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HTTP downloads stop after some time, resuming is not possible

- by cdauth

When I try to download a file via HTTP, the downloads sometimes stop after around 30 MB. The download rates goes down to 0 B/s and no data keeps coming. When I stop the download and resume again, the download still hangs. But when I redownload it from byte 0 again, everything works fine up to 30 MB when it stops again. Sometimes, after some hours, it just works again without problems. The position in the file when the download stops is variable, but most of the time it is around 30–35 MB. As a download manager I use wget. The same behaviour happens though using curl and other download managers. The error occurs independently of the server I download from. I have also observed this error on other Linux computers in my network. All computers on my network run Gentoo Linux on x86. All internet connections on my network go through a server on my network which runs a transparent Squid proxy on port 80. That server is connected to a router, which is a Speedport W 700V by Deutsche Telekom AG. That router is connected to the internet using ADSL, with 448 kbit/s down speed and 96 kbit/s up speed. I am almost sure that my transparent proxy is not the problem. I turned that off without resolving the issue. I also connected to the router directly via WLAN without resolving the issue. I also tried to download over another port via HTTP. Furthermore, I tried to download the file using IPv6 with a gateway6 tunnel from my computer, which resulted in exactly the same problem. Now the strange thing is that everything works fine using FTP and HTTPS (also with wget on the same computer). Even more strange: when I resume the download that hanged over HTTP using FTP or HTTPS, download a few bytes that way, stop wget and then resume again using HTTP, it loads data again! But after a few MB, it may stop again. Unfortunately, files downloaded that way are always broken (the MD5 sum is not correct), so at some point, there must have been bogus data. I tried searching for HTML error messages in the downloaded file, but grep -i html does not find anything. (I cannot think of a way to search for GZIP-compressed HTML error messages in the file, so I did not try that.) I tried using strace on wget when it failed to resume a download, you can find the entire output on pastebin. The important lines are repeated every second: clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, {326102, 62176435}) = 0 ) = 1 write(2, "78% [++++++++++++++++++++++++++++"..., 19578% [+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ] 110,683,685 --.-K/s ) = 195 select(4, [3], NULL, NULL, {0, 949999}) = 0 (Timeout) I have absolutely no idea what could be the reason of this problem. It seems like whatever causes the issue speaks HTTP. It seems to speak HTTP that intelligently that it even regognises it in an IPv6-over-IPv4 tunnel. But what could that be and why does it only happen sometimes? The other possibility would be that there is a problem on my computer that is the same on other Gentoo Linux computers as well. Has anyone ever had such a problem? What could be the reason and where do I have to continue investigating to find out more about the issue? Update: I have just run into the problem again and tried to resume the download over the router’s WLAN, and this time it worked. Maybe I did something wrong during my last tests with the WLAN. Now maybe my transparent proxy server is in fact the problem. It is a very basic Squid proxy server that does not cache anything. Maybe the fact is interesting that a second Squid proxy runs on the same computer on another port. Update: A download hung again and this time I turned off all firewall settings and stopped all proxy servers. I failed to resume the download from my network server, which is directly connected to the router. So my proxy server definitely is not the cause the problem. I will try to upgrade the firmware of my router now, although I do not have admin access to it. I will see what I can do.

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The Return Of __FILE__ And __LINE__ In .NET 4.5

- by Alois Kraus

Good things are hard to kill. One of the most useful predefined compiler macros in C/C++ were __FILE__ and __LINE__ which do expand to the compilation units file name and line number where this value is encountered by the compiler. After 4.5 versions of .NET we are on par with C/C++ again. It is of course not a simple compiler expandable macro it is an attribute but it does serve exactly the same purpose. Now we do get CallerLineNumberAttribute == __LINE__ CallerFilePathAttribute == __FILE__ CallerMemberNameAttribute == __FUNCTION__ (MSVC Extension) The most important one is CallerMemberNameAttribute which is very useful to implement the INotifyPropertyChanged interface without the need to hard code the name of the property anymore. Now you can simply decorate your change method with the new CallerMemberName attribute and you get the property name as string directly inserted by the C# compiler at compile time. public string UserName { get { return _userName; } set { _userName=value; RaisePropertyChanged(); // no more RaisePropertyChanged(“UserName”)! } } protected void RaisePropertyChanged([CallerMemberName] string member = "") { var copy = PropertyChanged; if(copy != null) { copy(new PropertyChangedEventArgs(this, member)); } } Nice and handy. This was obviously the prime reason to implement this feature in the C# 5.0 compiler. You can repurpose this feature for tracing to get your hands on the method name of your caller along other stuff very fast now. All infos are added during compile time which is much faster than other approaches like walking the stack. The example on MSDN shows the usage of this attribute with an example public static void TraceMessage(string message, [CallerMemberName] string memberName = "", [CallerFilePath] string sourceFilePath = "", [CallerLineNumber] int sourceLineNumber = 0) { Console.WriteLine("Hi {0} {1} {2}({3})", message, memberName, sourceFilePath, sourceLineNumber); } When I do think of tracing I do usually want to have a API which allows me to Trace method enter and leave Trace messages with a severity like Info, Warning, Error When I do print a trace message it is very useful to print out method and type name as well. So your API must either be able to pass the method and type name as strings or extract it automatically via walking back one Stackframe and fetch the infos from there. The first glaring deficiency is that there is no CallerTypeAttribute yet because the C# compiler team was not satisfied with its performance. A usable Trace Api might therefore look like enum TraceTypes { None = 0, EnterLeave = 1 << 0, Info = 1 << 1, Warn = 1 << 2, Error = 1 << 3 } class Tracer : IDisposable { string Type; string Method; public Tracer(string type, string method) { Type = type; Method = method; if (IsEnabled(TraceTypes.EnterLeave,Type, Method)) { } } private bool IsEnabled(TraceTypes traceTypes, string Type, string Method) { // Do checking here if tracing is enabled return false; } public void Info(string fmt, params object[] args) { } public void Warn(string fmt, params object[] args) { } public void Error(string fmt, params object[] args) { } public static void Info(string type, string method, string fmt, params object[] args) { } public static void Warn(string type, string method, string fmt, params object[] args) { } public static void Error(string type, string method, string fmt, params object[] args) { } public void Dispose() { // trace method leave } } This minimal trace API is very fast but hard to maintain since you need to pass in the type and method name as hard coded strings which can change from time to time. But now we have at least CallerMemberName to rid of the explicit method parameter right? Not really. Since any acceptable usable trace Api should have a method signature like Tracexxx(… string fmt, params [] object args) we not able to add additional optional parameters after the args array. If we would put it before the format string we would need to make it optional as well which would mean the compiler would need to figure out what our trace message and arguments are (not likely) or we would need to specify everything explicitly just like before . There are ways around this by providing a myriad of overloads which in the end are routed to the very same method but that is ugly. I am not sure if nobody inside MS agrees that the above API is reasonable to have or (more likely) that the whole talk about you can use this feature for diagnostic purposes was not a core feature at all but a simple byproduct of making the life of INotifyPropertyChanged implementers easier. A way around this would be to allow for variable argument arrays after the params keyword another set of optional arguments which are always filled by the compiler but I do not know if this is an easy one. The thing I am missing much more is the not provided CallerType attribute. But not in the way you would think of. In the API above I did add some filtering based on method and type to stay as fast as possible for types where tracing is not enabled at all. It should be no more expensive than an additional method call and a bool variable check if tracing for this type is enabled at all. The data is tightly bound to the calling type and method and should therefore become part of the static type instance. Since extending the CLR type system for tracing is not something I do expect to happen I have come up with an alternative approach which allows me basically to attach run time data to any existing type object in super fast way. The key to success is the usage of generics. class Tracer<T> : IDisposable { string Method; public Tracer(string method) { if (TraceData<T>.Instance.Enabled.HasFlag(TraceTypes.EnterLeave)) { } } public void Dispose() { if (TraceData<T>.Instance.Enabled.HasFlag(TraceTypes.EnterLeave)) { } } public static void Info(string fmt, params object[] args) { } /// <summary> /// Every type gets its own instance with a fresh set of variables to describe the /// current filter status. /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="T"></typeparam> internal class TraceData<UsingType> { internal static TraceData<UsingType> Instance = new TraceData<UsingType>(); public bool IsInitialized = false; // flag if we need to reinit the trace data in case of reconfigured trace settings at runtime public TraceTypes Enabled = TraceTypes.None; // Enabled trace levels for this type } } We do not need to pass the type as string or Type object to the trace Api. Instead we define a generic Api that accepts the using type as generic parameter. Then we can create a TraceData static instance which is due to the nature of generics a fresh instance for every new type parameter. My tests on my home machine have shown that this approach is as fast as a simple bool flag check. If you have an application with many types using tracing you do not want to bring the app down by simply enabling tracing for one special rarely used type. The trace filter performance for the types which are not enabled must be therefore the fasted code path. This approach has the nice side effect that if you store the TraceData instances in one global list you can reconfigure tracing at runtime safely by simply setting the IsInitialized flag to false. A similar effect can be achieved with a global static Dictionary<Type,TraceData> object but big hash tables have random memory access semantics which is bad for cache locality and you always need to pay for the lookup which involves hash code generation, equality check and an indexed array access. The generic version is wicked fast and allows you to add more features to your tracing Api with minimal perf overhead. But it is cumbersome to write the generic type argument always explicitly and worse if you do refactor code and move parts of it to other classes it might be that you cannot configure tracing correctly. I would like therefore to decorate my type with an attribute [CallerType] class Tracer<T> : IDisposable to tell the compiler to fill in the generic type argument automatically. class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { using (var t = new Tracer()) // equivalent to new Tracer<Program>() { That would be really useful and super fast since you do not need to pass any type object around but you do have full type infos at hand. This change would be breaking if another non generic type exists in the same namespace where now the generic counterpart would be preferred. But this is an acceptable risk in my opinion since you can today already get conflicts if two generic types of the same name are defined in different namespaces. This would be only a variation of this issue. When you do think about this further you can add more features like to trace the exception in your Dispose method if the method is left with an exception with that little trick I did write some time ago. You can think of tracing as a super fast and configurable switch to write data to an output destination or to execute alternative actions. With such an infrastructure you can e.g. Reconfigure tracing at run time. Take a memory dump when a specific method is left with a specific exception. Throw an exception when a specific trace statement is hit (useful for testing error conditions). Execute a passed delegate which e.g. dumps additional state when enabled. Write data to an in memory ring buffer and dump it when specific events do occur (e.g. method is left with an exception, triggered from outside). Write data to an output device. …. This stuff is really useful to have when your code is in production on a mission critical server and you need to find the root cause of sporadic crashes of your application. It could be a buggy graphics card driver which throws access violations into your application (ok with .NET 4 not anymore except if you enable a compatibility flag) where you would like to have a minidump or you have reached after two weeks of operation a state where you need a full memory dump at a specific point in time in the middle of an transaction. At my older machine I do get with this super fast approach 50 million traces/s when tracing is disabled. When I do know that tracing is enabled for this type I can walk the stack by using StackFrameHelper.GetStackFramesInternal to check further if a specific action or output device is configured for this method which is about 2-3 times faster than the regular StackTrace class. Even with one String.Format I am down to 3 million traces/s so performance is not so important anymore since I do want to do something now. The CallerMemberName feature of the C# 5 compiler is nice but I would have preferred to get direct access to the MethodHandle and not to the stringified version of it. But I really would like to see a CallerType attribute implemented to fill in the generic type argument of the call site to augment the static CLR type data with run time data.

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SQL SERVER – Create a Very First Report with the Report Wizard

- by Pinal Dave

This example is from the Beginning SSRS by Kathi Kellenberger. Supporting files are available with a free download from the www.Joes2Pros.com web site. What is the report Wizard? In today’s world automation is all around you. Henry Ford began building his Model T automobiles on a moving assembly line a century ago and changed the world. The moving assembly line allowed Ford to build identical cars quickly and cheaply. Henry Ford said in his autobiography “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.” Today you can buy a car straight from the factory with your choice of several colors and with many options like back up cameras, built-in navigation systems and heated leather seats. The assembly lines now use robots to perform some tasks along with human workers. When you order your new car, if you want something special, not offered by the manufacturer, you will have to find a way to add it later. In computer software, we also have “assembly lines” called wizards. A wizard will ask you a series of questions, often branching to specific questions based on earlier answers, until you get to the end of the wizard. These wizards are used for many things, from something simple like setting up a rule in Outlook to performing administrative tasks on a server. Often, a wizard will get you part of the way to the end result, enough to get much of the tedious work out of the way. Once you get the product from the wizard, if the wizard is not capable of doing something you need, you can tweak the results. Create a Report with the Report Wizard Let’s get started with your first report! Launch SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) from the Start menu under SQL Server 2012. Once SSDT is running, click New Project to launch the New Project dialog box. On the left side of the screen expand Business Intelligence and select Reporting Services. Configure the properties as shown in . Be sure to select Report Server Project Wizard as the type of report and to save the project in the C:\Joes2Pros\SSRSCompanionFiles\Chapter3\Project folder. Click OK and wait for the Report Wizard to launch. Click Next on the Welcome screen. On the Select the Data Source screen, make sure that New data source is selected. Type JProCo as the data source name. Make sure that Microsoft SQL Server is selected in the Type dropdown. Click Edit to configure the connection string on the Connection Properties dialog box. If your SQL Server database server is installed on your local computer, type in localhost for the Server name and select the JProCo database from the Select or enter a database name dropdown. Click OK to dismiss the Connection Properties dialog box. Check Make this a shared data source and click Next. On the Design the Query screen, you can use the query builder to build a query if you wish. Since this post is not meant to teach you T-SQL queries, you will copy all queries from files that have been provided for you. In the C:\Joes2Pros\SSRSCompanionFiles\Chapter3\Resources folder open the sales by employee.sql file. Copy and paste the code from the file into the Query string Text Box. Click Next. On the Select the Report Type screen, choose Tabular and click Next. On the Design the Table screen, you have to figure out the groupings of the report. How do you do this? Well, you often need to know a bit about the data and report requirements. I often draw the report out on paper first to help me determine the groups. In the case of this report, I could group the data several ways. Do I want to see the data grouped by Year and Month? Do I want to see the data grouped by Employee or Category? The only thing I know for sure about this ahead of time is that the TotalSales goes in the Details section. Let’s assume that the CIO asked to see the data grouped first by Year and Month, then by Category. Let’s move the fields to the right-hand side. This is done by selecting Page > Group or Details >, as shown in, and click Next. On the Choose the Table Layout screen, select Stepped and check Include subtotals and Enable drilldown, as shown in. On the Choose the Style screen, choose any color scheme you wish (unlike the Model T) and click Next. I chose the default, Slate. On the Choose the Deployment Location screen, change the Deployment folder to Chapter 3 and click Next. At the Completing the Wizard screen, name your report Employee Sales and click Finish. After clicking Finish, the report and a shared data source will appear in the Solution Explorer and the report will also be visible in Design view. Click the Preview tab at the top. This report expects the user to supply a year which the report will then use as a filter. Type in a year between 2006 and 2013 and click View Report. Click the plus sign next to the Sales Year to expand the report to see the months, then expand again to see the categories and finally the details. You now have the assembly line report completed, and you probably already have some ideas on how to improve the report. Tomorrow’s Post Tomorrow’s blog post will show how to create your own data sources and data sets in SSRS. If you want to learn SSRS in easy to simple words – I strongly recommend you to get Beginning SSRS book from Joes 2 Pros. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Reporting Services, SSRS

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Finally, upgrade from Nokia X3 to Samsung Galaxy S III

