you look at paging links in ASP.NET they are always postback links with javascript:__doPostback() calls that go back to the server. While that works fine and actually has some benefit like the fact that paging saves changes to the page and post them back, it’s not very SEO friendly. Basically if you use javascript based navigation nosearch engine will follow the paging links which effectively cuts off list content on the first page. The DataPager control does support GET based links via the QueryStringParameter property, but the control is effectively tied to the ListView control (which is the only control that implements IPageableItemContainer). DataSource Controls required for Efficient Data Paging Retrieval The only way you can get paging to work efficiently where only the few records you display on the page are queried for and retrieved from the database you have to use a DataSource control - only the Linq and Entity DataSource controls  support this natively. While you can retrieve this data yourself manually, there’s no way to just assign the page number and render the pager based on this custom subset. Other than that default paging requires a full resultset for ASP.NET to filter the data and display only a subset which can be very resource intensive and wasteful if you’re dealing with largish resultsets (although I’m a firm believer in returning actually usable sets :-}). If you use your own business layer that doesn’t fit an ObjectDataSource you’re SOL. That’s a real shame too because with LINQ based querying it’s real easy to retrieve a subset of data that is just the data you want to display but the native Pager functionality doesn’t support just setting properties to display just the subset AFAIK. DataPager is not Free Standing The DataPager control is the closest thing to a decent Pager implementation that ASP.NET has, but alas it’s not a free standing component – it works off a related control and the only one that it effectively supports from the stock ASP.NET controls is the ListView control. This means you can’t use the same data pager formatting for a grid and a list view or vice versa and you’re always tied to the control. Paging Events In order to handle paging you have to deal with paging events. The events fire at specific time instances in the page pipeline and because of this you often have to handle data binding in a way to work around the paging events or else end up double binding your data sources based on paging. Yuk. Styling The GridView pager is a royal pain to beat into submission for styled rendering. The DataPager control has many more options and template layout and it renders somewhat cleaner, but it too is not exactly easy to get a decent display for. Not a Generic Solution The problem with the ASP.NET controls too is that it’s not generic. GridView, DataGrid use their own internal paging, ListView can use a DataPager and if you want to manually create data layout – well you’re on your own. IOW, depending on what you use you likely have very different looking Paging experiences. So, I figured I’ve struggled with this once too many and finally sat down and built a Pager control. The Pager Control My goal was to create a totally free standing control that has no dependencies on other controls and certainly no requirements for using DataSource controls. The idea is that you should be able to use this pager control without any sort of data requirements at all – you should just be able to set properties and be able to display a pager. The Pager control I ended up with has the following features: Completely free standing Pager control – no control or data dependencies Complete manual control – Pager can render without any data dependency Easy to use: Only need to set PageSize, ActivePage and TotalItems Supports optional filtering of IQueryable for efficient queries and Pager rendering Supports optional full set filtering of IEnumerable<T> and DataTable Page links are plain HTTP GET href Links Control automatically picks up Page links on the URL and assigns them (automatic page detection no page index changing events to hookup) Full CSS Styling support On the downside there’s no templating support for the control so the layout of the pager is relatively fixed. All elements however are stylable and there are options to control the text, and layout options such as whether to display first and last pages and the previous/next buttons and so on. To give you an idea what the pager looks like, here are two differently styled examples (all via CSS):   The markup for these two pagers looks like this: <ww:Pager runat="server" id="ItemPager" PageSize="5" PageLinkCssClass="gridpagerbutton" SelectedPageCssClass="gridpagerbutton-selected" PagesTextCssClass="gridpagertext" CssClass="gridpager" RenderContainerDiv="true" ContainerDivCssClass="gridpagercontainer" MaxPagesToDisplay="6" PagesText="Item Pages:" NextText="next" PreviousText="previous" /> <ww:Pager runat="server" id="ItemPager2" PageSize="5" RenderContainerDiv="true" MaxPagesToDisplay="6" /> The latter example uses default style settings so it there’s not much to set. The first example on the other hand explicitly assigns custom styles and overrides a few of the formatting options. Styling The styling is based on a number of CSS classes of which the the main pager, pagerbutton and pagerbutton-selected classes are the important ones. Other styles like pagerbutton-next/prev/first/last are based on the pagerbutton style. The default styling shown for the red outlined pager looks like this: .pagercontainer { margin: 20px 0; background: whitesmoke; padding: 5px; } .pager { float: right; font-size: 10pt; text-align: left; } .pagerbutton,.pagerbutton-selected,.pagertext { display: block; float: left; text-align: center; border: solid 2px maroon; min-width: 18px; margin-left: 3px; text-decoration: none; padding: 4px; } .pagerbutton-selected { font-size: 130%; font-weight: bold; color: maroon; border-width: 0px; background: khaki; } .pagerbutton-first { margin-right: 12px; } .pagerbutton-last,.pagerbutton-prev { margin-left: 12px; } .pagertext { border: none; margin-left: 30px; font-weight: bold; } .pagerbutton a { text-decoration: none; } .pagerbutton:hover { background-color: maroon; color: cornsilk; } .pagerbutton-prev { background-image: url(images/prev.png); background-position: 2px center; background-repeat: no-repeat; width: 35px; padding-left: 20px; } .pagerbutton-next { background-image: url(images/next.png); background-position: 40px center; background-repeat: no-repeat; width: 35px; padding-right: 20px; margin-right: 0px; } Yup that’s a lot of styling settings although not all of them are required. The key ones are pagerbutton, pager and pager selection. The others (which are implicitly created by the control based on the pagerbutton style) are for custom markup of the ‘special’ buttons. In my apps I tend to have two kinds of pages: Those that are associated with typical ‘grid’ displays that display purely tabular data and those that have a more looser list like layout. The two pagers shown above represent these two views and the pager and gridpager styles in my standard style sheet reflect these two styles. Configuring the Pager with Code Finally lets look at what it takes to hook up the pager. As mentioned in the highlights the Pager control is completely independent of other controls so if you just want to display a pager on its own it’s as simple as dropping the control and assigning the PageSize, ActivePage and either TotalPages or TotalItems. So for this markup: <ww:Pager runat="server" id="ItemPagerManual" PageSize="5" MaxPagesToDisplay="6" /> I can use code as simple as: ItemPagerManual.PageSize = 3; ItemPagerManual.ActivePage = 4;ItemPagerManual.TotalItems = 20; Note that ActivePage is not required - it will automatically use any Page=x query string value and assign it, although you can override it as I did above. TotalItems can be any value that you retrieve from a result set or manually assign as I did above. A more realistic scenario based on a LINQ to SQL IQueryable result is even easier. In this example, I have a UserControl that contains a ListView control that renders IQueryable data. I use a User Control here because there are different views the user can choose from with each view being a different user control. This incidentally also highlights one of the nice features of the pager: Because the pager is independent of the control I can put the pager on the host page instead of into each of the user controls. IOW, there’s only one Pager control, but there are potentially many user controls/listviews that hold the actual display data. The following code demonstrates how to use the Pager with an IQueryable that loads only the records it displays: protected voidPage_Load(objectsender, EventArgs e) {     Category = Request.Params["Category"] ?? string.Empty;     IQueryable<wws_Item> ItemList = ItemRepository.GetItemsByCategory(Category);     // Update the page and filter the list down     ItemList = ItemPager.FilterIQueryable<wws_Item>(ItemList); // Render user control with a list view Control ulItemList = LoadControl("~/usercontrols/" + App.Configuration.ItemListType + ".ascx"); ((IInventoryItemListControl)ulItemList).InventoryItemList = ItemList; phItemList.Controls.Add(ulItemList); // placeholder } The code uses a business object to retrieve Items by category as an IQueryable which means that the result is only an expression tree that hasn’t execute SQL yet and can be further filtered. I then pass this IQueryable to the FilterIQueryable() helper method of the control which does two main things: Filters the IQueryable to retrieve only the data displayed on the active page Sets the Totaltems property and calculates TotalPages on the Pager and that’s it! When the Pager renders it uses those values, plus the PageSize and ActivePage properties to render the Pager. In addition to IQueryable there are also filter methods for IEnumerable<T> and DataTable, but these versions just filter the data by removing rows/items from the entire already retrieved data. Output Generated and Paging Links The output generated creates pager links as plain href links. Here’s what the output looks like: <div id="ItemPager" class="pagercontainer"> <div class="pager"> <span class="pagertext">Pages: </span><a href="http://localhost/WestWindWebStore/itemlist.aspx?Page=1" class="pagerbutton" />1</a> <a href="http://localhost/WestWindWebStore/itemlist.aspx?Page=2" class="pagerbutton" />2</a> <a href="http://localhost/WestWindWebStore/itemlist.aspx?Page=3" class="pagerbutton" />3</a> <span class="pagerbutton-selected">4</span> <a href="http://localhost/WestWindWebStore/itemlist.aspx?Page=5" class="pagerbutton" />5</a> <a href="http://localhost/WestWindWebStore/itemlist.aspx?Page=6" class="pagerbutton" />6</a> <a href="http://localhost/WestWindWebStore/itemlist.aspx?Page=20" class="pagerbutton pagerbutton-last" />20</a>&nbsp;<a href="http://localhost/WestWindWebStore/itemlist.aspx?Page=3" class="pagerbutton pagerbutton-prev" />Prev</a>&nbsp;<a href="http://localhost/WestWindWebStore/itemlist.aspx?Page=5" class="pagerbutton pagerbutton-next" />Next</a></div> <br clear="all" /> </div> </div> The links point back to the current page and simply append a Page= page link into the page. When the page gets reloaded with the new page number the pager automatically detects the page number and automatically assigns the ActivePage property which results in the appropriate page to be displayed. The code shown in the previous section is all that’s needed to handle paging. Note that HTTP GET based paging is different than the Postback paging ASP.NET uses by default. Postback paging preserves modified page content when clicking on pager buttons, but this control will simply load a new page – no page preservation at this time. The advantage of not using Postback paging is that the URLs generated are plain HTML links that a search engine can follow where __doPostback() links are not. Pager with a Grid The pager also works in combination with grid controls so it’s easy to bypass the grid control’s paging features if desired. In the following example I use a gridView control and binds it to a DataTable result which is also filterable by the Pager control. The very basic plain vanilla ASP.NET grid markup looks like this: <div style="width: 600px; margin: 0 auto;padding: 20px; "> <asp:DataGrid runat="server" AutoGenerateColumns="True" ID="gdItems" CssClass="blackborder" style="width: 600px;"> <AlternatingItemStyle CssClass="gridalternate" /> <HeaderStyle CssClass="gridheader" /> </asp:DataGrid> <ww:Pager runat="server" ID="Pager" CssClass="gridpager" ContainerDivCssClass="gridpagercontainer" PageLinkCssClass="gridpagerbutton" SelectedPageCssClass="gridpagerbutton-selected" PageSize="8" RenderContainerDiv="true" MaxPagesToDisplay="6" /> </div> and looks like this when rendered: using custom set of CSS styles. The code behind for this code is also very simple: protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { string category = Request.Params["category"] ?? ""; busItem itemRep = WebStoreFactory.GetItem(); var items = itemRep.GetItemsByCategory(category) .Select(itm => new {Sku = itm.Sku, Description = itm.Description}); // run query into a DataTable for demonstration DataTable dt = itemRep.Converter.ToDataTable(items,"TItems"); // Remove all items not on the current page dt = Pager.FilterDataTable(dt,0); // bind and display gdItems.DataSource = dt; gdItems.DataBind(); } A little contrived I suppose since the list could already be bound from the list of elements, but this is to demonstrate that you can also bind against a DataTable if your business layer returns those. Unfortunately there’s no way to filter a DataReader as it’s a one way forward only reader and the reader is required by the DataSource to perform the bindings.  However, you can still use a DataReader as long as your business logic filters the data prior to rendering and provides a total item count (most likely as a second query). Control Creation The control itself is a pretty brute force ASP.NET control. Nothing clever about this other than some basic rendering logic and some simple calculations and update routines to determine which buttons need to be shown. You can take a look at the full code from the West Wind Web Toolkit’s Repository (note there are a few dependencies). To give you an idea how the control works here is the Render() method: /// <summary> /// overridden to handle custom pager rendering for runtime and design time /// </summary> /// <param name="writer"></param> protected override void Render(HtmlTextWriter writer) { base.Render(writer); if (TotalPages == 0 && TotalItems > 0) TotalPages = CalculateTotalPagesFromTotalItems(); if (DesignMode) TotalPages = 10; // don't render pager if there's only one page if (TotalPages < 2) return; if (RenderContainerDiv) { if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(ContainerDivCssClass)) writer.AddAttribute("class", ContainerDivCssClass); writer.RenderBeginTag("div"); } // main pager wrapper writer.WriteBeginTag("div"); writer.AddAttribute("id", this.ClientID); if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(CssClass)) writer.WriteAttribute("class", this.CssClass); writer.Write(HtmlTextWriter.TagRightChar + "\r\n"); // Pages Text writer.WriteBeginTag("span"); if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(PagesTextCssClass)) writer.WriteAttribute("class", PagesTextCssClass); writer.Write(HtmlTextWriter.TagRightChar); writer.Write(this.PagesText); writer.WriteEndTag("span"); // if the base url is empty use the current URL FixupBaseUrl(); // set _startPage and _endPage ConfigurePagesToRender(); // write out first page link if (ShowFirstAndLastPageLinks && _startPage != 1) { writer.WriteBeginTag("a"); string pageUrl = StringUtils.SetUrlEncodedKey(BaseUrl, QueryStringPageField, (1).ToString()); writer.WriteAttribute("href", pageUrl); if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(PageLinkCssClass)) writer.WriteAttribute("class", PageLinkCssClass + " " + PageLinkCssClass + "-first"); writer.Write(HtmlTextWriter.SelfClosingTagEnd); writer.Write("1"); writer.WriteEndTag("a"); writer.Write("&nbsp;"); } // write out all the page links for (int i = _startPage; i < _endPage + 1; i++) { if (i == ActivePage) { writer.WriteBeginTag("span"); if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(SelectedPageCssClass)) writer.WriteAttribute("class", SelectedPageCssClass); writer.Write(HtmlTextWriter.TagRightChar); writer.Write(i.ToString()); writer.WriteEndTag("span"); } else { writer.WriteBeginTag("a"); string pageUrl = StringUtils.SetUrlEncodedKey(BaseUrl, QueryStringPageField, i.ToString()).TrimEnd('&'); writer.WriteAttribute("href", pageUrl); if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(PageLinkCssClass)) writer.WriteAttribute("class", PageLinkCssClass); writer.Write(HtmlTextWriter.SelfClosingTagEnd); writer.Write(i.ToString()); writer.WriteEndTag("a"); } writer.Write("\r\n"); } // write out last page link if (ShowFirstAndLastPageLinks && _endPage < TotalPages) { writer.WriteBeginTag("a"); string pageUrl = StringUtils.SetUrlEncodedKey(BaseUrl, QueryStringPageField, TotalPages.ToString()); writer.WriteAttribute("href", pageUrl); if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(PageLinkCssClass)) writer.WriteAttribute("class", PageLinkCssClass + " " + PageLinkCssClass + "-last"); writer.Write(HtmlTextWriter.SelfClosingTagEnd); writer.Write(TotalPages.ToString()); writer.WriteEndTag("a"); } // Previous link if (ShowPreviousNextLinks && !string.IsNullOrEmpty(PreviousText) && ActivePage > 1) { writer.Write("&nbsp;"); writer.WriteBeginTag("a"); string pageUrl = StringUtils.SetUrlEncodedKey(BaseUrl, QueryStringPageField, (ActivePage - 1).ToString()); writer.WriteAttribute("href", pageUrl); if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(PageLinkCssClass)) writer.WriteAttribute("class", PageLinkCssClass + " " + PageLinkCssClass + "-prev"); writer.Write(HtmlTextWriter.SelfClosingTagEnd); writer.Write(PreviousText); writer.WriteEndTag("a"); } // Next link if (ShowPreviousNextLinks && !string.IsNullOrEmpty(NextText) && ActivePage < TotalPages) { writer.Write("&nbsp;"); writer.WriteBeginTag("a"); string pageUrl = StringUtils.SetUrlEncodedKey(BaseUrl, QueryStringPageField, (ActivePage + 1).ToString()); writer.WriteAttribute("href", pageUrl); if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(PageLinkCssClass)) writer.WriteAttribute("class", PageLinkCssClass + " " + PageLinkCssClass + "-next"); writer.Write(HtmlTextWriter.SelfClosingTagEnd); writer.Write(NextText); writer.WriteEndTag("a"); } writer.WriteEndTag("div"); if (RenderContainerDiv) { if (RenderContainerDivBreak) writer.Write("<br clear=\"all\" />\r\n"); writer.WriteEndTag("div"); } } As I said pretty much brute force rendering based on the control’s property settings of which there are quite a few: You can also see the pager in the designer above. unfortunately the VS designer (both 2010 and 2008) fails to render the float: left CSS styles properly and starts wrapping after margins are applied in the special buttons. Not a big deal since VS does at least respect the spacing (the floated elements overlay). Then again I’m not using the designer anyway :-}. Filtering Data What makes the Pager easy to use is the filter methods built into the control. While this functionality is clearly not the most politically correct design choice as it violates separation of concerns, it’s very useful for typical pager operation. While I actually have filter methods that do something similar in my business layer, having it exposed on the control makes the control a lot more useful for typical databinding scenarios. Of course these methods are optional – if you have a business layer that can provide filtered page queries for you can use that instead and assign the TotalItems property manually. There are three filter method types available for IQueryable, IEnumerable and for DataTable which tend to be the most common use cases in my apps old and new. The IQueryable version is pretty simple as it can simply rely on on .Skip() and .Take() with LINQ: /// <summary> /// <summary> /// Queries the database for the ActivePage applied manually /// or from the Request["page"] variable. This routine /// figures out and sets TotalPages, ActivePage and /// returns a filtered subset IQueryable that contains /// only the items from the ActivePage. /// </summary> /// <param name="query"></param> /// <param name="activePage"> /// The page you want to display. Sets the ActivePage property when passed. /// Pass 0 or smaller to use ActivePage setting. /// </param> /// <returns></returns> public IQueryable<T> FilterIQueryable<T>(IQueryable<T> query, int activePage) where T : class, new() { ActivePage = activePage < 1 ? ActivePage : activePage; if (ActivePage < 1) ActivePage = 1; TotalItems = query.Count(); if (TotalItems <= PageSize) { ActivePage = 1; TotalPages = 1; return query; } int skip = ActivePage - 1; if (skip > 0) query = query.Skip(skip * PageSize); _TotalPages = CalculateTotalPagesFromTotalItems(); return query.Take(PageSize); } The IEnumerable<T> version simply  converts the IEnumerable to an IQuerable and calls back into this method for filtering. The DataTable version requires a little more work to manually parse and filter records (I didn’t want to add the Linq DataSetExtensions assembly just for this): /// <summary> /// Filters a data table for an ActivePage. /// /// Note: Modifies the data set permanently by remove DataRows /// </summary> /// <param name="dt">Full result DataTable</param> /// <param name="activePage">Page to display. 0 to use ActivePage property </param> /// <returns></returns> public DataTable FilterDataTable(DataTable dt, int activePage) { ActivePage = activePage < 1 ? ActivePage : activePage; if (ActivePage < 1) ActivePage = 1; TotalItems = dt.Rows.Count; if (TotalItems <= PageSize) { ActivePage = 1; TotalPages = 1; return dt; } int skip = ActivePage - 1; if (skip > 0) { for (int i = 0; i < skip * PageSize; i++ ) dt.Rows.RemoveAt(0); } while(dt.Rows.Count > PageSize) dt.Rows.RemoveAt(PageSize); return dt; } Using the Pager Control The pager as it is is a first cut I built a couple of weeks ago and since then have been tweaking a little as part of an internal project I’m working on. I’ve replaced a bunch of pagers on various older pages with this pager without any issues and have what now feels like a more consistent user interface where paging looks and feels the same across different controls. As a bonus I’m only loading the data from the database that I need to display a single page. With the preset class tags applied too adding a pager is now as easy as dropping the control and adding the style sheet for styling to be consistent – no fuss, no muss. Schweet. Hopefully some of you may find this as useful as I have or at least as a baseline to build ontop of… Resources The Pager is part of the West Wind Web & Ajax Toolkit Pager.cs Source Code (some toolkit dependencies) Westwind.css base stylesheet with .pager and .gridpager styles Pager Example Page © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  

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  • Version Assemblies with TFS 2010 Continuous Integration

