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• What to Do When Windows Won’t Boot

  - by Chris Hoffman

  You turn on your computer one day and Windows refuses to boot — what do you do? “Windows won’t boot” is a common symptom with a variety of causes, so you’ll need to perform some troubleshooting. Modern versions of Windows are better at recovering from this sort of thing. Where Windows XP might have stopped in its tracks when faced with this problem, modern versions of Windows will try to automatically run Startup Repair. First Things First Be sure to think about changes you’ve made recently — did you recently install a new hardware driver, connect a new hardware component to your computer, or open your computer’s case and do something? It’s possible the hardware driver is buggy, the new hardware is incompatible, or that you accidentally unplugged something while working inside your computer. The Computer Won’t Power On At All If your computer won’t power on at all, ensure it’s plugged into a power outlet and that the power connector isn’t loose. If it’s a desktop PC, ensure the power switch on the back of its case — on the power supply — is set to the On position. If it still won’t power on at all, it’s possible you disconnected a power cable inside its case. If you haven’t been messing around inside the case, it’s possible the power supply is dead. In this case, you’ll have to get your computer’s hardware fixed or get a new computer. Be sure to check your computer monitor — if your computer seems to power on but your screen stays black, ensure your monitor is powered on and that the cable connecting it to your computer’s case is plugged in securely at both ends. The Computer Powers On And Says No Bootable Device If your computer is powering on but you get a black screen that says something like “no bootable device” or another sort of “disk error” message, your computer can’t seem to boot from the hard drive that Windows was installed on. Enter your computer’s BIOS or UEFI firmware setup screen and check its boot order setting, ensuring that it’s set to boot from its hard drive. If the hard drive doesn’t appear in the list at all, it’s possible your hard drive has failed and can no longer be booted from. In this case, you may want to insert Windows installation or recovery media and run the Startup Repair operation. This will attempt to make Windows bootable again. For example, if something overwrote your Windows drive’s boot sector, this will repair the boot sector. If the recovery environment won’t load or doesn’t see your hard drive, you likely have a hardware problem. Be sure to check your BIOS or UEFI’s boot order first if the recovery environment won’t load. You can also attempt to manually fix Windows boot loader problems using the fixmbr and fixboot commands. Modern versions of Windows should be able to fix this problem for you with the Startup Repair wizard, so you shouldn’t actually have to run these commands yourself. Windows Freezes or Crashes During Boot If Windows seems to start booting but fails partway through, you may be facing either a software or hardware problem. If it’s a software problem, you may be able to fix it by performing a Startup Repair operation. If you can’t do this from the boot menu, insert a Windows installation disc or recovery disk and use the startup repair tool from there. If this doesn’t help at all, you may want to reinstall Windows or perform a Refresh or Reset on Windows 8. If the computer encounters errors while attempting to perform startup repair or reinstall Windows, or the reinstall process works properly and you encounter the same errors afterwards, you likely have a hardware problem. Windows Starts and Blue Screens or Freezes If Windows crashes or blue-screens on you every time it boots, you may be facing a hardware or software problem. For example, malware or a buggy driver may be loading at boot and causing the crash, or your computer’s hardware may be malfunctioning. To test this, boot your Windows computer in safe mode. In safe mode, Windows won’t load typical hardware drivers or any software that starts automatically at startup. If the computer is stable in safe mode, try uninstalling any recently installed hardware drivers, performing a system restore, and scanning for malware. If you’re lucky, one of these steps may fix your software problem and allow you to boot Windows normally. If your problem isn’t fixed, try reinstalling Windows or performing a Refresh or Reset on Windows 8. This will reset your computer back to its clean, factory-default state. If you’re still experiencing crashes, your computer likely has a hardware problem. Recover Files When Windows Won’t Boot If you have important files that will be lost and want to back them up before reinstalling Windows, you can use a Windows installer disc or Linux live media to recover the files. These run entirely from a CD, DVD, or USB drive and allow you to copy your files to another external media, such as another USB stick or an external hard drive. If you’re incapable of booting a Windows installer disc or Linux live CD, you may need to go into your BIOS or UEFI and change the boot order setting. If even this doesn’t work — or if you can boot from the devices and your computer freezes or you can’t access your hard drive — you likely have a hardware problem. You can try pulling the computer’s hard drive, inserting it into another computer, and recovering your files that way. Following these steps should fix the vast majority of Windows boot issues — at least the ones that are actually fixable. The dark cloud that always hangs over such issues is the possibility that the hard drive or another component in the computer may be failing. Image Credit: Karl-Ludwig G. Poggemann on Flickr, Tzuhsun Hsu on Flickr     

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• Career development as a Software Developer without becoming a manager.

  - by albertpascual

  I’m a developer, I like to write new exciting code everyday, my perfect day at work is a day that when I wake up, I know that I have to write some code that I haven’t done before or to use a new framework/language/platform that is unknown to me. The best days in the office is when a project is waiting for me to architect or write. In my 15 years in the development field, I had to in order to get a better salary to manage people, not just to lead developers, to actually manage people. Something that I found out when I get into a management position is that I’m not that good at managing people, and not afraid to say it. I do not enjoy that part of the job, the worse one, takes time away from what I really like. Leading developers and managing people are very different things. I do like teaching and leading developers in a project. Yet most people believe, and is true in most companies, the way to get a better salary is to be promoted to a manager position. In order to advance in your career you need to let go of the everyday writing code and become a supervisor or manager. This is the path for developers after they become senior developers. As you get older and your family grows, the only way to hit your salary requirements is to advance your career to become a manager and get that manager salary. That path is the common in most companies, the most intelligent companies out there, have learned that promoting good developers mean getting a crappy manager and losing a good resource. Now scratch everything I said, because as I previously stated, I don’t see myself going to the office everyday and just managing people until is time to go home. I like to spend hours working in some code to accomplish a task, learning new platforms and languages or patterns to existing languages. Being interrupted every 15 minutes by emails or people stopping by my office to resolve their problems, is not something I could enjoy. All the sudden riding my motorcycle to work one cold morning over the Redlands Canyon and listening to .NET Rocks podcast, Michael “Doc” Norton explaining how to take control of your development career without necessary going to the manager’s track. I know, I should not have headphones under my helmet when riding a motorcycle in California. His conversation with Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell was just confirming everything I have ever did with actually more details and assuring that there are other paths. His method was simple yet most of us, already do many of those steps, Mr. Michael “Doc” Norton believe that it pays off on the long run, that finally companies prefer to pay higher salaries to those developers, yet I would actually think that many companies do not see developers that way, this is not true for bigger companies. However I do believe the value of those developers increase and most of the time, changing companies could increase their salary instead of staying in the same one. In short without even trying to get into the shadow of Mr. Norton and without following the steps in the order; you should love to learn new technologies, and then teach them to other geeks. I personally have learn many technologies and I haven’t stop doing that, I am a professor at UCR where I teach ASP.NET and Silverlight. Mr Norton continues that after than, you want to be involve in the development community, user groups, online forums, open source projects. I personally talk to user groups, I’m very active in forums asking and answering questions as well as for those I got awarded the Microsoft MVP for ASP.NET. After you accomplish all those, you should also expose yourself for what you know and what you do not know, learning a new language will make you humble again as well as extremely happy. There is no better feeling that learning a new language or pattern in your daily job. If you love your job everyday and what you do, I really recommend you to follow Michael’s presentation that he kindly share it on the link below. His confirmation is a refreshing, knowing that my future is not behind a desk where the computer screen is on my right hand side instead of in front of me. Where I don’t have to spent the days filling up performance forms for people and the new platforms that I haven’t been using yet are just at my fingertips. Presentation here. http://www.slideshare.net/LeanDog/take-control-of-your-development-career-michael-doc-norton?from=share_email_logout3 Take Control of Your Development Career Welcome! Michael “Doc” Norton @DocOnDev http://docondev.blogspot.com/ [email protected] Recovering Post Technical I love to learn I love to teach I love to work in teams I love to write code I really love to write code What about YOU? Do you love your job? Do you love your Employer? Do you love your Boss? What do you love? What do you really love? Take Control Take Control • Get Noticed • Get Together • Get Your Mojo • Get Naked • Get Schooled Get Noticed Get Noticed Know Your Business Get Noticed Get Noticed Understand Management Get Noticed Get Noticed Do Your Existing Job Get Noticed Get Noticed Make Yourself Expendable Get Together Get Together Join a User Group Get Together Help Run a User Group Get Together Start a User Group Get Your Mojo Get Your Mojo Kata Get Your Mojo Koans Get Your Mojo Breakable Toys Get Your Mojo Open Source Get Naked Get Naked Run with Group A Get Naked Do Something Different Get Naked Own Your Mistakes Get Naked Admit You Don’t Know Get Schooled Get Schooled Choose a Mentor Get Schooled Attend Conferences Get Schooled Teach a New Subject Get Started Read These (Again) Take Control of Your Development Career Thank You! Michael “Doc” Norton @DocOnDev http://docondev.blogspot.com/ [email protected] In a short summary, I recommend any developer to check his blog and more important his presentation, I haven’t been lucky enough to watch him live, I’m looking forward the day I have the opportunity. He is giving us hope in the future of developers, when I see some of my geek friends moving to position that in short years they begin to regret, I get more unsure of my future doing what I love. I would say that now is looking at the spectrum of companies that understand and appreciate developers. There are a few there, hopefully with time code sweat shops will start disappearing and being a developer will feed a family of 4. Cheers Al tweetmeme_url = 'http://weblogs.asp.net/albertpascual/archive/2010/12/07/career-development-as-a-software-developer-without-becoming-a-manager.aspx'; tweetmeme_source = 'alpascual';

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• Fragmented Log files could be slowing down your database