This time, something slightly different but nonetheless not less interesting, hopefully. Living on a remote island like Mauritius, ill-praised 'Cyber Island' in the Indian Ocean, has its advantages in life style and relaxed environment to life in but in terms of technological aspects it can be quite a nightmare. Well, I guess this might be different story to report about... one day. Cyber Island Mauritius Despite it's shiny advertisement as Cyber Island and business in ICT hub to Africa, Mauritius is not on the latest track of available models in computer hardware or, in the context of this article, cellulars or smart-phone, or communication technology in general. Okay, I have to admit that this statement is only partly true. Money can buy, even here in Mauritius. Luckily, there are ways and ways to deal with this outcry of modern, read: technological, civilisation issues. Online shopping you might think? Yes, for sure, until you discover in your checkout procedure that a small island in the Indian Ocean isn't a preferred destination for delivery and the precious time you spent on putting your items into your cart and feeding your personal level of anticipation gets ruined on the last stint. Ordering from abroad saves you money Anyway, I got in touch with my personal courier and luckily there were some extra-kilos left in the luggage. First obstacle sorted, we have a Transporter! Okay, on the next occasion off to Amazon online and using their Prime service for fast delivery. Actually, the order was placed on Saturday evening and everything got delivered on Tuesday morning - nice job in less than 72 hours. Okay, among the items of that shopping rush I ordered a shiny Samsung Galaxy S III 16GB in oceanic blue - did I mention, that you hardly get a blue model in Mauritius? - for my BWE. Interesting side-notes: First, Amazon Germany dropped the prices for roughly 30% on the S3, and we got the 16GB model for less than 500 Euro (or approx. Rs. 19.500,-) compared to the usual Rs. 27.000,- on the local market. It even varies whether the local price is inclusive or exclusive VAT (15%). Second, since a while she was bothering me to get an iPhone and an iPad for her, fair enough I thought, decent hardware, posh design and reliable services. Until we watched the 'magical' introduction of Samsung's new models at the IFA exhibition, she read the bashing comments on Google+ on the iPhone 5 and I gave her a brief summary on the law suit between Apple and Samsung in the USA. So, yes, Samsung USA is right, the next big thing is already here - literally. My BWE loves the look and touch of the Galaxy S3. And for me it was more cost-effective in terms of purchases done at the App Store, ups, Play Store. Transfer of contacts, text messages and media files Okay, now that the hardware is in place, how to transfer all those contacts, text messages, media files, etc. between those two devices? In the past, I used to use the Nokia Communication Suite between various models but now for Android? Well, as usual Google and Bing are reliable friends and among the first hits I came across an article about How to Transfer Contacts from Nokia to Android. Couldn't be easier, right? Well, sort of... my main Windows systems are already running on Windows 8, and this actually caused problems with the mobile/smart-phone device drivers. The article provides the download for an older version 1.10 which upgrades to 2.11 (as time of writing this entry) but both couldn't get the Galaxy S3 and the Nokia connected. Shame on me... the product page clearly doesn't mention Windows 8 (for now) and Windows 8 isn't available for the general audience at all... After I took a spare machine running on Windows Vista everything went smooth. Software installed, upgrade done, device drivers for Android automatically downloaded and installed, and the same painless routine for the Nokia part. I think, I rebooted the system twice during the whole setup procedure but hey, it was more or less a distraction while coding some stuff in ASP.NET MVC and Telerik Kendo UI. The transfer of contacts and text messages was done via Wondershare MobileGo for Android, and all media files by moving the additional microSD card from one device to the other. But even without an external SD card, it would have been very easy to copy the files via Windows Explorer directly. Little catch and excellent service Fine, we are almost done and the only step left is to shift the SIM card... Ouch, gotcha! The X3 uses a standard size SIM card while the S III only accepts microSIM form factor. What an irony, bigger smartphone needs smaller SIM card. Luckily, the next showroom of Emtel is just 5 mins away up the road, and the service staff over there know their job. Finally, after roughly 10 mins of paper work, activation and small chit-chat, the S3 came to life on the mobile network. Owning a smart-phone now and knowing that my BWE would like to interact more on social networks away from home, especially to upload pictures and provide local 'check-ins', I activated a data package for her in advance, too. Even that it is Saturday, everything was already done and ready to be used. Nice bonus: The Emtel clerk directly offered me to set up the configuration for the Emtel data services, yes sure, go ahead, this saves me to search for that in the settings. Okay, spoiler-alert here, setting a static APN to access the Emtel network and the internet wouldn't be a challenge. But hey, she already had the phone in her hands and I could keep my eyes on the children. Well done, Emtel! Resume Thanks to the useful software package by Wondershare is was a hands-free experience to transfer all the data from a Nokia mobile on Symbian S60 to a Samsung Galaxy S III on Android Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS). In the future, this wont be a serious issue at all anymore thanks to synchronisation services and cloud storage. And for now, I'm only waiting for the official upgrades for Jelly Bean.

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Why are my USB 2.0 devices hanging Windows XP?

- by BenAlabaster

Background on the machine I'm having a problem with: The machine was inherited and appears to be circa 2003 (there's a date stamp on the power supply which leads me to this conclusion). I've got it set up as a Skype terminal for my 2 year old to keep in touch with her grandparents and other members of the family - which everyone loves. It has a DFI CM33-TL/G ATX (identified using SiSoft Sandra) motherboard hosting an Intel Celeron 1.3GHz CPU, 768Mb PC133 SDRAM, a D-LINK WDA-2320 54G Wi-Fi network card and a generic USB 2.0 expansion board based on the NEC uPD720102 chipset containing 3 external and 1 internal USB sockets. It's also hosting a 1.44Mb floppy drive on FDD0, a new 80Gb Western Digital hard drive running as master on IDE0 and a Panasonic DVD+/-RW running as master on IDE1. All this is sitting in a slimline case running off a Macron Power MPT-135 135W Flex power supply. The motherboard is running a version of Award BIOS 05/24/2002-601T-686B-6A6LID4AC-00. Could this be updated? If so, from where? I've raked through the manufacturer's website but can't find any hint of downloads for either drivers or BIOS updates. The hard disk is freshly formatted and built with Windows XP Professional/Service Pack 3 and is up to date with all current patches. In addition to Windows XP, the only other software it's running is Skype 4.1 (4.2 hangs the whole machine as soon as it starts up, requiring a hard boot to recover). It's got a Daytek MV150 15" touch screen hooked up to the on board VGA and COM1 sockets with the most current drivers from the Daytek website and the most current version of ELO-Touchsystems drivers for the touch component. The webcam is a Logitech Webcam C200 with the latest drivers from the Logitech website. The problem: If I hook any devices to the USB 2.0 sockets, it hangs the whole machine and I have to hard boot it to get it back up. If I have any devices attached to the USB 2.0 sockets when I boot up, it hangs before Windows gets to the login prompt and I have to hard boot it to recover. Workarounds found: I can plug the same devices into the on board USB 1.0 sockets and everything works fine, albeit at reduced performance. I've tried 3 different kinds of USB thumb drives, 3 different makes/models of webcams and my iPhone all with the same effect. They're recognized and don't hang the machine when I hook them to the USB 1.0 but if I hook them to the USB 2.0 ports, the machine hangs within a couple of seconds of recognizing the devices were connected. Attempted solutions: I've seen suggestions that this could be a power problem - that the PSU just doesn't have the wattage to drive these ports. While I'm doubtful this is the problem [after all the motherboard has the same standard connector regardless of the PSU wattage], I tried disabling all the on board devices that I'm not using - on board LAN, the second COM port, the AGP connector etc. through the BIOS in what I'm sure is a futile attempt to reduce the power consumption... I also modified the ACPI and power management settings. It didn't have any noticeable affect, although it didn't do any harm either. Could the wattage of the PSU really cause this problem? If it can, is there anything I need to be aware of when replacing it or do I just need to make sure it's got a higher wattage than the current one? My interpretation was that the wattage only affected the number of drives you could hook up to the power connectors, is that right? I've installed the USB card in another machine and it works without issue, so it's not a problem with the USB card itself, and Windows says the card is installed and working correctly... right up until I connect a device to it. The only thing I haven't done which I only just thought of while writing this essay is trying the USB 2.0 card in a different PCI slot, or re-ordering the wi-fi and USB cards in the slots... although I'm not sure if this will make any difference - does anyone have any experience that would suggest this might work? Other thoughts/questions: Perhaps this is an incompatibility between the USB 2.0 card and the BIOS, would re-flashing the BIOS with a newer version help? Do I need to be able to identify the manufacturer of the motherboard in order to be able to find a BIOS edition specific for this motherboard or will any version of Award BIOS function in its place? Question: Does anyone have any ideas that could help me get my USB 2.0 devices hooked up to this machine?

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Can someone explain the "use-cases" for the default munin graphs?

- by exhuma

When installing munin, it activates a default set of plugins (at least on ubuntu). Alternatively, you can simply run munin-node-configure to figure out which plugins are supported on your system. Most of these plugins plot straight-forward data. My question is not to explain the nature of the data (well... maybe for some) but what is it that you look for in these graphs? It is easy to install munin and see fancy graphs. But having the graphs and not being able to "read" them renders them totally useless. I am going to list standard plugins which are enabled by default on my system. So it's going to be a long list. For completeness, I am also going to list plugins which I think to understand and give a short explanation as to what I think it's used for. Pleas correct if I am wrong with any of them. So let me split this questions in three parts: Plugins where I don't even understand the data Plugins where I understand the data but don't know what I should look out for Plugins which I think to understand Plugins where I don't even understand the data These may contain questions that are not necessarily aimed at munin alone. Not understanding the data usually mean a gap in fundamental knowledge on operating systems/hardware.... ;) Feel free to respond with a "giyf" answer. These are plugins where I can only guess what's going on... I hardly want to look at these "guessing"... Disk IOs per device (IOs/second)What's an IO. I know it stands for input/output. But that's as far as it goes. Disk latency per device (Average IO wait)Not a clue what an "IO wait" is... IO Service TimeThis one is a huge mess, and it's near impossible to see something in the graph at all. Plugins where I understand the data but don't know what I should look out for IOStat (blocks/second read/written)I assume, the thing to look out for in here are spikes? Which would mean that the device is in heavy use? Available entropy (bytes)I assume that this is important for random number generation? Why would I graph this? So far the value has always been near constant. VMStat (running/I/O sleep processes)What's the difference between this one and the "processes" graph? Both show running/sleeping processes, whereas the "Processes" graph seems to have more details. Disk throughput per device (bytes/second read/written) What's thedifference between this one and the "IOStat" graph? inode table usageWhat should I look for in this graph? Plugins which I think to understand I'll be guessing some things here... correct me if I am wrong. Disk usage in percent (percent)How much disk space is used/remaining. As this is approaching 100%, you should consider cleaning up or extend the partition. This is extremely important for the root partition. Firewall Throughput (packets/second)The number of packets passing through the firewall. If this is spiking for a longer period of time, it could be a sign of a DOS attack (or we are simply recieving a large file). It can also give you an idea about your firewall performance. If it's levelling out and you need more "power" you should consider load balancing. If it's levelling out and see a correlation with your CPU load, it could also mean that your hardware is not fast enough. Correlations with disk usage could point to excessive LOG targets in you FW config. eth0 errors (packets in/out)Network errors. If this value is increasing, it could be a sign of faulty hardware. eth0 traffic (bits/second in/out)Raw network traffic. This should correlate with Firewall throughput. number of threadsAn ever-increasing value might point to a process not properly closing threads. Investigate! processesBreakdown of active processes (including sleeping). A quick spike in here might point to a fork-bomb. A slowly, but ever-increasing value might point to an application spawning sub-processes but not properly closing them. Investigate using ps faux. process priorityThis shows the distribution of process priorities. Having only high-priority processes is not of much use. Consider de-prioritizing some. cpu usageFairly straight-forward. If this is spiking, you may have an attack going on, or a process is hogging the CPU. Idf it's slowly increasing and approaching max in normal operations, you should consider upgrading your hardware (or load-balancing). file table usageNumber of actively open files. If this is reaching max, you may have a process opening, but not properly releasing files. load averageShows an summarized value for the system load. Should correlate with CPU usage. Increasing values can come from a number of sources. Look for correlations with other graphs. memory usageA graphical representation of you memory. As long as you have a lot of unused+cache+buffers you are fine. swap in/outShows the activity on your swap partition. This should always be 0. If you see activity on this, you should add more memory to your machine!

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Day 3 - XNA: Hacking around with images

- by dapostolov

Yay! Today I'm going to get into some code! My mind has been on this all day! I find it amusing how I practice, daily, to be "in the moment" or "present" and the excitement and anticipation of this project seems to snatch it away from me frequently. WELL!!! (Shakes Excitedly) Let's do this =)! Let's code! For these next few days it is my intention to better understand image rendering using XNA; after said prototypes are complete I should (fingers crossed) be able to dive into my game code using the design document I hammered out the other night. On a personal note, I think the toughest thing right now is finding the time to do this project. Each night, after my little ones go to bed I can only really afford a couple hours of work on this project. However, I hope to utilise this time as best as I can because this is the first time in a while I've found a project that I've been passionate about. A friend recently asked me if I intend to go 3D or extend the game design. Yes. For now I'm keeping it simple. Lastly, just as a note, as I was doing some further research into image rendering this morning I came across some other XNA content and lessons learned. I believe this content could have probably been posted in the first couple of posts, however, I will share the new content as I learn it at the end of each day. Maybe I'll take some time later to fix the posts but for now Installation and Deployment - Lessons Learned I had installed the XNA studio (Day 1) and the site instructions were pretty easy to follow. However, I had a small difficulty with my development environment. You see, I run a virtual desktop development environment. Even though I was able to code and compile all the tutorials the game failed to run...because I lacked a 3D capable card; it was not detected on the virtual box... First Lesson: The XNA runtime needs to "see" the 3D card! No sweat, Il copied the files over to my parent box and executed the program. ERROR. Hmm... Second Lesson (which I should have probably known but I let the excitement get the better of me): you need the XNA runtime on the client PC to run the game, oh, and don't forget the .Net Runtime! Sprite, it ain't just a Soft Drink... With these prototypes I intend to understand and perform the following tasks. learn game development terminology how to place and position (rotate) a static image on the screen how to layer static images on the screen understand image scaling can we reuse images? understand how framerate is handled in XNA how to display text , basic shapes, and colors on the screen how to interact with an image (collision of user input?) how to animate an image and understand basic animation techniques how to detect colliding images or screen edges how to manipulate the image, lets say colors, stretching how to focus on a segment of an image...like only displaying a frame on a film reel what's the best way to manage images (compression, storage, location, prevent artwork theft, etc.) Well, let's start with this "prototype" task list for now...Today, let's get an image on the screen and maybe I can mark a few of the tasks as completed... C# Prototype1 New Visual Studio Project Select the XNA Game Studio 3.1 Project Type Select the Windows Game 3.1 Template Type Prototype1 in the Name textbox provided Press OK. At this point code has auto-magically been created. Feel free to press the F5 key to run your first XNA program. You should have a blue screen infront of you. Without getting into the nitty gritty right, the code that was generated basically creates some basic code to clear the window content with the lovely CornFlowerBlue color. Something to notice, when you move your mouse into the window...nothing. ooooo spoooky. Let's put an image on that screen! Step A - Get an Image into the solution Under "Content" in your Solution Explorer, right click and add a new folder and name it "Sprites". Copy a small image in there; I copied a "Royalty Free" wizard hat from a quick google search and named it wizards_hat.jpg (rightfully so!) Step B - Add the sprite and position fields Now, open/edit Game1.cs Locate the following line: SpriteBatch spriteBatch; Under this line type the following: SpriteBatch spriteBatch; // the line you are looking for... Texture2D sprite; Vector2 position; Step C - Load the image asset Locate the "Load Content" Method and duplicate the following: protected override void LoadContent() { spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice); // your image name goes here... sprite = Content.Load<Texture2D>("Sprites\\wizards_hat"); position = new Vector2(200, 100); base.LoadContent(); } Step D - Draw the image Locate the "Draw" Method and duplicate the following: protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.CornflowerBlue); spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteBlendMode.AlphaBlend); spriteBatch.Draw(sprite, position, Color.White); spriteBatch.End(); base.Draw(gameTime); } Step E - Compile and Run Engage! (F5) - Debug! Your image should now display on a cornflowerblue window about 200 pixels from the left and 100 pixels from the top. Awesome! =) Pretty cool how we only coded a few lines to display an image, but believe me, there is plenty going on behind the scenes. However, for now, I'm going to call it a night here. Blogging all this progress certainly takes time... However, tomorrow night I'm going to detail what we just did, plus start checking off points on that list! I'm wondering right now if I should add pictures / code to this post...let me know if you want them =) Best Regards, D.

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Wireless internet connection connects but internet does not work (no packets received). Wired does.