    - by Steve Michelotti
    When I first heard that TFS 2010 had moved to Workflow Foundation for Team Build, I was *extremely* skeptical. I’ve loved MSBuild and didn’t quite understand the reasons for this change. In fact, given that I’ve been exclusively using Cruise Control for Continuous Integration (CI) for the last 5+ years of my career, I was skeptical of TFS for CI in general. However, after going through the learning process for TFS 2010 recently, I’m starting to become a believer. I’m also starting to see some of the benefits with Workflow Foundation for the overall processing because it gives you constructs not available in MSBuild such as parallel tasks, better control flow constructs, and a slightly better customization story. The first customization I had to make to the build process was to version the assemblies of my solution. This is not new. In fact, I’d recommend reading Mike Fourie’s well known post on Versioning Code in TFS before you get started. This post describes several foundational aspects of versioning assemblies regardless of your version of TFS. The main points are: 1) don’t use source control operations for your version file, 2) use a schema like <Major>.<Minor>.<IncrementalNumber>.0, and 3) do not keep AssemblyVersion and AssemblyFileVersion in sync. To do this in TFS 2010, the best post I’ve found has been Jim Lamb’s post of building a custom TFS 2010 workflow activity. Overall, this post is excellent but the primary issue I have with it is that the assembly version numbers produced are based in a date and look like this: “2010.5.15.1”. This is definitely not what I want. I want to be able to communicate to the developers and stakeholders that we are producing the “1.1 release” or “1.2 release” – which would have an assembly version number of “1.1.317.0” for example. In this post, I’ll walk through the process of customizing the assembly version number based on this method – customizing the concepts in Lamb’s post to suit my needs. I’ll also be combining this with the concepts of Fourie’s post – particularly with regards to the standards around how to version the assemblies. The first thing I’ll do is add a file called SolutionAssemblyVersionInfo.cs to the root of my solution that looks like this: 1: using System; 2: using System.Reflection; 3: [assembly: AssemblyVersion("1.1.0.0")] 4: [assembly: AssemblyFileVersion("1.1.0.0")] I’ll then add that file as a Visual Studio link file to each project in my solution by right-clicking the project, “Add – Existing Item…” then when I click the SolutionAssemblyVersionInfo.cs file, making sure I “Add As Link”: Now the Solution Explorer will show our file. We can see that it’s a “link” file because of the black arrow in the icon within all our projects. Of course you’ll need to remove the AssemblyVersion and AssemblyFileVersion attributes from the AssemblyInfo.cs files to avoid the duplicate attributes since they now leave in the SolutionAssemblyVersionInfo.cs file. This is an extremely common technique so that all the projects in our solution can be versioned as a unit. At this point, we’re ready to write our custom activity. The primary consideration is that I want the developer and/or tech lead to be able to easily be in control of the Major.Minor and then I want the CI process to add the third number with a unique incremental number. We’ll leave the fourth position always “0” for now – it’s held in reserve in case the day ever comes where we need to do an emergency patch to Production based on a branched version.   Writing the Custom Workflow Activity Similar to Lamb’s post, I’m going to write two custom workflow activities. The “outer” activity (a xaml activity) will be pretty straight forward. It will check if the solution version file exists in the solution root and, if so, delegate the replacement of version to the AssemblyVersionInfo activity which is a CodeActivity highlighted in red below:   Notice that the arguments of this activity are the “solutionVersionFile” and “tfsBuildNumber” which will be passed in. The tfsBuildNumber passed in will look something like this: “CI_MyApplication.4” and we’ll need to grab the “4” (i.e., the incremental revision number) and put that in the third position. Then we’ll need to honor whatever was specified for Major.Minor in the SolutionAssemblyVersionInfo.cs file. For example, if the SolutionAssemblyVersionInfo.cs file had “1.1.0.0” for the AssemblyVersion (as shown in the first code block near the beginning of this post), then we want to resulting file to have “1.1.4.0”. Before we do anything, let’s put together a unit test for all this so we can know if we get it right: 1: [TestMethod] 2: public void Assembly_version_should_be_parsed_correctly_from_build_name() 3: { 4: // arrange 5: const string versionFile = "SolutionAssemblyVersionInfo.cs"; 6: WriteTestVersionFile(versionFile); 7: var activity = new VersionAssemblies(); 8: var arguments = new Dictionary<string, object> { 9: { "tfsBuildNumber", "CI_MyApplication.4"}, 10: { "solutionVersionFile", versionFile} 11: }; 12:   13: // act 14: var result = WorkflowInvoker.Invoke(activity, arguments); 15:   16: // assert 17: Assert.AreEqual("1.2.4.0", (string)result["newAssemblyFileVersion"]); 18: var lines = File.ReadAllLines(versionFile); 19: Assert.IsTrue(lines.Contains("[assembly: AssemblyVersion(\"1.2.0.0\")]")); 20: Assert.IsTrue(lines.Contains("[assembly: AssemblyFileVersion(\"1.2.4.0\")]")); 21: } 22: 23: private void WriteTestVersionFile(string versionFile) 24: { 25: var fileContents = "using System.Reflection;\n" + 26: "[assembly: AssemblyVersion(\"1.2.0.0\")]\n" + 27: "[assembly: AssemblyFileVersion(\"1.2.0.0\")]"; 28: File.WriteAllText(versionFile, fileContents); 29: }   At this point, the code for our AssemblyVersion activity is pretty straight forward: 1: [BuildActivity(HostEnvironmentOption.Agent)] 2: public class AssemblyVersionInfo : CodeActivity 3: { 4: [RequiredArgument] 5: public InArgument<string> FileName { get; set; } 6:   7: [RequiredArgument] 8: public InArgument<string> TfsBuildNumber { get; set; } 9:   10: public OutArgument<string> NewAssemblyFileVersion { get; set; } 11:   12: protected override void Execute(CodeActivityContext context) 13: { 14: var solutionVersionFile = this.FileName.Get(context); 15: 16: // Ensure that the file is writeable 17: var fileAttributes = File.GetAttributes(solutionVersionFile); 18: File.SetAttributes(solutionVersionFile, fileAttributes & ~FileAttributes.ReadOnly); 19:   20: // Prepare assembly versions 21: var majorMinor = GetAssemblyMajorMinorVersionBasedOnExisting(solutionVersionFile); 22: var newBuildNumber = GetNewBuildNumber(this.TfsBuildNumber.Get(context)); 23: var newAssemblyVersion = string.Format("{0}.{1}.0.0", majorMinor.Item1, majorMinor.Item2); 24: var newAssemblyFileVersion = string.Format("{0}.{1}.{2}.0", majorMinor.Item1, majorMinor.Item2, newBuildNumber); 25: this.NewAssemblyFileVersion.Set(context, newAssemblyFileVersion); 26:   27: // Perform the actual replacement 28: var contents = this.GetFileContents(newAssemblyVersion, newAssemblyFileVersion); 29: File.WriteAllText(solutionVersionFile, contents); 30:   31: // Restore the file's original attributes 32: File.SetAttributes(solutionVersionFile, fileAttributes); 33: } 34:   35: #region Private Methods 36:   37: private string GetFileContents(string newAssemblyVersion, string newAssemblyFileVersion) 38: { 39: var cs = new StringBuilder(); 40: cs.AppendLine("using System.Reflection;"); 41: cs.AppendFormat("[assembly: AssemblyVersion(\"{0}\")]", newAssemblyVersion); 42: cs.AppendLine(); 43: cs.AppendFormat("[assembly: AssemblyFileVersion(\"{0}\")]", newAssemblyFileVersion); 44: return cs.ToString(); 45: } 46:   47: private Tuple<string, string> GetAssemblyMajorMinorVersionBasedOnExisting(string filePath) 48: { 49: var lines = File.ReadAllLines(filePath); 50: var versionLine = lines.Where(x => x.Contains("AssemblyVersion")).FirstOrDefault(); 51:   52: if (versionLine == null) 53: { 54: throw new InvalidOperationException("File does not contain [assembly: AssemblyVersion] attribute"); 55: } 56:   57: return ExtractMajorMinor(versionLine); 58: } 59:   60: private static Tuple<string, string> ExtractMajorMinor(string versionLine) 61: { 62: var firstQuote = versionLine.IndexOf('"') + 1; 63: var secondQuote = versionLine.IndexOf('"', firstQuote); 64: var version = versionLine.Substring(firstQuote, secondQuote - firstQuote); 65: var versionParts = version.Split('.'); 66: return new Tuple<string, string>(versionParts[0], versionParts[1]); 67: } 68:   69: private string GetNewBuildNumber(string buildName) 70: { 71: return buildName.Substring(buildName.LastIndexOf(".") + 1); 72: } 73:   74: #endregion 75: }   At this point the final step is to incorporate this activity into the overall build template. Make a copy of the DefaultTempate.xaml – we’ll call it DefaultTemplateWithVersioning.xaml. Before the build and labeling happens, drag the VersionAssemblies activity in. Then set the LabelName variable to “BuildDetail.BuildDefinition.Name + "-" + newAssemblyFileVersion since the newAssemblyFileVersion was produced by our activity.   Configuring CI Once you add your solution to source control, you can configure CI with the build definition window as shown here. The main difference is that we’ll change the Process tab to reflect a different build number format and choose our custom build process file:   When the build completes, we’ll see the name of our project with the unique revision number:   If we look at the detailed build log for the latest build, we’ll see the label being created with our custom task:     We can now look at the history labels in TFS and see the project name with the labels (the Assignment activity I added to the workflow):   Finally, if we look at the physical assemblies that are produced, we can right-click on any assembly in Windows Explorer and see the assembly version in its properties:   Full Traceability We now have full traceability for our code. There will never be a question of what code was deployed to Production. You can always see the assembly version in the properties of the physical assembly. That can be traced back to a label in TFS where the unique revision number matches. The label in TFS gives you the complete snapshot of the code in your source control repository at the time the code was built. This type of process for full traceability has been used for many years for CI – in fact, I’ve done similar things with CCNet and SVN for quite some time. This is simply the TFS implementation of that pattern. The new features that TFS 2010 give you to make these types of customizations in your build process are quite easy once you get over the initial curve.

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  • Solution: Testing Web Services with MSTest on Team Build

    - by Martin Hinshelwood
    Guess what. About 20 minutes after I fixed the build, Allan broke it again! Update: 4th March 2010 – After having huge problems getting this working I read Billy Wang’s post which showed me the light. The problem here is that even though the test passes locally it will not during an Automated Build. When you send your tests to the build server it does not understand that you want to spin up the web site and run tests against that! When you run the test in Visual Studio it spins up the web site anyway, but would you expect your test to pass if you told the website not to spin up? Of course not. So, when you send the code to the build server you need to tell it what to spin up. First, the best way to get the parameters you need is to right click on the method you want to test and select “Create Unit Test”. This will detect wither you are running in IIS or ASP.NET Development Server or None, and create the relevant tags. Figure: Right clicking on “SaveDefaultProjectFile” will produce a context menu with “Create Unit tests…” on it. If you use this option it will AutoDetect most of the Attributes that are required. /// <summary> ///A test for SSW.SQLDeploy.SilverlightUI.Web.Services.IProfileService.SaveDefaultProjectFile ///</summary> // TODO: Ensure that the UrlToTest attribute specifies a URL to an ASP.NET page (for example, // http://.../Default.aspx). This is necessary for the unit test to be executed on the web server, // whether you are testing a page, web service, or a WCF service. [TestMethod()] [HostType("ASP.NET")] [AspNetDevelopmentServerHost("D:\\Workspaces\\SSW\\SSW\\SqlDeploy\\DEV\\Main\\SSW.SQLDeploy.SilverlightUI.Web", "/")] [UrlToTest("http://localhost:3100/")] [DeploymentItem("SSW.SQLDeploy.SilverlightUI.Web.dll")] public void SaveDefaultProjectFileTest() { IProfileService target = new ProfileService(); // TODO: Initialize to an appropriate value string strComputerName = string.Empty; // TODO: Initialize to an appropriate value bool expected = false; // TODO: Initialize to an appropriate value bool actual; actual = target.SaveDefaultProjectFile(strComputerName); Assert.AreEqual(expected, actual); Assert.Inconclusive("Verify the correctness of this test method."); } Figure: Auto created code that shows the attributes required to run correctly in IIS or in this case ASP.NET Development Server If you are a purist and don’t like creating unit tests like this then you just need to add the three attributes manually. HostType – This attribute specified what host to use. Its an extensibility point, so you could write your own. Or you could just use “ASP.NET”. UrlToTest – This specifies the start URL. For most tests it does not matter which page you call, as long as it is a valid page otherwise your test may not run on the server, but may pass anyway. AspNetDevelopmentServerHost – This is a nasty one, it is only used if you are using ASP.NET Development Host and is unnecessary if you are using IIS. This sets the host settings and the first value MUST be the physical path to the root of your web application. OK, so all that was rubbish and I could not get anything working using the MSDN documentation. Google provided very little help until I ran into Billy Wang’s post  and I heard that heavenly music that all developers hear when understanding dawns that what they have been doing up until now is just plain stupid. I am sure that the above will work when I am doing Web Unit Tests, but there is a much easier way when doing web services. You need to add the AspNetDevelopmentServer attribute to your code. This will tell MSTest to spin up an ASP.NET Development server to host the service. Specify the path to the web application you want to use. [AspNetDevelopmentServer("WebApp1", "D:\\Workspaces\\SSW\\SSW\\SqlDeploy\\DEV\\Main\\SSW.SQLDeploy.SilverlightUI.Web")] [DeploymentItem("SSW.SQLDeploy.SilverlightUI.Web.dll")] [TestMethod] public void ProfileService_Integration_SaveDefaultProjectFile_Returns_True() { ProfileServiceClient target = new ProfileServiceClient(); bool isTrue = target.SaveDefaultProjectFile("Mav"); Assert.AreEqual(true, isTrue); } Figure: This AspNetDevelopmentServer will make sure that the specified web application is launched. Now we can run the test and have it pass, but if the dynamically assigned ASP.NET Development server port changes what happens to the details in your app.config that was generated when creating a reference to the web service? Well, it would be wrong and the test would fail. This is where Billy’s helper method comes in. Once you have created an instance of your service call, and it has loaded the config, but before you make any calls to it you need to go in and dynamically set the Endpoint address to the same address as your dynamically hosted Web Application. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting; using System.Reflection; using System.ServiceModel.Description; using System.ServiceModel; namespace SSW.SQLDeploy.Test { class WcfWebServiceHelper { public static bool TryUrlRedirection(object client, TestContext context, string identifier) { bool result = true; try { PropertyInfo property = client.GetType().GetProperty("Endpoint"); string webServer = context.Properties[string.Format("AspNetDevelopmentServer.{0}", identifier)].ToString(); Uri webServerUri = new Uri(webServer); ServiceEndpoint endpoint = (ServiceEndpoint)property.GetValue(client, null); EndpointAddressBuilder builder = new EndpointAddressBuilder(endpoint.Address); builder.Uri = new Uri(endpoint.Address.Uri.OriginalString.Replace(endpoint.Address.Uri.Authority, webServerUri.Authority)); endpoint.Address = builder.ToEndpointAddress(); } catch (Exception e) { context.WriteLine(e.Message); result = false; } return result; } } } Figure: This fixes a problem with the URL in your web.config not being the same as the dynamically hosted ASP.NET Development server port. We can now add a call to this method after we created the Proxy object and change the Endpoint for the Service to the correct one. This process is wrapped in an assert as if it fails there is no point in continuing. [AspNetDevelopmentServer("WebApp1", D:\\Workspaces\\SSW\\SSW\\SqlDeploy\\DEV\\Main\\SSW.SQLDeploy.SilverlightUI.Web")] [DeploymentItem("SSW.SQLDeploy.SilverlightUI.Web.dll")] [TestMethod] public void ProfileService_Integration_SaveDefaultProjectFile_Returns_True() { ProfileServiceClient target = new ProfileServiceClient(); Assert.IsTrue(WcfWebServiceHelper.TryUrlRedirection(target, TestContext, "WebApp1")); bool isTrue = target.SaveDefaultProjectFile("Mav"); Assert.AreEqual(true, isTrue); } Figure: Editing the Endpoint from the app.config on the fly to match the dynamically hosted ASP.NET Development Server URL and port is now easy. As you can imagine AspNetDevelopmentServer poses some problems of you have multiple developers. What are the chances of everyone using the same location to store the source? What about if you are using a build server, how do you tell MSTest where to look for the files? To the rescue is a property called" “%PathToWebRoot%” which is always right on the build server. It will always point to your build drop folder for your solutions web sites. Which will be “\\tfs.ssw.com.au\BuildDrop\[BuildName]\Debug\_PrecompiledWeb\” or whatever your build drop location is. So lets change the code above to add this. [AspNetDevelopmentServer("WebApp1", "%PathToWebRoot%\\SSW.SQLDeploy.SilverlightUI.Web")] [DeploymentItem("SSW.SQLDeploy.SilverlightUI.Web.dll")] [TestMethod] public void ProfileService_Integration_SaveDefaultProjectFile_Returns_True() { ProfileServiceClient target = new ProfileServiceClient(); Assert.IsTrue(WcfWebServiceHelper.TryUrlRedirection(target, TestContext, "WebApp1")); bool isTrue = target.SaveDefaultProjectFile("Mav"); Assert.AreEqual(true, isTrue); } Figure: Adding %PathToWebRoot% to the AspNetDevelopmentServer path makes it work everywhere. Now we have another problem… this will ONLY run on the build server and will fail locally as %PathToWebRoot%’s default value is “C:\Users\[profile]\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects”. Well this sucks… How do we get the test to run on any build server and any developer laptop. Open “Tools | Options | Test Tools | Test Execution” in Visual Studio and you will see a field called “Web application root directory”. This is where you override that default above. Figure: You can override the default website location for tests. In my case I would put in “D:\Workspaces\SSW\SSW\SqlDeploy\DEV\Main” and all the developers working with this branch would put in the folder that they have mapped. Can you see a problem? What is I create a “$/SSW/SqlDeploy/DEV/34567” branch from Main and I want to run tests in there. Well… I would have to change the value above. This is not ideal, but as you can put your projects anywhere on a computer, it has to be done. Conclusion Although this looks convoluted and complicated there are real problems being solved here that mean that you have a test ANYWHERE solution. Any build server, any Developer workstation. Resources: http://billwg.blogspot.com/2009/06/testing-wcf-web-services.html http://tough-to-find.blogspot.com/2008/04/testing-asmx-web-services-in-visual.html http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms243399(VS.100).aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/dscruggs/archive/2008/09/29/web-tests-unit-tests-the-asp-net-development-server-and-code-coverage.aspx http://www.5z5.com/News/?543f8bc8b36b174f Technorati Tags: VS2010,MSTest,Team Build 2010,Team Build,Visual Studio,Visual Studio 2010,Visual Studio ALM,Team Test,Team Test 2010

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  • How to Upgrade Your Netbook to Windows 7 Home Premium

    - by Matthew Guay
    Would you like more features and flash in Windows on your netbook?  Here’s how you can easily upgrade your netbook to Windows 7 Home Premium the easy way. Most new netbooks today ship with Windows 7 Starter, which is the cheapest edition of Windows 7.  It is fine for many computing tasks, and will run all your favorite programs great, but it lacks many customization, multimedia, and business features found in higher editions.  Here we’ll show you how you can quickly upgrade your netbook to more full-featured edition of Windows 7 using Windows Anytime Upgrade.  Also, if you want to upgrade your laptop or desktop to another edition of Windows 7, say Professional, you can follow these same steps to upgrade it, too. Please note: This is only for computers already running Windows 7.  If your netbook is running XP or Vista, you will have to run a traditional upgrade to install Windows 7. Upgrade Advisor First, let’s make sure your netbook can support the extra features, such as Aero Glass, in Windows 7 Home Premium.  Most modern netbooks that ship with Windows 7 Starter can run the advanced features in Windows 7 Home Premium, but let’s check just in case.  Download the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor (link below), and install as normal. Once it’s installed, run it and click Start Check.   Make sure you’re connected to the internet before you run the check, or otherwise you may see this error message.  If you see it, click Ok and then connect to the internet and start the check again. It will now scan all of your programs and hardware to make sure they’re compatible with Windows 7.  Since you’re already running Windows 7 Starter, it will also tell you if your computer will support the features in other editions of Windows 7. After a few moments, the Upgrade Advisor will show you want it found.  Here we see that our netbook, a Samsung N150, can be upgraded to Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate. We also see that we had one issue, but this was because a driver we had installed was not recognized.  Click “See all system requirements” to see what your netbook can do with the new edition. This shows you which of the requirements, including support for Windows Aero, your netbook meets.  Here our netbook supports Aero, so we’re ready to go upgrade. For more, check out our article on how to make sure your computer can run Windows 7 with Upgrade Advisor. Upgrade with Anytime Upgrade Now, we’re ready to upgrade our netbook to Windows 7 Home Premium.  Enter “Anytime Upgrade” in the Start menu search,and select Windows Anytime Upgrade. Windows Anytime Upgrade lets you upgrade using product key you already have or one you purchase during the upgrade process.  And, it installs without any downloads or Windows disks, so it works great even for netbooks without DVD drives. Anytime Upgrades are cheaper than a standard upgrade, and for a limited time, select retailers in the US are offering Anytime Upgrades to Windows 7 Home Premium for only $49.99 if purchased with a new netbook.  If you already have a netbook running Windows 7 Starter, you can either purchase an Anytime Upgrade package at a retail store or purchase a key online during the upgrade process for $79.95.  Or, if you have a standard Windows 7 product key (full or upgrade), you can use it in Anytime upgrade.  This is especially nice if you can purchase Windows 7 cheaper through your school, university, or office. Purchase an upgrade online To purchase an upgrade online, click “Go online to choose the edition of Windows 7 that’s best for you”.   Here you can see a comparison of the features of each edition of Windows 7.  Note that you can upgrade to either Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate.  We chose home Premium because it has most of the features that home users want, including Media Center and Aero Glass effects.  Also note that the price of each upgrade is cheaper than the respective upgrade from Windows XP or Vista.  Click buy under the edition you want.   Enter your billing information, then your payment information.  Once you confirm your purchase, you will directly be taken to the Upgrade screen.  Make sure to save your receipt, as you will need the product key if you ever need to reinstall Windows on your computer. Upgrade with an existing product key If you purchased an Anytime Upgrade kit from a retailer, or already have a Full or Upgrade key for another edition of Windows 7, choose “Enter an upgrade key”. Enter your product key, and click Next.  If you purchased an Anytime Upgrade kit, the product key will be located on the inside of the case on a yellow sticker. The key will be verified as a valid key, and Anytime Upgrade will automatically choose the correct edition of Windows 7 based on your product key.  Click Next when this is finished. Continuing the Upgrade process Whether you entered a key or purchased a key online, the process is the same from here on.  Click “I accept” to accept the license agreement. Now, you’re ready to install your upgrade.  Make sure to save all open files and close any programs, and then click Upgrade. The upgrade only takes about 10 minutes in our experience but your mileage may vary.  Any available Microsoft updates, including ones for Office, Security Essentials, and other products, will be installed before the upgrade takes place. After a couple minutes, your computer will automatically reboot and finish the installation.  It will then reboot once more, and your computer will be ready to use!  Welcome to your new edition of Windows 7! Here’s a before and after shot of our desktop.  When you do an Anytime Upgrade, all of your programs, files, and settings will be just as they were before you upgraded.  The only change we noticed was that our pinned taskbar icons were slightly rearranged to the default order of Internet Explorer, Explorer, and Media Player.  Here’s a shot of our desktop before the upgrade.  Notice that all of our pinned programs and desktop icons are still there, as well as our taskbar customization (we are using small icons on the taskbar instead of the default large icons). Before, with the Windows 7 Starter background and the Aero Basic theme: And after, with Aero Glass and the more colorful default Windows 7 background.   All of the features of Windows 7 Home Premium are now ready to use.  The Aero theme was activate by default, but you can now customize your netbook theme, background, and more with the Personalization pane.  To open it, right-click on your desktop and select Personalize. You can also now use Windows Media Center, and can play-back DVD movies using an external drive. One of our favorite tools, the Snipping Tool, is also now available for easy screenshots and clips. Activating you new edition of Windows 7 You will still need to activate your new edition of Windows 7.  To do this right away, open the start menu, right-click on Computer, and select Properties.   Scroll to the bottom, and click “Activate Windows Now”. Make sure you’re connected to the internet, and then select “Activate Windows online now”. Activation may take a few minutes, depending on your internet connection speed. When it is done, the Activation wizard will let you know that Windows is activated and genuine.  Your upgrade is all finished! Conclusion Windows Anytime Upgrade makes it easy, and somewhat cheaper, to upgrade to another edition of Windows 7.  It’s useful for desktop and laptop owners who want to upgrade to Professional or Ultimate, but many more netbook owners will want to upgrade from Starter to Home Premium or another edition.  Links Download the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor Windows Team Blog: Anytime Upgrade Special with new PC purchase Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How To Upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 Home Premium EditionAnother Blog You Should Subscribe ToMysticgeek Blog: Turn Vista Home Premium Into Ultimate (Part 3) – Shadow CopyUpgrade Ubuntu from Breezy to DapperHow to Upgrade the Windows 7 RC to RTM (Final Release) TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Get Your Delicious Bookmarks In Firefox’s Awesome Bar Manage Photos Across Different Social Sites With Dropico Test Drive Windows 7 Online Download Wallpapers From National Geographic Site Spyware Blaster v4.3 Yes, it’s Patch Tuesday