  - by Fatherjack

  Something that is sometimes forgotten by a lot of DBAs is the fact that database log files get fragmented in the same way that you get fragmentation in a data file. The cause is very different but the effect is the same – too much effort reading and writing data. Data files get fragmented as data is changed through normal system activity, INSERTs, UPDATEs and DELETEs cause fragmentation and most experienced DBAs are monitoring their indexes for fragmentation and dealing with it accordingly. However, you don’t hear about so many working on their log files. How can a log file get fragmented? I’m glad you asked. When you create a database there are at least two files created on the disk storage; an mdf for the data and an ldf for the log file (you can also have ndf files for extra data storage but that’s off topic for now). It is wholly possible to have more than one log file but in most cases there is little point in creating more than one as the log file is written to in a ‘wrap-around’ method (more on that later). When a log file is created at the time that a database is created the file is actually sub divided into a number of virtual log files (VLFs). The number and size of these VLFs depends on the size chosen for the log file. VLFs are also created in the space added to a log file when a log file growth event takes place. Do you have your log files set to auto grow? Then you have potentially been introducing many VLFs into your log file. Let’s get to see how many VLFs we have in a brand new database. USE master GO CREATE DATABASE VLF_Test ON ( NAME = VLF_Test, FILENAME = 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.ROCK_2008\MSSQL\DATA\VLF_Test.mdf', SIZE = 100, MAXSIZE = 500, FILEGROWTH = 50 ) LOG ON ( NAME = VLF_Test_Log, FILENAME = 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.ROCK_2008\MSSQL\DATA\VLF_Test_log.ldf', SIZE = 5MB, MAXSIZE = 250MB, FILEGROWTH = 5MB ); go USE VLF_Test go DBCC LOGINFO; The results of this are firstly a new database is created with specified files sizes and the the DBCC LOGINFO results are returned to the script editor. The DBCC LOGINFO results have plenty of interesting information in them but lets first note there are 4 rows of information, this relates to the fact that 4 VLFs have been created in the log file. The values in the FileSize column are the sizes of each VLF in bytes, you will see that the last one to be created is slightly larger than the others. So, a 5MB log file has 4 VLFs of roughly 1.25 MB. Lets alter the CREATE DATABASE script to create a log file that’s a bit bigger and see what happens. Alter the code above so that the log file details are replaced by LOG ON ( NAME = VLF_Test_Log, FILENAME = 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.ROCK_2008\MSSQL\DATA\VLF_Test_log.ldf', SIZE = 1GB, MAXSIZE = 25GB, FILEGROWTH = 1GB ); With a bigger log file specified we get more VLFs What if we make it bigger again? LOG ON ( NAME = VLF_Test_Log, FILENAME = 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.ROCK_2008\MSSQL\DATA\VLF_Test_log.ldf', SIZE = 5GB, MAXSIZE = 250GB, FILEGROWTH = 5GB ); This time we see more VLFs are created within our log file. We now have our 5GB log file comprised of 16 files of 320MB each. In fact these sizes fall into all the ranges that control the VLF creation criteria – what a coincidence! The rules that are followed when a log file is created or has it’s size increased are pretty basic. If the file growth is lower than 64MB then 4 VLFs are created If the growth is between 64MB and 1GB then 8 VLFs are created If the growth is greater than 1GB then 16 VLFs are created. Now the potential for chaos comes if the default values and settings for log file growth are used. By default a database log file gets a 1MB log file with unlimited growth in steps of 10%. The database we just created is 6 MB, let’s add some data and see what happens. USE vlf_test go -- we need somewhere to put the data so, a table is in order IF OBJECT_ID('A_Table') IS NOT NULL DROP TABLE A_Table go CREATE TABLE A_Table ( Col_A int IDENTITY, Col_B CHAR(8000) ) GO -- Let's check the state of the log file -- 4 VLFs found EXECUTE ('DBCC LOGINFO'); go -- We can go ahead and insert some data and then check the state of the log file again INSERT A_Table (col_b) SELECT TOP 500 REPLICATE('a',2000) FROM sys.columns AS sc, sys.columns AS sc2 GO -- insert 500 rows and we get 22 VLFs EXECUTE ('DBCC LOGINFO'); go -- Let's insert more rows INSERT A_Table (col_b) SELECT TOP 2000 REPLICATE('a',2000) FROM sys.columns AS sc, sys.columns AS sc2 GO 10 -- insert 2000 rows, in 10 batches and we suddenly have 107 VLFs EXECUTE ('DBCC LOGINFO'); Well, that escalated quickly! Our log file is split, internally, into 107 fragments after a few thousand inserts. The same happens with any logged transactions, I just chose to illustrate this with INSERTs. Having too many VLFs can cause performance degradation at times of database start up, log backup and log restore operations so it’s well worth keeping a check on this property. How do we prevent excessive VLF creation? Creating the database with larger files and also with larger growth steps and actively choosing to grow your databases rather than leaving it to the Auto Grow event can make sure that the growths are made with a size that is optimal. How do we resolve a situation of a database with too many VLFs? This process needs to be done when the database is under little or no stress so that you don’t affect system users. The steps are: BACKUP LOG YourDBName TO YourBackupDestinationOfChoice Shrink the log file to its smallest possible size DBCC SHRINKFILE(FileNameOfTLogHere, TRUNCATEONLY) * Re-size the log file to the size you want it to, taking in to account your expected needs for the coming months or year. ALTER DATABASE YourDBName MODIFY FILE ( NAME = FileNameOfTLogHere, SIZE = TheSizeYouWantItToBeIn_MB) * – If you don’t know the file name of your log file then run sp_helpfile while you are connected to the database that you want to work on and you will get the details you need. The resize step can take quite a while This is already detailed far better than I can explain it by Kimberley Tripp in her blog 8-Steps-to-better-Transaction-Log-throughput.aspx. The result of this will be a log file with a VLF count according to the bullet list above. Knowing when VLFs are being created By complete coincidence while I have been writing this blog (it’s been quite some time from it’s inception to going live) Jonathan Kehayias from SQLSkills.com has written a great article on how to track database file growth using Event Notifications and Service Broker. I strongly recommend taking a look at it as this is going to catch any sneaky auto grows that take place and let you know about them right away. Hassle free monitoring of VLFs If you are lucky or wise enough to be using SQL Monitor or another monitoring tool that let’s you write your own custom metrics then you can keep an eye on this very easily. There is a custom metric for VLFs (written by Stuart Ainsworth) already on the site and there are some others there are very useful so take a moment or two to look around while you are there. Resources MSDN – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms179355(v=sql.105).aspx Kimberly Tripp from SQLSkills.com – http://www.sqlskills.com/BLOGS/KIMBERLY/post/8-Steps-to-better-Transaction-Log-throughput.aspx Thomas LaRock at Simple-Talk.com – http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/database-administration/monitoring-sql-server-virtual-log-file-fragmentation/ Disclosure I am a Friend of Red Gate. This means that I am more than likely to say good things about Red Gate DBA and Developer tools. No matter how awesome I make them sound, take the time to compare them with other products before you contact the Red Gate sales team to make your order.

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• My Code Kata–A Solution Kata

  - by Glav

  There are many developers and coders out there who like to do code Kata’s to keep their coding ability up to scratch and to practice their skills. I think it is a good idea. While I like the concept, I find them dead boring and of minimal purpose. Yes, they serve to hone your skills but that’s about it. They are often quite abstract, in that they usually focus on a small problem set requiring specific solutions. It is fair enough as that is how they are designed but again, I find them quite boring. What I personally like to do is go for something a little larger and a little more fun. It takes a little more time and is not as easily executed as a kata though, but it services the same purposes from a practice perspective and allows me to continue to solve some problems that are not directly part of the initial goal. This means I can cover a broader learning range and have a bit more fun. If I am lucky, sometimes they even end up being useful tools. With that in mind, I thought I’d share my current ‘kata’. It is not really a code kata as it is too big. I prefer to think of it as a ‘solution kata’. The code is on bitbucket here. What I wanted to do was create a kind of simplistic virtual world where I can create a player, or a class, stuff it into the world, and see if it survives, and can navigate its way to the exit. Requirements were pretty simple: Must be able to define a map to describe the world using simple X,Y co-ordinates. Z co-ordinates as well if you feel like getting clever. Should have the concept of entrances, exists, solid blocks, and potentially other materials (again if you want to get clever). A coder should be able to easily write a class which will act as an inhabitant of the world. An inhabitant will receive stimulus from the world in the form of surrounding environment and be able to make a decision on action which it passes back to the ‘world’ for processing. At a minimum, an inhabitant will have sight and speed characteristics which determine how far they can ‘see’ in the world, and how fast they can move. Coders who write a really bad ‘inhabitant’ should not adversely affect the rest of world. Should allow multiple inhabitants in the world. So that was the solution I set out to act as a practice solution and a little bit of fun. It had some interesting problems to solve and I figured, if it turned out ok, I could potentially use this as a ‘developer test’ for interviews. Ask a potential coder to write a class for an inhabitant. Show the coder the map they will navigate, but also mention that we will use their code to navigate a map they have not yet seen and a little more complex. I have been playing with solution for a short time now and have it working in basic concepts. Below is a screen shot using a very basic console visualiser that shows the map, boundaries, blocks, entrance, exit and players/inhabitants. The yellow asterisks ‘*’ are the players, green ‘O’ the entrance, purple ‘^’ the exit, maroon/browny ‘#’ are solid blocks. The players can move around at different speeds, knock into each others, and make directional movement decisions based on what they see and who is around them. It has been quite fun to write and it is also quite fun to develop different players to inject into the world. The code below shows a really simple implementation of an inhabitant that can work out what to do based on stimulus from the world. It is pretty simple and just tries to move in some direction if there is nothing blocking the path. public class TestPlayer:LivingEntity { public TestPlayer() { Name = "Beta Boy"; LifeKey = Guid.NewGuid(); } public override ActionResult DecideActionToPerform(EcoDev.Core.Common.Actions.ActionContext actionContext) { try { var action = new MovementAction(); // move forward if we can if (actionContext.Position.ForwardFacingPositions.Length > 0) { if (CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(actionContext.Position.ForwardFacingPositions[0])) { action.DirectionToMove = MovementDirection.Forward; return action; } } if (actionContext.Position.LeftFacingPositions.Length > 0) { if (CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(actionContext.Position.LeftFacingPositions[0])) { action.DirectionToMove = MovementDirection.Left; return action; } } if (actionContext.Position.RearFacingPositions.Length > 0) { if (CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(actionContext.Position.RearFacingPositions[0])) { action.DirectionToMove = MovementDirection.Back; return action; } } if (actionContext.Position.RightFacingPositions.Length > 0) { if (CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(actionContext.Position.RightFacingPositions[0])) { action.DirectionToMove = MovementDirection.Right; return action; } } return action; } catch (Exception ex) { World.WriteDebugInformation("Player: "+ Name, string.Format("Player Generated exception: {0}",ex.Message)); throw ex; } } private bool CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(MapBlock block) { if (block == null || block.Accessibility == MapBlockAccessibility.AllowEntry || block.Accessibility == MapBlockAccessibility.AllowExit || block.Accessibility == MapBlockAccessibility.AllowPotentialEntry) { return true; } return false; } } It is simple and it seems to work well. The world implementation itself decides the stimulus context that is passed to he inhabitant to make an action decision. All movement is carried out on separate threads and timed appropriately to be as fair as possible and to cater for additional skills such as speed, and eventually maybe stamina, strength, with actions like fighting. It is pretty fun to make up random maps and see how your inhabitant does. You can download the code from here. Along the way I have played with parallel extensions to make the compute intensive stuff spread across all cores, had to heavily factor in visibility of methods and properties so design of classes was paramount, work out movement algorithms that play fairly in the world and properly favour the players with higher abilities, as well as a host of other issues. So that is my ‘solution kata’. If I keep going with it, I may develop a web interface for it where people can upload assemblies and watch their player within a web browser visualiser and maybe even a map designer. What do you do to keep the fires burning?