- by Rodney

When I connect my PC via ethernet cable to my ADSL router it works fine. When I connect via Wireless it connects and the internet will work for a random amount of time and then stop working. It stays connected with a strong signal but no packets are received. My laptop/iphone are right next to it and wireless works fine. If I open the Wireless USB status, it says it is connected to my SSID with full strength (54 mps - I am 3 meteres away from my router) and the activty shows as Packets 594 SENT and 105 RECEIVED (this goes up VERY slowly) I have tried the following: Turned off anitvirus and firewall completely. Tested the wifi signal- I am writing this on my laptop which is next to my PC and also has full wifi strength. Tried a different wireless adapter - I dug out an old PCI wireless card - it does the exact same thing. Compared all wireless settings to my laptop. I can ping google.com and it replies (sometimes with packet loss) When I reboot the PC it will connect for a minute or two (random time) and then just stops again. I tried Firefox, IE etc. no joy I have updated all latest versions (Netgear WG111v2) and drivers Checked Event Log - nothing unusual Ping the router (and even connect as admin for the few minutes when the internet does work) Changed the MTU down to 1200 using DrTCP Checked Device Manager for conflicts - none. I ping the router from the PC (192.168.0.10 - 192.168.0.1) and it replies with 4 packets. BUT, on my router admin page (which I access via http on my laptop wirelessly) - if I ping 192.168.0.10 all packets timeout (pinging my laptop 192.168.0.12 works fine) My router admin page shows the leased IP address for 192.168.0.10 (ie it is definitely talking to the router initially) Now I am out of ideas - please help. I think it is an OS/Software issue as I have tried 2 different wireless adapaters (PCI and USB) with the same result but all other wireless devices work fine around mine). It's not the firewall. It is getting assigned an IP address correctly (my PC gets 192.168.0.10, my laptop is .12) It is assigned by DHCP. As soon as I plug in the ethernet cable it all works fine. Repairing the adapter sometimes helps but it will always stop working after a random time. The wireless adapter always shows as connected with Excellent signal but the internet does not work. I am running Windows XP SP3 and have tried a Netgear WG111v2 USB adapter. Thanks in advance! UPDATE: The internet seems to be working, it is just either sending packets too small or slow to work (some small pages load bits of them very slowly but then hang). XP seems to have a networking diagnostic app - here is the output: Last diagnostic run time: 08/30/10 08:16:38 IP Configuration Diagnostic Invalid IP address info Valid IP address detected: 192.168.0.10 IP Layer Diagnostic Corrupted IP routing table info The default route is valid info The loopback route is valid info The local host route is valid info The local subnet route is valid Invalid ARP cache entries action The ARP cache has been flushed Gateway Diagnostic Gateway info The following proxy configuration is being used by IE: Automatically Detect Settings:Disabled Automatic Configuration Script: Proxy Server: Proxy Bypass list: info This computer has the following default gateway entry(ies): 192.168.0.1 info This computer has the following IP address(es): 192.168.0.10 info The default gateway is in the same subnet as this computer info The default gateway entry is a valid unicast address info The default gateway address was resolved via ARP in 1 try(ies) info The default gateway was reached via ICMP Ping in 1 try(ies) info TCP port 80 on host 65.55.12.249 was successfully reached info The Internet host www.microsoft.com was successfully reached info The default gateway is OK DNS Client Diagnostic DNS - Not a home user scenario info Using Web Proxy: no info Resolving name ok for (www.microsoft.com): yes No DNS servers DNS failure HTTP, HTTPS, FTP Diagnostic HTTP, HTTPS, FTP connectivity info FTP (Passive): Successfully connected to ftp.microsoft.com. info HTTP: Successfully connected to www.microsoft.com. warn HTTPS: Error 12002 connecting to www.microsoft.com: The operation timed out warn HTTPS: Error 12002 connecting to www.passport.net: The operation timed out error Could not make an HTTPS connection. info Redirecting user to support call WinSock Diagnostic WinSock status info All base service provider entries are present in the Winsock catalog. info The Winsock Service provider chains are valid. info Provider entry MSAFD Tcpip [TCP/IP] passed the loopback communication test. info Provider entry MSAFD Tcpip [UDP/IP] passed the loopback communication test. info Provider entry RSVP UDP Service Provider passed the loopback communication test. info Provider entry RSVP TCP Service Provider passed the loopback communication test. info Connectivity is valid for all Winsock service providers. Wireless Diagnostic Wireless - Service disabled Wireless - User SSID action User input required: Specify network name or SSID Wireless - First time setup info The Wireless Network name (SSID) to which the user would like to connect = RodSof Wifi. Wireless - Radio off info Valid IP address detected: 192.168.0.10 Wireless - Out of range Wireless - Hardware issue Wireless - Novice user Wireless - Ad-hoc network Wireless - Less preferred Wireless - 802.1x enabled Wireless - Configuration mismatch Wireless - Low SNR Network Adapter Diagnostic Network location detection info Using home Internet connection Network adapter identification info Network connection: Name=Local Area Connection 2, Device=Realtek RTL8168C(P)/8111C(P) PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet NIC, MediaType=LAN, SubMediaType=LAN info Network connection: Name=Wireless USB, Device=NETGEAR WG111v2 54Mbps Wireless USB 2.0 Adapter, MediaType=LAN, SubMediaType=WIRELESS info Both Ethernet and Wireless connections available, prompting user for selection action User input required: Select network connection info Wireless connection selected Network adapter status info Network connection status: Connected HTTP, HTTPS, FTP Diagnostic HTTP, HTTPS, FTP connectivity info FTP (Active): Successfully connected to ftp.microsoft.com. warn HTTP: Error 12007 connecting to www.microsoft.com: The server name or address could not be resolved warn HTTP: Error 12002 connecting to www.hotmail.com: The operation timed out warn HTTPS: Error 12002 connecting to www.passport.net: The operation timed out warn HTTPS: Error 12002 connecting to www.microsoft.com: The operation timed out error Could not make an HTTP connection. error Could not make an HTTPS connection.

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Summary of the Solaris 11 webcast's livechat QnA session

- by Karoly Vegh

This is a followup post to the previous summary on the "What's new with Solaris 11 since the launch" webcast. That webcast has had a chatroom for a live Questions and Answers session running. I went through the archive of those and compiled a list of some of the (IMHO) most relevant and most frequently asked questions, I'd like to share. This is the first part, covering the QnA of Session I and II of the webcast, in a followup post we can have a look of the rest of the sessions if required - let me know in the comments. Also, should you have questions, as usual, feel free to ask those there, too. ...and here come the answered questions: When will Exadata be based on Solaris in place of Oracle Enterprise Linux?Exadata offers both Solaris 11 or Oracle Enterprise Linux. The choice can be made at deployment time based on your OS needs.What are all other benefits and futures avilable in solaris 11 (cloud O.S.) compared to cloud based Red Hat Linux and Windows?suggest you check out our cloud white paper for a view of this. Also the OTN Solaris 11 page has some good articles. Here are the links: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris11/documentation/o11-106-sol11-cloud-501066.pdf http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris11/overview/index.htmlWill 11.1 have a more complete IPS respository for Oracle and FOSS software?Yes, we are adding additional packages to the various package repositories. Since Solaris 11 was launched, both the Oracle Solaris Studio tools as well as Oracle Solaris Cluster have been made available along with numerous new FOSS packages. We will continue to be adding additional Oracle products and open source packages in the future. Will Exadata be based on Sparc in place of intel-amd x86 in next future ?We can't publically discuss futures, but we actually have a SPARC version of Exadata today, it's called SuperCluster, this is such a powerfull multipurpose system that it actually have multiple personalities built into one system: Exadata, Exalogic, and it can be a general purpose platform if you want. Have I understood this right? Livepatching KSplice-style is coming to Solaris 11 too?We're looking at that for certain types of Solaris patches in the future.Will there be a security framework like SST/JASS for Solaris 11?We can't talk about the future projects on a public forum, but we recognize the need for SST/JASS and want to address this as soon as possible. On the other side there are a whole bunch of "best practices" that are now embedded into Solaris 11 by default, so out of the box Solaris 11 should already address part of what SST/JASS gave you. (For example we did a lot of work on improving the auditing performance so that we can now have it turned on by default). On x86 can install VirtualBox in a Zone and use that to host other OSes.Yes, this was one of the first things we made sure would work when we acquired VirtualBox when we were still Sun Microsystems. If I have a Solaris 11 Control Domain on a T-series, can I run a Solaris 10 Ldom with Solaris 8 branded containers?Yes, you can.Is Oracle Solaris free or do we need to purchase?Solaris is free, the entitlement to run it comes either with a Sun system (new or historical) or for 3rd party systems the entitlement comes with a support contract. Note that for production use you will be expected to get a support contract. If you don't want to use the Solaris system (Sun or 3rd party) for production use (i.e. development) you can get an OTN license on the Oracle Technical Network website. Will encryption and deduplication both work on a share?This should work at the same time. What approaches does Solaris use to monitor usage?There are many different tools in Solaris to monitor usage. The main ones are the "stats" (vmstat, mpstat, prstat, ...), the kstat interface, and DTrace (to get details you couldn't see before). And then there are layered tools that can interface with these tools (Ops Center, BMC, CA, Tivoli, ...) Apart little-endian, big-endian how is it easy to port Solaris applications on Sparc to x86 and vice-versa ?Very easy. Except for certain hardware specific applications (those that utilize hardware specific drivers), all of the same Oracle Solaris APIs exist for all architectures. Is IPS based patching aware of the fact that zones can reside on ZFS and move from one physical server to another ?IPS is definitely aware of zones and uses ZFS to support boot environments for non-global zones in the same way that's used for the global zone. With respect to moving a zone from one physical server to another, Solaris 11 supports to the same zone attach/deattach method that was introduced in Solaris 10. Is vnic support in Ldoms planned?This is currently being investigated for a future LDOM release. Is it possible with the new patching system to build a system later with the same patch level as a system built a few months earlier?Yes, you can choose/define exactly which version should go to the system and it will always put the same bits in place. The technical answer is that you choose the version of the "entire" package you want on the system and the rest flows from there. Is it in the plans to allow zones to add/remove zpools to running zones dynamically in future updates?Work in this area is currently under investigation. Any plans to realese Solaris 11 source code? i.e. opensolaris?We currently can't comment on publicly releasing the source code. If you need/want this access please let your Oracle account team know. What about VirtualBox and Solaris11 for virtualization?Solaris 11 works great with VirtualBox, as both a client and a host system. Will Oracle DB software eventually be supplied as IPS packages? When?We don't have a date yet but this is actively being worked on. What are the new artifacts in Oracle Solaris 11 than the previous versions?There are quite a few actually. The best start is to look at our "Evaluate Solaris 11" page, and there you also can find a Transition Guide. http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris11/overview/evaluate-1530234.html So, this seems just like RedHat's YUM environment?IPS offers certain features beyond those in YUM or other packaging systems. For example, IPS works with ZFS and Solaris Boot Environments to provide a safe environment for software lifecycle management so that changes can be reverted by switching to an older boot environment. With Zones on solaris 11, can I do paravirtualitation?The great thing about zones is you don't *need* paravirtualization. You're making the same direct kernel calls that you would outside of a zone. It's an incredibly significant performance win over hypervisor-based virtualization. Are zones/containers officially supported to run Oracle Databases? EBIZ?Hi Calvin, the answer is yes, here is the support matrix for DB: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/virtualizationmatrix-172995.html I've found some nasty bugs in Solaris 11 (one of which today) that have been fixed in community forks (i.e., Illumos). Will Oracle ever restart collaboration with the community?We continue to work with the community, just not as open on all projects as we did before (For example IPS is an open project) and the source of more than half of the Solaris packages is posted on our opensource websites. I can't comment on what we will do in the future. And with regards to bugs please file them through the support organization and we will get them resolved. Is zpool vdev removal on-the fly now possible ?This issue is actively being investigated although we don't have a date for when this feature will be available. Is pgstat now the official replacement for corestat ?It's intended to provide similar functionality Where are the opensource website?For Oracle Solaris, visit http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/opensource/systems-solaris-1562786.html As a cloud-scale virtualization, is it going to be easier to move zones between machines? maybe even automatic in case of a hardware failure?Hi Gashaw, we already have customers that have implemented what they refer to as "flying zones" that they can move around very easily. They use Solaris Cluster to do this. What about VMware vMotion like feature?We have secure live migration with both Logical Domains on SPARC T series systems, and with Oracle VM on x86 systems. When running Solaris 10/11 on an enterprise server with a lot of zones, what are best practises commands to show the system is running fine? (has enough hardware resources). For example CPU / Memory / I/O / system load. What are the recommended values?For Solaris 11, look into the new zonestat(1M) command that provides a great deal of information about zone utilization. In addition, there is new work underway in providing additional observability in areas such as per-zone file system I/O. Java optimizations done with Solaris 11? For X86 platforms too? Where can I find more detail about this?There is lots of work that go into optimizing Java for Oracle Solaris 10 & 11 on both SPARC and x86. See http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-dev/solarisforjavadevelop-168642.pdf What is meant by "ZFS Shadow Migration"?It's a way to migrate data from another file system to ZFS: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23824_01/html/E24456/filesystem-3.html Is flash archive available with S11?Flash archive is not. There is a procedure for disaster recovery, and we're working on a modern archive-based deployment tool for a future update. The disaster recovery tool is here: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/o11-091-sol-dis-recovery-489183.html You can also use Distribution Constructor to build common golden images. Will solaris 11 be available on the ODA soon?The idea's under evaluation -- we'll share your interest with the team. What steps can be taken to ensure that breaches of security are identified quickly?There are a number of tools, including the "bart" tool and "pkg verify" to ensure that software has not been compromised. Solaris Audit can also be used to detect unauthorized access. You can also use Immutable Zones to protect against compromise. There are a wide variety of security tools, and I've covered only a few. What is the relation from solaris to java 7 speed optimization?There is constant work done between the Oracle Solaris and Java teams on performance optimizations. See http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/technotes/guides/vm/performance-enhancements-7.html for examples. What is the difference in the Solaris 11 installation compared to solaris 10 ? where i can find the document describing basic repository concepts ?The best place to start is: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris11/index.html Hope you found the post useful. For questions, input, requests for the second half of the QnA, please find the comment section below. -- charlie

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alot questings since i wanted to make a new SSB game or mario game(that use 3d models) [closed]

- by user20465

i have just started to study programming and i know already ppl will say why make a so big project like as a SSB game for a noob game development? cuz i always wanted a SSB engine like as Mugen is a fighter game engine but is not like as SSB´s gameplay + is not using 3d models too so i will call it SSBmugen(until i find a better title for it i got afew ideas for titles) also i wanted to make this game so it can use SSBbrawl files(models+animations mainly) the moveset+Stage coding files i wanted to redo cuz so anything can be possible like make a teleporter or a pipe teleporter(like as Super mario bros game) on a stag e or make some stuff there is impossible in SSBbrawl for moveset coding but is not in SSBmugen like make so a char. summon a Clone and the clone will do a attack and then is gone or some attacks/moves also i will make a moveset/stage Coding editor so it will be really easy to make moveset/stages coding for yours 3d models/animations moveset+stage Coding i mean: hitboxes/hurtboxes/moving Stuff/moving bones like cape or hair bones that is moving by wind effects or falling or other stuff like that/other stuff that needed to be coded i have planed to make a editor(for moveset/char. coding) or add the editor in brawlbox for my game so other ppl can easy make moveset/stages Coding to they´s models/animations so it will be easy so even kids can make a custom movesets/stages why using SSBbrawl files?: cuz ppl have made alot of models or textures/custom movesets/custom stages like goku/other anime/not brawl stuff for super smash bros brawl hacking(a.k.a modding) so ppl dont have to redo anything if they wanted to have the custom models or textures/custom movesets/custom stages from SSBbrawl to SSBmugen +there is the program named brawlbox that can open brawl files like model/animations and can edit models or animations and import models from 3ds max to be the right model format for SSBbrawl and i also wanted it so easy to add(a.k.a installer) Recolours or alt. models(like as oneslot doctor mario model over mario´s boneset) or textures/Movesets/new char. slots/new stages so easy so you only needing to download themplace them in right foldername them the right nameStart the gameRecolours or alt. models or textures/Movesets/new char. slots/new stages works an loading right so you wont needing to edit any files for add something so kids/not so smart ppl can easy use the mods other ppl is making/uploading for this game here is the file format i wanted to know if they can be readed/opened if making a game that use these files: .mld0(brawl model file) .chr0(model animation for moving/scale/rota the bones) .srt0(animations for texture like moving eyes or blinking) .vis0(Animations for get polygons to hide/show with visibilitybones on the model there is also some polygons there ) .brres(a file format where stuff like model files or textures or animations is inside) .pac(a file format where the .brres is inside to keep model+textures+model for the shadow in 1 file) .wav (for SoundFX effects or voices to char. or stages) i am sure that one is possible the .wav files is inside a other file format for brawl but that file can´t you add more .wav files inside only replace so i wanted the .wav files outside so its easy to add/replace/remove SoundFX effects or voices to char. or stages .brstm(brawl music file so the music is looped perfect so it loop in middel of the music and not start over again then the music is done) afew more file formats (mainly for the Graphics effects like fire/aura/hit effects if not needing to redo them)so only coding in the editor i will make is needed to be done for port a SSBB hack(a.k.a mod)(moveset/stage coding) to this game wanted the game to be able to load these files and load them right like if loading wait1.chr0(idle animation) it will also load at same time wait1.srt0/wait1.vis0 and all kinda of animations is inside the same .brres file i am needing since it to be able to load the file format i wanted cuz: -the animations can´t be converted to any other animation file format and i dont think ppl want to redo these animations(inc. me for Goku to SSBbrawl) -models can be converted but then they lose all the shader/materials stuff like a shine effect or lighting on the model -.brstm can be converted to .wav but then there will be no loop so i prefer it can load this file format too for the music to stage/menu -brawlbox is really easy to use for make animation for the char. and import models from 3ds max so even around "not too stupid" 10 year kids can make SSBB mods(not try to be rude but to say how easy it is) also i wanted the folder setup for characters/stages/moveset/other stuff to be like this: https://www.dropbox.com/s/2oolm5z5ri234tz/SSBmugen%20Folder%20setup.txt just uploaded a txt file since it is a wall of text and this post is already a wall of test so it easy to place stuff (if not i do a program for to that so it auto place the stuff on right place) not 100% sure what to use of game engine to make this possible but i got a dll file from that brawlbox program that can open/read/edit these file formats if that helps i also got open source of brawlbox i have kinda learned programming(since its kinda the same thing but still not 100% same) from Super smash bros modding/hacking like coding a moveset for the new animations/models + have readed alittle about it but i am soon starting for real to study it for ppl who is alittle confuse for what i am asking for here is the list: -what game engine should i use to make a SSB clone? but at same time to make all this stuff i just said possible so ppl can make they own mods and share them and use the already made mods from SSBbrawl? and easy to use aswell so noob programmors can use it? -where to learning programming on internet to be even more ready to make a game like this? and dont wanted to start in the small like making small boring 2d games that no one care about anyway ps. i am also planing a other project like as SSBmugen but it will be Super mario bros open (again tittle unsure but open means open source) i will make a Mario game engine that also use 3d models and can have 2d or 3d gameplay with any mario powerups/gameplay(from any mario platform games) there is ever made multiplayer like as in New super mario bros wii maybe multiplay over lan or online but for now over 1 PC also alittle planed for that to my SSBmugen a Level/world map editor for it too(easy to use so even kids can use it and make levels for it) so it just place the objects/enemies and options for them enemies since they are not 100% same AI in all mario game like to choose a goomba have AI from SM64 the Editor will be able to change the gameplay on a level while have a other gameplay on a other level like this: 1 level have Super mario bros 3 gameplay (then it will be a 3d model remake) a other level have super mario galaxy gameplay but in a Super mario 3d land level yet a other level have super mario 64 gameplay but with powerups from a other mario game like powerups from mario 3d land or can ride on Yoshi so you can easy remake your fav. level from a old mario game in this mario engine/editor or just make a custom one with yours fav. mario gameplay/powerups so it will be like turn off/on: walljump/triple jump/other kinda or jumps/2x punch and 1 kick+Air kick/SMG spin attack/Fludd/other stuff like that so you can make the gameplay from the first mario game to the newest or make custom gameplay on a level also the star(from 64/sunshine/galaxy) will be replaced with the flag from new super mario bros/mario 3d land since the game is not so much about getting stars its more about making/download the levels you wanted and share them to other ppl and play these level so after have killed like the boss from SM64 bomb omb field(if one have made that) you will get the flag instead of star since i wanted it to be simple to make levels in the editor to make the bosses/new enemies/new powerups/custom char. idk what to do to make that simple yet also thinking the mario game will use brawl files since it almost already got all needed animations/models for this since i dont wanted to redo animations/models and if needing more animations i can just make them easy in brawlbox since thats the program i am most used to make animations but that will be after my SSBmugen project if not this game will be easyer then SSBmugen to make since i am planing then 1 of them is done i use the that game as base to make the other (since both is kinda platfrom games and possible using same file format for both) also wanted to ask what is best to start with out of these 2 games? also will maybe make a DLC site(or ingame) for both of these games if they get done so it wont end up like as Mugen where you needing to look all over the internet to find the stuff you wanted but for my game all the mods for my game is on same place not sure about online mode for SSBmugen or super mario bros open but i can always add that then i get better at programming both games also need to have options on controls/if using joystick also that i have planed these game for a long time and got even more ideas for them but first i wanted to get them to work so i can add the other stuff later(like DLC or online mode or some other stuff later) right now i know 0,0001% to programming(in my option) maybe i know more then that since i have been study it alittle but i learning while making stuff like this that was also my plan for make these game learn while making them and get better to programming so again i say it i kinda dont want to hear dont do these projects cuz i already know it will be hard so dont wanted so much to heard stuff like: you can´t do it since you just started learning programming or this project will fail since somewhere i needing to get started with programming and this is where i want to start to make my dream games(possible other´s dream games too) and i dont think this project will fail if i work hard on it (as i possible will) and ppl will maybe help i think this was all my questing/ideas for now (sorry for it sounds more like ideas then questings) but i needing to say my ideas so you ppl can see what i needing to use for make this possible