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  • Complete Guide to Symbolic Links (symlinks) on Windows or Linux

    - by Matthew Guay
    Want to easily access folders and files from different folders without maintaining duplicate copies?  Here’s how you can use Symbolic Links to link anything in Windows 7, Vista, XP, and Ubuntu. So What Are Symbolic Links Anyway? Symbolic links, otherwise known as symlinks, are basically advanced shortcuts. You can create symbolic links to individual files or folders, and then these will appear like they are stored in the folder with the symbolic link even though the symbolic link only points to their real location. There are two types of symbolic links: hard and soft. Soft symbolic links work essentially the same as a standard shortcut.  When you open a soft link, you will be redirected to the folder where the files are stored.  However, a hard link makes it appear as though the file or folder actually exists at the location of the symbolic link, and your applications won’t know any different. Thus, hard links are of the most interest in this article. Why should I use Symbolic Links? There are many things we use symbolic links for, so here’s some of the top uses we can think of: Sync any folder with Dropbox – say, sync your Pidgin Profile Across Computers Move the settings folder for any program from its original location Store your Music/Pictures/Videos on a second hard drive, but make them show up in your standard Music/Pictures/Videos folders so they’ll be detected my your media programs (Windows 7 Libraries can also be good for this) Keep important files accessible from multiple locations And more! If you want to move files to a different drive or folder and then symbolically link them, follow these steps: Close any programs that may be accessing that file or folder Move the file or folder to the new desired location Follow the correct instructions below for your operating system to create the symbolic link. Caution: Make sure to never create a symbolic link inside of a symbolic link. For instance, don’t create a symbolic link to a file that’s contained in a symbolic linked folder. This can create a loop, which can cause millions of problems you don’t want to deal with. Seriously. Create Symlinks in Any Edition of Windows in Explorer Creating symlinks is usually difficult, but thanks to the free Link Shell Extension, you can create symbolic links in all modern version of Windows pain-free.  You need to download both Visual Studio 2005 redistributable, which contains the necessary prerequisites, and Link Shell Extension itself (links below).  Download the correct version (32 bit or 64 bit) for your computer. Run and install the Visual Studio 2005 Redistributable installer first. Then install the Link Shell Extension on your computer. Your taskbar will temporally disappear during the install, but will quickly come back. Now you’re ready to start creating symbolic links.  Browse to the folder or file you want to create a symbolic link from.  Right-click the folder or file and select Pick Link Source. To create your symlink, right-click in the folder you wish to save the symbolic link, select “Drop as…”, and then choose the type of link you want.  You can choose from several different options here; we chose the Hardlink Clone.  This will create a hard link to the file or folder we selected.  The Symbolic link option creates a soft link, while the smart copy will fully copy a folder containing symbolic links without breaking them.  These options can be useful as well.   Here’s our hard-linked folder on our desktop.  Notice that the folder looks like its contents are stored in Desktop\Downloads, when they are actually stored in C:\Users\Matthew\Desktop\Downloads.  Also, when links are created with the Link Shell Extension, they have a red arrow on them so you can still differentiate them. And, this works the same way in XP as well. Symlinks via Command Prompt Or, for geeks who prefer working via command line, here’s how you can create symlinks in Command Prompt in Windows 7/Vista and XP. In Windows 7/Vista In Windows Vista and 7, we’ll use the mklink command to create symbolic links.  To use it, we have to open an administrator Command Prompt.  Enter “command” in your start menu search, right-click on Command Prompt, and select “Run as administrator”. To create a symbolic link, we need to enter the following in command prompt: mklink /prefix link_path file/folder_path First, choose the correct prefix.  Mklink can create several types of links, including the following: /D – creates a soft symbolic link, which is similar to a standard folder or file shortcut in Windows.  This is the default option, and mklink will use it if you do not enter a prefix. /H – creates a hard link to a file /J – creates a hard link to a directory or folder So, once you’ve chosen the correct prefix, you need to enter the path you want for the symbolic link, and the path to the original file or folder.  For example, if I wanted a folder in my Dropbox folder to appear like it was also stored in my desktop, I would enter the following: mklink /J C:\Users\Matthew\Desktop\Dropbox C:\Users\Matthew\Documents\Dropbox Note that the first path was to the symbolic folder I wanted to create, while the second path was to the real folder. Here, in this command prompt screenshot, you can see that I created a symbolic link of my Music folder to my desktop.   And here’s how it looks in Explorer.  Note that all of my music is “really” stored in C:\Users\Matthew\Music, but here it looks like it is stored in C:\Users\Matthew\Desktop\Music. If your path has any spaces in it, you need to place quotes around it.  Note also that the link can have a different name than the file it links to.  For example, here I’m going to create a symbolic link to a document on my desktop: mklink /H “C:\Users\Matthew\Desktop\ebook.pdf”  “C:\Users\Matthew\Downloads\Before You Call Tech Support.pdf” Don’t forget the syntax: mklink /prefix link_path Target_file/folder_path In Windows XP Windows XP doesn’t include built-in command prompt support for symbolic links, but we can use the free Junction tool instead.  Download Junction (link below), and unzip the folder.  Now open Command Prompt (click Start, select All Programs, then Accessories, and select Command Prompt), and enter cd followed by the path of the folder where you saved Junction. Junction only creates hard symbolic links, since you can use shortcuts for soft ones.  To create a hard symlink, we need to enter the following in command prompt: junction –s link_path file/folder_path As with mklink in Windows 7 or Vista, if your file/folder path has spaces in it make sure to put quotes around your paths.  Also, as usual, your symlink can have a different name that the file/folder it points to. Here, we’re going to create a symbolic link to our My Music folder on the desktop.  We entered: junction -s “C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\Music” “C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\My Music” And here’s the contents of our symlink.  Note that the path looks like these files are stored in a Music folder directly on the Desktop, when they are actually stored in My Documents\My Music.  Once again, this works with both folders and individual files. Please Note: Junction would work the same in Windows 7 or Vista, but since they include a built-in symbolic link tool we found it better to use it on those versions of Windows. Symlinks in Ubuntu Unix-based operating systems have supported symbolic links since their inception, so it is straightforward to create symbolic links in Linux distros such as Ubuntu.  There’s no graphical way to create them like the Link Shell Extension for Windows, so we’ll just do it in Terminal. Open terminal (open the Applications menu, select Accessories, and then click Terminal), and enter the following: ln –s file/folder_path link_path Note that this is opposite of the Windows commands; you put the source for the link first, and then the path second. For example, let’s create a symbolic link of our Pictures folder in our Desktop.  To do this, we entered: ln -s /home/maguay/Pictures /home/maguay/Desktop   Once again, here is the contents of our symlink folder.  The pictures look as if they’re stored directly in a Pictures folder on the Desktop, but they are actually stored in maguay\Pictures. Delete Symlinks Removing symbolic links is very simple – just delete the link!  Most of the command line utilities offer a way to delete a symbolic link via command prompt, but you don’t need to go to the trouble.   Conclusion Symbolic links can be very handy, and we use them constantly to help us stay organized and keep our hard drives from overflowing.  Let us know how you use symbolic links on your computers! Download Link Shell Extension for Windows 7, Vista, and XP Download Junction for XP Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using Symlinks in Windows VistaHow To Figure Out Your PC’s Host Name From the Command PromptInstall IceWM on Ubuntu LinuxAdd Color Coding to Windows 7 Media Center Program GuideSync Your Pidgin Profile Across Multiple PCs with Dropbox TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7 Microsoft’s “How Do I ?” Videos Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause Check Your IMAP Mail Offline In Thunderbird Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow

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  • Pluralsight Meet the Author Podcast on Structuring JavaScript Code

    - by dwahlin
    I had the opportunity to talk with Fritz Onion from Pluralsight about one of my recent courses titled Structuring JavaScript Code for one of their Meet the Author podcasts. We talked about why JavaScript patterns are important for building more re-useable and maintainable apps, pros and cons of different patterns, and how to go about picking a pattern as a project is started. The course provides a solid walk-through of converting what I call “Function Spaghetti Code” into more modular code that’s easier to maintain, more re-useable, and less susceptible to naming conflicts. Patterns covered in the course include the Prototype Pattern, Revealing Module Pattern, and Revealing Prototype Pattern along with several other tips and techniques that can be used. Meet the Author:  Dan Wahlin on Structuring JavaScript Code   The transcript from the podcast is shown below: [Fritz]  Hello, this is Fritz Onion with another Pluralsight author interview. Today we’re talking with Dan Wahlin about his new course, Structuring JavaScript Code. Hi, Dan, it’s good to have you with us today. [Dan]  Thanks for having me, Fritz. [Fritz]  So, Dan, your new course, which came out in December of 2011 called Structuring JavaScript Code, goes into several patterns of usage in JavaScript as well as ways of organizing your code and what struck me about it was all the different techniques you described for encapsulating your code. I was wondering if you could give us just a little insight into what your motivation was for creating this course and sort of why you decided to write it and record it. [Dan]  Sure. So, I got started with JavaScript back in the mid 90s. In fact, back in the days when browsers that most people haven’t heard of were out and we had JavaScript but it wasn’t great. I was on a project in the late 90s that was heavy, heavy JavaScript and we pretty much did what I call in the course function spaghetti code where you just have function after function, there’s no rhyme or reason to how those functions are structured, they just kind of flow and it’s a little bit hard to do maintenance on it, you really don’t get a lot of reuse as far as from an object perspective. And so coming from an object-oriented background in JAVA and C#, I wanted to put something together that highlighted kind of the new way if you will of writing JavaScript because most people start out just writing functions and there’s nothing with that, it works, but it’s definitely not a real reusable solution. So the course is really all about how to move from just kind of function after function after function to the world of more encapsulated code and more reusable and hopefully better maintenance in the process. [Fritz]  So I am sure a lot of people have had similar experiences with their JavaScript code and will be looking forward to seeing what types of patterns you’ve put forth. Now, a couple I noticed in your course one is you start off with the prototype pattern. Do you want to describe sort of what problem that solves and how you go about using it within JavaScript? [Dan]  Sure. So, the patterns that are covered such as the prototype pattern and the revealing module pattern just as two examples, you know, show these kind of three things that I harp on throughout the course of encapsulation, better maintenance, reuse, those types of things. The prototype pattern specifically though has a couple kind of pros over some of the other patterns and that is the ability to extend your code without touching source code and what I mean by that is let’s say you’re writing a library that you know either other teammates or other people just out there on the Internet in general are going to be using. With the prototype pattern, you can actually write your code in such a way that we’re leveraging the JavaScript property and by doing that now you can extend my code that I wrote without touching my source code script or you can even override my code and perform some new functionality. Again, without touching my code.  And so you get kind of the benefit of the almost like inheritance or overriding in object oriented languages with this prototype pattern and it makes it kind of attractive that way definitely from a maintenance standpoint because, you know, you don’t want to modify a script I wrote because I might roll out version 2 and now you’d have to track where you change things and it gets a little tricky. So with this you just override those pieces or extend them and get that functionality and that’s kind of some of the benefits that that pattern offers out of the box. [Fritz]  And then the revealing module pattern, how does that differ from the prototype pattern and what problem does that solve differently? [Dan]  Yeah, so the prototype pattern and there’s another one that’s kind of really closely lined with revealing module pattern called the revealing prototype pattern and it also uses the prototype key word but it’s very similar to the one you just asked about the revealing module pattern. [Fritz]  Okay. [Dan]  This is a really popular one out there. In fact, we did a project for Microsoft that was very, very heavy JavaScript. It was an HMTL5 jQuery type app and we use this pattern for most of the structure if you will for the JavaScript code and what it does in a nutshell is allows you to get that encapsulation so you have really a single function wrapper that wraps all your other child functions but it gives you the ability to do public versus private members and this is kind of a sort of debate out there on the web. Some people feel that all JavaScript code should just be directly accessible and others kind of like to be able to hide their, truly their private stuff and a lot of people do that. You just put an underscore in front of your field or your variable name or your function name and that kind of is the defacto way to say hey, this is private. With the revealing module pattern you can do the equivalent of what objective oriented languages do and actually have private members that you literally can’t get to as an external consumer of the JavaScript code and then you can expose only those members that you want to be public. Now, you don’t get the benefit though of the prototype feature, which is I can’t easily extend the revealing module pattern type code if you don’t like something I’m doing, chances are you’re probably going to have to tweak my code to fix that because we’re not leveraging prototyping but in situations where you’re writing apps that are very specific to a given target app, you know, it’s not a library, it’s not going to be used in other apps all over the place, it’s a pattern I actually like a lot, it’s very simple to get going and then if you do like that public/private feature, it’s available to you. [Fritz]  Yeah, that’s interesting. So it’s almost, you can either go private by convention just by using a standard naming convention or you can actually enforce it by using the prototype pattern. [Dan]  Yeah, that’s exactly right. [Fritz]  So one of the things that I know I run across in JavaScript and I’m curious to get your take on is we do have all these different techniques of encapsulation and each one is really quite different when you’re using closures versus simply, you know, referencing member variables and adding them to your objects that the syntax changes with each pattern and the usage changes. So what would you recommend for people starting out in a brand new JavaScript project? Should they all sort of decide beforehand on what patterns they’re going to stick to or do you change it based on what part of the library you’re working on? I know that’s one of the points of confusion in this space. [Dan]  Yeah, it’s a great question. In fact, I just had a company ask me about that. So which one do I pick and, of course, there’s not one answer fits all. [Fritz]  Right. [Dan]  So it really depends what you just said is absolutely in my opinion correct, which is I think as a, especially if you’re on a team or even if you’re just an individual a team of one, you should go through and pick out which pattern for this particular project you think is best. Now if it were me, here’s kind of the way I think of it. If I were writing a let’s say base library that several web apps are going to use or even one, but I know that there’s going to be some pieces that I’m not really sure on right now as I’m writing I and I know people might want to hook in that and have some better extension points, then I would look at either the prototype pattern or the revealing prototype. Now, really just a real quick summation between the two the revealing prototype also gives you that public/private stuff like the revealing module pattern does whereas the prototype pattern does not but both of the prototype patterns do give you the benefit of that extension or that hook capability. So, if I were writing a library that I need people to override things or I’m not even sure what I need them to override, I want them to have that option, I’d probably pick a prototype, one of the prototype patterns. If I’m writing some code that is very unique to the app and it’s kind of a one off for this app which is what I think a lot of people are kind of in that mode as writing custom apps for customers, then my personal preference is the revealing module pattern you could always go with the module pattern as well which is very close but I think the revealing module patterns a little bit cleaner and we go through that in the course and explain kind of the syntax there and the differences. [Fritz]  Great, that makes a lot of sense. [Fritz]  I appreciate you taking the time, Dan, and I hope everyone takes a chance to look at your course and sort of make these decisions for themselves in their next JavaScript project. Dan’s course is, Structuring JavaScript Code and it’s available now in the Pluralsight Library. So, thank you very much, Dan. [Dan]  Thanks for having me again.

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  • Calling Web Service Functions Asynchronously from a Web Page

    - by SGWellens
    Over on the Asp.Net forums where I moderate, a user had a problem calling a Web Service from a web page asynchronously. I tried his code on my machine and was able to reproduce the problem. I was able to solve his problem, but only after taking the long scenic route through some of the more perplexing nuances of Web Services and Proxies. Here is the fascinating story of that journey. Start with a simple Web Service     public class Service1 : System.Web.Services.WebService    {        [WebMethod]        public string HelloWorld()        {            // sleep 10 seconds            System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(10 * 1000);            return "Hello World";        }    } The 10 second delay is added to make calling an asynchronous function more apparent. If you don't call the function asynchronously, it takes about 10 seconds for the page to be rendered back to the client. If the call is made from a Windows Forms application, the application freezes for about 10 seconds. Add the web service to a web site. Right-click the project and select "Add Web Reference…" Next, create a web page to call the Web Service. Note: An asp.net web page that calls an 'Async' method must have the Async property set to true in the page's header: <%@ Page Language="C#"          AutoEventWireup="true"          CodeFile="Default.aspx.cs"          Inherits="_Default"           Async='true'  %> Here is the code to create the Web Service proxy and connect the event handler. Shrewdly, we make the proxy object a member of the Page class so it remains instantiated between the various events. public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page {    localhost.Service1 MyService;  // web service proxy     // ---- Page_Load ---------------------------------     protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)    {        MyService = new localhost.Service1();        MyService.HelloWorldCompleted += EventHandler;          } Here is the code to invoke the web service and handle the event:     // ---- Async and EventHandler (delayed render) --------------------------     protected void ButtonHelloWorldAsync_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)    {        // blocks        ODS("Pre HelloWorldAsync...");        MyService.HelloWorldAsync();        ODS("Post HelloWorldAsync");    }    public void EventHandler(object sender, localhost.HelloWorldCompletedEventArgs e)    {        ODS("EventHandler");        ODS("    " + e.Result);    }     // ---- ODS ------------------------------------------------    //    // Helper function: Output Debug String     public static void ODS(string Msg)    {        String Out = String.Format("{0}  {1}", DateTime.Now.ToString("hh:mm:ss.ff"), Msg);        System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(Out);    } I added a utility function I use a lot: ODS (Output Debug String). Rather than include the library it is part of, I included it in the source file to keep this example simple. Fire up the project, open up a debug output window, press the button and we get this in the debug output window: 11:29:37.94 Pre HelloWorldAsync... 11:29:37.94 Post HelloWorldAsync 11:29:48.94 EventHandler 11:29:48.94 Hello World   Sweet. The asynchronous call was made and returned immediately. About 10 seconds later, the event handler fires and we get the result. Perfect….right? Not so fast cowboy. Watch the browser during the call: What the heck? The page is waiting for 10 seconds. Even though the asynchronous call returned immediately, Asp.Net is waiting for the event to fire before it renders the page. This is NOT what we wanted. I experimented with several techniques to work around this issue. Some may erroneously describe my behavior as 'hacking' but, since no ingesting of Twinkies was involved, I do not believe hacking is the appropriate term. If you examine the proxy that was automatically created, you will find a synchronous call to HelloWorld along with an additional set of methods to make asynchronous calls. I tried the other asynchronous method supplied in the proxy:     // ---- Begin and CallBack ----------------------------------     protected void ButtonBeginHelloWorld_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)    {        ODS("Pre BeginHelloWorld...");        MyService.BeginHelloWorld(AsyncCallback, null);        ODS("Post BeginHelloWorld");    }    public void AsyncCallback(IAsyncResult ar)    {        String Result = MyService.EndHelloWorld(ar);         ODS("AsyncCallback");        ODS("    " + Result);    } The BeginHelloWorld function in the proxy requires a callback function as a parameter. I tested it and the debug output window looked like this: 04:40:58.57 Pre BeginHelloWorld... 04:40:58.57 Post BeginHelloWorld 04:41:08.58 AsyncCallback 04:41:08.58 Hello World It works the same as before except for one critical difference: The page rendered immediately after the function call. I was worried the page object would be disposed after rendering the page but the system was smart enough to keep the page object in memory to handle the callback. Both techniques have a use: Delayed Render: Say you want to verify a credit card, look up shipping costs and confirm if an item is in stock. You could have three web service calls running in parallel and not render the page until all were finished. Nice. You can send information back to the client as part of the rendered page when all the services are finished. Immediate Render: Say you just want to start a service running and return to the client. You can do that too. However, the page gets sent to the client before the service has finished running so you will not be able to update parts of the page when the service finishes running. Summary: YourFunctionAsync() and an EventHandler will not render the page until the handler fires. BeginYourFunction() and a CallBack function will render the page as soon as possible. I found all this to be quite interesting and did a lot of searching and researching for documentation on this subject….but there isn't a lot out there. The biggest clues are the parameters that can be sent to the WSDL.exe program: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/7h3ystb6(VS.100).aspx Two parameters are oldAsync and newAsync. OldAsync will create the Begin/End functions; newAsync will create the Async/Event functions. Caveat: I haven't tried this but it was stated in this article. I'll leave confirming this as an exercise for the student J. Included Code: I'm including the complete test project I created to verify the findings. The project was created with VS 2008 SP1. There is a solution file with 3 projects, the 3 projects are: Web Service Asp.Net Application Windows Forms Application To decide which program runs, you right-click a project and select "Set as Startup Project". I created and played with the Windows Forms application to see if it would reveal any secrets. I found that in the Windows Forms application, the generated proxy did NOT include the Begin/Callback functions. Those functions are only generated for Asp.Net pages. Probably for the reasons discussed earlier. Maybe those Microsoft boys and girls know what they are doing. I hope someone finds this useful. Steve Wellens