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• Reg Gets a Job at Red Gate (and what happens behind the scenes)

  - by red(at)work

  Mr Reg Gater works at one of Cambridge’s many high-tech companies. He doesn’t love his job, but he puts up with it because... well, it could be worse. Every day he drives to work around the Red Gate roundabout, wondering what his boss is going to blame him for today, and wondering if there could be a better job out there for him. By late morning he already feels like handing his notice in. He got the hacky look from his boss for being 5 minutes late, and then they ran out of tea. Again. He goes to the local sandwich shop for lunch, and picks up a Red Gate job menu and a Book of Red Gate while he’s waiting for his order. That night, he goes along to Cambridge Geek Nights and sees some very enthusiastic Red Gaters talking about the work they do; it sounds interesting and, of all things, fun. He takes a quick look at the job vacancies on the Red Gate website, and an hour later realises he’s still there – looking at videos, photos and people profiles. He especially likes the Red Gate’s Got Talent page, and is very impressed with Simon Johnson’s marathon time. He thinks that he’d quite like to work with such awesome people. It just so happens that Red Gate recently decided that they wanted to hire another hot shot team member. Behind the scenes, the wheels were set in motion: the recruitment team met with the hiring manager to understand exactly what they’re looking for, and to decide what interview tests to do, who will do the interviews, and to kick-start any interview training those people might need. Next up, a job description and job advert were written, and the job was put on the market. Reg applies, and his CV lands in the Recruitment team’s inbox and they open it up with eager anticipation that Reg could be the next awesome new starter. He looks good, and in a jiffy they’ve arranged an interview. Reg arrives for his interview, and is greeted by a smiley receptionist. She offers him a selection of drinks and he feels instantly relaxed. A couple of interviews and an assessment later, he gets a job offer. We make his day and he makes ours by accepting, and becoming one of the 60 new starters so far this year. Behind the scenes, things start moving all over again. The HR team arranges for a “Welcome” goodie box to be whisked out to him, prepares his contract, sends an email to Information Services (Or IS for short - we’ll come back to them), keeps in touch with Reg to make sure he knows what to expect on his first day, and of course asks him to fill in the all-important wiki questionnaire so his new colleagues can start to get to know him before he even joins. Meanwhile, the IS team see an email in SupportWorks from HR. They see that Reg will be starting in the sales team in a few days’ time, and they know exactly what to do. They pull out a new machine, and within minutes have used their automated deployment software to install every piece of software that a new recruit could ever need. They also check with Reg’s new manager to see if he has any special requirements that they could help with. Reg starts and is amazed to find a fully configured machine sitting on his desk, complete with stationery and all the other tools he’ll need to do his job. He feels even more cared for after he gets a workstation assessment, and realises he’d be comfier with an ergonomic keyboard and a footstool. They arrive minutes later, just like that. His manager starts him off on his induction and sales training. Along with job-specific training, he’ll also have a buddy to help him find his feet, and loads of pre-arranged demos and introductions. Reg settles in nicely, and is great at his job. He enjoys the canteen, and regularly eats one of the 40,000 meals provided each year. He gets used to the selection of teas that are available, develops a taste for champagne launch parties, and has his fair share of the 25,000 cups of coffee downed at Red Gate towers each year. He goes along to some Feel Good Fund events, and donates a little something to charity in exchange for a turn on the chocolate fountain. He’s looking a little scruffy, so he decides to get his hair cut in between meetings, just in time for the Red Gate birthday company photo. Reg starts a new project: identifying existing customers to up-sell to new bundles. He talks with the web team to generate lists of qualifying customers who haven’t recently been sent marketing emails, and sends emails out, using a new in-house developed tool to schedule follow-up calls in CRM for the same group. The customer responds, saying they’d like to upgrade but are having a licensing problem – Reg sends the issue to Support, and it gets routed to the web team. The team identifies a workaround, and the bug gets scheduled into the next maintenance release in a fortnight’s time (hey; they got lucky). With all the new stuff Reg is working on, he realises that he’d be way more efficient if he had a third monitor. He speaks to IS and they get him one - no argument. He also needs a test machine and then some extra memory. Done. He then thinks he needs an iPad, and goes to ask for one. He gets told to stop pushing his luck. Some time later, Reg’s wife has a baby, so Reg gets 2 weeks of paid paternity leave and a bunch of flowers sent to his house. He signs up to the childcare scheme so that he doesn’t have to pay National Insurance on the first £243 of his childcare. The accounts team makes it all happen seamlessly, as they did with his Give As You Earn payments, which come out of his wages and go straight to his favorite charity. Reg’s sales career is going well. He’s grateful for the help that he gets from the product support team. How do they answer all those 900-ish support calls so effortlessly each month? He’s impressed with the patches that are sent out to customers who find “interesting behavior” in their tools, and to the customers who just must have that new feature. A little later in his career at Red Gate, Reg decides that he’d like to learn about management. He goes on some management training specially customised for Red Gate, joins the Management Book Club, and gets together with other new managers to brainstorm how to get the most out of one to one meetings with his team. Reg decides to go for a game of Foosball to celebrate his good fortune with his team, and has to wait for Finance to finish. While he’s waiting, he reflects on the wonderful time he’s had at Red Gate. He can’t put his finger on what it is exactly, but he knows he’s on to a good thing. All of the stuff that happened to Reg didn’t just happen magically. We’ve got teams of people working relentlessly behind the scenes to make sure that everyone here is comfortable, safe, well fed and caffeinated to the max.

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #050

  - by Pinal Dave

  Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 Executing Remote Stored Procedure – Calling Stored Procedure on Linked Server In this example we see two different methods of how to call Stored Procedures remotely.  Connection Property of SQL Server Management Studio SSMS A very simple example of the how to build connection properties for SQL Server with the help of SSMS. Sample Example of RANKING Functions – ROW_NUMBER, RANK, DENSE_RANK, NTILE SQL Server has a total of 4 ranking functions. Ranking functions return a ranking value for each row in a partition. All the ranking functions are non-deterministic. T-SQL Script to Add Clustered Primary Key Jr. DBA asked me three times in a day, how to create Clustered Primary Key. I gave him following sample example. That was the last time he asked “How to create Clustered Primary Key to table?” 2008 2008 – TRIM() Function – User Defined Function SQL Server does not have functions which can trim leading or trailing spaces of any string at the same time. SQL does have LTRIM() and RTRIM() which can trim leading and trailing spaces respectively. SQL Server 2008 also does not have TRIM() function. User can easily use LTRIM() and RTRIM() together and simulate TRIM() functionality. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-hhApy6MHM 2009 Earlier I have written two different articles on the subject Remove Bookmark Lookup. This article is as part 3 of original article. Please read the first two articles here before continuing reading this article. Query Optimization – Remove Bookmark Lookup – Remove RID Lookup – Remove Key Lookup Query Optimization – Remove Bookmark Lookup – Remove RID Lookup – Remove Key Lookup – Part 2 Query Optimization – Remove Bookmark Lookup – Remove RID Lookup – Remove Key Lookup – Part 3 Interesting Observation – Query Hint – FORCE ORDER SQL Server never stops to amaze me. As regular readers of this blog already know that besides conducting corporate training, I work on large-scale projects on query optimizations and server tuning projects. In one of the recent projects, I have noticed that a Junior Database Developer used the query hint Force Order; when I asked for details, I found out that the basic concept was not properly understood by him. Queries Waiting for Memory Allocation to Execute In one of the recent projects, I was asked to create a report of queries that are waiting for memory allocation. The reason was that we were doubtful regarding whether the memory was sufficient for the application. The following query can be useful in similar cases. Queries that do not have to wait on a memory grant will not appear in the result set of following query. 2010 Quickest Way to Identify Blocking Query and Resolution – Dirty Solution As the title suggests, this is quite a dirty solution; it’s not as elegant as you expect. However, it works totally fine. Simple Explanation of Data Type Precedence While I was working on creating a question for SQL SERVER – SQL Quiz – The View, The Table and The Clustered Index Confusion, I had actually created yet another question along with this question. However, I felt that the one which is posted on the SQL Quiz is much better than this one because what makes that more challenging question is that it has a multiple answer. Encrypted Stored Procedure and Activity Monitor I recently had received questionable if any stored procedure is encrypted can we see its definition in Activity Monitor.Answer is - No. Let us do a quick test. Let us create following Stored Procedure and then launch the Activity Monitor and check the text. Indexed View always Use Index on Table A single table can have maximum 249 non clustered indexes and 1 clustered index. In SQL Server 2008, a single table can have maximum 999 non clustered indexes and 1 clustered index. It is widely believed that a table can have only 1 clustered index, and this belief is true. I have some questions for all of you. Let us assume that I am creating view from the table itself and then create a clustered index on it. In my view, I am selecting the complete table itself. 2011 Detecting Database Case Sensitive Property using fn_helpcollations() I received a question on how to determine the case sensitivity of the database. The quick answer to this is to identify the collation of the database and check the properties of the collation. I have previously written how one can identify database collation. Once you have figured out the collation of the database, you can put that in the WHERE condition of the following T-SQL and then check the case sensitivity from the description. Server Side Paging in SQL Server CE (Compact Edition) SQL Server Denali is coming up with new T-SQL of Paging. I have written about the same earlier.SQL SERVER – Server Side Paging in SQL Server Denali – A Better Alternative,  SQL SERVER – Server Side Paging in SQL Server Denali Performance Comparison, SQL SERVER – Server Side Paging in SQL Server Denali – Part2 What is very interesting is that SQL Server CE 4.0 have the same feature introduced. Here is the quick example of the same. To run the script in the example, you will have to do installWebmatrix 4.0 and download sample database. Once done you can run following script. Why I am Going to Attend PASS Summit Unite 2011 The four-day event will be marked by a lot of learning, sharing, and networking, which will help me increase both my knowledge and contacts. Every year, PASS Summit provides me a golden opportunity to build my network as well as to identify and meet potential customers or employees. 2012 Manage Help Settings – CTRL + ALT + F1 This is very interesting read as my daughter once accidently came across a screen in SQL Server Management Studio. It took me 2-3 minutes to figure out how she has created the same screen. Recover the Accidentally Renamed Table “I accidentally renamed table in my SSMS. I was scrolling very fast and I made mistakes. It was either because I double clicked or clicked on F2 (shortcut key for renaming). However, I have made the mistake and now I have no idea how to fix this. If you have renamed the table, I think you pretty much is out of luck. Here are few things which you can do which can give you an idea about what your table name can be if you are lucky. Identify Numbers of Non Clustered Index on Tables for Entire Database Here is the script which will give you numbers of non clustered indexes on any table in entire database. Identify Most Resource Intensive Queries – SQL in Sixty Seconds #029 – Video Here is the complete complete script which I have used in the SQL in Sixty Seconds Video. Thanks Harsh for important Tip in the comment. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kDHC_Tjrns Advanced Data Quality Services with Melissa Data – Azure Data Market For the purposes of the review, I used a database I had in an Excel spreadsheet with name and address information. Upon a cursory inspection, there are miscellaneous problems with these records; some addresses are missing ZIP codes, others missing a city, and some records are slightly misspelled or have unparsed suites. With DQS, I can easily add a knowledge base to help standardize my values, such as for state abbreviations. But how do I know that my address is correct? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Microsoft Business Intelligence Seminar 2011