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apache tomcat loadbalancing clustering on ubuntu

- by user740010

i am facing a problem in clustering the tomcat with apache as a loadbalancer using mod_jk on ubuntu. i have install apache2 on my ubuntu 11.04 and i have downloaded tomcat7 created two copies and kept them at two different location. 1st one is at /home/net4u/vishal/test/tomcatA 2nd one is at /home/net4u/vishal/test1/tomcatB i have made following changes to server.xml file in /conf folder 1. <Server port="8205" shutdown="SHUTDOWN"> 2. <Connector port="8280" protocol="HTTP/1.1" connectionTimeout="20000" redirectPort="8443" /> 3.<Connector port="8209" protocol="AJP/1.3" redirectPort="8443" /> <Engine name="Catalina" defaultHost="localhost" jvmRoute="tomcatB"> 4. <Cluster className="org.apache.catalina.ha.tcp.SimpleTcpCluster"/> similarly i have modified other tomcat i.e tomcatA server.xml content of the server.xml is as follow: --    <Connector port="8280" protocol="HTTP/1.1" connectionTimeout="20000" redirectPort="8443" />      <Connector port="8109" protocol="AJP/1.3" redirectPort="8443" />   <Engine name="Catalina" defaultHost="localhost" jvmRoute="tomcatB">   <Cluster className="org.apache.catalina.ha.tcp.SimpleTcpCluster"/>  <Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.LockOutRealm">  <Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.UserDatabaseRealm" resourceName="UserDatabase"/> </Realm> <Host name="localhost" appBase="webapps" unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true">    <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve" directory="logs" prefix="localhost_access_log." suffix=".txt" pattern="%h %l %u %t "%r" %s %b" resolveHosts="false"/> </Host> </Engine> i have install libapache2-mod-jk step 1. i have Created jk.load file in /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/jk.load content is as follows: LoadModule jk_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_jk.so Create /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/jk.conf: JkWorkersFile /etc/apache2/workers.properties JkLogFile /var/log/apache2/jk.log JkMount /ecommerce/* worker1 JkMount /images/* worker1 JkMount /content/* worker1 step 2. Created workers.properties file in /etc/apache2/workers.properties content is as follows: workers.tomcat_home=/home/vishal/Desktop/test/tomcatA workers.java_home=/usr/lib/jvm/default-java ps=/ worker.list=tomcatA,tomcatB,loadbalancer worker.tomcatA.port=8109 worker.tomcatA.host=localhost worker.tomcatA.type=ajp13 worker.tomcatA.lbfactor=1 worker.tomcatB.port=8209 worker.tomcatB.host=localhost worker.tomcatB.type=ajp13 worker.tomcatB.lbfactor=1 worker.loadbalancer.type=lb worker.loadbalancer.balanced_workers=tomcatA,tomcatB worker.loadbalancer.sticky_session=1 i tried the same thing on the windows machine it is working.

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, September 11, 2012

CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, September 11, 2012Popular ReleasesMetodología General Ajustada - MGA: 03.01.04: Cambios Parmenio: Envio actualizaciones al formato PRO_F02, costos y fuentes. Se debe ejecutar el script en la base de datos. Soluciona problema que al tener varias alternativas, traiga en el formulario PR-02 los costos de la otra alternativa. Cambios John: Integración de código con cambios enviados por Parmenio Bonilla. Generación de instaladores. Soporte técnico por correo electrónico y telefónico. Restauración y recuperación de dos proycetos de Bakcup de Base de Datos de Chocó.Arduino for Visual Studio: Arduino 1.x for Visual Studio 2012, 2010 and 2008: Register for the visualmicro.com forum for more news and updates Version 1209.10 includes support for VS2012 and minor fixes for the Arduino debugger beta test team. Version 1208.19 is considered stable for visual studio 2010 and 2008. If you are upgrading from an older release of Visual Micro and encounter a problem then uninstall "Visual Micro for Arduino" using "Control Panel>Add and Remove Programs" and then run the install again. Key Features of 1209.10 Support for Visual Studio 2...Microsoft Script Explorer for Windows PowerShell: Script Explorer Reference Implementation(s): This download contains Source Code and Documentation for Script Explorer DB Reference Implementation. You can create your own provider and use it in Script Explorer. Refer to the documentation for more information. The source code is provided "as is" without any warranty. Read the Readme.txt file in the SourceCode.Social Network Importer for NodeXL: SocialNetImporter(v.1.5): This new version includes: - Fixed the "resource limit" bug caused by Facebook - Bug fixes To use the new graph data provider, do the following: Unzip the Zip file into the "PlugIns" folder that can be found in the NodeXL installation folder (i.e "C:\Program Files\Social Media Research Foundation\NodeXL Excel Template\PlugIns") Open NodeXL template and you can access the new importer from the "Import" menuAcDown????? - AcDown Downloader Framework: AcDown????? v4.1: ??●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?? ??...Move Mouse: Move Mouse 2.5.2: FIXED - Minor fixes and improvements.MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 2.3: Added The new release is compatible with Mvc4 RTM. Support for handling Time Zones in dates. Specifically added helper methods to convert to UTC or local time all DateTimes contained in a model received by a controller, and helper methods to handle date only fileds. This together with a detailed documentation on how TimeZones are handled in all situations by the Asp.net Mvc framework, will contribute to mitigate the nightmare of dates and timezones. Multiple Templates, and more options to...DNN Metro7 style Skin package: Metro7 style Skin for DotNetNuke 06.02.00: Maintenance Release Changes on Metro7 06.02.00 Fixed width and height on the jQuery popup for the Editor. Navigation Provider changed to DDR menu Added menu files and scripts Changed skins to Doctype HTML Changed manifest to dnn6 manifest file Changed License to HTML view Fixed issue on Metro7/PinkTitle.ascx with double registering of the Actions Changed source folder structure and start folder, so the project works with the default DNN structure on developing Added VS 20...Mishra Reader: Mishra Reader Beta 4: Additional bug fixes and logging in this release to try to find the reason some users aren't able to see the main window pop up. Also, a few UI tweaks to tighten up the feed item list. This release requires the final version of .NET 4.5. If the ClickOnce installer doesn't work for you, please try the additional setup exe.Xenta Framework - extensible enterprise n-tier application framework: Xenta Framework 1.9.0: Release Notes Imporved framework architecture Improved the framework security More import/export formats and operations New WebPortal application which includes forum, new, blog, catalog, etc. UIs Improved WebAdmin app. Reports, navigation and search Perfomance optimization Improve Xenta.Catalog domain More plugin interfaces and plugin implementations Refactoring Windows Azure support and much more... Package Guide Source Code - package contains the source code Binaries...Json.NET: Json.NET 4.5 Release 9: New feature - Added JsonValueConverter New feature - Set a property's DefaultValueHandling to Ignore when EmitDefaultValue from DataMemberAttribute is false Fix - Fixed DefaultValueHandling.Ignore not igoring default values of non-nullable properties Fix - Fixed DefaultValueHandling.Populate error with non-nullable properties Fix - Fixed error when writing JSON for a JProperty with no value Fix - Fixed error when calling ToList on empty JObjects and JArrays Fix - Fixed losing deci...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.66: Just going to bite the bullet and rip off the band-aid... SEMI-BREAKING CHANGE! Well, it's a BREAKING change to those who already adjusted their projects to use the previous breaking change's ill-conceived renamed DLLs (versions 4.61-4.65). For those who had not adapted and were still stuck in this-doesn't-work-please-fix-me mode, this is more like a fixing change. The previous breaking change just broke too many people, I'm sorry to say. Renaming the DLL from AjaxMin.dll to AjaxMinLibrary.dl...DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 07.00.00 CTP (Not for Production Use): NOTE: New Minimum Requirementshttp://www.dotnetnuke.com/Portals/25/Blog/Files/1/3418/Windows-Live-Writer-1426fd8a58ef_902C-MinimumVersionSupport_2.png Simplified InstallerThe first thing you will notice is that the installer has been updated. Not only have we updated the look and feel, but we also simplified the overall install process. You shouldn’t have to click through a series of screens in order to just get your website running. With the 7.0 installer we have taken an approach that a...WinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.2.2: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Windows 8 RTM SDK. Download the latest source from the SOURCE CODE page. 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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 AsyncUI extensions Controls and control extensions Converters Debugging helpers Imaging IO helpers VisualTree helpers Samples Recent changes NOTE: Namespace changes DebugConsol...BIDS Helper: BIDS Helper 1.6.1: In addition to fixing a number of bugs that beta testers reported, this release includes the following new features for Tabular models in SQL 2012: New Features: Tabular Display Folders Tabular Translations Editor Tabular Sync Descriptions Fixed Issues: Biml issues 32849 fixing bug in Tabular Actions Editor Form where you type in an invalid action name which is a reserved word like CON or which is a duplicate name to another action 32695 - fixing bug in SSAS Sync Descriptions whe...Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.9.0: Whats newThe media section has been overhauled to support HTML5 uploads, just drag and drop files in, even multiple files are supported on any HTML5 capable browser. The folder content overview is also much improved allowing you to filter it and perform common actions on your media items. The Rich Text Editor’s “Media” button now uses an embedder based on the open oEmbed standard (if you’re upgrading, enable the media button in the Rich Text Editor datatype settings and set TidyEditorConten...WordMat: WordMat v. 1.02: This version was used for the 2012 exam.Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks OData Feed: The AdventureWorks OData service exposes resources based on specific SQL views. The SQL views are a limited subset of the AdventureWorks database that results in several consuming scenarios: CompanySales Documents ManufacturingInstructions ProductCatalog TerritorySalesDrilldown WorkOrderRouting How to install the sample You can consume the AdventureWorks OData feed from http://services.odata.org/AdventureWorksV3/AdventureWorks.svc. You can also consume the AdventureWorks OData fe...Desktop Google Reader: 1.4.6: Sorting feeds alphabetical is now optional (see preferences window)Droid Explorer: Droid Explorer 0.8.8.7 Beta: Bug in the display icon for apk's, will fix with next release Added fallback icon if unable to get the image/icon from the Cloud Service Removed some stale plugins that were either out dated or incomplete. Added handler for *.ab files for restoring backups Added plugin to create device backups Backups stored in %USERPROFILE%\Android Backups\%DEVICE_ID%\ Added custom folder icon for the android backups directory better error handling for installing an apk bug fixes for the Runn...New Projects&*^&hjkdhasdas;!231231+_)_(asldjhdasjkdhasjkd!#$: aaaaaasdsadsbob.js: bob.js is a JavaScript framework which will help you design better JavaScript objects, and to write better JavaScript code in general.CS559: CS559 - Graphics project at UW MadisonEjemplodeProyectosII: El sisguiente es un ejemplo de pruebasHow to apply MVC to mobile project: I am setting up simple ASP NET MVC test project in order to demonstrate how to create cross-platform webdelivery backend with ASP.NET IntelsiWEB: Proyecto Intelsi WEBjass: xcxczzzzccxzcxcxzcxzcxMajo Proyecto de Prueba: Este proyecto es un proyectoManaged silverlight roaches: Just roaches for silverlight. nothing moreMetro Jalali Calendar: The Jalali Calendar for Windows 8 Metro User Interface. "Jalali Calendar" aka "Shamsi Calendar" aka "Iranian Calendar"MyBackupTool: Basic c# .net 4.0 library to help copy files / folders, very simple to use.NCT Inventory System: This is a sample Inventory System ProjectNDEF Library for Proximity APIs (NFC): Easily parse and create NDEF records with C# and the Windows Proximity APIs (NFC).OAMaster: Help company to manage their information of staff.Open School Management System: Open School Management System is an open source initiative that I am undertaking to contribute to the society that we live in.Oscilloscope Frequency Calculator: Oscilloscope Frequency Calculator Gives you the frequency when you have a analogue oscilloscopePCControl: testPersonal Expenses: A simple web application to track personal expenses.PMOM: project management tool on SharePointpostback tutorial: This is a tutorial project.ProjectJabbr910: pappaProyecto: Primer proyectoProyecto Cachanga: Demo proyectos 2Proyecto de Prueba: Demo proyecto 2Proyecto Integrador 2: CURSO : PROYECTO INTEGRADOR 2 DEMOProyecto Integrador Para Soluciones Empresariales: Demo Proyecto 2Proyecto Integrador Soluciones Empresariales II - 2012-2: Demo proyectos 2Proyecto Prueba: practica codeplexRaquelAzureProject: Test projectSILAS: Sistema de Información Local de Agua Y Saneamiento: Sistema de Información Local para el Área de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales de la Municipalidad Provincial de CajamarcaSilasPro: Proyecto de proyecto integradorSistem LPK Pemkot Semarang versi x86: Sistem Laporan Pelaksanaan Kegiatan SKPD Kota Semarang khusus untuk komputer Windows 64 bitSSIS Compressed File Source and Destination Components: Compressed File Source and Destination Components for SSIS 2012.testscenairo7: kudutestTorrentTrafficInspector: IT Solution Georgia TowerDef: Ð? tài opensource c?a group môn CNPMUdpBBS: BBS that uses UDP messages for communication to allow small, simple clients to use IP connections to interact with the BBS.WPFYard: my wpf yardWPUtils: WPUtils provides out-of-box attached properties/behaviors to extent existing controls/components.XiSD: A simple XSD to C# code generation tool with support for included XSD files and data contract attributes.xxxxf32: xxx

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How to resolve "HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden" errors from iCal/CalDAV server after upgrade to Snow Leopard Server?