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  • Quotas - Using quotas on ZFSSA shares and projects and users

    - by Steve Tunstall
    So you don't want your users to fill up your entire storage pool with their MP3 files, right? Good idea to make some quotas. There's some good tips and tricks here, including a helpful workflow (a script) that will allow you to set a default quota on all of the users of a share at once. Let's start with some basics. I mad a project called "small" and inside it I made a share called "Share1". You can set quotas on the project level, which will affect all of the shares in it, or you can do it on the share level like I am here. Go the the share's General property page. First, I'm using a Windows client, so I need to make sure I have my SMB mountpoint. Do you know this trick yet? Go to the Protocol page of the share. See the SMB section? It needs a resource name to make the UNC path for the SMB (Windows) users. You do NOT have to type this name in for every share you make! Do this at the Project level. Before you make any shares, go to the Protocol properties of the Project, and set the SMB Resource name to "On". This special code will automatically make the SMB resource name of every share in the project the same as the share name. Note the UNC path name I got below. Since I did this at the Project level, I didn't have to lift a finger for it to work on every share I make in this project. Simple. So I have now mapped my Windows "Z:" drive to this Share1. I logged in as the user "Joe". Note that my computer shows my Z: drive as 34GB, which is the entire size of my Pool that this share is in. Right now, Joe could fill this drive up and it would fill up my pool.  Now, go back to the General properties of Share1. In the "Space Usage" area, over on the right, click on the "Show All" text under the Users & Groups section. Sure enough, Joe and some other users are in here and have some data. Note this is also a handy window to use just to see how much space your users are using in any given share.  Ok, Joe owes us money from lunch last week, so we want to give him a quota of 100MB. Type his name in the Users box. Notice how it now shows you how much data he's currently using. Go ahead and give him a 100M quota and hit the Apply button. If I go back to "Show All", I can see that Joe now has a quota, and no one else does. Sure enough, as soon as I refresh my screen back on Joe's client, he sees that his Z: drive is now only 100MB, and he's more than half way full.  That was easy enough, but what if you wanted to make the whole share have a quota, so that the share itself, no matter who uses it, can only grow to a certain size? That's even easier. Just use the Quota box on the left hand side. Here, I use a Quota on the share of 300MB.  So now I log off as Joe, and log in as Steve. Even though Steve does NOT have a quota, it is showing my Z: drive as 300MB. This would effect anyone, INCLUDING the ROOT user, becuase you specified the Quota to be on the SHARE, not on a person.  Note that back in the Share, if you click the "Show All" text, the window does NOT show Steve, or anyone else, to have a quota of 300MB. Yet we do, because it's on the share itself, not on any user, so this panel does not see that. Ok, here is where it gets FUN.... Let's say you do NOT want a quota on the SHARE, because you want SOME people, like Root and yourself, to have FULL access to it and you want the ability to fill the whole thing up if you darn well feel like it. HOWEVER, you want to give the other users a quota. HOWEVER you have, say, 200 users, and you do NOT feel like typing in each of their names and giving them each a quota, and they are not all members of a AD global group you could use or anything like that.  Hmmmmmm.... No worries, mate. We have a handy-dandy script that can do this for us. Now, this script was written a few years back by Tim Graves, one of our ZFSSA engineers out of the UK. This is not my script. It is NOT supported by Oracle support in any way. It does work fine with the 2011.1.4 code as best as I can tell, but Oracle, and I, are NOT responsible for ANYTHING that you do with this script. Furthermore, I will NOT give you this script, so do not ask me for it. You need to get this from your local Oracle storage SC. I will give it to them. I want this only going to my fellow SCs, who can then work with you to have it and show you how it works.  Here's what it does...Once you add this workflow to the Maintenance-->Workflows section, you click it once to run it. Nothing seems to happen at this point, but something did.   Go back to any share or project. You will see that you now have four new, custom properties on the bottom.  Do NOT touch the bottom two properties, EVER. Only touch the top two. Here, I'm going to give my users a default quota of about 40MB each. The beauty of this script is that it will only effect users that do NOT already have any kind of personal quota. It will only change people who have no quota at all. It does not effect the Root user.  After I hit Apply on the Share screen. Nothing will happen until I go back and run the script again. The first time you run it, it creates the custom properties. The second and all subsequent times you run it, it checks the shares for any users, and applies your quota number to each one of them, UNLESS they already have one set. Notice in the readout below how it did NOT apply to my Joe user, since Joe had a quota set.  Sure enough, when I go back to the "Show All" in the share properties, all of the users who did not have a quota, now have one for 39.1MB. Hmmm... I did my math wrong, didn't I?    That's OK, I'll just change the number of the Custom Default quota again. Here, I am adding a zero on the end.  After I click Apply, and then run the script again, all of my users, except Joe, now have a quota of 391MB  You can customize a person at any time. Here, I took the Steve user, and specifically gave him a Quota of zero. Now when I run the script again, he is different from the rest, so he is no longer effected by the script. Under Show All, I see that Joe is at 100, and Steve has no Quota at all. I can do this all day long. es, you will have to re-run the script every time new users get added. The script only applies the default quota to users that are present at the time the script is ran. However, it would be a simple thing to schedule the script to run each night, or to make an alert to run the script when certain events occur.  For you power users, if you ever want to delete these custom properties and remove the script completely, you will find these properties under the "Schema" section under the Shares section. You can remove them here. There's no need to, however, they don't hurt a thing if you just don't use them.  I hope these tips have helped you out there. Quotas can be fun. 

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  • Quick guide to Oracle IRM 11g: Server installation

    - by Simon Thorpe
    Quick guide to Oracle IRM 11g index This is the first of a set of articles designed to assist with the successful installation, configuration and deployment of a document security solution using Oracle IRM. This article goes through a set of simple instructions which detail how to download, install and configure the IRM server, the starting point for building a document security solution. This article contains a subset of information from the official documentation and is focused on installing the server on Oracle Enterprise Linux. If you are planning to deploy on a non-Linux platform, you will need to reference the documentation for platform specific information. Contents Introduction Downloading the software Preparing a database Creating the schema WebLogic Server installation Installing Oracle IRM Introduction Because we are using Oracle Enterprise Linux in this guide, and before we get into the detail of IRM, i'd like to share some tips with Linux to make life a bit easier.Use a 64bit platform, IRM 11g runs just fine on a 32bit server but with 64bit you will build a more future proof service. Download and install the latest Java JDK package. Make sure you get the 64bit version if you are on a 64bit server. Configure Linux to use a good Yum server to simplify installing packages. For Oracle Enterprise Linux we maintain a great public Yum here. Have at least 20GB of free disk space on the partition you intend to install the IRM server. The downloads are big, then you extract them and then install. This quickly consumes disk space which you can easily recover by deleting the downloaded and extracted files after wards. But it's nice to have the disk space spare to keep these around in case you need to restart any part of the installation process again. Downloading the software OK, so before you can do anything, you need the software install kits. Luckily Oracle allows you to freely download every technology we create. You'll need to get the following; Oracle WebLogic Server Oracle Database Oracle Repository Creation Utility (rcu) Oracle IRM server You can use Microsoft SQL server 2005 or 2008, in this guide i've used Oracle RDBMS 11gR2 for Linux. Preparing the database I'm not going to go through the finer points of installing the database. There are many very good guides on installing the Oracle Database. However one thing I would suggest you think about is enabling TDE, network encryption and using Database Vault. These Oracle database security technologies are excellent for creating a complete end to end security solution. No point in going to all the effort to secure document access with IRM when someone can go directly to the database and assign themselves rights to documents. To understand this further, you can see a video of the IRM service using these database security technologies here. With a database up and running we need to create a schema to hold the IRM data. This schema contains the rights model, cryptographic keys, user account id's and associated rights etc. Creating the IRM database schema Oracle uses the Repository Creation Tool which builds your schema, extract the files from the rcu zip. Then in a terminal window; cd /oracle/install/rcu/bin ./rcu This will launch the Repository Creation Tool and you will be presented with the image to the right. Hit next and continue onto the next dialog. You are asked if you are going to be creating a new schema or wish to drop an existing one, you obviously just need to click next at this point to create a new schema. The RCU next needs to know where your database is so you'll need the following details of your database instance. Below, for reference, is the information for my installation. Hostname: irm.oracle.demo Port: 1521 (This is the default TCP port for the Oracle Database) Service Name: irm.oracle.demo. Note this is not the SID, but the service name. Username: sys Password: ******** Role: SYSDBA And then select next. Because the RCU contains schemas for many of the Oracle Technologies, you now need to select to just deploy the Oracle IRM schema. Open the section under "Enterprise Content Management" and tick the "Oracle Information Rights Management" component. Note that you also get the chance to select a prefix which defaults to "DEV" (for development). I usually change this to something that reflects my own install. PROD for a production system, INT for internal only etc. The next step asks for the passwords for the schema users. We are only creating one schema here so you just enter one password. Some brave souls store this password in an Excel spreadsheet which is then secure against the IRM server you're about to install in this guide. Nearing the end of the schema creation is the mapping of the tablespaces to the schema. Note I had setup a table space already that was encrypted using TDE and at this point I was able to select that tablespace by clicking in the "Default Tablespace" column. The next dialog confirms your actions and clicking on next causes it to create the schema and default data. After this you are presented with the completion summary. WebLogic Server installation The database is now ready and the next step is to install the application server. Oracle IRM 11g is a JEE application and currently only supported in Oracle WebLogic Server. So the next step is get WebLogic Server installed, which is pretty easy. Depending on the version you download, you either run the binary or for a 64 bit platform (like mine) run the following command. java -d64 -jar wls1033_generic.jar And in the resulting dialog hit next to start walking through the install. Next choose a directory into which you will install WebLogic Server. I like to change from the default and install into /oracle/. Then all my software goes into this one folder, all owned by the "oracle" user. The next dialog asks for your Oracle support information to ensure you are kept up to date. If you have an Oracle support account, enter your details but for most evaluation systems I leave these fields blank. Again, for evaluation or development systems, I usually stick with the "Typical" install type which you are next asked for. Next you are asked for the JDK which will be used for the server. When installing from the generic jar on a 64bit platform like in this guide, no JDK is bundled with the installer. But as you can see in the image on the right, that it does a good job of detecting the one you've got installed. Defaults for the install directories are usually taken, no changes here, just click next. And finally we are ready to install, hit next, sit back and relax. Typically this takes about 10 minutes. After the install, do not run the quick start, we need to deploy the IRM install itself from which we will create a new WebLogic domain. For now just hit done and lets move to the final step of the installation process. Installing Oracle IRM The last piece of the puzzle to getting your environment ready is to deploy the IRM files themselves. Unzip the Oracle Enterprise Content Management 11g zip file and it will create a Disk1 directory. Switch to this folder and in the console run ./runInstaller. This will launch the installer which will also ask for the location of the JDK. Look at the image on the right for the detail. You should now see the first stage of the IRM installation. The dialog warns you need to have a WebLogic server installed and have created the schema's, but you've just done all that above (I hope) so we are ready to go. The installer now checks that you have all the required libraries installed and other system parameters are correct. Because nearly all of my development and evaluation installations have the database server on the same system, the installer passes these checks without issue... Next... Now chose where to install the IRM files, you must install into the same Middleware Home as the WebLogic Server installation you just performed. Usually the installer already defaults to this location anyway. I also tend to change the Oracle Home Directory to Oracle_IRM so it's clear this is just an IRM install. The summary page tells you about space needed to deploy the files. Unfortunately the IRM install comes with all of the other Oracle ECM software, you can't just select the IRM files, everything gets deployed to disk and uses 1.6GB of space! Not fun, but Oracle has to package up similar technologies otherwise we would have a very large number of installers to QA and manage, again, not fun. Hit Install, time for another drink, maybe a piece of cake or a donut... on a half decent system this part of the install took under 10 minutes. Finally the installation of your IRM server is complete, click on finish and the next phase is to create the WebLogic domain and start configuring your server. Now move onto the next article in this guide... configuring your IRM server ready to seal your first document.

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  • When Your Boss Doesn't Want you to Succeed

    - by Phil Factor
    You're working hard to get an application finished. You are programming long into the evenings sometimes, and eating sandwiches at your desk instead of taking a lunch break. Then one day you glance up at the IT manager, serene in his mysterious round of meetings, and think 'Does he actually care whether this project succeeds or not?'. The question may seem absurd. Of course the project must succeed. The truth, as always, is often far more complex. Your manager may even be doing his best to make sure you don't succeed. Why? There have always been rich pickings for the unscrupulous in IT.  In extreme cases, where administrators struggle with scarcely-comprehended technical issues, huge sums of money can be lost and gained without any perceptible results. In a very few cases can fraud be proven: most of the time, the intricacies of the 'game' are such that one can do little more than harbor suspicion.  Where does over-enthusiastic salesmanship end and fraud begin? The Business of Information Technology provides rich opportunities for White-collar crime. The poor developer has his, or her, hands full with the task of wrestling with the sheer complexity of building an application. He, or she, has no time for following the complexities of the chicanery of the management that is directing affairs.  Most likely, the developers wouldn't even suspect that their company management had ulterior motives. I'll illustrate what I mean with an entirely fictional, hypothetical, example. The Opportunist and the Aged Charities often do good, unexciting work that is funded by the income from a bequest that dates back maybe hundreds of years.  In our example, it isn't exciting work, for it involves the welfare of elderly people who have fallen on hard times.  Volunteers visit, giving a smile and a chat, and check that they are all right, but are able to spend a little money on their discretion to ameliorate any pressing needs for these old folk.  The money is made to work very hard and the charity averts a great deal of suffering and eases the burden on the state. Daisy hears the garden gate creak as Mrs Rainer comes up the path. She looks forward to her twice-weekly visit from the nice lady from the trust. She always asked ‘is everything all right, Love’. Cheeky but nice. She likes her cheery manner. She seems interested in hearing her memories, and talking about her far-away family. She helps her with those chores in the house that she couldn’t manage and once even paid to fill the back-shed with coke, the other year. Nice, Mrs. Rainer is, she thought as she goes to open the door. The trustees are getting on in years themselves, and worry about the long-term future of the charity: is it relevant to modern society? Is it likely to attract a new generation of workers to take it on. They are instantly attracted by the arrival to the board of a smartly dressed University lecturer with the ear of the present Government. Alain 'Stalin' Jones is earnest, persuasive and energetic. The trustees welcome him to the board and quickly forgive his humorless political-correctness. He talks of 'diversity', 'relevance', 'social change', 'equality' and 'communities', but his eye is on that huge bequest. Alain first came to notice as a Trotskyite union official, who insinuated himself into one of the duller Trades Unions and turned it, through his passionate leadership, into a radical, headline-grabbing organization.  Middle age, and the rise of European federal socialism, had brought him quiet prosperity and charcoal suits, an ear in the current government, and a wide influence as a member of various Quangos (government bodies staffed by well-paid unelected courtiers).  He was employed as a 'consultant' by several organizations that relied on government contracts. After gaining the confidence of the trustees, and showing a surprising knowledge of mundane processes and the regulatory framework of charities, Alain launches his plan.  The trust will expand their work by means of a bold IT initiative that will coordinate the interventions of several 'caring agencies', and provide  emergency cover, a special Website so anxious relatives can see how their elderly charges are doing, and a vastly more efficient way of coordinating the work of the volunteer carers. It will also provide a special-purpose site that gives 'social networking' facilities, rather like Facebook, to the few elderly folk on the lists with access to the internet. The trustees perk up. Their own experience of the internet is restricted to the occasional scanning of railway timetables, but they can see that it is 'relevant'. In his next report to the other trustees, Alain proudly announces that all this glamorous and exciting technology can be paid for by a grant from the government. He admits darkly that he has influence. True to his word, the government promises a grant of a size that is an order of magnitude greater than any budget that the trustees had ever handled. There was the understandable proviso that the company that would actually do the IT work would have to be one of the government's preferred suppliers and the work would need to be tendered under EU competition rules. The only company that tenders, a multinational IT company with a long track record of government work, quotes ten million pounds for the work. A trustee questions the figure as it seems enormous for the reasonably trivial internet facilities being built, but the IT Salesmen dazzle them with presentations and three-letter acronyms until they subside into quiescent acceptance. After all, they can’t stay locked in the Twentieth century practices can they? The work is put in hand with a large project team, in a splendid glass building near west London. The trustees see rooms of programmers working diligently at screens, and who talk with enthusiasm of the project. Paul, the project manager, looked through his resource schedule with growing unease. His initial excitement at being given his first major project hadn’t lasted. He’d been allocated a lackluster team of developers whose skills didn’t seem right, and he was allowed only a couple of contractors to make good the deficit. Strangely, the presentation he’d given to his management, where he’d saved time and resources with a OTS solution to a great deal of the development work, and a sound conservative architecture, hadn’t gone down nearly as big as he’d hoped. He almost got the feeling they wanted a more radical and ambitious solution. The project starts slipping its dates. The costs build rapidly. There are certain uncomfortable extra charges that appear, such as the £600-a-day charge by the 'Business Manager' appointed to act as a point of liaison between the charity and the IT Company.  When he appeared, his face permanently split by a 'Mr Sincerity' smile, they'd thought he was provided at the cost of the IT Company. Derek, the DBA, didn’t have to go to the server room quite some much as he did: but It got him away from the poisonous despair of the development group. Wave after wave of events had conspired to delay the project.  Why the management had imposed hideous extra bureaucracy to cover ISO 9000 and 9001:2008 accreditation just as the project was struggling to get back on-schedule was  beyond belief.  Then  the Business manager was coming back with endless changes in scope, sorrowing saying that the Trustees were very insistent, though hopelessly out in touch with the reality of technical challenges. Suddenly, the costs mount to the point of consuming the government grant in its entirety. The project remains tantalizingly just out of reach. Alain Jones gives an emotional rallying speech at the trustees review meeting, urging them not to lose their nerve. Sadly, the trustees dip into the accumulated capital of the trust, the seed-corn of all their revenues, in order to save the IT project. A few months later it is all over. The IT project is never delivered, even though it had seemed so incredibly close.  With the trust's capital all gone, the activities it funded have to be terminated and the trust becomes just a shell. There aren't even the funds to mount a legal challenge against the IT company, even had the trust's solicitor advised such a foolish thing. Alain leaves as suddenly as he had arrived, only to pop up a few months later, bronzed and rested, at another charity. The IT workers who were permanent employees are dispersed to other projects, and the contractors leave to other contracts. Within months the entire project is but a vague memory. One or two developers remain  puzzled that their managers had been so obstructive when they should have welcomed progress toward completion of the project, but they put it down to incompetence and testosterone. Few suspected that they were actively preventing the project from getting finished. The relationships between the IT consultancy, and the government of the day are intricate, and made more complex by the Private Finance initiatives and political patronage.  The losers in this case were the taxpayers, and the beneficiaries of the trust, and, perhaps the soul of the original benefactor of the trust, whose bid to give his name some immortality had been scuppered by smooth-talking white-collar political apparatniks.  Even now, nobody is certain whether a crime was ever committed. The perfect heist, I guess. Where’s the victim? "I hear that Daisy’s cottage is up for sale. She’s had to go into a care home.  She didn’t want to at all, but then there is nobody to keep an eye on her since she had that minor stroke a while back.  A charity used to help out. The ‘social’ don’t have the funding, evidently for community care. Yes, her old cat was put down. There was a good clearout, and now the house is all scrubbed and cleared ready for sale. The skip was full of old photos and letters, memories. No room in her new ‘home’."