  - by DavidWimbush

  I was lucky enough to attend the maiden presentation of this at Microsoft Reading yesterday. It was pretty gripping stuff not only because of what was said but also because of what could only be hinted at. Here's what I took away from the day. (Disclaimer: I'm not a BI guru, just a reasonably experienced BI developer, so I may have misunderstood or misinterpreted a few things. Particularly when so much of the talk was about the vision and subtle hints of what is coming. Please comment if you think I've got anything wrong. I'm also not going to even try to cover Master Data Services as I struggled to imagine how you would actually use it.) I was a bit worried when I learned that the whole day was going to be presented by one guy but Rafal Lukawiecki is a very engaging speaker. He's going to be presenting this about 20 times around the world over the coming months. If you get a chance to hear him speak, I say go for it. No doubt some of the hints will become clearer as Denali gets closer to RTM. Firstly, things are definitely happening in the SQL Server Reporting and BI world. Traditionally IT would build a data warehouse, then cubes on top of that, and then publish them in a structured and controlled way. But, just as with many IT projects in general, by the time it's finished the business has moved on and the system no longer meets their requirements. This not sustainable and something more agile is needed but there has to be some control. Apparently we're going to be hearing the catchphrase 'Balancing agility with control' a lot. More users want more access to more data. Can they define what they want? Of course not, but they'll recognise it when they see it. It's estimated that only 28% of potential BI users have meaningful access to the data they need, so there is a real pent-up demand. The answer looks like: give them some self-service tools so they can experiment and see what works, and then IT can help to support the results. It's estimated that 32% of Excel users are comfortable with its analysis tools such as pivot tables. It's the power user's preferred tool. Why fight it? That's why PowerPivot is an Excel add-in and that's why they released a Data Mining add-in for it as well. It does appear that the strategy is going to be to use Reporting Services (in SharePoint mode), PowerPivot, and possibly something new (smiles and hints but no details) to create reports and explore data. Everything will be published and managed in SharePoint which gives users the ability to mash-up, share and socialise what they've found out. SharePoint also gives IT tools to understand what people are looking at and where to concentrate effort. If PowerPivot report X becomes widely used, it's time to check that it shows what they think it does and perhaps get it a bit more under central control. There was more SharePoint detail that went slightly over my head regarding where Excel Services and Excel Web Application fit in, the differences between them, and the suggestion that it is likely they will one day become one (but not in the immediate future). That basic pattern is set to be expanded upon by further exploiting Vertipaq (the columnar indexing engine that enables PowerPivot to store and process a lot of data fast and in a small memory footprint) to provide scalability 'from the desktop to the data centre', and some yet to be detailed advances in 'frictionless deployment' (part of which is about making the difference between local and the cloud pretty much irrelevant). Excel looks like becoming Microsoft's primary BI client. It already has: the ability to consume cubes strong visualisation tools slicers (which are part of Excel not PowerPivot) a data mining add-in PowerPivot A major hurdle for self-service BI is presenting the data in a consumable format. You can't just give users PowerPivot and a server with a copy of the OLTP database(s). Building cubes is labour intensive and doesn't always give the user what they need. This is where the BI Semantic Model (BISM) comes in. I gather it's a layer of metadata you define that can combine multiple data sources (and types of data source) into a clear 'interface' that users can work with. It comes with a new query language called DAX. SSAS cubes are unlikely to go away overnight because, with their pre-calculated results, they are still the most efficient way to work with really big data sets. A few other random titbits that came up: Reporting Services is going to get some good new stuff in Denali. Keep an eye on www.projectbotticelli.com for the slides. You can also view last year's seminar sessions which covered a lot of the same ground as far as the overall strategy is concerned. They plan to add more material as Denali's features are publicly exposed. Check out the PASS keynote address for a showing of Yahoo's SQL BI servers. Apparently they wheeled the rack out on stage still plugged in and running! Check out the Excel 2010 Data Mining Add-Ins. 32 bit only at present but 64 bit is on the way. There are lots of data sets, many of them free, at the Windows Azure Marketplace Data Market (where you can also get ESRI shape files). If you haven't already seen it, have a look at the Silverlight Pivot Viewer (http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/06/29/silverlight-pivotviewer-now-available.aspx). The Bing Maps Data Connector is worth a look if you're into spatial stuff (http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/maps/archive/2010/07/13/data-connector-sql-server-2008-spatial-amp-bing-maps.aspx).  

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• Using Sitecore RenderingContext Parameters as MVC controller action arguments

  - by Kyle Burns

  I have been working with the Technical Preview of Sitecore 6.6 on a project and have been for the most part happy with the way that Sitecore (which truly is an MVC implementation unto itself) has been expanded to support ASP.NET MVC. That said, getting up to speed with the combined platform has not been entirely without stumbles and today I want to share one area where Sitecore could have really made things shine from the "it just works" perspective. A couple days ago I was asked by a colleague about the usage of the "Parameters" field that is defined on Sitecore's Controller Rendering data template. Based on the standard way that Sitecore handles a field named Parameters, I was able to deduce that the field expected key/value pairs separated by the "&" character, but beyond that I wasn't sure and didn't see anything from a documentation perspective to guide me, so it was time to dig and find out where the data in the field was made available. My first thought was that it would be really nice if Sitecore handled the parameters in this field consistently with the way that ASP.NET MVC handles the various parameter collections on the HttpRequest object and automatically maps them to parameters of the action method executing. Being the hopeful sort, I configured a name/value pair on one of my renderings, added a parameter with matching name to the controller action and fired up the bugger to see... that the parameter was not populated. Having established that the field's value was not going to be presented to me the way that I had hoped it would, the next assumption that I would work on was that Sitecore would handle this field similar to how they handle other similar data and would plug it into some ambient object that I could reference from within the controller method. After a considerable amount of guessing, testing, and cracking code open with Redgate's Reflector (a must-have companion to Sitecore documentation), I found that the most direct way to access the parameter was through the ambient RenderingContext object using code similar to: string myArgument = string.Empty; var rc = Sitecore.Mvc.Presentation.RenderingContext.CurrentOrNull; if (rc != null) {     var parms = rc.Rendering.Parameters;     myArgument = parms["myArgument"]; } At this point, we know how this field is used out of the box from Sitecore and can provide information from Sitecore's Content Editor that will be available when the controller action is executing, but it feels a little dirty. In order to properly test the action method I would have to do a lot of setup work and possible use an isolation framework such as Pex and Moles to get at a value that my action method is dependent upon. Notice I said that my method is dependent upon the value but in order to meet that dependency I've accepted another dependency upon Sitecore's RenderingContext.  I'm a big believer in, when possible, ensuring that any piece of code explicitly advertises dependencies using the method signature, so I found myself still wanting this to work the same as if the parameters were in the request route, querystring, or form by being able to add a myArgument parameter to the action method and have this parameter populated by the framework. Lucky for us, the ASP.NET MVC framework is extremely flexible and provides some easy to grok and use extensibility points. ASP.NET MVC is able to provide information from the request as input parameters to controller actions because it uses objects which implement an interface called IValueProvider and have been registered to service the application. The most basic statement of responsibility for an IValueProvider implementation is "I know about some data which is indexed by key. If you hand me the key for a piece of data that I know about I give you that data". When preparing to invoke a controller action, the framework queries registered IValueProvider implementations with the name of each method argument to see if the ValueProvider can supply a value for the parameter. (the rest of this post will assume you're working along and make a lot more sense if you do) Let's pull Sitecore out of the equation for a second to simplify things and create an extremely simple IValueProvider implementation. For this example, I first create a new ASP.NET MVC3 project in Visual Studio, selecting "Internet Application" and otherwise taking defaults (I'm assuming that anyone reading this far in the post either already knows how to do this or will need to take a quick run through one of the many available basic MVC tutorials such as the MVC Music Store). Once the new project is created, go to the Index action of HomeController.  This action sets a Message property on the ViewBag to "Welcome to ASP.NET MVC!" and invokes the View, which has been coded to display the Message. For our example, we will remove the hard coded message from this controller (although we'll leave it just as hard coded somewhere else - this is sample code). For the first step in our exercise, add a string parameter to the Index action method called welcomeMessage and use the value of this argument to set the ViewBag.Message property. The updated Index action should look like: public ActionResult Index(string welcomeMessage) {     ViewBag.Message = welcomeMessage;     return View(); } This represents the entirety of the change that you will make to either the controller or view.  If you run the application now, the home page will display and no message will be presented to the user because no value was supplied to the Action method. Let's now write a ValueProvider to ensure this parameter gets populated. We'll start by creating a new class called StaticValueProvider. When the class is created, we'll update the using statements to ensure that they include the following: using System.Collections.Specialized; using System.Globalization; using System.Web.Mvc; With the appropriate using statements in place, we'll update the StaticValueProvider class to implement the IValueProvider interface. The System.Web.Mvc library already contains a pretty flexible dictionary-like implementation called NameValueCollectionValueProvider, so we'll just wrap that and let it do most of the real work for us. The completed class looks like: public class StaticValueProvider : IValueProvider {     private NameValueCollectionValueProvider _wrappedProvider;     public StaticValueProvider(ControllerContext controllerContext)     {         var parameters = new NameValueCollection();         parameters.Add("welcomeMessage", "Hello from the value provider!");         _wrappedProvider = new NameValueCollectionValueProvider(parameters, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);     }     public bool ContainsPrefix(string prefix)     {         return _wrappedProvider.ContainsPrefix(prefix);     }     public ValueProviderResult GetValue(string key)     {         return _wrappedProvider.GetValue(key);     } } Notice that the only entry in the collection matches the name of the argument to our HomeController's Index action.  This is the important "secret sauce" that will make things work. We've got our new value provider now, but that's not quite enough to be finished. Mvc obtains IValueProvider instances using factories that are registered when the application starts up. These factories extend the abstract ValueProviderFactory class by initializing and returning the appropriate implementation of IValueProvider from the GetValueProvider method. While I wouldn't do so in production code, for the sake of this example, I'm going to add the following class definition within the StaticValueProvider.cs source file: public class StaticValueProviderFactory : ValueProviderFactory {     public override IValueProvider GetValueProvider(ControllerContext controllerContext)     {         return new StaticValueProvider(controllerContext);     } } Now that we have a factory, we can register it by adding the following line to the end of the Application_Start method in Global.asax.cs: ValueProviderFactories.Factories.Add(new StaticValueProviderFactory()); If you've done everything right to this point, you should be able to run the application and be presented with the home page reading "Hello from the value provider!". Now that you have the basics of the IValueProvider down, you have everything you need to enhance your Sitecore MVC implementation by adding an IValueProvider that exposes values from the ambient RenderingContext's Parameters property. I'll provide the code for the IValueProvider implementation (which should look VERY familiar) and you can use the work we've already done as a reference to create and register the factory: public class RenderingContextValueProvider : IValueProvider {     private NameValueCollectionValueProvider _wrappedProvider = null;     public RenderingContextValueProvider(ControllerContext controllerContext)     {         var collection = new NameValueCollection();         var rc = RenderingContext.CurrentOrNull;         if (rc != null && rc.Rendering != null)         {             foreach(var parameter in rc.Rendering.Parameters)             {                 collection.Add(parameter.Key, parameter.Value);             }         }         _wrappedProvider = new NameValueCollectionValueProvider(collection, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);         }     public bool ContainsPrefix(string prefix)     {         return _wrappedProvider.ContainsPrefix(prefix);     }     public ValueProviderResult GetValue(string key)     {         return _wrappedProvider.GetValue(key);     } } In this post I've discussed the MVC IValueProvider used to map data to controller action method arguments and how this can be integrated into your Sitecore 6.6 MVC solution.