- by morgant

We recently upgraded our Open Directory Master & Replica to Mac OS X 10.6.4 Snow Leopard Server. We had a mismatched server FQDN & LDAP Search Base/Kerberos Realm, so we exported all users & groups, created the new Open Directory Master w/matching FQDN & Search Base/Realm, reimported users & groups, and re-bound all servers & workstations to the new OD Master. At the same time as all of this, we upgraded our iCal/CalDAV server to Mac OS X 10.6.4 Snow Leopard Server. Ever since doing so, we've seen the following issues with our iCal/CalDAV server and iCal clients on both Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard & Mac OS X 10.6: If a user attempts to move or delete an event (single or repeating) that was created prior to the upgrade to 10.6 Server, they get the following error: Access to "blah" in "blah" in account "blah" is not permitted. The server responded: "HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden" to operation CalDAVWriteEntityQueueableOperation. New users added to the directory get the following error when attempting to add their account to in iCal's preferences: The user "blah" has no configured pricipals. Confirm with your network administrator that your account has at least one CalDAV principal configured. Interestingly, we've since discovered that users seem to be able to delete individual events from an old repeating event without error, but that's a massive amount of work to get rid of a repeating event. I will note that we have not yet added an SRV record in DNS as instructed on page 19 of iCal_Server_Admin_v10.6.pdf. Further Investigation: In this particular case, a user is attempting to decline repeating events created prior to the upgrade to Snow Leopard Server. Granting the user full write access with sudo calendarserver_manage_principals --add-write-proxy users:user1 users:user2 (which did work) doesn't allow deletion of the events. Still get the usual error: Access to "blah blah" in "blah blah" in account "blah blah" is not permitted. The server responded: "HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden" to operation CalDAVWriteEntityQueueableOperation. The error that shows up in /var/log/caldavd/error.log on the iCal Server when attempting to delete one of the events is: 2011-03-17 15:14:30-0400 [-] [caldav-8009] [PooledMemCacheProtocol,client] [twistedcaldav.extensions#info] PUT /calendars/__uids__/XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX/calendar/XXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX.ics HTTP/1.1 2011-03-17 15:14:30-0400 [-] [caldav-8009] [PooledMemCacheProtocol,client] [twistedcaldav.scheduling.implicit#error] Cannot change ORGANIZER: UID:XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX And the error in /var/log/system.log on the client is: Mar 17 15:14:30 192-168-21-169-dhcp iCal[33509]: CalDAV CalDAVWriteEntityQueueableOperation failed: status 'HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden' request:\n\nBEGIN:VCALENDAR^M\nVERSION:2.0^M\nPRODID:-//Apple Inc.//iCal 3.0//EN^M\nCALSCALE:GREGORIAN^M\nBEGIN:VTIMEZONE^M\nTZID:US/Eastern^M\nBEGIN:DAYLIGHT^M\nTZOFFSETFROM:-0500^M\nTZOFFSETTO:-0400^M\nDTSTART:20070311T020000^M\nRRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=2SU^M\nTZNAME:EDT^M\nEND:DAYLIGHT^M\nBEGIN:STANDARD^M\nTZOFFSETFROM:-0400^M\nTZOFFSETTO:-0500^M\nDTSTART:20071104T020000^M\nRRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=11;BYDAY=1SU^M\nTZNAME:EST^M\nEND:STANDARD^M\nEND:VTIMEZONE^M\nBEGIN:VEVENT^M\nSEQUENCE:5^M\nDTSTART;TZID=US/Eastern:20090117T094500^M\nDTSTAMP:20081227T143043Z^M\nSUMMARY:blah blah^M\nATTENDEE;CN="First Last";CUTYPE=INDIVIDUAL;ROLE=REQ-PARTICIPANT:urn:uuid^M\n :XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX^M\nATTENDEE;CN="First Last";CUTYPE=INDIVIDUAL;PARTSTAT=ACCEPTED:mailto:user@d^M\n omain.tld^M\nEXDATE;TZID=US/Eastern:20110319T094500^M\nDTEND;TZID=US/Eastern:20090117T183000^M\nRRULE:FREQ=WEEKLY;INTERVAL=1^M\nTRANSP:OPAQUE^M\nUID:XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX^M\nORGANIZER;CN="First Last":mailto:[email protected]^M\nX-WR-ITIPSTATUSML:UNCLEAN^M\nCREATED:20110317T191348Z^M\nEND:VEVENT^M\nEND:VCALENDAR^M\n\n\n... response:\nHTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden^M\nDate: Thu, 17 Mar 2011 19:14:30 GMT^M\nDav: 1, access-control, calendar-access, calendar-schedule, calendar-auto-schedule, calendar-availability, inbox-availability, calendar-proxy, calendarserver-private-events, calendarserver-private-comments, calendarserver-principal-property-search^M\nContent-Type: text/xml^M\nContent-Length: 134^M\nServer: Twisted/8.2.0 TwistedWeb/8.2.0 TwistedCalDAV/2.5 (iCal Server v12.56.21)^M\n^M\n<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?><error xmlns='DAV:'>^M\n <valid-attendee-change xmlns='urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:caldav'/>^M\n</error> One thing I have noticed, and I'm not sure if this has any real effect is that in many of these pre-Snow Leopard Server migration events, the ORGANIZER is specified like the following: ORGANIZER;CN=First Last:mailto:[email protected] But newer ones are more like one of the two following: ORGANIZER;CN=First Last;[email protected];SCHEDULE-STATUS=1 ORGANIZER;CN=First Last;[email protected]:urn:uuid:XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX iCal_Server_Admin_v10.6.pdf notes that the ".db.sqlite" files are completely disposable, they're merely a performance cache and are re-built on the fly, so are safe to delete. I did delete the one for the organizer's calendars and it took longer to process the attempted event delete while it rebuilt the database, but still errored out in the end. FWIW the error is thrown by this code: https://trac.calendarserver.org/browser/CalendarServer/trunk/twistedcaldav/scheduling/implicit.py Any further suggestions? I see lots of questions about this in my Google searches, but not solutions and this is a widespread problem on our iCal Server. Now, we mostly try to get users to ignore them (hence the amount of time this question has been open), but every now and then I dig in deeper trying to find the culprit and/or solution.

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Neo4J and Azure and VS2012 and Windows 8

- by Chris Skardon

Now, I know that this has been written about, but both of the main places (http://www.richard-banks.org/2011/02/running-neo4j-on-azure.html and http://blog.neo4j.org/2011/02/announcing-neo4j-on-windows-azure.html) utilise VS2010, and well, I’m on VS2012 and Windows 8. Not that I think Win 8 had anything to do with it really, anyhews! I’m going to begin from the beginning, this is my first foray into running something on Azure, so it’s been a bit of a learning curve. But luckily the Neo4J guys have got us started, so let’s download the VS2010 solution: http://neo4j.org/get?file=Neo4j.Azure.Server.zip OK, the other thing we’ll need is the VS2012 Azure SDK, so let’s get that as well: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/downloads/ (I just did the full install). Now, unzip the VS2010 solution and let’s open it in VS2012: <your location>\Neo4j.Azure.Server\Neo4j.Azure.Server.sln One-way-upgrade? Yer! Ignore the migration report – we don’t care! Let’s build that sucker… Ahhh 14 errors… WindowsAzure does not exist in the namespace ‘Microsoft’ Not a problem right? We’ve installed the SDK, just need to update the references: We can ignore the Test projects, they don’t use Azure, we’re interested in the other projects, so what we’ll do is remove the broken references, and add the correct ones, so expand the references bit of each project: hunt out those yellow exclamation marks, and delete them! You’ll need to add the right ones back in (listed below), when you go to the ‘Add Reference’ dialog make sure you have ‘Assemblies’ and ‘Framework’ selected before you seach (and search for ‘microsoft.win’ to narrow it down) So the references you need for each project are: CollectDiagnosticsData Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Diagnostics Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient Diversify.WindowsAzure.ServiceRuntime Microsoft.WindowsAzure.CloudDrive Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ServiceRuntime Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient Right, so let’s build again… Sweet! No errors. Now we need to setup our Blobs, I’m assuming you are using the most up-to-date Java you happened to have downloaded :) in my case that’s JRE7, and that is located in: C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre7 So, zip up that folder into whatever you want to call it, I went with jre7.zip, and stuck it in a temp folder for now. In that same temp folder I also copied the neo4j zip I was using: neo4j-community-1.7.2-windows.zip OK, now, we need to get these into our Blob storage, this is where a lot of stuff becomes unstuck - I didn’t find any applications that helped me use the blob storage, one would crash (because my internet speed is so slow) and the other just didn’t work – sure it looked like it had worked, but when push came to shove it didn’t. So this is how I got my files into Blob (local first): 1. Run the ‘Storage Emulator’ (just search for that in the start menu) 2. That takes a little while to start up so fire up another instance of Visual Studio in the mean time, and create a new Console Application. 3. Manage Nuget Packages for that solution and add ‘Windows Azure Storage’ Now you’re set up to add the code: public static void Main() { CloudStorageAccount cloudStorageAccount = CloudStorageAccount.DevelopmentStorageAccount; CloudBlobClient client = cloudStorageAccount.CreateCloudBlobClient(); client.Timeout = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(30); CloudBlobContainer container = client.GetContainerReference("neo4j"); //This will create it as well UploadBlob(container, "jre7.zip", "c:\\temp\\jre7.zip"); UploadBlob(container, "neo4j-community-1.7.2-windows.zip", "c:\\temp\\neo4j-community-1.7.2-windows.zip"); } private static void UploadBlob(CloudBlobContainer container, string blobName, string filename) { CloudBlob blob = container.GetBlobReference(blobName); using (FileStream fileStream = File.OpenRead(filename)) blob.UploadFromStream(fileStream); } This will upload the files to your local storage account (to switch to an Azure one, you’ll need to create a storage account, and use those credentials when you make your CloudStorageAccount above) To test you’ve got them uploaded correctly, go to: http://localhost:10000/devstoreaccount1/neo4j/jre7.zip and you will hopefully download the zip file you just uploaded. Now that those files are there, we are ready for some final configuration… Right click on the Neo4jServerHost role in the Neo4j.Azure.Server cloud project: Click on the ‘Settings’ tab and we’ll need to do some changes – by default, the 1.7.2 edition of neo4J unzips to: neo4j-community-1.7.2 So, we need to update all the ‘neo4j-1.3.M02’ directories to be ‘neo4j-community-1.7.2’, we also need to update the Java runtime location, so we start with this: and end with this: Now, I also changed the Endpoints settings, to be HTTP (from TCP) and to have a port of 7410 (mainly because that’s straight down on the numpad) The last ‘gotcha’ is some hard coded consts, which had me looking for ages, they are in the ‘ConfigSettings’ class of the ‘Neo4jServerHost’ project, and the ones we’re interested in are: Neo4jFileName JavaZipFileName Change those both to what that should be. OK Nearly there (I promise)! Run the ‘Compute Emulator’ (same deal with the Start menu), in your system tray you should have an Azure icon, when the compute emulator is up and running, right click on the icon and select ‘Show Compute Emulator UI’ The last steps! Make sure the ‘Neo4j.Azure.Server’ cloud project is set up as the start project and let’s hit F5 tension mounts, the build takes place (you need to accept the UAC warning) and VS does it’s stuff. If you look at the Compute Emulator UI you’ll see some log stuff (which you’ll need if this goes awry – but it won’t don’t worry!) In a bit, the console and a Java window will pop up: Then the console will bog off, leaving just the Java one, and if we switch back to the Compute Emulator UI and scroll up we should be able to see a line telling us the port number we’ve been assigned (in my case 7411): (If you can’t see it, don’t worry.. press CTRL+A on the emulator, then CTRL+C, copy all the text and paste it into something like Notepad, then just do a Find for ‘port’ you’ll soon see it) Go to your favourite browser, and head to: http://localhost:YOURPORT/ and you should see the WebAdmin! See you on the cloud side hopefully! Chris PS Other gotchas! OK, I’ve been caught out a couple of times: I had an instance of Neo4J running as a service on my machine, the Azure instance wanted to run the https version of the server on the same port as the Service was running on, and so Java would complain that the port was already in use.. The first time I converted the project, it didn’t update the version of the Azure library to load, in the App.Config of the Neo4jServerHost project, and VS would throw an exception saying it couldn’t find the Azure dll version 1.0.0.0.

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Profiling Startup Of VS2012 – SpeedTrace Profiler

- by Alois Kraus

SpeedTrace is a relatively unknown profiler made a company called Ipcas. A single professional license does cost 449€+VAT. For the test I did use SpeedTrace 4.5 which is currently Beta. Although it is cheaper than dotTrace it has by far the most options to influence how profiling does work. First you need to create a tracing project which does configure tracing for one process type. You can start the application directly from the profiler or (much more interesting) it does attach to a specific process when it is started. For this you need to check “Trace the specified …” radio button and enter the process name in the “Process Name of the Trace” edit box. You can even selectively enable tracing for processes with a specific command line. Then you need to activate the trace project by pressing the Activate Project button and you are ready to start VS as usual. If you want to profile the next 10 VS instances that you start you can set the Number of Processes counter to e.g. 10. This is immensely helpful if you are trying to profile only the next 5 started processes. As you can see there are many more tabs which do allow to influence tracing in a much more sophisticated way. SpeedTrace is the only profiler which does not rely entirely on the profiling Api of .NET. Instead it does modify the IL code (instrumentation on the fly) to write tracing information to disc which can later be analyzed. This approach is not only very fast but it does give you unprecedented analysis capabilities. Once the traces are collected they do show up in your workspace where you can open the trace viewer. I do skip the other windows because this view is by far the most useful one. You can sort the methods not only by Wall Clock time but also by CPU consumption and wait time which none of the other products support in their views at the same time. If you want to optimize for CPU consumption sort by CPU time. If you want to find out where most time is spent you need Clock Total time and Clock Waiting. There you can directly see if the method did take long because it did wait on something or it did really execute stuff that did take so long. Once you have found a method you want to drill deeper you can double click on a method to get to the Caller/Callee view which is similar to the JetBrains Method Grid view. But this time you do see much more. In the middle is the clicked method. Above are the methods that call you and below are the methods that you do directly call. Normally you would then start digging deeper to find the end of the chain where the slow method worth optimizing is located. But there is a shortcut. You can press the magic button to calculate the aggregation of all called methods. This is displayed in the lower left window where you can see each method call and how long it did take. There you can also sort to see if this call stack does only contain methods (e.g. WCF connect calls which you cannot make faster) not worth optimizing. YourKit has a similar feature where it is called Callees List. In the Functions tab you have in the context menu also many other useful analysis options One really outstanding feature is the View Call History Drilldown. When you select this one you get not a sum of all method invocations but a list with the duration of each method call. This is not surprising since SpeedTrace does use tracing to get its timings. There you can get many useful graphs how this method did behave over time. Did it become slower at some point in time or was only the first call slow? The diagrams and the list will tell you that. That is all fine but what should I do when one method call was slow? I want to see from where it was coming from. No problem select the method in the list hit F10 and you get the call stack. This is a life saver if you e.g. search for serialization problems. Today Serializers are used everywhere. You want to find out from where the 5s XmlSerializer.Deserialize call did come from? Hit F10 and you get the call stack which did invoke the 5s Deserialize call. The CPU timeline tab is also useful to find out where long pauses or excessive CPU consumption did happen. Click in the graph to get the Thread Stacks window where you can get a quick overview what all threads were doing at this time. This does look like the Stack Traces feature in YourKit. Only this time you get the last called method first which helps to quickly see what all threads were executing at this moment. YourKit does generate a rather long list which can be hard to go through when you have many threads. The thread list in the middle does not give you call stacks or anything like that but you see which methods were found most often executing code by the profiler which is a good indication for methods consuming most CPU time. This does sound too good to be true? I have not told you the best part yet. The best thing about this profiler is the staff behind it. When I do see a crash or some other odd behavior I send a mail to Ipcas and I do get usually the next day a mail that the problem has been fixed and a download link to the new version. The guys at Ipcas are even so helpful to log in to your machine via a Citrix Client to help you to get started profiling your actual application you want to profile. After a 2h telco I was converted from a hater to a believer of this tool. The fast response time might also have something to do with the fact that they are actively working on 4.5 to get out of the door. But still the support is by far the best I have encountered so far. The only downside is that you should instrument your assemblies including the .NET Framework to get most accurate numbers. You can profile without doing it but then you will see very high JIT times in your process which can severely affect the correctness of the measured timings. If you do not care about exact numbers you can also enable in the main UI in the Data Trace tab logging of method arguments of primitive types. If you need to know what files at which times were opened by your application you can find it out without a debugger. Since SpeedTrace does read huge trace files in its reader you should perhaps use a 64 bit machine to be able to analyze bigger traces as well. The memory consumption of the trace reader is too high for my taste. But they did promise for the next version to come up with something much improved.

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Story of success: MySQL Enterprise Backup (MEB) was successfully integrated with IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) via System Backup to Tape (SBT) interface.