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  • The Internet of Things & Commerce: Part 2 -- Interview with Brian Celenza, Commerce Innovation Strategist

    - by Katrina Gosek, Director | Commerce Product Strategy-Oracle
    Internet of Things & Commerce Series: Part 2 (of 3) Welcome back to the second installation of my three part series on the Internet of Things & Commerce. A few weeks ago, I wrote “The Next 7,000 Days” about how we’ve become embedded in a digital architecture in the last 7,000 days since the birth of the internet – an architecture that everyday ties the massive expanse of the internet evermore closely with our physical lives. This blog series explores how this new blend of virtual and material will change how we shop and how businesses sell. Now enjoy reading my interview with Brian Celenza, one of the chief strategists in our Oracle Commerce innovation group. He comments on the past, present, and future of the how the growing Internet of Things relates and will relate to the buying and selling of goods on and offline. -------------------------------------------- QUESTION: You probably have one of the coolest jobs on our team, Brian – and frankly, one of the coolest jobs in our industry. As part of the innovation team for Oracle Commerce, you’re regularly working on bold features and groundbreaking commerce-focused experiences for our vision demos. As you look back over the past couple of years, what is the biggest trend (or trends) you’ve seen in digital commerce that started to bring us closer to this idea of what people are calling an “Internet of Things”? Brian: Well as you look back over the last couple of years, the speed at which change in our industry has moved looks like one of those blurred movement photos – you know the ones where the landscape blurs because the observer is moving so quickly your eye focus can’t keep up. But one thing that is absolutely clear is that the biggest catalyst for that speed of change – especially over the last three years – has been mobile. Mobile technology changed everything. Over the last three years the entire thought process of how to sell on (and offline) has shifted because of mobile technology advances. Particularly for eCommerce professionals who have started to move past the notion of “channels” for selling goods to this notion of “Mobile First”… then the Web site. Or more accurately, that everything – smartphones, web, store, tablet – is just one channel or has to act like one singular access point to the same product catalog, information and content. The most innovative eCommerce professionals realized some time ago that it’s not ideal to build an eCommerce Web site and then build everything on top of or off of it. Rather, they want to build an eCommerce API and then integrate it will all other systems. To accomplish this, they are leveraging all the latest mobile technologies or possibilities mobile technology has opened up: 4G and LTE, GPS, bluetooth, touch screens, apps, html5… How has this all started to come together for shopping experiences on and offline? Well to give you a personal example, I remember visiting an Apple store a few years ago and being amazed that I didn’t have to wait in line because a store associate knew everything about me from my ID – right there on the sales floor – and could check me out anywhere. Then just a few months later (when like any good addict) I went back to get the latest and greatest new gadget, I felt like I was stealing it because I could check myself out with my smartphone. I didn’t even need to see a sales associate OR go to a cash register. Amazing. And since then, all sort sorts of companies across all different types of industries – from food service to apparel –  are starting to see mobile payments in the billions of dollars now thanks not only to the convenience factor but to smart loyalty rewards programs as well. These are just some really simple current examples that come to mind. So many different things have happened in the last couple of years, it’s hard to really absorb all of the quickly – because as soon as you do, everything changes again! Just like that blurry speed photo image. For eCommerce, however, this type of new environment underscores the importance of building an eCommerce API – a platform that has services you can tap in to and build on as the landscape changes at a fever pitch. It’s a mobile first perspective. A web service perspective – particularly if you are thinking of how to engage customers across digital and physical spaces. —— QUESTION: Thanks for bringing us into the present – some really great examples you gave there to put things into perspective. So what do you see as the biggest trend right now around the “Internet of Things” – and what’s coming next few years? Brian: Honestly, even sitting where I am in the innovation group – it’s hard to look out even 12 months because, well, I don’t even think we’ve fully caught up with what is possible now. But I can definitely say that in the last 12 months and in the coming 12 months, in the technology and eCommerce world it’s all about iBeacons. iBeacons are awesome tools we have right now to tie together physical and digital shopping experiences. They know exactly where you are as a shopper and can communicate that to businesses. Currently there seem to be two camps of thought around iBeacons. First, many people are thinking of them like an “indoor GPS”, which to be fair they literally are. The use case this first camp envisions for iBeacons is primarily for advertising and marketing. So they use iBeacons to push location-based promotions to customers if they are close to a store or in a store. You may have seen these types of mobile promotions start to pop up occasionally on your smart phone as you pass by a store you’ve bought from in the past. That’s the work of iBeacons. But in my humble opinion, these promotions probably come too early in the customer journey and although they may be well timed and work to “convert” in some cases, I imagine in most they are just eroding customer trust because they are kind of a “one-size-fits-all” solution rather than one that is taking into account what exactly the customer might be looking for in that particular moment. Maybe they just want more information and a promotion is way too soon for that type of customer. The second camp is more in line with where my thinking falls. In this case, businesses take a more sensitive approach with iBeacons to customers’ needs. Instead of throwing out a “one-size-fits-all” to any passer by with iBeacons, the use case is more around looking at the physical proximity of a customer as an opportunity to provide a service: show expert reviews on a product they may be looking at in a particular aisle of a store, offer the opportunity to compare prices (and then offer a promotion), signal an in-store associate if a customer has been in the store for more than 10 minutes in one place. These are all less intrusive more value-driven uses of iBeacons. And they are more about building customer trust through service. To take this example a bit further into the future realm of “Big Data” and “Internet of Things” businesses could actually use the Oracle Commerce Platform and iBeacons to “silently” track customer movement w/in the store to provide higher quality service. And this doesn’t have to be creepy or intrusive. Simply if a customer has been in a particular department or aisle for more than a 5 or 10 minutes, an in-store associate could come over an offer some assistance already knowing customer preferences from their online profile and maybe even seeing the items in a shopping cart they started at home. None of this has to be revealed to the customer, but it certainly could boost the level of service an in-store sales associate could provide. Or, in another futuristic example, stores could use the digital footprint of the physical store transmitted by iBeacons to generate heat maps of the store that could be tracked over time. Imagine how much you could find out about which parts of the store are more busy during certain parts of the day or seasons. This could completely revolutionize how physical merchandising is deployed or where certain high value / new items are placed. And / or this use of iBeacons could also help businesses figure out if customers are getting held up in certain parts of the store during busy days like Black Friday. If long lines are causing customers to bounce from a physical store and leave those holiday gifts behind, maybe having employees with mobile check as an option could remove the cash register bottleneck. But going to back to my original statement, it’s all still very early in the story for iBeacons. The hardware manufacturers are still very new and there is still not one clear standard.  Honestly, it all goes back to building and maintaining an extensible and flexible platform for anywhere engagement. What you’re building today should allow you to rapidly take advantage of whatever unimaginable use cases wait around the corner. ------------------------------------------------------ I hope you enjoyed the brief interview with Brian. It’s really awesome to have such smart and innovation-minded individuals on our Oracle Commerce innovation team. Please join me again in a few weeks for Part 3 of this series where I interview one of the product managers on our team about how the blending of digital and in-store selling in influencing our product development and vision.

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  • Experience your music in a whole new way with Zune for PC

    - by Matthew Guay
    Tired of the standard Media Player look and feel, and want something new and innovative?  Zune offers a fresh, new way to enjoy your music, videos, pictures, and podcasts, whether or not you own a Zune device. Microsoft started out on a new multimedia experience for PCs and mobile devices with the launch of the Zune several years ago.  The Zune devices have been well received and noted for their innovative UI, and the Zune HD’s fluid interface is the foundation for the widely anticipated Windows Phone 7.  But regardless of whether or not you have a Zune Device, you can still use the exciting new UI and services directly from your PC.  Zune for Windows is a very nice media player that offers a music and video store and wide support for multimedia formats including those used in Apple products.  And if you enjoy listening to a wide variety of music, it also offers the Zune Pass which lets you stream an unlimited number of songs to your computer and download 10 songs for keeps per month for $14.99/month. Or you can do a pre-paid music card as well.  It does all this using the new Metro UI which beautifully shows information using text in a whole new way.  Here’s a quick look at setting up and using Zune on your PC. Getting Started Download the installer (link below), and run it to begin setup.  Please note that Zune offers a separate version for computers running the 64 bit version of Windows Vista or 7, so choose it if your computer is running these. Once your download is finished, run the installer to setup Zune on your computer.  Accept the EULA when prompted. If there are any updates available, they will automatically download and install during the setup.  So, if you’re installing Zune from a disk (for example, one packaged with a Zune device), you don’t have to worry if you have the latest version.  Zune will proceed to install on your computer.   It may prompt you to restart your computer after installation; click Restart Now so you can proceed with your Zune setup.  The reboot appears to be for Zune device support, and the program ran fine otherwise without rebooting, so you could possibly skip this step if you’re not using a Zune device.  However, to be on the safe side, go ahead and reboot. After rebooting, launch Zune.  It will play a cute introduction video on first launch; press skip if you don’t want to watch it. Zune will now ask you if you want to keep the default settings or change them.  Choose Start to keep the defaults, or Settings to customize to your wishes.  Do note that the default settings will set Zune as your default media player, so click Settings if you wish to change this. If you choose to change the default settings, you can change how Zune finds and stores media on your computer.  In Windows 7, Zune will by default use your Windows 7 Libraries to manage your media, and will in fact add a new Podcasts library to Windows 7. If your media is stored on another location, such as on a server, then you can add this to the Library.  Please note that this adds the location to your system-wide library, not just the Zune player. There’s one last step.  Enter three of your favorite artists, and Zune will add Smart DJ mixes to your Quickplay list based on these.  Some less famous or popular artists may not be recognized, so you may have to try another if your choice isn’t available.  Or, you can click Skip if you don’t want to do this right now. Welcome to Zune!  This is the default first page, QuickPlay, where you can easily access your pinned and new items.   If you have a Zune account, or would like to create a new one, click Sign In on the top. Creating a new account is quick and simple, and if you’re new to Zune, you can try out a 14 day trial of Zune Pass for free if you want. Zune allows you to share your listening habits and favorites with friends or the world, but you can turn this off or change it if you like. Using Zune for Windows To access your media, click the Collection link on the top left.  Zune will show all the media you already have stored on your computer, organized by artist and album. Right-click on any album, and you choose to have Zune find album art or do a variety of other tasks with the media.   When playing media, you can view it in several unique ways.  First, the default Mix view will show related tracks to the music you’re playing from Smart DJ.  You can either play these fully if you’re a Zune Pass subscriber, or otherwise you can play 30 second previews. Then, for many popular artists, Zune will change the player background to show pictures and information in a unique way while the music is playing.  The information may range from history about the artist to the popularity of the song being played.   Zune also works as a nice viewer for the pictures on your computer. Start a slideshow, and Zune will play your pictures with nice transition effects and music from your library. Zune Store The Zune Store offers a wide variety of music, TV shows, and videos for purchase.  If you’re a Zune Pass subscriber, you can listen to or download any song without purchasing it; otherwise, you can preview a 30 second clip first. Zune also offers a wide selection of Podcasts you can subscribe to for free. Using Zune for PC with a Zune Device If you have a Zune device attached to your computer, you can easily add media files to it by simply dragging them to the Zune device icon in the left corner.  In the future, this will also work with Windows Phone 7 devices. If you have a Zune HD, you can also download and add apps to your device. Here’s the detailed information window for the weather app.  Click Download to add it to your device.   Mini Mode The Zune player generally takes up a large portion of your screen, and is actually most impressive when run maximized.  However, if you’re simply wanting to enjoy your tunes while you’re using your computer, you can use the Mini mode to still view music info and control Zune in a smaller mode.  Click the Mini Player button near the window control buttons in the top right to activate it. Now Zune will take up much less of your desktop.  This window will stay on top of other windows so you can still easily view and control it. Zune will display an image of the artist if one is available, and this shows up in Mini mode more often than it does in the full mode. And, in Windows 7, you could simply minimize Zune as you can control it directly from the taskbar thumbnail preview.   Even more controls are available from Zune’s jumplist in Windows 7.  You can directly access your Quickplay links or choose to shuffle all music without leaving the taskbar. Settings Although Zune is designed to be used without confusing menus and settings, you can tweak the program to your liking from the settings panel.  Click Settings near the top left of the window. Here you can change file storage, types, burn, metadata, and many more settings.  You can also setup Zune to stream media to your XBOX 360 if you have one.   You can also customize Zune’s look with a variety of modern backgrounds and gradients. Conclusion If you’re ready for a fresh way to enjoy your media, Zune is designed for you.  It’s innovative UI definitely sets it apart from standard media players, and is very pleasing to use.  Zune is especially nice if your computer is using XP, Vista Home Basic, or 7 Starter as these versions of Windows don’t include Media Center.  Additionally, the mini player mode is a nice touch that brings a feature of Windows 7’s Media Player to XP and Vista.  Zune is definitely one of our favorite music apps.  Try it out, and get a fresh view of your music today! Link Download Zune for Windows Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Redeem Pre-paid Zune Card Points for Zune Marketplace MediaUpdate Your Zune Player SoftwaredoubleTwist is an iTunes Alternative that Supports Several DevicesFind Free or Cheap Indie Music at Amie StreetAmie Street Downloader Makes Purchasing Music Easier TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 The Ultimate Guide For YouTube Lovers Will it Blend? iPad Edition Penolo Lets You Share Sketches On Twitter Visit Woolyss.com for Old School Games, Music and Videos Add a Custom Title in IE using Spybot or Spyware Blaster When You Need to Hail a Taxi in NYC

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, October 13, 2012

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, October 13, 2012Popular ReleasesArduino Installer For Atmel Studio 6: Arduino Installer - Version 1.01 Beta2: Bug Fixes - Handling spaces in avrdude path - Handling spaces in avrdude config path - Handling spaces in project names - Handling spaces in project path - hard coded directories pointing to my space has been removed New Features - Total of 7 project templates included - C program - C library - C++ program - C++ library - Arduino Unit Tests - Arduino library - Arduino program (sketch) - Group all supporting scripts under a script directory in the solution - Support for calling multiple pre-...AcDown????? - AcDown Downloader Framework: AcDown????? v4.2: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????,????,?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????,??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown??????????????????,????????????????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??,????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ???? 32??64? ???Linux ????(1)????????Windows XP???,????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86),?????"?????????"??? (2)???????????Linux???,????????Mono?? ??2...PHPExcel: PHPExcel 1.7.8: See Change Log for details of the new features and bugfixes included in this release, and methods that are now deprecated. Note changes to the PDF Writer: tcPDF is no longer bundled with PHPExcel, but should be installed separately if you wish to use that 3rd-Party library with PHPExcel. Alternatively, you can choose to use mPDF or DomPDF as PDF Rendering libraries instead: PHPExcel now provides a configurable wrapper allowing you a choice of PDF renderer. See the documentation, or the PDF s...DirectX Tool Kit: October 12, 2012: October 12, 2012 Added PrimitiveBatch for drawing user primitives Debug object names for all D3D resources (for PIX and debug layer leak reporting)Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.70: Fixed issue described in discussion #399087: variable references within case values weren't getting resolved.GoogleMap Control: GoogleMap Control 6.1: Some important bug fixes and couple of new features were added. There are no major changes to the sample website. Source code could be downloaded from the Source Code section selecting branch release-6.1. Thus just builds of GoogleMap Control are issued here in this release. NuGet Package GoogleMap Control 6.1 NuGet Package FeaturesBounds property to provide ability to create a map by center and bounds as well; Setting in markup <artem:GoogleMap ID="GoogleMap1" runat="server" MapType="HY...mojoPortal: 2.3.9.3: see release notes on mojoportal.com http://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2393-released Note that we have separate deployment packages for .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0, but we recommend you to use .NET 4, we will probably drop support for .NET 3.5 once .NET 4.5 is available The deployment package downloads on this page are pre-compiled and ready for production deployment, they contain no C# source code and are not intended for use in Visual Studio. To download the source code see getting the lates...OstrivDB: OstrivDB 0.1: - Storage configuration: objects serialization (Xml, Json), storage file compressing, data block size. - Caching for Select queries. - Indexing. - Batch of queries. - No special query language (LINQ used). - Integrated sorting and paging. - Multithreaded data processing.D3 Loot Tracker: 1.5.4: Fixed a bug where the server ip was not logged properly in the stats file.Captcha MVC: Captcha Mvc 2.1.2: v 2.1.2: Fixed problem with serialization. Made all classes from a namespace Jetbrains.Annotaions as the internal. Added autocomplete attribute and autocorrect attribute for captcha input element. Minor changes. v 2.1.1: Fixed problem with serialization. Minor changes. v 2.1: Added support for storing captcha in the session or cookie. See the updated example. Updated example. Minor changes. v 2.0.1: Added support for a partial captcha. Now you can easily customize the layout, s...DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.02.04: Major Highlights Fixed issue where the module printing function was only visible to administrators Fixed issue where pane level skinning was being assigned to a default container for any content pane Fixed issue when using password aging and FB / Google authentication Fixed issue that was causing the DateEditControl to not load the assigned value Fixed issue that stopped additional profile properties to be displayed in the member directory after modifying the template Fixed er...Advanced DataGridView with Excel-like auto filter: 1.0.0.0: ?????? ??????WinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.3.3: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Windows 8 RTM SDK. Download the latest source from the SOURCE CODE page. For compiled version use NuGet. You can add it to your project in Visual Studio by going to View/Other Windows/Package Manager Console and entering: PM> Install-Package winrtxamltoolkit Features Attachable Behaviors AwaitableUI extensions Controls Converters Debugging helpers Extension methods Imaging helpers IO helpers VisualTree helpers Samples Recent changes NOTE:...VidCoder: 1.4.4 Beta: Fixed inability to create new presets with "Save As".MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.3.2: Changelog for 2.3.2 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Added support for generating XBMC XML NFO files for files in the conversion queue (store it along with the source video with source video name.nfo). Right click on the file in queue and select generate XML 2. UI bugifx, start and end trim box locations interchanged 3. Added support for removing commercials from non DVRMS/WTV files (MP4, AVI etc) 4. Now checking for Firewall port status before enabling (might help with some firewall problems) 5. User In...Sandcastle Help File Builder: SHFB v1.9.5.0 with Visual Studio Package: General InformationIMPORTANT: On some systems, the content of the ZIP file is blocked and the installer may fail to run. Before extracting it, right click on the ZIP file, select Properties, and click on the Unblock button if it is present in the lower right corner of the General tab in the properties dialog. This release supports the Sandcastle October 2012 Release (v2.7.1.0). It includes full support for generating, installing, and removing MS Help Viewer files. This new release suppor...The GLMET Project: Shutdown Manager: Shutdown, Log off and Restart Timer Set time for shutdown, log off and restartClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.68.0: ClosedXML now resolves formulas! Yes it finally happened. If you call cell.Value and it has a formula the library will try to evaluate the formula and give you the result. For example: var wb = new XLWorkbook(); var ws = wb.AddWorksheet("Sheet1"); ws.Cell("A1").SetValue(1).CellBelow().SetValue(1); ws.Cell("B1").SetValue(1).CellBelow().SetValue(1); ws.Cell("C1").FormulaA1 = "\"The total value is: \" & SUM(A1:B2)"; var...Json.NET: Json.NET 4.5 Release 10: New feature - Added Portable build to NuGet package New feature - Added GetValue and TryGetValue with StringComparison to JObject Change - Improved duplicate object reference id error message Fix - Fixed error when comparing empty JObjects Fix - Fixed SecAnnotate warnings Fix - Fixed error when comparing DateTime JValue with a DateTimeOffset JValue Fix - Fixed serializer sometimes not using DateParseHandling setting Fix - Fixed error in JsonWriter.WriteToken when writing a DateT...Readable Passphrase Generator: KeePass Plugin 0.7.2: Changes: Tested against KeePass 2.20.1 Tested under Ubuntu 12.10 (and KeePass 2.20) Added GenerateAsUtf8 method returning the encrypted passphrase as a UTF8 byte array.New ProjectsAaron.Core: It's a special core be used to help your project become standardization. It provides the standard platform, including core systems, data flows,...AFSSignarlRServer: Server ready tryAgileFramework: Agile Framework in order to build easily application based on WCF, NHibernate , WPF, and multithreadingala, A Programming Language: ala, A Programming LanguageBaseSRS (Basic Service Request System): BaseSRS is a basic "Service Request System" or "SRS" which can be adapted and used by anyone. ContainerVariations: ContainerVariations is a collection of similar unit tests projects, each applied to a different Inversion of Control container. If successful, it will provide a consistent and comprehensive set of examples for popular .NET IoC containers. It is developed in C#.COST Policies - ART Work: COST Policies: ART Work ? ??????? ?????? ?? ??????? ?? ??????????: -baceCP -guideCPCS Script Runner: Provide users an easy way of executing C# programs (scripts) that are compiled on the fly.DbUtility: DbUtility is a free utility to display databases info like, size, backup date, instance name, database name, last backup log date, with export to excel feature.EchoLink Monitor: EchoLink Monitor is a management tool for EchoLink sysops maintaining remote EchoLink nodes.NextUI: We are on the way...Notas Alexandre: Apenas teste ainda...será modificado depois...Orchard CMS Amba.HtmlBlocks: Amba.HtmlBlocks module for Orchard CMS 1.5.1Portable Basemap Server: multiple map data source<--PBS-->multiple map apiRonYee: ??????????????。 ????(viewer)???????????????????,???????????????。 ????(customer)?????????????????,???????,?????????????????。 ??????(user)??????????????????。ShangWu: ????,???StoreIpAddress: Examine different means to store IP addressesSummon for Umbraco: Summon for Umbraco is a .NET solution for Summon API, provided by Serials Solutions.teasingg: this is for testing code plexWeb Scripting and Content Creation assignment: A stub project.WriteableBitmapEx for Windows Embedded: WriteableBitmapEx for Windows Embedded Compact 7 and Silverlight for Windows Embedded. Requires XAML In The Hand for managed code development.X.Web.Sitemap: X.Web.Sitemap is a part of X-Framework library. X.Web.Sitemap allows quickly and easily generate a Google-compatible filesZeropaste: A pastebin with minimal features.??: ?????EPUB????。