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• Source-control 'wet-work'?

  - by Phil Factor

  When a design or creative work is flawed beyond remedy, it is often best to destroy it and start again. The other day, I lost the code to a long and intricate SQL batch I was working on. I’d thought it was impossible, but it happened. With all the technology around that is designed to prevent this occurring, this sort of accident has become a rare event.  If it weren’t for a deranged laptop, and my distraction, the code wouldn’t have been lost this time.  As always, I sighed, had a soothing cup of tea, and typed it all in again.  The new code I hastily tapped in  was much better: I’d held in my head the essence of how the code should work rather than the details: I now knew for certain  the start point, the end, and how it should be achieved. Instantly the detritus of half-baked thoughts fell away and I was able to write logical code that performed better.  Because I could work so quickly, I was able to hold the details of all the columns and variables in my head, and the dynamics of the flow of data. It was, in fact, easier and quicker to start from scratch rather than tidy up and refactor the existing code with its inevitable fumbling and half-baked ideas. What a shame that technology is now so good that developers rarely experience the cleansing shock of losing one’s code and having to rewrite it from scratch.  If you’ve never accidentally lost  your code, then it is worth doing it deliberately once for the experience. Creative people have, until Technology mistakenly prevented it, torn up their drafts or sketches, threw them in the bin, and started again from scratch.  Leonardo’s obsessive reworking of the Mona Lisa was renowned because it was so unusual:  Most artists have been utterly ruthless in destroying work that didn’t quite make it. Authors are particularly keen on writing afresh, and the results are generally positive. Lawrence of Arabia actually lost the entire 250,000 word manuscript of ‘The Seven Pillars of Wisdom’ by accidentally leaving it on a train at Reading station, before rewriting a much better version.  Now, any writer or artist is seduced by technology into altering or refining their work rather than casting it dramatically in the bin or setting a light to it on a bonfire, and rewriting it from the blank page.  It is easy to pick away at a flawed work, but the real creative process is far more brutal. Once, many years ago whilst running a software house that supplied commercial software to local businesses, I’d been supervising an accounting system for a farming cooperative. No packaged system met their needs, and it was all hand-cut code.  For us, it represented a breakthrough as it was for a government organisation, and success would guarantee more contracts. As you’ve probably guessed, the code got mangled in a disk crash just a week before the deadline for delivery, and the many backups all proved to be entirely corrupted by a faulty tape drive.  There were some fragments left on individual machines, but they were all of different versions.  The developers were in despair.  Strangely, I managed to re-write the bulk of a three-month project in a manic and caffeine-soaked weekend.  Sure, that elegant universally-applicable input-form routine was‘nt quite so elegant, but it didn’t really need to be as we knew what forms it needed to support.  Yes, the code lacked architectural elegance and reusability. By dawn on Monday, the application passed its integration tests. The developers rose to the occasion after I’d collapsed, and tidied up what I’d done, though they were reproachful that some of the style and elegance had gone out of the application. By the delivery date, we were able to install it. It was a smaller, faster application than the beta they’d seen and the user-interface had a new, rather Spartan, appearance that we swore was done to conform to the latest in user-interface guidelines. (we switched to Helvetica font to look more ‘Bauhaus’ ). The client was so delighted that he forgave the new bugs that had crept in. I still have the disk that crashed, up in the attic. In IT, we have had mixed experiences from complete re-writes. Lotus 123 never really recovered from a complete rewrite from assembler into C, Borland made the mistake with Arago and Quattro Pro  and Netscape’s complete rewrite of their Navigator 4 browser was a white-knuckle ride. In all cases, the decision to rewrite was a result of extreme circumstances where no other course of action seemed possible.   The rewrite didn’t come out of the blue. I prefer to remember the rewrite of Minix by young Linus Torvalds, or the rewrite of Bitkeeper by a slightly older Linus.  The rewrite of CP/M didn’t do too badly either, did it? Come to think of it, the guy who decided to rewrite the windowing system of the Xerox Star never regretted the decision. I’ll agree that one should often resist calls for a rewrite. One of the worst habits of the more inexperienced programmer is to denigrate whatever code he or she inherits, and then call loudly for a complete rewrite. They are buoyed up by the mistaken belief that they can do better. This, however, is a different psychological phenomenon, more related to the idea of some motorcyclists that they are operating on infinite lives, or the occasional squaddies that if they charge the machine-guns determinedly enough all will be well. Grim experience brings out the humility in any experienced programmer.  I’m referring to quite different circumstances here. Where a team knows the requirements perfectly, are of one mind on methodology and coding standards, and they already have a solution, then what is wrong with considering  a complete rewrite? Rewrites are so painful in the early stages, until that point where one realises the payoff, that even I quail at the thought. One needs a natural disaster to push one over the edge. The trouble is that source-control systems, and disaster recovery systems, are just too good nowadays.   If I were to lose this draft of this very blog post, I know I’d rewrite it much better. However, if you read this, you’ll know I didn’t have the nerve to delete it and start again.  There was a time that one prayed that unreliable hardware would deliver you from an unmaintainable mess of a codebase, but now technology has made us almost entirely immune to such a merciful act of God. An old friend of mine with long experience in the software industry has long had the idea of the ‘source-control wet-work’,  where one hires a malicious hacker in some wild eastern country to hack into one’s own  source control system to destroy all trace of the source to an application. Alas, backup systems are just too good to make this any more than a pipedream. Somehow, it would be difficult to promote the idea. As an alternative, could one construct a source control system that, on doing all the code-quality metrics, would systematically destroy all trace of source code that failed the quality test? Alas, I can’t see many managers buying into the idea. In reading the full story of the near-loss of Toy Story 2, it set me thinking. It turned out that the lucky restoration of the code wasn’t the happy ending one first imagined it to be, because they eventually came to the conclusion that the plot was fundamentally flawed and it all had to be rewritten anyway.  Was this an early  case of the ‘source-control wet-job’?’ It is very hard nowadays to do a rapid U-turn in a development project because we are far too prone to cling to our existing source-code.