- by user13334359

Since version 3.6 MEB supports backups to tape through the SBT interface.The officially supported tool for such backups to tape is Oracle Secure Backup (OSB).But there are a lot of other Storage Managers. MEB allows to use them through the SBT interface. Since version 3.7 it also has option --sbt-environment which allows to pass environment variables, not needed by OSB, to third-party managers. At the same time MEB can not guarantee it would work with all of them.This month we were contacted by a customer who wanted to use IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) with MEB. We could only say them same thing I wrote in previous paragraph: this solution is supposed to work, but you have to be pioneers of this technology. And they agreed. They agreed to be the pioneers and so the story begins.MEB requires following options to be specified by those who want to connect it to SBT interface:--sbt-database-name: a name which should be handed over to SBT interface. This can be any name. Default, MySQL, works for most cases, so user is not required to specify this option.--sbt-lib-path: path to SBT library. For TSM this library comes with "Data Protection for Oracle", which, in its turn, interfaces with Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN), which uses SBT interface. So you need to install it even if you don't use Oracle.--sbt-environment: environment for third-party manager. This option is not needed when you use OSB, but almost always necessary for third-party SBT managers. TSM requires variable TDPO_OPTFILE to be set and point to the TSM configuration file.--backup-image=sbt:: path to the image. Prefix "sbt:" indicates that image should be sent through SBT interfaceSo full command in our case would look like: ./mysqlbackup --port=3307 --protocol=tcp --user=backup_user --password=foobar \ --backup-image=sbt:my-first-backup --sbt-lib-path=/usr/lib/libobk.so \ --sbt-environment="TDPO_OPTFILE=/path/to/my/tdpo.opt" --backup-dir=/path/to/my/dir backup-to-imageAnd this command results in the following output log: MySQL Enterprise Backup version 3.7.1 [2012/02/16] Copyright (c) 2003, 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All Rights Reserved. INFO: Starting with following command line ... ./mysqlbackup --port=3307 --protocol=tcp --user=backup_user --password=foobar --backup-image=sbt:my-first-backup --sbt-lib-path=/usr/lib/libobk.so --sbt-environment="TDPO_OPTFILE=/path/to/my/tdpo.opt" --backup-dir=/path/to/my/dir backup-to-image sbt-environment: 'TDPO_OPTFILE=/path/to/my/tdpo.opt' INFO: Got some server configuration information from running server. IMPORTANT: Please check that mysqlbackup run completes successfully. At the end of a successful 'backup-to-image' run mysqlbackup prints "mysqlbackup completed OK!". -------------------------------------------------------------------- Server Repository Options: -------------------------------------------------------------------- datadir = /path/to/data innodb_data_home_dir = /path/to/data innodb_data_file_path = ibdata1:2048M;ibdata2:2048M;ibdata3:64M:autoextend:max:2048M innodb_log_group_home_dir = /path/to/data innodb_log_files_in_group = 2 innodb_log_file_size = 268435456 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Backup Config Options: -------------------------------------------------------------------- datadir = /path/to/my/dir/datadir innodb_data_home_dir = /path/to/my/dir/datadir innodb_data_file_path = ibdata1:2048M;ibdata2:2048M;ibdata3:64M:autoextend:max:2048M innodb_log_group_home_dir = /path/to/my/dir/datadir innodb_log_files_in_group = 2 innodb_log_file_size = 268435456 Backup Image Path= sbt:my-first-backup mysqlbackup: INFO: Unique generated backup id for this is 13297406400663200 120220 08:54:00 mysqlbackup: INFO: meb_sbt_session_open: MMS is 'Data Protection for Oracle: version 5.5.1.0' 120220 08:54:00 mysqlbackup: INFO: meb_sbt_session_open: MMS version '5.5.1.0' mysqlbackup: INFO: Uses posix_fadvise() for performance optimization. mysqlbackup: INFO: System tablespace file format is Antelope. mysqlbackup: INFO: Found checkpoint at lsn 31668381. mysqlbackup: INFO: Starting log scan from lsn 31668224. 120220 8:54:00 mysqlbackup: INFO: Copying log... 120220 8:54:00 mysqlbackup: INFO: Log copied, lsn 31668381. We wait 1 second before starting copying the data files... 120220 8:54:01 mysqlbackup: INFO: Copying /path/to/ibdata/ibdata1 (Antelope file format). mysqlbackup: Progress in MB: 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000 120220 8:55:30 mysqlbackup: INFO: Copying /path/to/ibdata/ibdata2 (Antelope file format). mysqlbackup: Progress in MB: 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000 120220 8:57:18 mysqlbackup: INFO: Copying /path/to/ibdata/ibdata3 (Antelope file format). mysqlbackup: INFO: Preparing to lock tables: Connected to mysqld server. 120220 08:57:22 mysqlbackup: INFO: Starting to lock all the tables.... 120220 08:57:22 mysqlbackup: INFO: All tables are locked and flushed to disk mysqlbackup: INFO: Opening backup source directory '/path/to/data/' 120220 08:57:22 mysqlbackup: INFO: Starting to backup all files in subdirectories of '/path/to/data/' mysqlbackup: INFO: Backing up the database directory 'mysql' mysqlbackup: INFO: Backing up the database directory 'test' mysqlbackup: INFO: Copying innodb data and logs during final stage ... mysqlbackup: INFO: A copied database page was modified at 31668381. (This is the highest lsn found on page) Scanned log up to lsn 31670396. Was able to parse the log up to lsn 31670396. Maximum page number for a log record 328 120220 08:57:23 mysqlbackup: INFO: All tables unlocked mysqlbackup: INFO: All MySQL tables were locked for 0.000 seconds 120220 08:59:01 mysqlbackup: INFO: meb_sbt_backup_close: blocks: 4162 size: 1048576 bytes: 4363985063 120220 8:59:01 mysqlbackup: INFO: Full backup completed! mysqlbackup: INFO: MySQL binlog position: filename bin_mysql.001453, position 2105 mysqlbackup: WARNING: backup-image already closed mysqlbackup: INFO: Backup image created successfully.: Image Path: 'sbt:my-first-backup' ------------------------------------------------------------- Parameters Summary ------------------------------------------------------------- Start LSN : 31668224 End LSN : 31670396 ------------------------------------------------------------- mysqlbackup completed OK!Backup successfully completed.To restore it you should use same commands like you do for any other MEB image, but need to provide sbt* options as well: $./mysqlbackup --backup-image=sbt:my-first-backup --sbt-lib-path=/usr/lib/libobk.so \ --sbt-environment="TDPO_OPTFILE=/path/to/my/tdpo.opt" --backup-dir=/path/to/my/dir image-to-backup-dirThen apply log as usual: $./mysqlbackup --backup-dir=/path/to/my/dir apply-logThen stop mysqld and finally copy-back: $./mysqlbackup --defaults-file=path/to/my.cnf --backup-dir=/path/to/my/dir copy-back Disclaimer. This is only story of one success which can be useful for someone else. MEB is not regularly tested and not guaranteed to work with IBM TSM or any other third-party storage manager.

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SQL Sentry First Impressions

- by AjarnMark

After struggling to defend my SQL Servers from a political attack recently, I realized that I needed better tools to back me up, and SQL Sentry is the leading candidate. A couple of weeks ago, seemingly from out of nowhere, complaints from the business users started coming in that one of the core internal applications was running dramatically slower than normal, and fingers were being pointed at the SQL Server. Unfortunately, we don’t have a production DBA whose entire job is to monitor and maintain our SQL Servers. The responsibility falls to me to do the best I can, investing only a small portion of my time, because there are so many other responsibilities to take care of, and our industry is still deep in recession. I inherited these SQL Servers and have made significant improvements in process and procedure, but I had not yet made the time to take real baseline measurements or keep a really close eye on the performance. Like many DBAs, I wrote several of my own tools and used the “built-in tools” like Profiler, PerfMon, and sp_who2 (did I mention most of our instances are SQL Server 2000?). These have all served me well for in-the-moment troubleshooting and maintenance, but they really fell down on the job when I was called upon to “prove” that SQL Server performance was acceptable and more importantly had not degraded recently (i.e. historical comparisons). I really didn’t have anything from a historical comparison perspective, but I was able to show that current performance was acceptable, and deflect attention back onto other components (which in fact turned out to be the real culprit). That experience dramatically illustrated the need for better monitoring tools. Coincidentally, I had been talking recently to my boss about the mini nightmare of monitoring several critical and interdependent overnight jobs that operate on separate instances of SQL Server. Among other tools, I had been using Idera’s SQL Job Manager which is a free tool and did a nice job of showing me job schedules and histories in a nice calendar view. This worked fairly well, and for the money (did I mention it was free?) it couldn’t be beat. But it is based on the stored job history in MSDB, and there were other performance problems that we ran into when we started changing the settings for how much job history to retain, in order to be able to look back a month or more in the calendar view. Another coincidence (if you believe in such things) was that when we had some of those performance challenges, I posted a couple of questions to the #sqlhelp hashtag on Twitter and Greg Gonzalez (@SQLSensei) suggested I check out SQL Sentry’s Event Manager. At the time, I just thought he worked there, but later found out that he founded the company. When I took a quick look at the features & benefits, the one that really jumped out at me is Chaining and Queueing which sounded like it would really help with our “interdependent jobs on different servers” issue. I know that is a lot of background story and coincidences, but hopefully you have stuck with me so far, and now we have arrived at the point where last week I downloaded and installed the 30-day trial of the SQL Sentry Power Suite, which is Event Manager plus Performance Advisor. And I must say that I really like what I see so far. Here are a few highlights: Great Support. I had two issues getting the trial setup and monitoring a handful of our servers. One of which was entirely my fault (missed a security setting in SQL 2008) and the other was mostly my fault (late change to some config settings that were apparently cached and did not get refreshed properly). In both cases, the support staff at SQL Sentry were very responsive and rather quickly figured out what the cause and fix was for each of them. This left me with a great impression of the company. Kudos to them! Chaining and Queueing. While I have not yet activated this feature, I am very excited about the possibilities. We have jobs on three different instances of SQL Server that have to be run in a certain order, and each has to finish before the next can successfully begin, and I believe this feature will ensure just that. It has been a real pain in the backside when one of those jobs runs just a little too long and does not finish before the job on another instance starts, thus triggering a chain reaction of either outright job failures, or worse, successful completion of completely invalid processing. Calendar View. I really, really like the Event Manager calendar view where I can see all jobs and events across all instances and identify potential resource contention as well as windows of opportunity for maintenance activity. Very well done, and based on Event Manager’s own database of accumulated historical information rather than querying the source instances every time. Performance Advisor Dashboard History View. This view let’s me quickly select a date and time range and it displays graphs of key SQL Server and Windows metrics. This is exactly the thing I needed to answer the “has performance changed recently” question at the beginning of this post. Reporting Services Subscription Jobs with Report Name. This was a big and VERY pleasant surprise. If you have ever looked at the list of SQL Server jobs that SQL Server Reporting Services creates when you make a Subscription, you will notice that they all have some sort of GUID as the name of the job. This is really ugly, and really annoying because when you are just looking at the SQL Agent and Job Activity Monitor, if you see that Job X failed, you really do not have any indication in the name or the properties of the Job itself, as to what Report that was for. But with SQL Sentry Event Manager you do. The Jobs list in the Navigator pane in SQL Sentry, amazingly, displays the name of the Report that the Subscription Job is for. And when you open it to see more details, it shows you the full Reporting Services path to that Report, so you can immediately track it down in the Report Manager in case you want to identify/notify the owner or edit the Subscription information. I did not expect this at all, but I sure do like it. HOORAY! That is just my first impressions from using the tools for a few days. And I haven’t even gotten into how it showed me where I was completely mistaken about one aspect of my SQL Server disk configurations. I’ll share that lesson in another blog entry. But I have to say it again, the combination of Event Manager and Performance Advisor working together have really made me a fan.

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Thou shalt not put code on a piedestal - Code is a tool, no more, no less

- by Ralf Westphal

“Write great code and everything else becomes easier” is what Paul Pagel believes in. That´s his version of an adage by Brian Marick he cites: “treat code as an end, not just a means.” And he concludes: “My post-Agile world is software craftsmanship.” I wonder, if that´s really the way to go. Will “simply” writing great code lead the software industry into the light? He´s alluding to the philosopher Kant who proposed, a human beings should never be treated as a means, but always as an end. But should we transfer this ethical statement into the world of software? I doubt it. Reason #1: Human beings are categorially different from code. They are autonomous entities who need to find a way of living happily together. To Kant it seemed this goal could only be reached if nobody (ab)used a human being for his/her purposes. Because using a human being, i.e. treating it as a means, would contradict the fundamental autonomy and freedom of human beings. People should hold up a symmetric view of their relationships: Since nobody wants to be (ab)used, nobody should (ab)use anybody else. If you want to be treated decently, with respect, in accordance with your own free will - which means as an end - then do the same to other people. Code is dead, it´s a product, it´s a tool for people to reach their goals. No company spends any money on code other than to save money or earn money in the long run. Code is not a puppy. Enterprises do not commission software development to just feel good in its company. Code is not a buddy. Code is a slave, if you will. A mechanical slave, a non-tangible robot. Code is a tool, is a tool. And if we start to treat it differently, if we elevate its status unduely… I guess that will contort our relationship in a contraproductive way. Please get me right: Just because something is “just a tool”, “just a product” does not mean we should not be careful while designing, building, using it. Right to the contrary. We should be very careful when writing code – but not for the code´s sake! We should be careful because we respect our customers who are fellow human beings who should be treated as an end. If we are careless, neglectful, ignorant when producing code on their behalf, then we´re using them. Being sloppy means you´re caring more for yourself that for your customer. You´re then treating the customer as a means to fulfill some of your own needs. That´s plain unethical behavior. Reason #2: The focus should always be on your purpose, not on any tool. But if code is treated as an end, then the focus is on the code. That might sound right, because where else should be your focus as a software developer? But, well, I´d say, your focus should be on delivering value to your customer. Because in the end your customer does not care if you write a single line of code. She just wants her problem to be solved. Solving problems is the purpose of any contractor. Code must be treated just as a means, a tool we know how to handle very well. But if we´re really trying to be craftsmen then we should be conscious about exactly that and act ethically. That means we must never be so focused on our tool as to be unable to suggest better solutions to the problems of our customers than code. I´m all with Paul when he urges us to “Write great code”. Sure, if you need to write code, then by all means do so. Write the best code you can think of – and then try to improve it. Paul has all the best intentions when he signs Brians “treat code as an end” - but as we all know: “The road to hell is paved with best intentions” ;-) Yes, I can imagine a “hell of code focus”. In fact, I don´t need to imagine it, I´m seeing it quite often. Because code hell is whereever two developers stand together and are so immersed in talking about all sorts of coding tricks, design patterns, code smells, technologies, platforms, tools that they lose sight of the big picture. Talking about TDD or SOLID or refactoring is a sign of consciousness – relative to the “cowboy coders” view of the world. But from yet another point of view TDD, SOLID, and refactoring are just cures for ailments within a system. And I fear, if “Writing great code” is the only focus or the main focus of software development, then we as an industry lose the ability to see that. Focus draws a line around something, it defines a horizon for perceptions and thinking. So if we focus on code our horizon ends where “the land of code” ends. I don´t think that should be our professional attitude. So what about Software Craftsmanship as the next big thing after Agility? I think Software Craftsmanship has an important message for all software developers and beyond. But to make it the successor of the Agility movement seems to miss a point. Agility never claimed to solve all software development problems, I´d say. So to blame it for having missed out on certain aspects of it is wrong. If I had to summarize Agility in one word I´d say “Value”. Agility put value for the customer back in software development. Focus on delivering value early and often – that´s Agility´s mantra. All else follows from that. And I ask you: Is that obsolete? Is delivering value not hip anymore? No, sure not. That´s our very purpose as software developers. So how can Agility become obsolete and need to be replaced? We need to do away with this “either/or”-thinking. It´s either Agility or Lean or Software Craftsmanship or whatnot. Instead we should start integrating concepts and movements. Think “both/and”. Think Agility plus Software Craftsmanship plus Lean plus whatnot. We don´t neet to tear down anything from a piedestal and replace it with a new idol. Instead we should do away with piedestals and arrange whatever is helpful is a circle. Then we can turn to concepts, movements for whatever they are best. After 10 years of Agility we should be able to identify what it was good at – and keep that. Keep Agility around and add whatever Agility was lacking or never concerned with. Add whatever is at the core of Software Craftsmanship. Add whatever is at the core of Lean etc. But don´t call out the age of Post-Agility. Because it better never will end. Because once we start to lose Agility´s core we´re losing focus of the customer.

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VFS: file-max limit 1231582 reached

- by Rick Koshi

I'm running a Linux 2.6.36 kernel, and I'm seeing some random errors. Things like ls: error while loading shared libraries: libpthread.so.0: cannot open shared object file: Error 23 Yes, my system can't consistently run an 'ls' command. :( I note several errors in my dmesg output: # dmesg | tail [2808967.543203] EXT4-fs (sda3): re-mounted. Opts: (null) [2837776.220605] xv[14450] general protection ip:7f20c20c6ac6 sp:7fff3641b368 error:0 in libpng14.so.14.4.0[7f20c20a9000+29000] [4931344.685302] EXT4-fs (md16): re-mounted. Opts: (null) [4982666.631444] VFS: file-max limit 1231582 reached [4982666.764240] VFS: file-max limit 1231582 reached [4982767.360574] VFS: file-max limit 1231582 reached [4982901.904628] VFS: file-max limit 1231582 reached [4982964.930556] VFS: file-max limit 1231582 reached [4982966.352170] VFS: file-max limit 1231582 reached [4982966.649195] top[31095]: segfault at 14 ip 00007fd6ace42700 sp 00007fff20746530 error 6 in libproc-3.2.8.so[7fd6ace3b000+e000] Obviously, the file-max errors look suspicious, being clustered together and recent. # cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max 1231582 # cat /proc/sys/fs/file-nr 1231712 0 1231582 That also looks a bit odd to me, but the thing is, there's no way I have 1.2 million files open on this system. I'm the only one using it, and it's not visible to anyone outside the local network. # lsof | wc 16046 148253 1882901 # ps -ef | wc 574 6104 44260 I saw some documentation saying: file-max & file-nr: The kernel allocates file handles dynamically, but as yet it doesn't free them again. The value in file-max denotes the maximum number of file- handles that the Linux kernel will allocate. When you get lots of error messages about running out of file handles, you might want to increase this limit. Historically, the three values in file-nr denoted the number of allocated file handles, the number of allocated but unused file handles, and the maximum number of file handles. Linux 2.6 always reports 0 as the number of free file handles -- this is not an error, it just means that the number of allocated file handles exactly matches the number of used file handles. Attempts to allocate more file descriptors than file-max are reported with printk, look for "VFS: file-max limit reached". My first reading of this is that the kernel basically has a built-in file descriptor leak, but I find that very hard to believe. It would imply that any system in active use needs to be rebooted every so often to free up the file descriptors. As I said, I can't believe this would be true, since it's normal to me to have Linux systems stay up for months (even years) at a time. On the other hand, I also can't believe that my nearly-idle system is holding over a million files open. Does anyone have any ideas, either for fixes or further diagnosis? I could, of course, just reboot the system, but I don't want this to be a recurring problem every few weeks. As a stopgap measure, I've quit Firefox, which was accounting for almost 2000 lines of lsof output (!) even though I only had one window open, and now I can run 'ls' again, but I doubt that will fix the problem for long. (edit: Oops, spoke too soon. By the time I finished typing out this question, the symptom was/is back) Thanks in advance for any help. And another update: My system was basically unusable, so I decided I had no option but to reboot. But before I did, I carefully quit one process at a time, checking /proc/sys/fs/file-nr after each termination. I found that, predictably, the number of open files gradually went down as I closed things down. Unfortunately, it wasn't a large effect. Yes, I was able to clear up 5000-10000 open files, but there were still over 1.2 million left. I shut down just about everything. All interactive shells, except for the one ssh I left open to finish closing down, httpd, even nfs service. Basically everything in the process table that wasn't a kernel process, and there were still an appalling number of files apparently left open. After the reboot, I found that /proc/sys/fs/file-nr showed about 2000 files open, which is much more reasonable. Starting up 2 Xvnc sessions as usual, along with the dozen or so monitoring windows I like to keep open, brought the total up to about 4000 files. I can see nothing wrong with that, of course, but I've obviously failed to identify the root cause. I'm still looking for ideas, since I definitely expect it to happen again. And another update, the next day: I watched the system carefully, and discovered that /proc/sys/fs/file-nr showed a growth of about 900 open files per hour. I shut down the system's only NFS client for the night, and the growth stopped. Mind you, it didn't free up the resources, but it did at least stop consuming more. Is this a known bug with NFS? I'll be bringing the NFS client back online today, and I'll narrow it down further. If anyone is familiar with this behavior, feel free to jump in with "Yeah, NFS4 has this problem, go back to NFS3" or something like that.