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  • VSNewFile: A Visual Studio Addin to More Easily Add New Items to a Project

    - by InfinitiesLoop
    My first Visual Studio Add-in! Creating add-ins is pretty simple, once you get used to the CommandBar model it is using, which is apparently a general Office suite extensibility mechanism. Anyway, let me first explain my motivation for this. It started out as an academic exercise, as I have always wanted to dip my feet in a little VS extensibility. But I thought of a legitimate need for an add-in, at least in my personal experience, so it took on new life. But I figured I can’t be the only one who has felt this way, so I decided to publish the add-in, and host it on GitHub (VSNewFile on GitHub) hoping to spur contributions. Adding Files the Built-in Way Here’s the problem I wanted to solve. You’re working on a project, and it’s time to add a new file to the project. Whatever it is – a class, script, html page, aspx page, or what-have-you, you go through a menu or keyboard shortcut to get to the “Add New Item” dialog. Typically, you do it by right-clicking the location where you want the file (the project or a folder of it): This brings up a dialog the contains, well, every conceivable type of item you might want to add. It’s all the available item templates, which can result in anywhere from a ton to a veritable sea of choices. To be fair, this dialog has been revamped in Visual Studio 2010, which organizes it a little better than Visual Studio 2008, and adds a search box. It also loads noticeably faster.   To me, this dialog is just getting in my way. If I want to add a JavaScript script to my project, I don’t want to have to hunt for the script template item in this dialog. Yes, it is categorized, and yes, it now has a search box. But still, all this UI to swim through when all I need is a new file in the project. I will name it. I will provide the content, I don’t even need a ‘template’. VS kind of realizes this. In the add menu in a class library project, for example, there is a “Add Class…” choice. But all this really does is select that project item from the dialog by default. You still must wait for the dialog, see it, and type in a name for the file. How is that really any different than hitting F2 on an existing item? It isn’t. Adding Files the Hack Way What I often find myself doing, just to avoid going through this dialog, is to copy and paste an existing file, rename it, then “CTRL-A, DEL” the content. In a few short keystrokes I’ve got my new file. Even if the original file wasn’t the right type, it doesn’t matter – I will rename it anyway, including the extension. It works well enough if the place I am adding the file to doesn’t have much in it already. But if there are a lot of files at that level, it sucks, because the new file will have the name “Copy of xyz”, causing it to be moved into the ‘C’ section of the alphabetically sorted items, which might be far, far away from the original file (and so I tend to try and copy a file that starts with ‘C’ *evil grin*). Using ‘Export Template’ To be completely fair I should at least mention this feature. I’m not even sure if this is new in VS 2010 or not (I think so). But it allows you to export a project item or items, including potential project references required by it. Then it becomes a new item in the available ‘installed templates’. No doubt this is useful to help bootstrap new projects. But that still requires you to go through the ‘New Item’ dialog. Adding Files with VSNewFile So hopefully I have sufficiently defined the problem and got a few of you to think, “Yeah, me too!”… What VSNewFile does is let you skip the dialog entirely by adding project items directly to the context menu. But it does a bit more than that, so do read on. For example, to add a new class, you can right-click the location and pick that option. A new .cs file is instantly added to the project, and the new item is selected and put into the ‘rename’ mode immediately. The default items available are shown here. But you can customize them. You can also customize the content of each template. To do so, you create a directory in your documents folder, ‘VSNewFile Templates’. In there, you drop the templates you want to use, but you name them in a particular way. For example, here’s a template that will add a new item named “Add TITLE”. It will add a project item named “SOMEFILE.foo” (or ‘SOMEFILE1.foo’ if that exists, etc). The format of the file name is: <ORDER>_<KEY>_<BASE FILENAME>_<ICON ID>_<TITLE>.<EXTENTION> Where: <ORDER> is a number that lets you determine the order of the items in the menu (relative to each other). <KEY> is a case sensitive identifier different for each template item. More on that later. <BASE FILENAME> is the default name of the file, which doesn’t matter that much, since they will be renaming it anyway. <ICON ID> is a number the dictates the icon used for the menu item. There are a huge number of built-in choices. More on that later. <TITLE> is the string that will appear in the menu. And, the contents of the file are the default content for the item (the ‘template’). The content of the file can contain anything you want, of course. But it also supports two tokens: %NAMESPACE% and %FILENAME%, which will be replaced with the corresponding values. Here is the content of this sample: testing Namespace = %NAMESPACE% Filename = %FILENAME% I kind went back and forth on this. I could have made it so there’d be an XML or JSON file that defines the templates, instead of cramming all this data into the filename itself. I like the simplicity of this better. It makes it easy to customize since you can literally just throw these files around, copy them from someone else, etc, without worrying about merge data into a central description file, in whatever format. Here’s our new item showing up: Practical Use One immediate thing I am using this for is to make it easier to add very commonly used scripts to my web projects. For example, uh, say, jQuery? :) All I need to do is drop jQuery-1.4.2.js and jQuery-1.4.2.min.js into the templates folder, provide the order, title, etc, and then instantly, I can now add jQuery to any project I have without even thinking about “where is jQuery? Can I copy it from that other project?”   Using the KEY There are two reasons for the ‘key’ portion of the item. First, it allows you to turn off the built-in, default templates, which are: FILE = Add File (generic, empty file) VB = Add VB Class CS = Add C# Class (includes some basic usings) HTML = Add HTML page (includes basic structure, doctype, etc) JS = Add Script (includes an immediately-invoking function closure) To turn one off, just include a file with the name “_<KEY>”. For example, to turn off all the items except our custom one, you do this: The other reason for the key is that there are new Visual Studio Commands created for each one. This makes it possible to bind a keyboard shortcut to one of them. So you could, for example, have a keyboard combination that adds a new web page to your website, or a new CS class to your class library, etc. Here is our sample item showing up in the keyboard bindings option. Even though the contents of the template directory may change from one launch of Visual Studio to the next, the bindings will remain attached to any item with a particular key, thanks to it taking care not to lose keyboard bindings even though the commands are completely recreated each time. The Icon Face ID Visual Studio uses a Microsoft Office style add-in mechanism, I gather. There are a predetermined set of built-in icons available. You can use your own icons when developing add-ins, of course, but I’m no designer. I just wanted to find appropriate-ish icons for the built-in templates, and allow you to choose from an existing built-in icon for your own. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot out there on the interwebs that helps you figure out what the built-in types are. There’s an MSDN article that describes at length a way to create a program that lists all the icons. But I don’t want to write a program to figure them out! Just show them to me! Sheesh :) Thankfully, someone out there felt the same way, and uses a novel hack to get the icons to show up in an outlook toolbar. He then painstakingly took screenshots of them, one group at a time. It isn’t complete though – there are tens of thousands of icons. But it’s good enough. If anyone has an exhaustive list, please let me, and the rest of the add-in community know. Icon Face ID Reference Installing the Add-in It will work with Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2010. Just unzip the release into your Documents\Visual Studio 20xx\Addins folder. It contains the binary and the Visual Studio “.addin” file. For example, the path to mine is: C:\Users\InfinitiesLoop\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Addins Conclusion So that’s it! I hope you find it as useful as I have. It’s on GitHub, so if you’re into this kind of thing, please do fork it and improve it! Reference: VSNewFile on GitHub VSNewFile release on GitHub Icon Face ID Reference

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  • Craftsmanship is ALL that Matters

    - by Wayne Molina
    Today, I'm going to talk about a touchy subject: the notion of working in a company that doesn't use the prescribed "best practices" in its software development endeavours.  Over the years I have, using a variety of pseudonyms, asked this question on popular programming forums.  Although I always add in some minor variation of the story to avoid suspicion that it's the same person posting, the crux of the tale remains the same: A Programmer’s Tale A junior software developer has just started a new job at an average company, creating average line-of-business applications for internal use (the most typical scenario programmers find themselves in).  This hypothetical newbie has spent a lot of time reading up on the "theory" of software development, devouring books, blogs and screencasts from well-known and respected software developers in the community in order to broaden his knowledge and "do what the pros do".  He begins his new job, eager to apply what he's learned on a real-world project only to discover that his new teammates doesn't use any of those concepts and techniques.  They hack their way through development, or in a best-case scenario use some homebrew, thrown-together semblance of a framework for their applications that follows not one of the best practices suggested by the “elite” in the software community - things like TDD (TDD as a "best practice" is the only subjective part of this post, but it's included here due to a very large following of respected developers who consider it one), the SOLID principles, well-known and venerable tools, even version control in a worst case and truly nightmarish scenario.  Our protagonist is frustrated that he isn't doing things the "proper" way - a way he's spent personal time digesting and learning about and, more importantly, a way that some of the top developers in the industry advocate - and turns to a forum to ask the advice of his peers. Invariably the answer I, in the guise of the concerned newbie, will receive is that A) I don't know anything and should just shut my mouth and sling code the bad way like everybody else on the team, and B) These "best practices" are fade or a joke, and the only thing that matters is shipping software to your customers. I am here today to say that anyone who says this, or anything like it, is not only full of crap but indicative of exactly the type of “developer” that has helped to give our industry a bad name.  Here is why: One Who Knows Nothing, Understands Nothing On one hand, you have the cognoscenti of the .NET development world.  Guys like James Avery, Jeremy Miller, Ayende Rahien and Rob Conery; all well-respected and noted programmers that are pretty much our version of celebrities.  These guys write blogs, books, and post videos outlining the "correct" way of writing software to make sure it not only works but is maintainable and extensible and a joy to work with.  They tout the virtues of the SOLID principles, or of using TDD/BDD, or using a mature ORM like NHibernate, Subsonic or even Entity Framework. On the other hand, you have Joe Everyman, Lead Software Developer at Initrode Corporation - in our hypothetical story Joe is the junior developer's new boss.  Joe's been with Initrode for 10 years, starting as the company’s very first programmer and over the years building up a little fiefdom of his own until at the present he’s in charge of all Initrode’s software development.  Joe writes code the same way he always has, without bothering to learn much, if anything.  He looked at NHibernate once and found it was "too hard", so he uses a primitive implementation of the TableDataGateway pattern as a wrapper around SqlClient.SqlConnection and SqlClient.SqlCommand instead of an actual ORM (or, in a better case scenario, has created his own ORM); the thought of using LINQ or Entity Framework or really anything other than his own hastily homebrew solution has never occurred to him.  He doesn't understand TDD and considers “testing” to be using the .NET debugger to step through code, or simply loading up an app and entering some values to see if it works.  He doesn't really understand SOLID, and he doesn't care to.  He's worked as a programmer for years, and that's all that counts.  Right?  WRONG. Who would you rather trust?  Someone with years of experience and who writes books, creates well-known software and is akin to a celebrity, or someone with no credibility outside their own minute environment who throws around their clout and company seniority as the "proof" of their ability?  Joe Everyman may have years of experience at Initrode as a programmer, and says to do things "his way" but someone like Jeremy Miller or Ayende Rahien have years of experience at companies just like Initrode, THEY know ten times more than Joe Everyman knows or could ever hope to know, and THEY say to do things "this way". Here's another way of thinking about it: If you wanted to get into politics and needed advice on the best way to do it, would you rather listen to the mayor of Hicktown, USA or Barack Obama?  One is a small-time nobody while the other is very well-known and, as such, would probably have much more accurate and beneficial advice. NOTE: The selection of Barack Obama as an example in no way, shape, or form suggests a political affiliation or political bent to this post or blog, and no political innuendo should be mistakenly read from it; the intent was merely to compare a small-time persona with a well-known persona in a non-software field.  Feel free to replace the name "Barack Obama" with any well-known Congressman, Senator or US President of your choice. DIY Considered Harmful I will say right now that the homebrew development environment is the WORST one for an aspiring programmer, because it relies on nothing outside it's own little box - no useful skill outside of the small pond.  If you are forced to use some half-baked, homebrew ORM created by your Director of Software, you are not learning anything valuable you can take with you in the future; now, if you plan to stay at Initrode for 10 years like Joe Everyman, this is fine and dandy.  However if, like most of us, you want to advance your career outside a very narrow space you will do more harm than good by sticking it out in an environment where you, to be frank, know better than everybody else because you are aware of alternative and, in almost most cases, better tools for the job.  A junior developer who understands why the SOLID principles are good to follow, or why TDD is beneficial, or who knows that it's better to use NHibernate/Subsonic/EF/LINQ/well-known ORM versus some in-house one knows better than a senior developer with 20 years experience who doesn't understand any of that, plain and simple.  Anyone who disagrees is either a liar, or someone who, just like Joe Everyman, Lead Developer, relies on seniority and tenure rather than adapting their knowledge as things evolve. In many cases, the Joe Everymans of the world act this way out of fear - they cannot possibly fathom that a “junior” could know more than them; after all, they’ve spent 10 or more years in the same company, doing the same job, cranking out the same shoddy software.  And here comes a newbie who hasn’t spent 10+ years doing the same things, with a fresh and often radical take on the craft, and Joe Everyman is afraid he might have to put some real effort into his career again instead of just pointing to his 10 years of service at Initrode as “proof” that he’s good, or that he might have to learn something new to improve; in most cases the problem is Joe Everyman, and by extension Initrode itself, has a mentality of just being “good enough”, and mediocrity is the rule of the day. A Thorn Bush is No Place for a Phoenix My advice is that if you work on a team where they don't use the best practices that some of the most famous developers in our field say is the "right" way to do things (and have legions of people who agree), and YOU are aware of these practices and can see why they work, then LEAVE the company.  Find a company where they DO care about quality, and craftsmanship, otherwise you will never be happy.  There is no point in "dumbing" yourself down to the level of your co-workers and slinging code without care to craftsmanship.  In 95% of these situations there will be no point in bringing it to the attention of Joe Everyman because he won't listen; he might even get upset that someone is trying to "upstage" him and fire the newbie, and replace someone with loads of untapped potential with a drone that will just nod affirmatively and grind out the tasks assigned without question. Find a company that has people smart enough to listen to the "best and brightest", and be happy.  Do not, I repeat, DO NOT waste away in a job working for ignorant people.  At the end of the day software development IS a craft, and a level of craftsmanship is REQUIRED for any serious professional.  When you have knowledgeable people with the credibility to back it up saying one thing, and small-time people who are, to put it bluntly, nobodies in the field saying and doing something totally different because they can't comprehend it, leave the nobodies to their own devices to fade into obscurity.  Work for a company that uses REAL software engineering techniques and really cares about craftsmanship.  The biggest issue affecting our career, and the reason software development has never been the respected, white-collar career it was meant to be, is because hacks and charlatans can pass themselves off as professional programmers without following a lick of good advice from programmers much better at the craft than they are.  These modern day snake-oil salesmen entrench themselves in companies by hoodwinking non-technical businesspeople and customers with their shoddy wares, end up in senior/lead/executive positions, and push their lack of knowledge on everybody unfortunate enough to work with/for/under them, crushing any dissent or voices of reason and change under their tyrannical heel and leaving behind a trail of dismayed and, often, unemployed junior developers who were made examples of to keep up the facade and avoid the shadow of doubt being cast upon them. To sum this up another way: If you surround yourself with learned people, you will learn.  Surround yourself with ignorant people who can't, as the saying goes, see the forest through the trees, and you'll learn nothing of any real value.  There is more to software development than just writing code, and the end goal should not be just "shipping software", it should be shipping software that is extensible, maintainable, and above all else software whose creation has broadened your knowledge in some capacity, even if a minor one.  An eager newbie who knows theory and thirsts for knowledge can easily be moulded and taught the advanced topics, but the same can't be said of someone who only cares about the finish line.  This industry needs more people espousing the benefits of software craftsmanship and proper software engineering techniques, and less Joe Everymans who are unwilling to adapt or foster new ways of thinking. Conclusion - I Cast “Protection from Fire” I am fairly certain this post will spark some controversy and might even invite the flames.  Please keep in mind these are opinions and nothing more.  A little healthy rant and subsequent flamewar can be good for the soul once in a while.  To paraphrase The Godfather: It helps to get rid of the bad blood.

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  • The future for Microsoft