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• Azure Diagnostics: The Bad, The Ugly, and a Better Way

  - by jasont

  If you’re a .Net web developer today, no doubt you’ve enjoyed watching Windows Azure grow up over the past couple of years. The platform has scaled, stabilized (mostly), and added on a slew of great (and sometimes overdue) features. What was once just an endpoint to host a solution, developers today have tremendous flexibility and options in the platform. Organizations are building new solutions and offerings on the platform, and others have, or are in the process of, migrating existing applications out of their own data centers into the Azure cloud. Whether new application development or migrating legacy, every development shop and IT organization needs to monitor their applications in the cloud, the same as they do on premises. Azure Diagnostics has some capabilities, but what I constantly hear from users is that it’s either (a) not enough, or (b) too cumbersome to set up. Today, Stackify is happy to announce that we fully support Azure deployments, just the same as your on-premises deployments. Let’s take a look below and compare and contrast the options. Azure Diagnostics Let’s crack open the Windows Azure documentation on Azure Diagnostics and see just how easy it is to use. The high level steps are:   Step 1: Import the Diagnostics Oh, I’ve already deployed my app without the diagnostics module. Guess I can’t do anything until I do this and re-deploy. Step 2: Configure the Diagnostics (and multiple sub-steps) Do I want it all? Or just pieces of it? Whoops, forgot to include a specific performance counter, I guess I’ll have to deploy again. Wait a minute… I have to specifically code these performance counters into my role’s OnStart() method, compile and deploy again? And query and consume it myself? Step 3: (Optional) Permanently store diagnostic data Lucky for me, Azure storage has gotten pretty cheap. But how often should I move the data into storage? I want to see real-time data, so I guess that’s out now as well. Step 4: (Optional) View stored diagnostic data Optional? Of course I want to see it. Conveniently, Microsoft recommends 3 tools to do this with. Un-conveniently, none of these are web based and they all just give you access to raw data, and very little charting or real-time intelligence. Just….. data. Nevermind that one product seems to have gotten stale since a recent acquisition, and doesn’t even have screenshots!   So, let’s summarize: lots of diagnostics data is available, but think realistically. Think Dev Ops. What happens when you are in the middle of a major production performance issue and you don’t have the diagnostics you need? You are redeploying an application (and thankfully you have a great branching strategy, so you feel perfectly safe just willy-nilly launching code into prod, don’t you?) to get data, then shipping it to storage, and then digging through that data to find a needle in a haystack. Would you like to be able to troubleshoot a performance issue in the middle of the night, or on a weekend, from your iPad or home computer’s web browser? Forget it: the best you get is this spark line in the Azure portal. If it’s real pointy, you probably have an issue; but since there is no alert based on a threshold your customers have likely already let you know. And high CPU, Memory, I/O, or Network doesn’t tell you anything about where the problem is. The Better Way – Stackify Stackify supports application and server monitoring in real time, all through a great web interface. All of the things that Azure Diagnostics provides, Stackify provides for your on-premises deployments, and you don’t need to know ahead of time that you’ll need it. It’s always there, it’s always on. Azure deployments are essentially no different than on-premises. It’s a Windows Server (or Linux) in the cloud. It’s behind a different firewall than your corporate servers. That’s it. Stackify can provide the same powerful tools to your Azure deployments in two simple steps. Step 1 Add a startup task to your web or worker role and deploy. If you can’t deploy and need it right now, no worries! Remote Desktop to the Azure instance and you can execute a Powershell script to download / install Stackify.   Step 2 Log in to your account at www.stackify.com and begin monitoring as much as you want, as often as you want and see the results instantly. WMI? It’s there Event Viewer? You’ve got it. File System Access? Yes, please! Would love to make sure my web.config is correct.   IIS / App Pool Info? Yep. You can even restart it. Running Services? All of them. Start and Stop them to your heart’s content. SQL Database access? You bet’cha. Alerts and Notification? Of course! You should know before your customers let you know. … and so much more.   Conclusion Microsoft has shown, consistently, that they love developers, developers, developers. What every developer needs to realize from this is that they’ve given you a canvas, which is exactly what Azure is. It’s great infrastructure that is readily available, easy to manage, and fairly cost effective. However, the tooling is your responsibility. What you get, at best, is bare bones. App and server diagnostics should be available when you need them. While we, as developers, try to plan for and think of everything ahead of time, there will come times where we need to get data that just isn’t available. And having to go through a lot of cumbersome steps to get that data, and then have to find a friendlier way to consume it…. well, that just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I’d rather spend my time writing and developing features and completing bug fixes for my applications, than to be writing code to monitor and diagnose.

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• first install for windows eight.....da beta

  - by raysmithequip

  The W8 preview is now installed and I am enjoying it.  I remember the learning curve of my first unix machine back in the eighties, this ain't that.It is normal for me to do the first os install with a keyboard and low end monitor...you never know what you'll encounter out in the field.  The OS took like a fish to water.  I used a low end INTEL motherboard dp55w I gathered on the cheap, an 1157 i5 from the used bin a pair of 6 gig ddr3 sticks, a rosewell 550 watt power supply a cheap used twenty buck sub 200g wd sata drive, a half working dvd burner and an asus fanless nvidia vid card, not a great one but Sub 50.00 on newey eggey...I did have to hunt the ms forums for a key and of course to activate the thing, if dos would of needed this outmoded ritual, we would still be on cpm and osborne would be a household name, of course little do people know that this ritual was common as far back as the seventies on att unix installs....not, but it was possible, I used to joke about when I ran a bbs, what hell would of been wrought had dos 3.2 machines been required to dial into my bbs to send fido mail to ms and wait for an acknowledgement.  All in all the thing was pushing a seven on the ms richter scale, not including the vid card, sadly it came in at just a tad over three....I wanted to evaluate it for a possible replacement on critical machines that in the past went down due to a vid card fan failure....you have no idea what a customer thinks when you show them a failed vid card fan..."you mean that little plastic piece of junk caused all this!!??!!!"...yea man.  Some production machines don't need any sort of vid, I will at least keep it on the maybe list for those, MTBF is a very important factor, some big box stores should put percentage of failure rate within 24 month estimates on the outside of the carton for sure.  And a warning that the power supplies are already at their limit.  Let's face it, today even 550w can be iffy.A few neat eye candy improvements over the earlier windows is nice, the metro screen is nice, anyone who has used a newer phone recently will intuitively drag their fingers across the screen....lot of good that was with no mouse or touch screen though.  Lucky me, I have been using windows since day one, I still have a copy of win 2.0 (and every other version) for no good reason.  Still the old ix collection of disks is much larger, recompiling any kernal is another silly ritual, same machine, different day, same recompile...argh. Rh is my all time fav, mandrake was always missing something, like it rewrote the init file or something, novell is ok as long as you stay on the beaten path and of course ubuntu normally recompiles with the same errors consistantly....makes life easy that way....no errors on windows eight, just a screen that did not match the installed hardware, natuarally I alt tabbed right out of it, then hit the flag key to find the start menu....no start button. I miss the start button already. Keyboard cowboy funnin and I was browsing the harddrive, nothing stunning there, I like that, means I can find stuff. Only I can't find what I want, the start button....the start menu is that first screen for touch tablets. No biggie for useruser, that is where they will want to be, I can see that. Admins won't want to be there, it is easy enough to get the control panel a bazzilion other ways though, just not the start button. (see a pattern here?). Personally, from the keyboard I find it fun to hit the carets along the location bar at the top of the explorer screen with tabs and arrows and choose SHOW ALL CONTROL PANEL ITEMS, or thereabouts. Bottom line, I love seven and I'll love eight even more!...very happy I did not have to follow the normal rule of thumb (a customer watching me build a system and asking questions said "oh I get it, so every piece you put in there is basically a hundred bucks, right?)...ok, sure, pretty much, more or less, well, ya dude.  It will be WAY past october till I get a real touch screen but I did pick up a pair of cheap tatungs so I can try the NEW main start screen, I parse a lot of folders and have a vision of how a pair of touch screens will be easier than landing a rover on mars.  Ok.  fine, they are way smallish, and I don't expect multitouch to work but we are talking a few percent of a new 21 inch viewsonic touch screen.  Will this OS be a game changer?  I don't know.  Bottom line with all the pads and droids in the world, it is more of a catch up move at first glance.  Not something ms is used to.  An app store?  I can see ms's motivation, the others have it.  I gather there will not be gadgets there, go ahead and see what ms did  to the once populated gadget page...go ahead, google gadgets and take a gander, used to hundreds of gadgets, they are already gone.  They replaced gadgets?  sort of, I'll drop that, it's a bit of a sore point for me.  More of interest was what happened when I downloaded stuff off codeplex and some other normal programs that I like, like orbitron, top o' my list!!...cardware it is...anyways, click on the exe, get a screen, normal for windows, this one indicated that I was not running a normal windows program and had a button for  exit the install, naw, I hit details, a hidden run program anyways came into view....great, my path to the normal windows has detected a program tha.....yea ok, acl is on, fine, moving along I got orbitron installed in record time and was tracking the iss on the newest Microsoft OS, beta of course, felt like the first time I setup bsd all those year ago...FUN!!...I suppose I gotta start to think about budgeting for the real os when it comes out in october, by then I should have a rasberry pi and be done with fedora remixed.  Of course that sounds like fun too!!  I would use this OS on a tablet or phone.  I don't like the idea of being hearded to an app store, don't like that on anything, we are americans and want real choices not marketed hype, lest you are younger with opm (other peoples money).   This os would be neat on a zune, but I suspect the zune is a gonner, I am rooting for microsoft, after all their default password is not admin anymore, nor alpine,  it's blank. Others force a password, my first fawn password was so long I could not even log into it with the password in front of me, who the heck uses %$# anyways, and if I was writing a brute force attack what the heck kinda impasse is that anyways at .00001 microseconds of a code execution cycle (just a non qualified number, not a real clock speed)....AI is where it will be before too long, MS is on that path, perhaps soon someone will sit down and write an app for the kinect that watches your eyes while you scan the new main start screen, clicking on the big E icon when you blink.....boy is that going to be fun!!!! sure. Blink,dammit,blink,dammit...... OPM no doubt.I like windows eight, we are moving forwards, better keep a close eye on ubuntu.  The real clinch comes when open source becomes paid source......don't blink, I already see plenty of very expensive 'ix apps, some even in app stores already.  more to come.......

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• Source-control 'wet-work'?