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3D Ball Physics Theory: collision response on ground and against walls?

- by David

I'm really struggling to get a strong grasp on how I should be handling collision response in a game engine I'm building around a 3D ball physics concept. Think Monkey Ball as an example of the type of gameplay. I am currently using sphere-to-sphere broad phase, then AABB to OBB testing (the final test I am using right now is one that checks if one of the 8 OBB points crosses the planes of the object it is testing against). This seems to work pretty well, and I am getting back: Plane that object is colliding against (with a point on the plane, the plane's normal, and the exact point of intersection. I've tried what feels like dozens of different high-level strategies for handling these collisions, without any real success. I think my biggest problem is understanding how to handle collisions against walls in the x-y axes (left/right, front/back), which I want to have elasticity, and the ground (z-axis) where I want an elastic reaction if the ball drops down, but then for it to eventually normalize and be kept "on the ground" (not go into the ground, but also not continue bouncing). Without kluging something together, I'm positive there is a good way to handle this, my theories just aren't getting me all the way there. For physics modeling and movement, I am trying to use a Euler based setup with each object maintaining a position (and destination position prior to collision detection), a velocity (which is added onto the position to determine the destination position), and an acceleration (which I use to store any player input being put on the ball, as well as gravity in the z coord). Starting from when I detect a collision, what is a good way to approach the response to get the expected behavior in all cases? Thanks in advance to anyone taking the time to assist... I am grateful for any pointers, and happy to post any additional info or code if it is useful. UPDATE Based on Steve H's and eBusiness' responses below, I have adapted my collision response to what makes a lot more sense now. It was close to right before, but I didn't have all the right pieces together at the right time! I have one problem left to solve, and that is what is causing the floor collision to hit every frame. Here's the collision response code I have now for the ball, then I'll describe the last bit I'm still struggling to understand. // if we are moving in the direction of the plane (against the normal)... if (m_velocity.dot(intersection.plane.normal) <= 0.0f) { float dampeningForce = 1.8f; // eventually create this value based on mass and acceleration // Calculate the projection velocity PVRTVec3 actingVelocity = m_velocity.project(intersection.plane.normal); m_velocity -= actingVelocity * dampeningForce; } // Clamp z-velocity to zero if we are within a certain threshold // -- NOTE: this was an experimental idea I had to solve the "jitter" bug I'll describe below float diff = 0.2f - abs(m_velocity.z); if (diff > 0.0f && diff <= 0.2f) { m_velocity.z = 0.0f; } // Take this object to its new destination position based on... // -- our pre-collision position + vector to the collision point + our new velocity after collision * time // -- remaining after the collision to finish the movement m_destPosition = m_position + intersection.diff + (m_velocity * intersection.tRemaining * GAMESTATE->dt); The above snippet is run after a collision is detected on the ball (collider) with a collidee (floor in this case). With a dampening force of 1.8f, the ball's reflected "upward" velocity will eventually be overcome by gravity, so the ball will essentially be stuck on the floor. THIS is the problem I have now... the collision code is running every frame (since the ball's z-velocity is constantly pushing it a collision with the floor below it). The ball is not technically stuck, I can move it around still, but the movement is really goofy because the velocity and position keep getting affected adversely by the above snippet. I was experimenting with an idea to clamp the z-velocity to zero if it was "close to zero", but this didn't do what I think... probably because the very next frame the ball gets a new gravity acceleration applied to its velocity regardless (which I think is good, right?). Collisions with walls are as they used to be and work very well. It's just this last bit of "stickiness" to deal with. The camera is constantly jittering up and down by extremely small fractions too when the ball is "at rest". I'll keep playing with it... I like puzzles like this, especially when I think I'm close. Any final ideas on what I could be doing wrong here? UPDATE 2 Good news - I discovered I should be subtracting the intersection.diff from the m_position (position prior to collision). The intersection.diff is my calculation of the difference in the vector of position to destPosition from the intersection point to the position. In this case, adding it was causing my ball to always go "up" just a little bit, causing the jitter. By subtracting it, and moving that clamper for the velocity.z when close to zero to being above the dot product (and changing the test from <= 0 to < 0), I now have the following: // Clamp z-velocity to zero if we are within a certain threshold float diff = 0.2f - abs(m_velocity.z); if (diff > 0.0f && diff <= 0.2f) { m_velocity.z = 0.0f; } // if we are moving in the direction of the plane (against the normal)... float dotprod = m_velocity.dot(intersection.plane.normal); if (dotprod < 0.0f) { float dampeningForce = 1.8f; // eventually create this value based on mass and acceleration? // Calculate the projection velocity PVRTVec3 actingVelocity = m_velocity.project(intersection.plane.normal); m_velocity -= actingVelocity * dampeningForce; } // Take this object to its new destination position based on... // -- our pre-collision position + vector to the collision point + our new velocity after collision * time // -- remaining after the collision to finish the movement m_destPosition = m_position - intersection.diff + (m_velocity * intersection.tRemaining * GAMESTATE->dt); UpdateWorldMatrix(m_destWorldMatrix, m_destOBB, m_destPosition, false); This is MUCH better. No jitter, and the ball now "rests" at the floor, while still bouncing off the floor and walls. The ONLY thing left is that the ball is now virtually "stuck". He can move but at a much slower rate, likely because the else of my dot product test is only letting the ball move at a rate multiplied against the tRemaining... I think this is a better solution than I had previously, but still somehow not the right idea. BTW, I'm trying to journal my progress through this problem for anyone else with a similar situation - hopefully it will serve as some help, as many similar posts have for me over the years.

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Weighted round robins via TTL - possible?

- by Joe Hopfgartner

I currently use DNS round robin for load balancing, which works great. The records look like this (I have a ttl of 120 seconds) ;; ANSWER SECTION: orion.2x.to. 116 IN A 80.237.201.41 orion.2x.to. 116 IN A 87.230.54.12 orion.2x.to. 116 IN A 87.230.100.10 orion.2x.to. 116 IN A 87.230.51.65 I learned that not every ISP / device treats such a response the same way. For example some DNS servers rotate the addresses randomly or always cycle them through. Some just propagate the first entry, others try to determine which is best (regionally near) by looking at the ip address. However if the userbase is big enough (spreads over multiple ISPs etc) it balances pretty well. The discrepancies from highest to lowest loaded server hardly every exceeds 15%. However now I have the problem that I am introducing more servers into the systems, that not all have the same capacities. I currently only have 1gbps servers, but I want to work with 100mbit and also 10gbps servers too. So what I want is I want to introduce a server with 10 GBps with a weight of 100, a 1 gbps server with a weight of 10 and a 100 mbit server with a weight of 1. I used to add servers twice to bring more traffic to them (which worked nice. the bandwidth doubled almost.) But adding a 10gbit server 100 times to DNS is a bit rediculous. So I thought about using the TTL. If I give server A 240 seconds ttl and server B only 120 seconds (which is about about the minimum to use for round robin, as a lot of dns servers set to 120 if a lower ttl is specified.. so i have heard) I think something like this should occour in an ideal scenario: first 120 seconds 50% of requests get server A -> keep it for 240 seconds. 50% of requests get server B -> keep it for 120 seconds second 120 seconds 50% of requests still have server A cached -> keep it for another 120 seconds. 25% of requests get server A -> keep it for 240 seconds 25% of requests get server B -> keep it for 120 seconds third 120 seconds 25% will get server A (from the 50% of Server A that now expired) -> cache 240 sec 25% will get server B (from the 50% of Server A that now expired) -> cache 120 sec 25% will have server A cached for another 120 seconds 12.5% will get server B (from the 25% of server B that now expired) -> cache 120sec 12.5% will get server A (from the 25% of server B that now expired) -> cache 240 sec fourth 120 seconds 25% will have server A cached -> cache for another 120 secs 12.5% will get server A (from the 25% of b that now expired) -> cache 240 secs 12.5% will get server B (from the 25% of b that now expired) -> cache 120 secs 12.5% will get server A (from the 25% of a that now expired) -> cache 240 secs 12.5% will get server B (from the 25% of a that now expired) -> cache 120 secs 6.25% will get server A (from the 12.5% of b that now expired) -> cache 240 secs 6.25% will get server B (from the 12.5% of b that now expired) -> cache 120 secs 12.5% will have server A cached -> cache another 120 secs ... i think i lost something at this point but i think you get the idea.... As you can see this gets pretty complicated to predict and it will for sure not work out like this in practice. But it should definitely have an effect on the distribution! I know that weighted round robin exists and is just controlled by the root server. It just cycles through dns records when responding and returns dns records with a set propability that corresponds to the weighting. My DNS server does not support this, and my requirements are not that precise. If it doesnt weight perfectly its okay, but it should go into the right direction. I think using the TTL field could be a more elegant and easier solution - and it deosnt require a dns server that controls this dynamically, which saves resources - which is in my opinion the whole point of dns load balancing vs hardware load balancers. My question now is... are there any best prectices / methos / rules of thumb to weight round robin distribution using the TTL attribute of DNS records? Edit: The system is a forward proxy server system. The amount of Bandwidth (not requests) exceeds what one single server with ethernet can handle. So I need a balancing solution that distributes the bandwidth to several servers. Are there any alternative methods than using DNS? Of course I can use a load balancer with fibre channel etc, but the costs are rediciulous and it also increases only the width of the bottleneck and does not eliminate it. The only thing i can think of are anycast (is it anycast or multicast?) ip addresses, but I don't have the means to set up such a system.

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Visiting the Fire Station in Coromandel

Hm, I just tried to remember how we actually came up with this cool idea... but it's already too blurred and it doesn't really matter after all. Anyway, if I remember correctly (IIRC), it happened during one of the Linux meetups at Mugg & Bean, Bagatelle where Ajay and I brought our children along and we had a brief conversation about how cool it would be to check out one of the fire stations here in Mauritius. We both thought that it would be a great experience and adventure for the little ones. An idea takes shape And there we go, down the usual routine these... having an idea, checking out the options and discussing who's doing what. Except this time, it was all up to Ajay, and he did a fantastic job. End of August, he told me that he got in touch with one of his friends which actually works as a fire fighter at the station in Coromandel and that there could be an option to come and visit them (soon). A couple of days later - Confirmed! Be there, and in time... What time? Anyway, doesn't really matter... Everything was settled and arranged. I asked the kids on Friday afternoon if they might be interested to see the fire engines and what a fire fighter is doing. Of course, they were all in! Getting up early on Sunday morning isn't really a regular exercise for all of us but everything went smooth and after a short breakfast it was time to leave. Where are we going? Are we there yet? Now, we are in Bambous. Why do you go this way? The kids were so much into it. Absolutely amazing to see their excitement. Are we there yet? Well, we went through the sugar cane fields towards Chebel and then down into the industrial zone at Coromandel. Honestly, I had a clue where the fire station is located but having Google Maps in reach that shouldn't be a problem in case that we might get lost. But my worries were washed away when our children guided us... "There! Over there are the fire engines! We have to turn left, dad." - No comment, the kids were right! As we were there a little bit too early, we parked the car and the kids started to explore the area and outskirts of the fire station. Some minutes later, as if we had placed an order a unit of two cars had to go out for an alarm and the kids could witness them leaving as closely as possible. Sirens on and wow!!! Ladder truck L32 - MAN truck with Rosenbauer built-up and equipment by Metz Taking the tour Ajay arrived shortly after that and guided us finally inside the station to meet with his pal. The three guys were absolutely well-prepared and showed us around in the hall, explaining that there two units out at the moment. But the ladder truck (with max. 32m expandable height) was still around we all got a great insight into the technique and equipment on the vehicle. It was amazing to see all three kids listening to Mambo as give some figures about the truck and how the fire fighters are actually it. The children and 'our' fire fighters of the day had great fun with the various fire engines Absolutely fantastic that the children were allowed to experience this - we had so much fun! Ajay's son brought two of his toy fire engines along, shared them with ours, and they all played very well together. As a parent it was really amazing to see them at such an ease. Enough theory Shortly afterwards the ladder truck was moved outside, got stabilised and ready to go for 'real-life' exercising. With the additional equipment of safety helmets, security belts and so on, we all got a first-hand impression about how it could be as a fire-fighter. Actually, I was totally amazed by the curiousity and excitement of my BWE. She was really into it and asked lots of interesting questions - in general but also technical. And while our fighters were busy with Ajay and family, I gave her some more details and explanations about the truck, the expandable ladder, the safety cage at the top and other equipment available. Safety first! No exceptions and always be prepared for the worst case... Also, the equipped has been checked prior to excuse - This is your life saver... Hooked up and ready to go... ...of course not too high. This is just a demonstration - and 32 meters above ground isn't for everyone. Well, after that it was me that had the asking looks on me, and I finally revealed to the local fire fighters that I was in the auxiliary fire brigade, more precisely in the hazard department, for more than 10 years. So not a professional fire fighter but at least a passionate and educated one as them. Inside the station Our fire fighters really took their time to explain their daily job to kids, provided them access to operation seat on the ladder truck and how the truck cabin is actually equipped with the different radios and so on. It was really a great time. Later on we had a brief tour through the building itself, and again all of our questions were answered. We had great fun and started to joke about bits and pieces. For me it was also very interesting to see the comparison between the fire station here in Mauritius and the ones I have been to back in Germany. Amazing to see them completely captivated in the play - the children had lots of fun! Also, that there are currently ten fire stations all over the island, plus two additional but private ones at the airport and at the harbour. The newest one is actually down in Black River on the west coast because the time from Quatre Bornes takes too long to have any chance of an effective alarm at all. IMHO, a very good decision as time is the most important factor in getting fire incidents under control. After all it was great experience for all of us, especially for the children to see and understand that their toy trucks are only copies of the real thing and that the job of a (professional) fire fighter is very important in our society. Don't forget that those guys run into the danger zone while you're trying to get away from it as much as possible. Another unit just came back from a grass fire - and shortly after they went out again. No time to rest, too much to do! Mauritian Fire Fighters now and (maybe) in the future... Thank you! It was an honour to be around! Thank you to Ajay for organising and arranging this Sunday morning event, and of course of Big Thank You to the three guys that took some time off to have us at the Fire Station in Coromandel and guide us through their daily job! And remember to call 115 in case of emergencies!