    - by Scott Dorman
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/sdorman/archive/2013/10/16/the-future-for-microsoft.aspxMicrosoft is in the process of reinventing itself. While some may argue that it’s “too little, too late” or that their growing consumer-focused strategy is wrong, the truth of the situation is that Microsoft is reinventing itself into a new company. While Microsoft is now calling themselves a “devices and services” company, that’s not entirely accurate. Let’s look at some facts: Microsoft will always (for the long-term foreseeable future) be financially split into the following divisions: Windows/Operating Systems, which for FY13 made up approximately 24% of overall revenue. Server and Tools, which for FY13 made up approximately 26% of overall revenue. Enterprise/Business Products, which for FY13 made up approximately 32% of overall revenue. Entertainment and Devices, which for FY13 made up approximately 13% of overall revenue. Online Services, which for FY13 made up approximately 4% of overall revenue. It is important to realize that hardware products like the Surface fall under the Windows/Operating Systems division while products like the Xbox 360 fall under the Entertainment and Devices division. (Presumably other hardware, such as mice, keyboards, and cameras, also fall under the Entertainment and Devices division.) It’s also unclear where Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Nokia’s handset division will fall, but let’s assume that it will be under Entertainment and Devices as well. Now, for the sake of argument, let’s assume a slightly different structure that I think is more in line with how Microsoft presents itself and how the general public sees it: Consumer Products and Devices, which would probably make up approximately 9% of overall revenue. Developer Tools, which would probably make up approximately 13% of overall revenue. Enterprise Products and Devices, which would probably make up approximately 47% of overall revenue. Entertainment, which would probably make up approximately 13% of overall revenue. Online Services, which would probably make up approximately 17% of overall revenue. (Just so we’re clear, in this structure hardware products like the Surface, a portion of Windows sales, and other hardware fall under the Consumer Products and Devices division. I’m assuming that more of the income for the Windows division is coming from enterprise/volume licenses so 15% of that income went to the Enterprise Products and Devices division. Most of the enterprise services, like Azure, fall under the Online Services division so half of the Server and Tools income went there as well.) No matter how you look at it, the bulk of Microsoft’s income still comes from not just the enterprise but also software sales, and this really shouldn’t surprise anyone. So, now that the stage is set…what’s the future for Microsoft? The future I see for Microsoft (again, this is just my prediction based on my own instinct, gut-feel and publicly available information) is this: Microsoft is becoming a consumer-focused enterprise company. Let’s look at it a different way. Microsoft is an enterprise-focused company trying to create a larger consumer presence.  To a large extent, this is the exact opposite of Apple, who is really a consumer-focused company trying to create a larger enterprise presence. The major reason consumer-focused companies (like Apple) have started making in-roads into the enterprise is the “bring your own device” phenomenon. Yes, Apple has created some “game-changing” products but their enterprise influence is still relatively small. Unfortunately (for this blog post at least), Apple provides revenue in terms of hardware products rather than business divisions, so it’s not possible to do a direct comparison. However, in the interest of transparency, from Apple’s Quarterly Report (filed 24 July 2013), their revenue breakdown is: iPhone, which for the 3 months ending 29 June 2013 made up approximately 51% of revenue. iPad, which for the 3 months ending 29 June 2013 made up approximately 18% of revenue. Mac, which for the 3 months ending 29 June 2013 made up approximately 14% of revenue. iPod, which for the 3 months ending 29 June 2013 made up approximately 2% of revenue. iTunes, Software, and Services, which for the 3 months ending 29 June 2013 made up approximately 11% of revenue. Accessories, which for the 3 months ending 29 July 2013 made up approximately 3% of revenue. From this, it’s pretty clear that Apple is a consumer-and-hardware-focused company. At this point, you may be asking yourself “Where is all of this going?” The answer to that lies in Microsoft’s shift in company focus. They are becoming more consumer focused, but what exactly does that mean? The biggest change (at least that’s been in the news lately) is the pending purchase of Nokia’s handset division. This, in combination with their Surface line of tablets and the Xbox, will put Microsoft squarely in the realm of a hardware-focused company in addition to being a software-focused company. That can (and most likely will) shift the revenue split to looking at revenue based on software sales (both consumer and enterprise) and also hardware sales (mostly on the consumer side). If we look at things strictly from a Windows perspective, Microsoft clearly has a lot of irons in the fire at the moment. Discounting the various product SKUs available and painting the picture with broader strokes, there are currently 5 different Windows-based operating systems: Windows Phone Windows Phone 7.x, which runs on top of the Windows CE kernel Windows Phone 8.x+, which runs on top of the Windows 8 kernel Windows RT The ARM-based version of Windows 8, which runs on top of the Windows 8 kernel Windows (Pro) The Intel-based version of Windows 8, which runs on top of the Windows 8 kernel Xbox The Xbox 360, which runs it’s own proprietary OS. The Xbox One, which runs it’s own proprietary OS, a version of Windows running on top of the Windows 8 kernel and a proprietary “manager” OS which manages the other two. Over time, Windows Phone 7.x devices will fade so that really leaves 4 different versions. Looking at Windows RT and Windows Phone 8.x paints an interesting story. Right now, all mobile phone devices run on some sort of ARM chip and that doesn’t look like it will change any time soon. That means Microsoft has two different Windows based operating systems for the ARM platform. Long term, it doesn’t make sense for Microsoft to continue supporting that arrangement. I have long suspected (since the Surface was first announced) that Microsoft will unify these two variants of Windows and recent speculation from some of the leading Microsoft watchers lends credence to this suspicion. It is rumored that upcoming Windows Phone releases will include support for larger screen sizes, relax the requirement to have a hardware-based back button and will continue to improve API parity between Windows Phone and Windows RT. At the same time, Windows RT will include support for smaller screen sizes. Since both of these operating systems are based on the same core Windows kernel, it makes sense (both from a financial and development resource perspective) for Microsoft to unify them. The user interfaces are already very similar. So similar in fact, that visually it’s difficult to tell them apart. To illustrate this, here are two screen captures: Other than a few variations (the Bing News app, the picture shown in the Pictures tile and the spacing between the tiles) these are identical. The one on the left is from my Windows 8.1 laptop (which looks the same as on my Surface RT) and the one on the right is from my Windows Phone 8 Lumia 925. This pretty clearly shows that from a consumer perspective, there really is no practical difference between how these two operating systems look and how you interact with them. For the consumer, your entertainment device (Xbox One), phone (Windows Phone) and mobile computing device (Surface [or some other vendors tablet], laptop, netbook or ultrabook) and your desktop computing device (desktop) will all look and feel the same. While many people will denounce this consistency of user experience, I think this will be a good thing in the long term, especially for the upcoming generations. For example, my 5-year old son knows how to use my tablet, phone and Xbox because they all feature nearly identical user experiences. When Windows 8 was released, Microsoft allowed a Windows Store app to be purchased once and installed on as many as 5 devices. With Windows 8.1, this limit has been increased to over 50. Why is that important? If you consider that your phone, computing devices, and entertainment device will be running the same operating system (with minor differences related to physical hardware chipset), that means that I could potentially purchase my sons favorite Angry Birds game once and be able to install it on all of the devices I own. (And for those of you wondering, it’s only 7 [at the moment].) From an app developer perspective, the story becomes even more compelling. Right now there are differences between the different operating systems, but those differences are shrinking. The user interface technology for both is XAML but there are different controls available and different user experience concepts. Some of the APIs available are the same while some are not. You can’t develop a Windows Phone app that can also run on Windows (either Windows Pro or RT). With each release of Windows Phone and Windows RT, those difference become smaller and smaller. Add to this mix the Xbox One, which will also feature a Windows-based operating system and the same “modern” (tile-based) user interface and the visible distinctions between the operating systems will become even smaller. Unifying the operating systems means one set of APIs and one code base to maintain for an app that can run on multiple devices. One code base means it’s easier to add features and fix bugs and that those changes become available on all devices at the same time. It also means a single app store, which will increase the discoverability and reach of your app and consolidate revenue and app profile management. Now, the choice of what devices an app is available on becomes a simple checkbox decision rather than a technical limitation. Ultimately, this means more apps available to consumers, which is always good for the app ecosystem. Is all of this just rumor, speculation and conjecture? Of course, but it’s not unfounded. As I mentioned earlier, some of the prominent Microsoft watchers are also reporting similar rumors. However, Microsoft itself has even hinted at this future with their recent organizational changes and by telling developers “if you want to develop for Xbox One, start developing for Windows 8 now.” I think this pretty clearly paints the following picture: Microsoft is committed to the “modern” user interface paradigm. Microsoft is changing their release cadence (for all products, not just operating systems) to be faster and more modular. Microsoft is going to continue to unify their OS platforms both from a consumer perspective and a developer perspective. While this direction will certainly concern some people it will excite many others. Microsoft’s biggest failing has always been following through with a strong and sustained marketing strategy that presents a consistent view point and highlights what this unified and connected experience looks like and how it benefits consumers and enterprises. We’ve started to see some of this over the last few years, but it needs to continue and become more aggressive and consistent. In the long run, I think Microsoft will be able to pull all of these technologies and devices together into one seamless ecosystem. It isn’t going to happen overnight, but my prediction is that we will be there by the end of 2016. As both a consumer and a developer, I, for one, am excited about the future of Microsoft.

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, October 15, 2013

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, October 15, 2013Popular ReleasesFFXIV Crafting Simulator: Crafting Simulator 2.4.1: -Fixed the offset for the new patch (Auto Loading function)iBoxDB.EX - Fast Transactional NoSQL Database Resources: iBoxDB.net fast transactional nosql database 1.5.2: Easily process objects and documents, zero configuration. fast embeddable transactional nosql document database, includes CURD, QueryLanguage, Master-Master-Slave Replication, MVCC, etc. supports .net2, .net4, windows phone, mono, unity3d, node.js , copy and run. http://download-codeplex.sec.s-msft.com/Download?ProjectName=iboxdb&DownloadId=737783 Benchmark with MongoDB Compatibility more platforms for java versionneurogoody: slicebox: this is the slice box jsEvent-Based Components AppBuilder: AB3.AppDesigner.55: Iteration 55 (Feature): Moving of TargetEdge (simple wires only) by mouse.Sandcastle Help File Builder: SHFB v1.9.8.0 with Visual Studio Package: General InformationIMPORTANT: On some systems, the content of the ZIP file is blocked and the installer may fail to run. Before extracting it, right click on the ZIP file, select Properties, and click on the Unblock button if it is present in the lower right corner of the General tab in the properties dialog. This new release contains bug fixes and feature enhancements. There are some potential breaking changes in this release as some features of the Help File Builder have been moved into...SharpConfig: SharpConfig 1.2: Implemented comment parsing. Comments are now part of settings and setting categories. New properties: Setting: Comment PreComments SettingCategory: Comment PreCommentsC++ REST SDK (codename "Casablanca"): C++ REST SDK 1.3.0: This release fixes multiple customer reported issues as well as the following: Full support for Dev12 binaries and project files Full support for Windows XP New sample highlighting the Client and Server APIs : BlackJack Expose underlying native handle to set custom options on http_client Improvements to Listener Library Note: Dev10 binaries have been dropped as of this release, however the Dev10 project files are still available in the Source CodeAD ACL Scanner: 1.3.2: Minor bug fixed: Powershell 4.0 will report: Select—Object: Parameter cannot be processed because the parameter name p is ambiguous.Json.NET: Json.NET 5.0 Release 7: New feature - Added support for Immutable Collections New feature - Added WriteData and ReadData settings to DataExtensionAttribute New feature - Added reference and type name handling support to extension data New feature - Added default value and required support to constructor deserialization Change - Extension data is now written when serializing Fix - Added missing casts to JToken Fix - Fixed parsing large floating point numbers Fix - Fixed not parsing some ISO date ...RESX Manager: ResxManager 0.2.1: FIXED: Many critical bugs have been fixed. New Features Error logging for improved exception handling New toolbar Improvements of user interfaceFast YouTube Downloader: YouTube Downloader 2.2.0: YouTube Downloader 2.2.0VidCoder: 1.5.8 Beta: Added hardware acceleration options: Bicubic OpenCL scaling algorithm, QSV decoding/encoding and DXVA decoding. Updated HandBrake core to SVN 5834. Updated VidCoder setup icon. Fixed crash when choosing the mp4v2 container on x86 and opening on x64. Warning: the hardware acceleration features require specific hardware or file types to work correctly: QSV: Need an Intel processor that supports Quick Sync Video encoding, with a monitor hooked up to the Intel HD Graphics output and the lat...ASP.net MVC Awesome - jQuery Ajax Helpers: 3.5.2: version 3.5.2 - fix for setting single value to multivalue controls - datepicker min max date offset fix - html encoding for keys fix - enable Column.ClientFormatFunc to be a function call that will return a function version 3.5.1 - fixed html attributes rendering - fixed loading animation rendering - css improvements version 3.5 ========================== - autosize for all popups ( can be turned off by calling in js awe.autoSize = false ) - added Parent, Paremeter extensions ...Wsus Package Publisher: Release v1.3.1310.12: Allow the Update Creation Wizard to be set in full screen mode. Fix a bug which prevent WPP to Reset Remote Sus Client ID. Change the behavior of links in the Update Detail Viewer. Left-Click to open, Right-Click to copy to the Clipboard.TerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v7 [Terraria Inventory Editor]: This is a complete overhaul but has the same core style. I hope you enjoy it. This version is compatible with 1.2.0.3 Please send issues to my Twitter or https://github.com/TJChap2840WDTVHubGen - Adds Metadata, thumbnails and subtitles to WDTV Live Hubs: WDTVHubGen.v2.1.6.maint: I think this covers all of the issues. new additions: fixed the thumbnail problem for backgrounds. general clean up and error checking. need to get this put through the wringer and all feedback is welcome.BIDS Helper: BIDS Helper 1.6.4: This BIDS Helper release brings the following new features and fixes: New Features: A new Bus Matrix style report option when you run the Printer Friendly Dimension Usage report for an SSAS cube. The Biml engine is now fully in sync with the supported subset of Varigence Mist 3.4. This includes a large number of language enhancements, bugfixes, and project deployment support. Fixed Issues: Fixed Biml execution for project connections fixing a bug with Tabular Translations Editor not a...MoreTerra (Terraria World Viewer): MoreTerra 1.11.3: =========== =New Features= =========== New Markers added for Plantera's Bulb, Heart Fruits and Gold Cache. Markers now correctly display for the gems found in rock debris on the floor. =========== =Compatibility= =========== Fixed header changes found in Terraria 1.0.3.1Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.581b: Fix in place for TVDB xml issue. New* Movie - General Preferences, allow saving of ignored 'The' or 'A' to end of movie title, stored in sorttitle field. * Movie - New Way for Cropping Posters. Fixed* Movie - Rename of folders/filename. caught error message. * Movie - Fixed Bug in Save Cropped image, only saving in Pre-Frodo format if Both model selected. * Movie - Fixed Cropped image didn't take zoomed ratio into effect. * Movie - Separated Folder Renaming and File Renaming fuctions durin...SmartStore.NET - Free ASP.NET MVC Ecommerce Shopping Cart Solution: SmartStore.NET 1.2.0: HighlightsMulti-store support "Trusted Shops" plugins Highly improved SmartStore.biz Importer plugin Add custom HTML content to pages Performance optimization New FeaturesMulti-store-support: now multiple stores can be managed within a single application instance (e.g. for building different catalogs, brands, landing pages etc.) Added 3 new Trusted Shops plugins: Seal, Buyer Protection, Store Reviews Added Display as HTML Widget to CMS Topics (store owner now can add arbitrary HT...New ProjectsArtezio SharePoint 2013 Workflow Activities: SharePoint Workflow 2013 doesn’t provide activities to work with permissions, we've fixed it using HttpSend activity that makes REST API calls.Dependency.Injection: An attempt to write a really simple dependency injection framework. Does property-based and recursive dependency injection. Handles singletons. Yay!DHGMS SUO Killer: SUO Killer is a Visual Studio extension to deal with the removal of SUO file to mitigate SUO related issues in Visual Studio. This project is written in C#.dynamicsheet: dynamicsheetExcel Comparator: Excel Comparator is an add-in for Microsoft Excel that allows the user to compare a range between two sheets. FetchAIP: FetchAIP is a utility to download the various sections of the Aeronautical Information Publication (AIP) for New Zealand.Fluent Method and Type Builder: Still working on the summary.getboost: NuGet package for Boost framework.Goldstone Forum: WebForms Forum - TelerikAcademy Team ProjectGroupMe Software Development Kit: .NET Software Development Kit for http://groupme.com/ chat service.GSLMS: ----Import Excel Files Into SQL Server: Load Excel files into SQL Database without schema changes.Inaction: ?????????? jBegin: Learning ASP.net MVC from beginning, then here will be the source code for jbegin.comKDG's Statistical Quality Control Solver: This tool will include methods that can solve sample standard deviation, sample variance, median, mode, moving average, percentiles, margin of error, etc.kpi: Key Performance Indicator (KPI)????; visual studio 2010 with .NET 4.0 runtimeLECO Remote Control Client Application: Sample code and binaries are provided to demonstrate the remote control capability of a LECO Cornerstone instrument.LinkPad: My first Windows Store app intended for student to sketch up thoughts and concepts in quick diagrams.Modler.NET - Automating Graphical Data Model Co-Evolution: Modler.NET was the tool created for a Master's thesis project, which automates the co-evolution of graphical data models and the database that they represent.MyFileManager1: SummaryNever Lotto: Korean 465 Lotto Analyzer and Simulator. The real purpose of this project is to show that this kind of lotto things are just shit.NHibernate: The purpose of this project is to demo CRUD operations using NHibernate with Mono in Visual Studio 2012 using C# language. OAuth2 Authorizer: OAuth2 Authorizer helps you get the access code for a standard OAuth2 REST service that implements 3-legged authentication.Regular Expression for Excel: Regular Expression For Excel is an Excel Plugin. It provides a regular expressions EXCEL support. We can use it in the EXCEL function.Service Tester: Service Tester is an Azure Cloud based load testing application targeted at Soap Web Services which allows you to invoke your Web Service by random parameters.Simple TypeScript and C# Class Generator: Simple GUI application to generate compatible class source code for C# and TypeScript for communications between C# and TypeScript. Soccer team management: ---Spanner: No more stringly-typed web development! Build statically typed single page web applications in C#, automatically generating all HTML, JavaScript, and Knockout.

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, October 10, 2012

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, October 10, 2012Popular ReleasesA C# 4.0 Push Notification Helper Library for WP7.0 & WP7.1: Easy Notification 1.0.0: New Feature - Send Tile, Toast & Raw Notifications to Windows Phone Devices. New Feature - Supports Windows Phone 7.0 & Windows Phone 7.1. New Feature - Validation rules are in-built for Push Notification Messages. New Feature - Strongly typed interfaces. New Feature - Supports synchronous & asynchronous methods to send notifications. New Feature - Supports authenticated notifications using X509 Certificates. New Feature - Supports Callback Registration Requests. New Feature - S...D3 Loot Tracker: 1.5.4: Fixed a bug where the server ip was not logged properly in the stats file.Captcha MVC: Captcha Mvc 2.1.2: v 2.1.2: Fixed problem with serialization. Made all classes from a namespace Jetbrains.Annotaions as the internal. Added autocomplete attribute and autocorrect attribute for captcha input element. Minor changes. v 2.1.1: Fixed problem with serialization. Minor changes. v 2.1: Added support for storing captcha in the session or cookie. See the updated example. Updated example. Minor changes. v 2.0.1: Added support for a partial captcha. Now you can easily customize the layout, s...DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.02.04: Major Highlights Fixed issue where the module printing function was only visible to administrators Fixed issue where pane level skinning was being assigned to a default container for any content pane Fixed issue when using password aging and FB / Google authentication Fixed issue that was causing the DateEditControl to not load the assigned value Fixed issue that stopped additional profile properties to be displayed in the member directory after modifying the template Fixed er...Online Image Editor: Online Image Editor v1.1: If you have problems with this tool, please email me at amisouvikdas@gmail.com or You can also participate this project to improve this.Advanced DataGridView with Excel-like auto filter: 1.0.0.0: ?????? ??????Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.69: Fix for issue #18766: build task should not build the output if it's newer than all the input files. Fix for Issue #18764: build taks -res switch not working. update build task to concatenate input source and then minify, rather than minify and then concatenate. include resource string-replacement root name in the assumed globals list. Stop replacing new Date().getTime() with +new Date -- the latter is smaller, but turns out it executes up to 45% slower. add CSS support for single-...WinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.3.3: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Windows 8 RTM SDK. Download the latest source from the SOURCE CODE page. For compiled version use NuGet. You can add it to your project in Visual Studio by going to View/Other Windows/Package Manager Console and entering: PM> Install-Package winrtxamltoolkit Features Attachable Behaviors AwaitableUI extensions Controls Converters Debugging helpers Extension methods Imaging helpers IO helpers VisualTree helpers Samples Recent changes NOTE:...DevLib: 69721 binary dll: 69721 binary dllVidCoder: 1.4.4 Beta: Fixed inability to create new presets with "Save As".MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.3.2: Changelog for 2.3.2 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Added support for generating XBMC XML NFO files for files in the conversion queue (store it along with the source video with source video name.nfo). Right click on the file in queue and select generate XML 2. UI bugifx, start and end trim box locations interchanged 3. Added support for removing commercials from non DVRMS/WTV files (MP4, AVI etc) 4. Now checking for Firewall port status before enabling (might help with some firewall problems) 5. User In...DotNetNuke Boards: 01.00.00: This beta release represents the end of training session 1, based on jQuery and Knockout integration in DotNetNuke 6.2.3. It is designed to allow a single user or multiple users to add/edit/delete cards but no cards can be assigned to anyone at this point. This release is not intended for production use!Sandcastle Help File Builder: SHFB v1.9.5.0 with Visual Studio Package: General InformationIMPORTANT: On some systems, the content of the ZIP file is blocked and the installer may fail to run. Before extracting it, right click on the ZIP file, select Properties, and click on the Unblock button if it is present in the lower right corner of the General tab in the properties dialog. This release supports the Sandcastle October 2012 Release (v2.7.1.0). It includes full support for generating, installing, and removing MS Help Viewer files. This new release suppor...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.68.0: ClosedXML now resolves formulas! Yes it finally happened. If you call cell.Value and it has a formula the library will try to evaluate the formula and give you the result. For example: var wb = new XLWorkbook(); var ws = wb.AddWorksheet("Sheet1"); ws.Cell("A1").SetValue(1).CellBelow().SetValue(1); ws.Cell("B1").SetValue(1).CellBelow().SetValue(1); ws.Cell("C1").FormulaA1 = "\"The total value is: \" & SUM(A1:B2)"; var...Json.NET: Json.NET 4.5 Release 10: New feature - Added Portable build to NuGet package New feature - Added GetValue and TryGetValue with StringComparison to JObject Change - Improved duplicate object reference id error message Fix - Fixed error when comparing empty JObjects Fix - Fixed SecAnnotate warnings Fix - Fixed error when comparing DateTime JValue with a DateTimeOffset JValue Fix - Fixed serializer sometimes not using DateParseHandling setting Fix - Fixed error in JsonWriter.WriteToken when writing a DateT...Readable Passphrase Generator: KeePass Plugin 0.7.2: Changes: Tested against KeePass 2.20.1 Tested under Ubuntu 12.10 (and KeePass 2.20) Added GenerateAsUtf8 method returning the encrypted passphrase as a UTF8 byte array.JSLint for Visual Studio 2010: 1.4.2: 1.4.2patterns & practices: Prism: Prism for .NET 4.5: This is a release does not include any functionality changes over Prism 4.1 Desktop. These assemblies target .NET 4.5. These assemblies also were compiled against updated dependencies: Unity 3.0 and Common Service Locator (Portable Class Library).Snoop, the WPF Spy Utility: Snoop 2.8.0: Snoop 2.8.0Announcing Snoop 2.8.0! It's been exactly six months since the last release, and this one has a bunch of goodies in it. In particular, there is now a PowerShell scripting tab, compliments of Bailey Ling. With this tab, the possibilities are limitless. It basically lets you automate/script the application that you are Snooping. Bailey has a couple blog posts (one and two) on his tab already, and I am sure more is to come. Please note that if you do not have PowerShell installed, y....NET Micro Framework: .NET MF 4.3 (Beta): This is the 4.3 Beta version of the .NET Micro Framework. Feature List for v4.3 Support for Visual Studio 2012 (including the Windows Desktop Express version) All v4.2 QFEs features and bug fixes (PWM enhancements, lwIP and network driver reliability improvements, Analog Output, WinUSB and latest GCC support) Improved diagnostic information for deployment Decreased boot time Bug fixes Work Item 1736 - Create link for MFDeploy under start menu Work Item 1504 - Customizing lwIP o...New Projectsadcc2: adccAP.Framework: This a asp.net mvc3 of test web site .EFCodeFirst: Projeto criado para experimentos e estudos com o Entity FrameworkEXPS-RAT: HelloFiskalizacija za developere: Projekt je namijenjen razvojnim inženjerima, programerima, developerima i svima ostalima koji se bave razvojem programskih rješenja za fiskalne blagajne.Galleriffic App for SharePoint 2013: Galleriffic App is an app part for SharePoint 2013 to display a picture gallery with cool JQuery animations and effects. Hack.net: Hack.net is a Roguelike clone similar to NetHack or Roguelike.Inno Setup For .NET Application: This is a simple inno setup for .net developerJava Special Functions Library: Java Special Functions Library implemented as a public class part of my larger mathematical package.LocalFileOpener: The LocalFileOpener plugin opens an intent to help you easily open local files on the device under installed applications.localizr - .NET Collaborative Translation & Localization: Localizr is a platform for collaborative localization and translation of .NET projects.Metro UI CSS: Metro UI CSS a set of styles to create a site with an interface similar to Windows 8 Metro UI. MoskieDotNet: A sandbox for me learn some new technologies.Mouse Automation: Allows a user to automate repetitive clicking within EverQuestMS SQL DB Schema Updater: Simple tool for updating MS SQL database schema based on "ideal" database model.n8design Tools: Tools any Source Code by Stefan Bauer.NasosCS: ???? ?? ??????Pokemonochan: ALright this is a Pokemon MMo bound to come out someday!PotatoSoft: ?????????????!Power Mirrors: Leverage the usefulness of SQL Server mirrors using PowerShell and SMO. Create mirrors from scratch, assign witnesses and test failovers, all from PowerShell! Project13251010: sdfdReal Time Data Bus: A collection of real time data bus implementations.Ricky Tailor's ASP.NET Web 2.0 Project: 7COM0203 Web Scripting And Content Creation Task 1. SampleTFS2: Sample Projectslotcarduino - An Arduino based slotcar timing project: Slotcar timing project based on Arduino Uno/Mega 2560. Standalone system with serial enabled graphic display.System.Data.Entity.Repository: Entity framework code first framework wrapper with support for generic repository pattern, N-Tier application and Transaction Management for rapid developmentTest Marron: This project is a test to explore codeplexTmib Video Downloader: A small youtube video downloader. Created in C#Web Scripting & Content Creation: Fhame Rashid MSc Software Engineering Module Log: Web-Scripting and Content Creationwebbase: webbaseWebScriptingandContentCreation: This project is for the MSc module Web Scripting and Content Creation.Zuordnung: Zuordnung