  - by Phil Factor

  When a design or creative work is flawed beyond remedy, it is often best to destroy it and start again. The other day, I lost the code to a long and intricate SQL batch I was working on. I’d thought it was impossible, but it happened. With all the technology around that is designed to prevent this occurring, this sort of accident has become a rare event.  If it weren’t for a deranged laptop, and my distraction, the code wouldn’t have been lost this time.  As always, I sighed, had a soothing cup of tea, and typed it all in again.  The new code I hastily tapped in  was much better: I’d held in my head the essence of how the code should work rather than the details: I now knew for certain  the start point, the end, and how it should be achieved. Instantly the detritus of half-baked thoughts fell away and I was able to write logical code that performed better.  Because I could work so quickly, I was able to hold the details of all the columns and variables in my head, and the dynamics of the flow of data. It was, in fact, easier and quicker to start from scratch rather than tidy up and refactor the existing code with its inevitable fumbling and half-baked ideas. What a shame that technology is now so good that developers rarely experience the cleansing shock of losing one’s code and having to rewrite it from scratch.  If you’ve never accidentally lost  your code, then it is worth doing it deliberately once for the experience. Creative people have, until Technology mistakenly prevented it, torn up their drafts or sketches, threw them in the bin, and started again from scratch.  Leonardo’s obsessive reworking of the Mona Lisa was renowned because it was so unusual:  Most artists have been utterly ruthless in destroying work that didn’t quite make it. Authors are particularly keen on writing afresh, and the results are generally positive. Lawrence of Arabia actually lost the entire 250,000 word manuscript of ‘The Seven Pillars of Wisdom’ by accidentally leaving it on a train at Reading station, before rewriting a much better version.  Now, any writer or artist is seduced by technology into altering or refining their work rather than casting it dramatically in the bin or setting a light to it on a bonfire, and rewriting it from the blank page.  It is easy to pick away at a flawed work, but the real creative process is far more brutal. Once, many years ago whilst running a software house that supplied commercial software to local businesses, I’d been supervising an accounting system for a farming cooperative. No packaged system met their needs, and it was all hand-cut code.  For us, it represented a breakthrough as it was for a government organisation, and success would guarantee more contracts. As you’ve probably guessed, the code got mangled in a disk crash just a week before the deadline for delivery, and the many backups all proved to be entirely corrupted by a faulty tape drive.  There were some fragments left on individual machines, but they were all of different versions.  The developers were in despair.  Strangely, I managed to re-write the bulk of a three-month project in a manic and caffeine-soaked weekend.  Sure, that elegant universally-applicable input-form routine was‘nt quite so elegant, but it didn’t really need to be as we knew what forms it needed to support.  Yes, the code lacked architectural elegance and reusability. By dawn on Monday, the application passed its integration tests. The developers rose to the occasion after I’d collapsed, and tidied up what I’d done, though they were reproachful that some of the style and elegance had gone out of the application. By the delivery date, we were able to install it. It was a smaller, faster application than the beta they’d seen and the user-interface had a new, rather Spartan, appearance that we swore was done to conform to the latest in user-interface guidelines. (we switched to Helvetica font to look more ‘Bauhaus’ ). The client was so delighted that he forgave the new bugs that had crept in. I still have the disk that crashed, up in the attic. In IT, we have had mixed experiences from complete re-writes. Lotus 123 never really recovered from a complete rewrite from assembler into C, Borland made the mistake with Arago and Quattro Pro  and Netscape’s complete rewrite of their Navigator 4 browser was a white-knuckle ride. In all cases, the decision to rewrite was a result of extreme circumstances where no other course of action seemed possible.   The rewrite didn’t come out of the blue. I prefer to remember the rewrite of Minix by young Linus Torvalds, or the rewrite of Bitkeeper by a slightly older Linus.  The rewrite of CP/M didn’t do too badly either, did it? Come to think of it, the guy who decided to rewrite the windowing system of the Xerox Star never regretted the decision. I’ll agree that one should often resist calls for a rewrite. One of the worst habits of the more inexperienced programmer is to denigrate whatever code he or she inherits, and then call loudly for a complete rewrite. They are buoyed up by the mistaken belief that they can do better. This, however, is a different psychological phenomenon, more related to the idea of some motorcyclists that they are operating on infinite lives, or the occasional squaddies that if they charge the machine-guns determinedly enough all will be well. Grim experience brings out the humility in any experienced programmer.  I’m referring to quite different circumstances here. Where a team knows the requirements perfectly, are of one mind on methodology and coding standards, and they already have a solution, then what is wrong with considering  a complete rewrite? Rewrites are so painful in the early stages, until that point where one realises the payoff, that even I quail at the thought. One needs a natural disaster to push one over the edge. The trouble is that source-control systems, and disaster recovery systems, are just too good nowadays.   If I were to lose this draft of this very blog post, I know I’d rewrite it much better. However, if you read this, you’ll know I didn’t have the nerve to delete it and start again.  There was a time that one prayed that unreliable hardware would deliver you from an unmaintainable mess of a codebase, but now technology has made us almost entirely immune to such a merciful act of God. An old friend of mine with long experience in the software industry has long had the idea of the ‘source-control wet-work’,  where one hires a malicious hacker in some wild eastern country to hack into one’s own  source control system to destroy all trace of the source to an application. Alas, backup systems are just too good to make this any more than a pipedream. Somehow, it would be difficult to promote the idea. As an alternative, could one construct a source control system that, on doing all the code-quality metrics, would systematically destroy all trace of source code that failed the quality test? Alas, I can’t see many managers buying into the idea. In reading the full story of the near-loss of Toy Story 2, it set me thinking. It turned out that the lucky restoration of the code wasn’t the happy ending one first imagined it to be, because they eventually came to the conclusion that the plot was fundamentally flawed and it all had to be rewritten anyway.  Was this an early  case of the ‘source-control wet-job’?’ It is very hard nowadays to do a rapid U-turn in a development project because we are far too prone to cling to our existing source-code.

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• PASS Summit – looking back on my first time

  - by Fatherjack

    So I was lucky enough to get my first experience of PASS Summit this year and took some time beforehand to read some blogs and reference material to get an idea on what to do and how to get the best out of my visit. Having been to other conferences – technical and non-technical – I had a reasonable idea on the routine and what to expect in general. Here is a list of a few things that I have learned/remembered as the week has gone by. Wear comfortable shoes. This actually needs to be broadened to Take several pairs of comfortable shoes. You will be spending many many hours, for several days one after another. Having comfortable feet that can literally support you for the duration will make the week in general a whole lot better. Not only at the conference but getting to and from you could well be walking. In the evenings you will be walking around town and standing talking in various bars and clubs. Looking back, on some days I was on my feet for over 20 hours. Make friends. This is a given for the long term benefits it brings but there is also an immediate reward in being at a conference with a friend or two. Some events are bigger and more popular than others and some have the type of session that every single attendee will want to be in. This is great for those that get in but if you are in the bathroom or queuing for coffee and you miss out it sucks. Having a friend that can get in to a room and reserve you a seat is a great advantage to make sure you get the content that you want to see and still have the coffee that you need. Don’t go to every session you want to see This might sound counter intuitive and it relies on the sessions being recorded in some way to guarantee you don’t totally miss out. Both PASS Summit and SQL Bits sessions are recorded (summit is audio, SQLBits is video) and this means that if you get into a good conversation with someone over a coffee you don’t have to break it up to go to a session. Obviously there is a trade-off here and you need to decide on the tipping point for yourself but a conversation at a place like this could make a big difference to the next contract or employer you have or it might simply be great catching up with some friends you don’t see so often. Go to at least one session you don’t want to Again, this will seem to be contrary to normal logic but there is no reason why you shouldn’t learn about a part of SQL Server that isn’t part of your daily routine. Not only will you learn something new but you will also pick up on the feelings and attitudes of the people in the session. So, if you are a DBA, head off to a BI session and so on. You’ll hear BI speakers speaking to a BI audience and get to understand their point of view and reasoning for making the decisions they do. You will also appreciate the way that your decisions and instructions affect the way they have to work. This will help you a lot when you are on a project, working with multiple teams and make you all more productive. Socialise While you are at the conference venue, speak to people. Ask questions, be interested in whoever you are speaking to. You get chances to talk to new friends at breakfast, dinner and every break between sessions. The only people that might not talk to you would be speakers that are about to go and give a session, in most cases speakers like peace and quiet before going on stage. Other than that the people around you are just waiting for someone to talk to them so make the first move. There is a whole lot going on outside of the conference hours and you should make an effort to join in with some of this too. At karaoke evenings or just out for a quiet drink with a few of the people you meet at the conference. Either way, don’t be a recluse and hide in your room or be alone out in the town. Don’t talk to people Once again this sounds wrong but stay with me. I have spoken to a number of speakers since Summit 2013 finished and they have all mentioned the time it has taken them to move about the conference venue due to people stopping them for a chat or to ask a question. 45 minutes to walk from a session room to the speaker room in one case. Wow. While none of the speakers were upset about this sort of delay I think delegates should take the situation into account and possibly defer their question to an email or to a time when the person they want is clearly less in demand. Give them a chance to enjoy the conference in the same way that you are, they may actually want to go to a session or just have a rest after giving their session – talking for 75 minutes is hard work, taking an extra 45 minutes right after is unbelievable. I certainly hope that they get good feedback on their sessions and perhaps if you spoke to a speaker outside a session you can give them a mention in the ‘any other comments’ part of the feedback, just to convey your gratitude for them giving up their time and expertise for free. Say thank you I just mentioned giving the speakers a clear, visible ‘thank you’ in the feedback but there are plenty of people that help make any conference the success it is that would really appreciate hearing that their efforts are valued. People on the registration desk, volunteers giving schedule guidance and directions, people on the community zone are all volunteers giving their time to help you have the best experience possible. Send an email to PASS and convey your thoughts about the work that was done. Maybe you want to be a volunteer next time so you could enquire how you get into that position at the same time. This isn’t an exclusive list and you may agree or disagree with the points I have made, please add anything you think is good advice in the comments. I’d like to finish by saying a huge thank you to all the people involved in planning, facilitating and executing the PASS Summit 2013, it was an excellent event and I know many others think it was a totally worthwhile event to attend.

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• Alcatel-Lucent: Enterprise 2.0: The Top 5 Things I would Do Over