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The Internet of Things & Commerce: Part 3 -- Interview with Kristen J. Flanagan, Commerce Product Management

- by Katrina Gosek, Director | Commerce Product Strategy-Oracle

Internet of Things & Commerce Series: Part 3 (of 3) And now for the final installment my three part series on the Internet of Things & Commerce. Post one, “The Next 7,000 Days”, introduced the idea of the Internet of Things, followed by a second post interviewing one of our chief commerce innovation strategists, Brian Celenza. This final post in the series is an interview with Kristen J. Flanagan, lead product manager for Oracle Commerce omnichannel strategy. She takes us through the past, present, and future of how our Commerce Solution is re-imagining the way physical and digital shopping come together. ------- QUESTION: It’s your job to stay on top of what our customers’ need to not only run their online businesses effectively, but also to make sure they have product capabilities they can innovate and grow on. What key trend has been top-of-mind for you and our customers around this collision of physical and digital shopping? Kristen: I’ll agree with Brian Celenza that hands down mobile has forced a major disruption in shopping and selling behavior. A few years ago, mobile exploded at a pace I don't think anyone was expecting. Early on, we saw our customers scrambling to establish a mobile presence---mostly through "screen scraping" technologies. As smartphones continued to advance (at lightening speed!), our customers started to investigate ways to truly tap in to their eCommerce capabilities to deliver the mobile experience. They started looking to us for a means of using the eCommerce services and capabilities to deliver a mobile experience that is tailored for mobile rather than the desktop experience on a smaller screen. In the future, I think we'll see customers starting to really understand what their shoppers need and expect from a mobile offering and how they can adapt their content and delivery of that content to meet those needs. And, mobile shopping doesn’t stop at the consumer / buyer. Because the in-store experience is compelling and has advantages that digital just can't offer, we're also starting to see the eCommerce services being leveraged for mobile for in-store sales associates. Brick-and-mortar retailers are interested in putting the omnichannel product catalog, promotions, and cart into the hands of knowledgeable associates. Retailers are now looking to connect and harness the eCommerce data in-store so that shoppers have a reason to walk-in. I think we'll be seeing a lot more customers thinking about melding the in-store and digital experiences to present a richer offering for shoppers. QUESTION: What are some examples of what our customers are doing currently to bring these concepts to reality? Kristen: Well, without question, connecting digital and brick-and-mortar worlds is becoming tablestakes for selling experiences. If a brand has a foot in both worlds (i.e., isn’t a pureplay online retailer), they have to connect the dots because shoppers – whether consumers or B2B buyers –don't think in clearly defined channels anymore. The expectation is connectedness – for on- and offline experiences, promotions, products, and customer data. What does this mean practically for businesses selling goods on- and offline? It touches a lot of systems: inventory info on the eCommerce site, fulfillment options across channels (buy online/pickup in store), order information (representing various channels for a cohesive view of shopper order history), promotions across digital and store, etc. A few years ago, the main link between store and digital was the smartphone. We all remember when “apps” became a thing and many of our customers were scrambling to get a native app out there. Now we're seeing more strategic thinking around the benefits of mobile web vs. native and how that ties in to the purpose and role of mobile within the digital channel. Put it more broadly, how these pieces fit together in the overall brand puzzle. The same could be said for “showrooming.” Where it was a major concern (i.e., shoppers using stores to look at merchandise and then order online from Amazon), in recent months, it’s emerged that the inverse is now becoming a a reality as well. "Webrooming" (using digital sites to do research before making a purchase in the store) is a new behavior pure play retailers are challenged with. There are many technologies, behaviors, and information that need to tie together to offer a holistic omnichannel shopping experience. As a result, brands are looking for ways to connect the digital and in-store experiences to bridge the gaps: shared assortments across channels, assisted selling apps that arm associates with information about shoppers, shared promotions, inventory, etc. QUESTION: How has Oracle Commerce been built to help brands make the link between in-store and digital over the last few years? Kristen: Over the last seven years, the product has been in step with the changes in industry needs. Here is a brief history of the evolution: Prior to Oracle’s acquisition of ATG and Endeca, key investments were made to cross-channel functionality that we are still building on today. Commerce Service Center (v2007.1) ATG introduced the Commerce Service Center in 2007.1 and marked the first entry into what was then called “cross-channel.” The Commerce Service Center is a call-center-agent-facing application that enables agents to see shopper orders, online catalog, promotions, and pricing. It is tightly integrated with the eCommerce capabilities of the platform and commerce engine and provided a means of connecting data from the call center and online channels. REST services framework (v9.1) In v9.1 we introduced the REST services framework and interface in the Platform that enabled customers to use ATG web services in other applications. This framework has become the basis for our subsequent omni-channel features and functionality. Multisite Architecture (v10) With the v10 release, we introduced the Multisite Architecture, which enabled customers to manage multiple sites (and channels) within a single instance of the BCC. Customers could create site- and channel-specific catalogs, promotions, targeters, and scenarios. Endeca Page Builder (2.x) / Experience Manager (3.x) With the introduction of Endeca for Mobile (now part of the core platform, available through the reference store – see blow) on top of Page Builder (and then eventually Experience Manager), Endeca gave business users the tools to create and manage native and mobile web applications. And since the acquisition of both ATG (2011) and Endeca (2012), Oracle Commerce has leveraged the best of each leading technology’s capabilities for omnichannel commerce to continue to drive innovation for our customers. Service enablement of core Oracle Commerce capabilities (v10.1.1, 10.2, & 11) After the establishment of the REST services framework and interface, we followed up in subsequent releases with service enablement of core Oracle Commerce capabilities throughout the iOS native app and the enablement of the core Commerce Service Center features. The result is that customers can leverage these services for their integrations with other systems, as well as their omnichannel initiatives. Mobile web reference application (v10.1) In 10.1 we introduced the shopper-facing mobile reference application that showed how to use Oracle Commerce to deliver a mobile web experience for shoppers. This included the use of Experience Manager and cartridges to drive those experiences on select pages. Native (iOS) reference application (v10.1.1) We came out with the 10.1.1 shopper-facing native iOS ref app that illustrated how to use the Commerce REST services to deliver an iOS app. Also included Experience Manager-driven pages. Assisted Selling reference application (v10.2.1) The Assisted Selling reference application is our first reference application designed for the in-store associate. This iOS app shows customers how they can use Oracle Commerce data and information to provide a high-touch, consultative sales environment as well as to put the endless aisle into hands of their associates. Shoppers can start a cart online, and in-store associates can access that cart via the application to provide more information or add products and then transact using the ATG engine. Support for Retail promotions (v11) As part of the v11 release, we worked with teams in the Oracle Retail Global Business Unit (RGBU) to assess which promotion types and capabilities are supported across our products. Those products included Oracle Commerce, Oracle Point of Service (ORPOS), and Oracle Retail Price Management (RPM). The result is that customers can now more easily support omnichannel use cases between the store and digital. Making sure Oracle Commerce can help support the omnichannel needs of our customers is core to our product strategy. With 89% of consumers now use two or more channels to make a single purchase, ensuring that cross-channel interactions are linked is critical to a great customer experience – and to sales. As Oracle Commerce evolves, we want to make it simple for organizations to create, deliver, and scale experiences across touchpoints with our create once, deploy commerce anywhere framework. We have a flexible, services-oriented architecture that allows data, content, catalogs, cart, experiences, personalization, and merchandising to be shared across touchpoints and easily extended in to new environments like mobile, social, in-store, Call Center, and new Websites. [For the latest downloads and Oracle Commerce documentation, please visit the Oracle Technical Network.] ------ Thank you to both Brian and Kristen for their contributions and to this blog series and their continued thought leadership for Oracle Commerce. We are all looking forward to the coming years of months of new shopping behaviors and opportunities to innovate. Because – if the digital fabric of our everyday lives continues to change at the same pace – the next five years (that just under 2,000 days), will be dramatic. ---------- THIS DOCUMENT IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND MAY NOT BE INCORPORATED INTO A CONTRACT OR AGREEMENT

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Our winners- and some BBQ for everyone

- by Steve Tunstall

Congrats to our two winners for the first two comments on my last entry. Steve from Australia and John Lemon. Steve won since he was the first person over the International Date Line to see the post I made so late after a workday on Friday. So not only does he get to live in a country with the 2nd most beautiful women in the world, but now he gets some cool Oracle Swag, too. (Yes, I live on the beach in southern California, so you can guess where 1st place is for that other contest…Now if Steve happens to live in Manly, we may actually have a tie going…) OK, ok, for everyone else, you can be winners, too. How you ask? I will make you the envy of every guy and gal in your neighborhood or campsite. What follows is the way to smoke the best ribs you or anyone you know have ever tasted. Follow my instructions and give it a try. People at your party/cookout/campsite will tell you that they’re the best ribs they’ve ever had, and I will let you take all the credit. Yes, I fully realize this post is going to be longer than any post I’ve done yet. But let’s get serious here. Smoking meat is much more important, agreed? J In all honesty, this is a repeat of another blog I did, so I’m just copying and pasting. Step 1. Get some ribs. I actually really like Costco’s pack. They have both St. Louis and Baby Back. (They are the same ribs, but cut in half down the sides. St. Louis style is the ‘front’ of the ribs closest to the stomach, and ‘Baby back’ is the part of the ribs where is connects to the backbone). I like them both, so here you see I got one pack of each. About 4 racks to a pack. So these two packs for $25 each will feed about 16-20 of my guests. So around 3 bucks a person is a pretty good deal for the best ribs you’ll ever have. Step 2. Prep the ribs the night before you’re going to smoke. You need to trim them to fit your smoker racks, and also take off the membrane and add your rub. Then cover and set in fridge overnight. Here’s how to take off the membrane, which will not break down with heat and smoke like the rest of the meat, so must be removed. Use a butter knife to work in a ways between the membrane and the white bone. Just enough to make room for your finger. Try really hard not to poke through the membrane, you want to keep it whole. See how my gloved fingers can now start to lift up and pull off the membrane? This is what you are trying to do. It’s awesome when the whole thing can come off at once. This one is going great, maybe the best one I’ve ever done. Sometime, it falls apart and doesn't come off in one nice piece. I hate when that happens. Now, add your rub and pat it down once into the meat with your other hand. My rub is not secret. I got it from my mentor, a BBQ competitive chef who is currently ranked #1 in California and #3 in the nation on the BBQ circuit. He does full-day classes in southern California if anyone is interested in taking his class. Go to www.slapyodaddybbq.com to check him out. I tweaked his run recipe a tad and made my own. It’s one part Lawry’s, one part sugar, one part Montreal Steak Seasoning, one part garlic powder, one-half part red chili powder, one-half part paprika, and then 1/20th part cayenne. You can adjust that last ingredient, or leave it out. Real cheap stuff you can get at Costco. This lets you make enough rub to last about a year or two. Don’t make it all at once, make a shaker’s worth and use it up before you make more. Place it all in a bowl, mix well, and then add to a shaker like you see here. You can get a shaker with medium sized holes on it at any restaurant supply store or Smart & Final. The kind you see at pizza places for their red pepper flakes works best. Now cover and place in fridge overnight. Step 3. The next day. Ok, I’m ready to go. Get your stuff together. You will need your smoker, some good foil, a can of peach nectar, a bottle of Agave syrup, and a package of brown sugar. You will need this stuff later. I also use a clean spray bottle, and apple juice. Step 4. Make your fire, or turn on your electric smoker. In this example I’m using my portable charcoal smoker. I got this for only $40. I then modified it to be useful. Once modified, these guys actually work very well. Trust me, your food DOES NOT KNOW how expensive your smoker is. Someone who tells you that you need to spend a bunch of money on a smoker is an idiot. I also have an electric smoker that stays in my backyard. It’s cleaner and larger so I can smoke more food. But this little $40 one works great for going camping. Here is what my fire-bowl looks like. I leave a space in the middle open, and place cold charcoal and wood chucks in a circle going outwards. This makes it so when I dump the hot coals down the middle, they will slowly burn outwards, hitting different wood chucks at different times, allowing me to go 4-5 hours without having to even touch my fire. For ribs, I use apple and pecan wood. Pecan works for anything. Apple or any fruit wood is excellent for pork. So now I make my hot charcoal with a chimney only about half-full. I found a great use for that side-burner on my grill that I never use. It makes a fantastic chimney starter. You never use fluids of any kind, nor ever use that stupid charcoal that has lighter fluid built into it. Never, ever, ever. Step 5. Smoke. Add your ribs in the racks and stack them up in your smoker. I have a digital thermometer on a probe that I use to keep track of the temp in the smoker. I just lay the probe on the top rack and shut the lid. This cheap guy is a little harder to maintain the right temperature of around 225 F, so I do have to keep my eye on it more than my electric one or a more expensive charcoal one with the cool gadgets that regulate your temp for you. Every hour, spray apple juice all over your ribs using that spray bottle. After about 3 hours, you should have a very good crust (called the Bark) on your ribs. Once you have the Bark where you want it, carefully remove your ribs and place them in a tray. We are now ready for a very important part to make the flavor. Get a large piece of foil and place one rib section on it. Splash some of the peach nectar on it, and then a drizzle of the Agave syrup. Then, use your gloved hand to pack on some brown sugar. Do this on BOTH sides, and then completely wrap it up TIGHT in the foil. Do this for each rib section, and then place all the wrapped sections back into the smoker for another 4 to 6 hours. This is where the meat will get tender and flavorful. The first three hours is only to make the smoke bark. You don’t need smoke anymore, since the ribs are wrapped, you only need to keep the heat around 225 for the next 4-6 hours. Obviously you don’t spray anymore. Just time and slow heat. Be patient. It’s actually really hard to overdo it. You can let them go longer, and all that will happen is they will get even MORE tender!!! If you take them out too soon, they will be tough. How do you know? Take out one package (use long tongs) and open it up. If you grab a bone with your tongs and it just falls apart and breaks away from the rest of the meat, you are done!!! Enjoy!!! Step 6. Eat. It pulls apart like this when it’s done. By the way, smoking tri-tip is way easier. Just rub it with the same rub, and put in your smoker for about 2.5 hours at 250 F. That’s it. Low-maintenance. It comes out like this, with a fantastic smoke ring and amazing flavor. Thanks, and I will put up another good tip, about the ZFSSA, around the end of November. Steve

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Moving from Tortoise to TFS

- by MarkPearl

The Past A few years ago my small software company made the jump from storing code on a shared folder to source code control. At the time we had evaluated a few of the options and settled on Tortoise SVN. The main motivation for going the SVN route was that we found a great plugin for Visual Studio that allowed us to avoid the command prompt for uploading changes (like I said we are windows programmers… command prompt bad!! ) and it was free. Up to now we have been pretty happy with SVN as it removed many of the worries that I had about how safe my code was on a shared folder and also gave us the opportunity to safely have several developers work on the same project at the same time. The only times when we have been unhappy has been when we have had SVN hell days – which pretty much occur when you are doing something out of the norm and suddenly SVN just won’t resolve conflicts or something along those lines. This happens once every 4 or 5 months and is not necessarily a problem caused directly by SVN – but a problem augmented by SVN. When you have SVN hell days you want to curse SVN! With that in mind I recently have been relooking at our source code control. I have explored using GIT and was very impressed by it and have also looked at TFS. From a source code control perspective I don’t want to get into a heated discussion on which one is better – but I do want to mention that I wear two hats in my organization – software developer & manager, and with the manager hat on I tend to sway the TFS route. So when I was given a coupon to test DiscountASP.Net Team Foundation Server Service for a year, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to try TFS in a distributed environment and also make the first step towards having an integrated development management system. Some of the things that appeal to me about DiscountASP’s offering are the following… Basic management / planning facilities like to do lists inside Visual Studio Daily backup of data on the server – we are developers, not IT managers and so the more of this I could outsource the better Distributed solution – all of us work remotely and so this was a big one as well. Registering and Setting Up with DiscountASP.NET The whole registration process was simple and intuitive. The web interface is not the most visually impressive one, but it is functional and a few seconds after I clicked the last submit button a email was sitting in my inbox giving me my control panel username and suggesting that I read the “Getting Started” article. The getting started article was easy to read and understand so no complaints there either. Next to set my dev environment to work. With a few references to the getting started article I had completed the whole setup process in a matter of minutes. Ten minutes after initiating the whole thing I was logged into VS2010 and creating my first TFS project. With the service that I signed up for, I have access for 5 users – which is sufficient for my internal needs. So from what I can tell, to set the rest of us up on the system I just need to supply them with their user credentials and url. My Concerns Resolved 1) Security So, a few concerns I had about the service. First and foremost – is it secure? I would hate for someone to get access to our code and the whole idea of putting it up on the internet is a concern for me. Turning to the Knowledge Base on the DiscountASP website this is one of the first question I can see answered. According to them it is secure. I have extracted their comment below regarding this. Our TFS hosting service is secure. We only accept HTTPS connections ensuring that any client-server data transmission is encrypted. At the network level, all of our systems are protected by multiple Juniper firewalls, Tipping Point's Intrusion Detection System (see Tipping Point's case study of our use here), and we also employ DDoS mitigation to add extra layers of security. Additionally, physical access to the servers is tightly restricted. Please see the security section of this Knowledge Base article for further details. 2) Web Portal Access The other big concern I have is regarding web portal access. In the ideal world I would like to be able to give my end users access to a web portal for reporting bugs etc. When I initially read through the FAQ of the site it mentioned that there was web portal access – but from what I can see this is just for “users”. Since I am limited to 5 users for the account, it would not be practical to set up external users that we could get feedback from on bugs etc. I would be interested if this is possible – and if so if someone could post it in the comments it would be much appreciated. If this isn’t possible, it is a slight let down as we rely heavily on end user feedback to get feedback and it would have been ideal to have gotten this within the service. Other than those two items, I didn’t have any real concerns that were unresolved. So where do I go from here? So time passed by from the initial writing of this post and as work whirred in and out of my inbox I have still not had a proper opportunity to give the service a test run. Recently though things have began to slow down and then surprise surprise I had another SVN Hell day. With that experience I had a new found resolve to get our team on TFS and so today we are going to start to use the service as a team. I am hoping that I do not have TFS hell days – but if I do, I will be sure to write about them. In short - the verdict is still out on whether this service is going to be invaluable to my business or whether it will create more headaches than it is worth BUT I am hopping it will be an invaluable service. I will only really be able to determine that in a few months… till then!

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