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  • Part 2&ndash;Load Testing In The Cloud

    - by Tarun Arora
    Welcome to Part 2, In Part 1 we discussed the advantages of creating a Test Rig in the cloud, the Azure edge and the Test Rig Topology we want to get to. In Part 2, Let’s start by understanding the components of Azure we’ll be making use of followed by manually putting them together to create the test rig, so… let’s get down dirty start setting up the Test Rig.  What Components of Azure will I be using for building the Test Rig in the Cloud? To run the Test Agents we’ll make use of Windows Azure Compute and to enable communication between Test Controller and Test Agents we’ll make use of Windows Azure Connect.  Azure Connect The Test Controller is on premise and the Test Agents are in the cloud (How will they talk?). To enable communication between the two, we’ll make use of Windows Azure Connect. With Windows Azure Connect, you can use a simple user interface to configure IPsec protected connections between computers or virtual machines (VMs) in your organization’s network, and roles running in Windows Azure. With this you can now join Windows Azure role instances to your domain, so that you can use your existing methods for domain authentication, name resolution, or other domain-wide maintenance actions. For more details refer to an overview of Windows Azure connect. A very useful video explaining everything you wanted to know about Windows Azure connect.  Azure Compute Windows Azure compute provides developers a platform to host and manage applications in Microsoft’s data centres across the globe. A Windows Azure application is built from one or more components called ‘roles.’ Roles come in three different types: Web role, Worker role, and Virtual Machine (VM) role, we’ll be using the Worker role to set up the Test Agents. A very nice blog post discussing the difference between the 3 role types. Developers are free to use the .NET framework or other software that runs on Windows with the Worker role or Web role. Developers can also create applications using languages such as PHP and Java. More on Windows Azure Compute. Each Windows Azure compute instance represents a virtual server... Virtual Machine Size CPU Cores Memory Cost Per Hour Extra Small Shared 768 MB $0.04 Small 1 1.75 GB $0.12 Medium 2 3.50 GB $0.24 Large 4 7.00 GB $0.48 Extra Large 8 14.00 GB $0.96   You might want to review the Windows Azure Pricing FAQ. Let’s Get Started building the Test Rig… Configuration Machine Role Comments VM – 1 Domain Controller for Playpit.com On Premise VM – 2 TFS, Test Controller On Premise VM – 3 Test Agent Cloud   In this blog post I would assume that you have the domain, Team Foundation Server and Test Controller Installed and set up already. If not, please refer to the TFS 2010 Installation Guide and this walkthrough on MSDN to set up your Test Controller. You can also download a preconfigured TFS 2010 VM from Brian Keller's blog, Brian also has some great hands on Labs on TFS 2010 that you may want to explore. I. Lets start building VM – 3: The Test Agent Download the Windows Azure SDK and Tools Open Visual Studio and create a new Windows Azure Project using the Cloud Template                   Choose the Worker Role for reasons explained in the earlier post         The WorkerRole.cs implements the Run() and OnStart() methods, no code changes required. You should be able to compile the project and run it in the compute emulator (The compute emulator should have been installed as part of the Windows Azure Toolkit) on your local machine.                   We will only be making changes to WindowsAzureProject, open ServiceDefinition.csdef. Ensure that the vmsize is small (remember the cost chart above). Import the “Connect” module. I am importing the Connect module because I need to join the Worker role VM to the Playpit domain. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceDefinition name="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceDefinition"> <WorkerRole name="WorkerRole1" vmsize="Small"> <Imports> <Import moduleName="Diagnostics" /> <Import moduleName="Connect"/> </Imports> </WorkerRole> </ServiceDefinition> Go to the ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg and note that settings with key ‘Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.%%%%’ have been added to the configuration file. This is because you decided to import the connect module. See the config below. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="1" osVersion="*"> <Role name="WorkerRole1"> <Instances count="1" /> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.ActivationToken" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Refresh" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.WaitForConnectivity" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Upgrade" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.EnableDomainJoin" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainFQDN" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainControllerFQDN" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainAccountName" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainPassword" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainOU" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Administrators" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainSiteName" value="" /> </ConfigurationSettings> </Role> </ServiceConfiguration>             Let’s go step by step and understand all the highlighted parameters and where you can find the values for them.       osFamily – By default this is set to 1 (Windows Server 2008 SP2). Change this to 2 if you want the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system. The Advantage of using osFamily = “2” is that you get Powershell 2.0 rather than Powershell 1.0. In Powershell 2.0 you could simply use “powershell -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted ./myscript.ps1” and it will work while in Powershell 1.0 you will have to change the registry key by including the following in your command file “reg add HKLM\Software\Microsoft\PowerShell\1\ShellIds\Microsoft.PowerShell /v ExecutionPolicy /d Unrestricted /f” before you can execute any power shell. The other reason you might want to move to os2 is if you wanted IIS 7.5.       Activation Token – To enable communication between the on premise machine and the Windows Azure Worker role VM both need to have the same token. Log on to Windows Azure Management Portal, click on Connect, click on Get Activation Token, this should give you the activation token, copy the activation token to the clipboard and paste it in the configuration file. Note – Later in the blog I’ll be showing you how to install connect on the on premise machine.                       EnableDomainJoin – Set the value to true, ofcourse we want to join the on windows azure worker role VM to the domain.       DomainFQDN, DomainControllerFQDN, DomainAccountName, DomainPassword, DomainOU, Administrators – This information is specific to your domain. I have extracted this information from the ‘service manager’ and ‘Active Directory Users and Computers’. Also, i created a new Domain-OU namely ‘CloudInstances’ so all my cloud instances joined to my domain show up here, this is optional. You can encrypt the DomainPassword – refer to the instructions here. Or hold fire, I’ll be covering that when i come to certificates and encryption in the coming section.       Now once you have filled all this information up, the configuration file should look something like below, <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="2" osVersion="*"> <Role name="WorkerRole1"> <Instances count="1" /> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.ActivationToken" value="45f55fea-f194-4fbc-b36e-25604faac784" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Refresh" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.WaitForConnectivity" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Upgrade" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.EnableDomainJoin" value="true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainFQDN" value="play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainControllerFQDN" value="WIN-KUDQMQFGQOL.play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainAccountName" value="playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainPassword" value="************************" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainOU" value="OU=CloudInstances, DC=Play, DC=Pit, DC=com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Administrators" value="Playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainSiteName" value="" /> </ConfigurationSettings> </Role> </ServiceConfiguration> Next we will be enabling the Remote Desktop module in to the ServiceDefinition.csdef, we could make changes manually or allow a beautiful wizard to help us make changes. I prefer the second option. So right click on the Windows Azure project and choose Publish       Now once you get the publish wizard, if you haven’t already you would be asked to import your Windows Azure subscription, this is simply the Msdn subscription activation key xml. Once you have done click Next to go to the Settings page and check ‘Enable Remote Desktop for all roles’.       As soon as you do that you get another pop up asking you the details for the user that you would be logging in with (make sure you enter a reasonable expiry date, you do not want the user account to expire today). Notice the more information tag at the bottom, click that to get access to the certificate section. See screen shot below.       From the drop down select the option to create a new certificate        In the pop up window enter the friendly name for your certificate. In my case I entered ‘WAC – Test Rig’ and click ok. This will create a new certificate for you. Click on the view button to see the certificate details. Do you see the Thumbprint, this is the value that will go in the config file (very important). Now click on the Copy to File button to copy the certificate, we will need to import the certificate to the windows Azure Management portal later. So, make sure you save it a safe location.                                Click Finish and enter details of the user you would like to create with permissions for remote desktop access, once you have entered the details on the ‘Remote desktop configuration’ screen click on Ok. From the Publish Windows Azure Wizard screen press Cancel. Cancel because we don’t want to publish the role just yet and Yes because we want to save all the changes in the config file.       Now if you go to the ServiceDefinition.csdef file you will see that the RemoteAccess and RemoteForwarder roles have been imported for you. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceDefinition name="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceDefinition"> <WorkerRole name="WorkerRole1" vmsize="Small"> <Imports> <Import moduleName="Diagnostics" /> <Import moduleName="Connect" /> <Import moduleName="RemoteAccess" /> <Import moduleName="RemoteForwarder" /> </Imports> </WorkerRole> </ServiceDefinition> Now go to the ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg file and you see a whole bunch for setting “Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.%%%” values added for you. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="2" osVersion="*"> <Role name="WorkerRole1"> <Instances count="1" /> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.ActivationToken" value="45f55fea-f194-4fbc-b36e-25604faac784" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Refresh" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.WaitForConnectivity" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Upgrade" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.EnableDomainJoin" value="true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainFQDN" value="play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainControllerFQDN" value="WIN-KUDQMQFGQOL.play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainAccountName" value="playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainPassword" value="************************" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainOU" value="OU=CloudInstances, DC=Play, DC=Pit, DC=com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Administrators" value="Playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainSiteName" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.Enabled" value="true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.AccountUsername" value="Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.AccountEncryptedPassword" value="MIIBnQYJKoZIhvcNAQcDoIIBjjCCAYoCAQAxggFOMIIBSgIBADAyMB4xHDAaBgNVBAMME1dpbmRvd 3MgQXp1cmUgVG9vbHMCEGa+B46voeO5T305N7TSG9QwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQAEggEABg4ol5Xol66Ip6QKLbAPWdmD4ae ADZ7aKj6fg4D+ATr0DXBllZHG5Umwf+84Sj2nsPeCyrg3ZDQuxrfhSbdnJwuChKV6ukXdGjX0hlowJu/4dfH4jTJC7sBWS AKaEFU7CxvqYEAL1Hf9VPL5fW6HZVmq1z+qmm4ecGKSTOJ20Fptb463wcXgR8CWGa+1w9xqJ7UmmfGeGeCHQ4QGW0IDSBU6ccg vzF2ug8/FY60K1vrWaCYOhKkxD3YBs8U9X/kOB0yQm2Git0d5tFlIPCBT2AC57bgsAYncXfHvPesI0qs7VZyghk8LVa9g5IqaM Cp6cQ7rmY/dLsKBMkDcdBHuCTAzBgkqhkiG9w0BBwEwFAYIKoZIhvcNAwcECDRVifSXbA43gBApNrp40L1VTVZ1iGag+3O1" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.AccountExpiration" value="2012-11-27T23:59:59.0000000+00:00" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteForwarder.Enabled" value="true" /> </ConfigurationSettings> <Certificates> <Certificate name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.PasswordEncryption" thumbprint="AA23016CF0BDFC344400B5B82706B608B92E4217" thumbprintAlgorithm="sha1" /> </Certificates> </Role> </ServiceConfiguration>          Okay let’s look at them one at a time,       Enabled - Yes, we would like to enable Remote Access.       AccountUserName – This is the user name you entered while you were on the publish windows azure role screen, as detailed above.       AccountEncrytedPassword – Try and decode that, the certificate is used to encrypt the password you specified for the user account. Remember earlier i said, either use the instructions or wait and i’ll be showing you encryption, now the user account i am using for rdp has the same password as my domain password, so i can simply copy the value of the AccountEncryptedPassword to the DomainPassword as well.       AccountExpiration – This is the expiration as you specified in the wizard earlier, make sure your account does not expire today.       Remote Forwarder – Check out the documentation, below is how I understand it, -- One role in an application that implements a remote desktop connection must import the RemoteForwarder module. The two modules work together to enable the remote desktop connections to role instances. -- If you have multiple roles defined in the service model, it does not matter which role you add the RemoteForwarder module to, but you must add it to only one of the role definitions.       Certificate – Remember the certificate thumbprint from the wizard, the on premise machine and windows azure role machine that need to speak to each other must have the same thumbprint. More on that when we install Windows Azure connect Endpoints on the on premise machine. As i said earlier, in this blog post, I’ll be showing you the manual process so i won’t be scripting any star up tasks to install the test agent or register the test agent with the TFS Server. I’ll be showing you all this cool stuff in the next blog post, that’s because it’s important to understand the manual side of it, it becomes easier for you to troubleshoot in case something fails. Having said that, the changes we have made are sufficient to spin up the Windows Azure Worker Role aka Test Agent VM, have it connected with the play.pit.com domain and have remote access enabled on it. Before we deploy the Test Agent VM we need to set up Windows Azure Connect on the TFS Server. II. Windows Azure Connect: Setting up Connect on VM – 2 i.e. TFS & Test Controller Glad you made it so far, now to enable communication between the on premise TFS/Test Controller and Azure-ed Test Agent we need to enable communication. We have set up the Azure connect module in the Test Agent configuration, now the connect end points need to be enabled on the on premise machines, let’s have a look at how we can do this. Log on to VM – 2 running the TFS Server and Test Controller Log on to the Windows Azure Management Portal and click on Virtual Network Click on Virtual Network, if you already have a subscription you should see the below screen shot, if not, you would be asked to complete the subscription first        Click on Install Local Endpoints from the top left on the panel and you get a url appended with a token id in it, remember the token i showed you earlier, in theory the token you get here should match the token you added to the Test Agent config file.        Copy the url to the clip board and paste it in IE explorer (important, the installation at present only works out of IE and you need to have cookies enabled in order to complete the installation). As stated in the pop up, you can NOT download and run the software later, you need to run it as is, since it contains a token. Once the installation completes you should see the Windows Azure connect icon in the system tray.                         Right click the Azure Connect icon, choose Diagnostics and refer to this link for diagnostic detail terminology. NOTE – Unfortunately I could not see the Windows Azure connect icon in the system tray, a bit of binging with Google revealed that the azure connect icon is only shown when the ‘Windows Azure Connect Endpoint’ Service is started. So go to services.msc and make sure that the service is started, if not start it, unfortunately again, the service did not start for me on a manual start and i realised that one of the dependant services was disabled, you can look at the service dependencies and start them and then start windows azure connect. Bottom line, you need to start Windows Azure connect service before you can proceed. Please refer here on MSDN for more on Troubleshooting Windows Azure connect. (Follow the next step as well)   Now go back to the Windows Azure Management Portal and from Groups and Roles create a new group, lets call it ‘Test Rig’. Make sure you add the VM – 2 (the TFS Server VM where you just installed the endpoint).       Now if you go back to the Azure Connect icon in the system tray and click ‘Refresh Policy’ you will notice that the disconnected status of the icon should change to ready for connection. III. Importing Certificate in to Windows Azure Management Portal But before that you need to import the certificate you created in Step I in to the Windows Azure Management Portal. Log on to the Windows Azure Management Portal and click on ‘Hosted Services, Storage Accounts & CDN’ and then ‘Management Certificates’ followed by Add Certificates as shown in the screen shot below        Browse to the location where you saved the certificate earlier, remember… Refer to Step I in case you forgot.        Now you should be able to see the imported certificate here, make sure the thumbprint of the certificate matches the one you inserted in the config files        IV. Publish Windows Azure Worker Role aka Test Agent Having completed I, II and III, you are ready to publish the Test Agent VM – 3 to the cloud. Go to Visual Studio and right click the Windows Azure project and select Publish. Verify the infomration in the wizard, from the advanced settings tab, you can also enabled capture of intellitrace or profiling information.         Click Next and Click Publish! From the view menu bar select the Windows Azure Activity Log window.       Now you should be able to see the deployment progress in real time.             In the Windows Azure Management Portal, you should also be able to see the progress of creation of a new Worker Role.       Once the deployment is complete you should be able to RDP (go to run prompt type mstsc and in the pop up the machine name) in to the Test Agent Worker Role VM from the Playpit network using the domain admin user account. In case you are unable to log in to the Test Agent using the domain admin user account it means the process of joining the Test Agent to the domain has failed! But the good news is, because you imported the connect module, you can connect to the Test Agent machine using Windows Azure Management Portal and troubleshoot the reason for failure, you will be able to log in with the user name and password you specified in the config file for the keys ‘RemoteAccess.AccountUsername, RemoteAccess.EncryptedPassword (just that enter the password unencrypted)’, fix it or manually join the machine to the domain. Once you have managed to Join the Test Agent VM to the Domain move to the next step.      So, log in to the Test Agent Worker Role VM with the Playpit Domain Administrator and verify that you can log in, the machine is connected to the domain and the connect service is successfully running. If yes, give your self a pat on the back, you are 80% mission accomplished!         Go to the Windows Azure Management Portal and click on Virtual Network, click on Groups and Roles and click on Test Rig, click Edit Group, the edit the Test Rig group you created earlier. In the Connect to section, click on Add to select the worker role you have just deployed. Also, check the ‘Allow connections between endpoints in the group’ with this you will enable to communication between test controller and test agents and test agents/test agents. Click Save.      Now, you are ready to deploy the Test Agent software on the Worker Role Test Agent VM and configure it to work with the Test Controller. V. Configuring VM – 3: Installing Test Agent and Associating Test Agent to Controller Log in to the Worker Role Test Agent VM that you have just successfully deployed, make sure you log in with the domain administrator account. Download the All Agents software from MSDN, ‘en_visual_studio_agents_2010_x86_x64_dvd_509679.iso’, extract the iso and navigate to where you have extracted the iso. In my case, i have extracted the iso to “C:\Resources\Temp\VsAgentSetup”. Open the Test Agent folder and double click on setup.exe. Once you have installed the Test Agent you should reach the configuration window. If you face any issues installing TFS Test Agent on the VM, refer to the walkthrough on MSDN.       Once you have successfully installed the Test Agent software you will need to configure the test agent. Right click the test agent configuration tool and run as a different user. i.e. an Administrator. This is really to run the configuration wizard with elevated privileges (you might have UAC block something's otherwise).        In the run options, you can select ‘service’ you do not need to run the agent as interactive un less you are running coded UI tests. I have specified the domain administrator to connect to the TFS Test Controller. In real life, i would never do that, i would create a separate test user service account for this purpose. But for the blog post, we are using the most powerful user so that any policies or restrictions don’t block you.        Click the Apply Settings button and you should be all green! If not, the summary usually gives helpful error messages that you can resolve and proceed. As per my experience, you may run in to either a permission or a firewall blocking communication issue.        And now the moment of truth! Go to VM –2 open up Visual Studio and from the Test Menu select Manage Test Controller       Mission Accomplished! You should be able to see the Test Agent that you have just configured here,         VI. Creating and Running Load Tests on your brand new Azure-ed Test Rig I have various blog posts on Performance Testing with Visual Studio Ultimate, you can follow the links and videos below, Blog Posts: - Part 1 – Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate - Part 2 – Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate - Part 3 – Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Videos: - Test Tools Configuration & Settings in Visual Studio - Why & How to Record Web Performance Tests in Visual Studio Ultimate - Goal Driven Load Testing using Visual Studio Ultimate Now that you have created your load tests, there is one last change you need to make before you can run the tests on your Azure Test Rig, create a new Test settings file, and change the Test Execution method to ‘Remote Execution’ and select the test controller you have configured the Worker Role Test Agent against in our case VM – 2 So, go on, fire off a test run and see the results of the test being executed on the Azur-ed Test Rig. Review and What’s next? A quick recap of the benefits of running the Test Rig in the cloud and what i will be covering in the next blog post AND I would love to hear your feedback! Advantages Utilizing the power of Azure compute to run a heavy virtual user load. Benefiting from the Azure flexibility, destroy Test Agents when not in use, takes < 25 minutes to spin up a new Test Agent. Most important test Network Latency, (network latency and speed of connection are two different things – usually network latency is very hard to test), by placing the Test Agents in Microsoft Data centres around the globe, one can actually test the lag in transferring the bytes not because of a slow connection but because the page has been requested from the other side of the globe. Next Steps The process of spinning up the Test Agents in windows Azure is not 100% automated. I am working on the Worker process and power shell scripts to make the role deployment, unattended install of test agent software and registration of the test agent to the test controller automated. In the next blog post I will show you how to make the complete process unattended and automated. Remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora. Hope you enjoyed this post, I would love to hear your feedback! If you have any recommendations on things that I should consider or any questions or feedback, feel free to leave a comment. See you in Part III.   Share this post : CodeProject

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