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

  Happy Monday! Does anyone else feel as if the weekend went entirely too quickly? At least for those of us in the United States, we have the 4th of July Holiday next week to look forward to This week on the blog, we are going to focus on "WebCenter by Example" and highlight best practices from customers and partners. I recently came across this article and I think this is a great example of how we can learn from one another when it comes to social collaboration adoption. Do you agree with Jem? What things or best practices have you learned in your organizations?  By Jem Janik, Enterprise community manager, Alcatel-Lucent  Not so long ago, Engage, the Alcatel-Lucent employee social network and collaboration platform, celebrated its third birthday. With more than 25,000 members actively interacting each month, Engage has been a big enough success that it’s been the subject of external articles, and often those of us who helped launch it will go out and speak about what aspects contributed to that success. Hindsight is still 20/20 and what it takes to successfully launch an enterprise 2.0 community is fairly well-known now.  Today I want to tell you what I suspect you really want to know about.  As the enterprise community manager for Engage, after three years in, what are the top 5 things I wish we (and I mostly mean me) could do over? #5 Define your analytics solution from the start There is so much to do when you launch a community and initially growing it without complete chaos is quite a task.  It doesn’t take too long to get to a point where you want to focus your continued efforts in growing company collaboration.  Do people truly talk across regional boundaries or have we shifted siloed conversations to a new platform.  Is there one organization that doesn’t interact with another? If you are lucky you’ll have someone in your community team well versed in the world of databases and SQL queries, but it takes time to figure out what backend analytics data actually means. Professional support can be expensive and it may be hard to justify later as it typically has the community manager as the only main customer.  Figure out what you think you’ll want to know and how to get it early on. The sooner the better even if it doesn’t seem that critical at the time. #4 Lobbies guide you to the right places One piece of feedback that comes up more and more as we keep growing Engage is it’s hard to find stuff, or new people are not sure where to start. Something we’re doing now is defining some general topic areas of interest to be like “lobbies” into the platform and some common hashtags to go with them. I liken this to walking into a large medical or professional building for the first time.  There are hundreds of offices, and you look to a sign in the lobby to get guided to the right place for you.  We’re building that sign for members now, but again we missed the boat as the majority of the company has had their initial Engage experience. #3 Clean up, clean up, clean up Knowledge work and folksonomies are messy! The day we opened the doors to Engage I would have said we should keep everything ever created in Engage with an argument that it was a window into our collective knowledge so nothing should go.  Well, 6000+ groups and 200,000+ pieces of content later, I’ve changed my mind.  As previously mentioned, with too much “stuff” the system can be overwhelming to new members and it makes it harder to get what you’re looking for.   Do we need that help document about a tool we no longer have? NO!  Do we need that group that had 1 document and 2 discussions in the last two years? NO! Should we only have one group about a given topic instead of 4?  YES! Last fall, Engage defined a cleanup process for groups not used for a long time.  We also formed a volunteer cleaning army who are extra eyes on the hunt for “stuff” that should be updated, merged, or deleted.  It’s better late than never, but in line with what’s becoming a theme I wish these efforts had started earlier. #2 Communications & local community management One of the most important aspects of my job is to make sure people who should be talking to each other are actually doing it.  Connecting people to the other people they should know, the groups they should join, a piece of content that shouldn’t be missed.   I have worked both inside and outside of communications teams, and they are the best informed people in your company.  They know when something big is coming, how it impacts employees, how it fits with strategy, who else knows more, etc.  Having communications professionals who are power users can help scale up community management because they are already so well connected.  They also need to have the platform skills to pay attention without suffering email overload, how to grab someone’s attention, etc.  I wish I’d had figured this out much earlier.  If I had I would have groomed more communications colleagues into advocates and power members right at the start. #1 Grooming advocates vs. natural advocates I’ve just alluded to this above already. The very best advocates are those who naturally embrace your platform and automatically start to see new ways to work within it.  Those advocates seem to come out of the woodwork naturally since some of them are early adopters.  Not surprisingly, our best advocates today are those same people who were willing to come kick the tires when the community was completely empty.  Unfortunately, we didn’t get a global spread of those natural advocates.  I did ask around when we first launched for other people who might be good candidates, but didn’t push too hard as there were so many other things to get ready.  That was a mistake.  If I could get a redo I would have formally asked for people to be assigned where there were gaps and groomed them into an advocate.  Today as we find new advocates to fill the gaps, people are hesitant as the initial set has three years of practice are ahead of the curve power members; it definitely would have been easier earlier on. As fairly early adopters to corporate scale enterprise collaboration, there hasn’t been a roadmap to follow as we’ve grown Engage, which is part of the fun! It’s clear a lot of issues are more easily tackled the earlier you identify and begin to correct them, and I’ve identified the main five I wish I could redo.  In the spirit of collaboration, I hope someone else learns from my mistakes! View the original article by Jem here. 

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• Mounting NAS share: Bad Address

  - by Korben

  I've faced to the problem that can't solve. Hope you can help me with it. I have a storage QNAP TS-459U, with it's own Linux, and 'massive1' folder shared, which I need to mount to my Debian server. They are connected by regular patch cord. Debian server has two network interfaces - eth0 and eth1. eth0 is for Internet, eth1 is for QNAP. So, I'm saying this: mount -t cifs //169.254.100.100/massive1/ /mnt/storage -o user=admin , where 169.254.100.100 is an IP of QNAP's interface. The result I get (after entering password): mount error(14): Bad address Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g. man mount.cifs) Tried: mount.cifs, smbmount, with '/' at the end of the network share and without it, and many other variations of that command. And always its: mount error(14): Bad address Funny thing is when I was in Data Center, I had connected my netbook to QNAP by the same scheme (with Fedora 16 on it), and it connected without any problems, I could read/write files on the QNAP's NAS share! So I'm really stuck with the Debian. I can't undrestand where's the difference with Fedora, making this error. Yeah, I've used Google. Couldn't find any useful info. Ping to the QNAP's IP is working, I can log into QNAP's Linux by ssh, telnet on 139's port is working. This is network interface configuration I use in Debian: IP: 169.254.100.1 Netmask: 255.255.0.0 The only diffence in connecting to Fedora and Debian is that in Fedora I've added gateway - 169.254.100.129, but ping to this IP is not working, so I think it's not necessary at all. P.S. ~# cat /etc/debian_version wheezy/sid ~# uname -a Linux host 2.6.32-5-openvz-amd64 #1 SMP Mon Mar 7 22:25:57 UTC 2011 x86_64 GNU/Linux ~# smbtree WORKGROUP \\HOST host server \\HOST\IPC$ IPC Service (host server) \\HOST\print$ Printer Drivers NAS \\MASSIVE1 NAS Server \\MASSIVE1\IPC$ IPC Service (NAS Server) \\MASSIVE1\massive1 \\MASSIVE1\Network Recycle Bin 1 [RAID5 Disk Volume: Drive 1 2 3 4] \\MASSIVE1\Public System default share \\MASSIVE1\Usb System default share \\MASSIVE1\Web System default share \\MASSIVE1\Recordings System default share \\MASSIVE1\Download System default share \\MASSIVE1\Multimedia System default share Please, help me with solving this strange issue. Thanks before.

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• dbus dependency with yum

  - by Hengjie

  Whenever, I try and run yum update I get the following error: [root@server ~]# yum update Loaded plugins: dellsysid, fastestmirror Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile * base: mirror01.idc.hinet.net * extras: mirror01.idc.hinet.net * rpmforge: fr2.rpmfind.net * updates: mirror01.idc.hinet.net Excluding Packages in global exclude list Finished Setting up Update Process Resolving Dependencies --> Running transaction check ---> Package NetworkManager.x86_64 1:0.7.0-13.el5 set to be updated ---> Package NetworkManager-glib.x86_64 1:0.7.0-13.el5 set to be updated ---> Package SysVinit.x86_64 0:2.86-17.el5 set to be updated ---> Package acl.x86_64 0:2.2.39-8.el5 set to be updated ---> Package acpid.x86_64 0:1.0.4-12.el5 set to be updated ---> Package apr.x86_64 0:1.2.7-11.el5_6.5 set to be updated ---> Package aspell.x86_64 12:0.60.3-12 set to be updated ---> Package audit.x86_64 0:1.8-2.el5 set to be updated ---> Package audit-libs.x86_64 0:1.8-2.el5 set to be updated ---> Package audit-libs-python.x86_64 0:1.8-2.el5 set to be updated ---> Package authconfig.x86_64 0:5.3.21-7.el5 set to be updated ---> Package autofs.x86_64 1:5.0.1-0.rc2.163.el5 set to be updated ---> Package bash.x86_64 0:3.2-32.el5 set to be updated ---> Package bind.x86_64 30:9.3.6-20.P1.el5 set to be updated ---> Package bind-libs.x86_64 30:9.3.6-20.P1.el5 set to be updated ---> Package bind-utils.x86_64 30:9.3.6-20.P1.el5 set to be updated ---> Package binutils.x86_64 0:2.17.50.0.6-20.el5 set to be updated ---> Package centos-release.x86_64 10:5-8.el5.centos set to be updated ---> Package centos-release-notes.x86_64 0:5.8-0 set to be updated ---> Package coreutils.x86_64 0:5.97-34.el5_8.1 set to be updated ---> Package cpp.x86_64 0:4.1.2-52.el5 set to be updated ---> Package cpuspeed.x86_64 1:1.2.1-10.el5 set to be updated ---> Package crash.x86_64 0:5.1.8-1.el5.centos set to be updated ---> Package cryptsetup-luks.x86_64 0:1.0.3-8.el5 set to be updated ---> Package cups.x86_64 1:1.3.7-30.el5 set to be updated ---> Package cups-libs.x86_64 1:1.3.7-30.el5 set to be updated ---> Package curl.x86_64 0:7.15.5-15.el5 set to be updated --> Processing Dependency: dbus = 1.1.2-15.el5_6 for package: dbus-libs ---> Package dbus.x86_64 0:1.1.2-16.el5_7 set to be updated ---> Package dbus-libs.x86_64 0:1.1.2-16.el5_7 set to be updated ---> Package device-mapper.x86_64 0:1.02.67-2.el5 set to be updated ---> Package device-mapper-event.x86_64 0:1.02.67-2.el5 set to be updated ---> Package device-mapper-multipath.x86_64 0:0.4.7-48.el5_8.1 set to be updated ---> Package dhclient.x86_64 12:3.0.5-31.el5 set to be updated ---> Package dmidecode.x86_64 1:2.11-1.el5 set to be updated ---> Package dmraid.x86_64 0:1.0.0.rc13-65.el5 set to be updated ---> Package dmraid-events.x86_64 0:1.0.0.rc13-65.el5 set to be updated ---> Package dump.x86_64 0:0.4b41-6.el5 set to be updated ---> Package e2fsprogs.x86_64 0:1.39-33.el5 set to be updated ---> Package e2fsprogs-devel.x86_64 0:1.39-33.el5 set to be updated ---> Package e2fsprogs-libs.x86_64 0:1.39-33.el5 set to be updated ---> Package ecryptfs-utils.x86_64 0:75-8.el5 set to be updated ---> Package file.x86_64 0:4.17-21 set to be updated ---> Package finger.x86_64 0:0.17-33 set to be updated ---> Package firstboot-tui.x86_64 0:1.4.27.9-1.el5.centos set to be updated ---> Package freetype.x86_64 0:2.2.1-28.el5_7.2 set to be updated ---> Package freetype-devel.x86_64 0:2.2.1-28.el5_7.2 set to be updated ---> Package ftp.x86_64 0:0.17-37.el5 set to be updated ---> Package gamin.x86_64 0:0.1.7-10.el5 set to be updated ---> Package gamin-python.x86_64 0:0.1.7-10.el5 set to be updated ---> Package gawk.x86_64 0:3.1.5-15.el5 set to be updated ---> Package gcc.x86_64 0:4.1.2-52.el5 set to be updated ---> Package gcc-c++.x86_64 0:4.1.2-52.el5 set to be updated ---> Package glibc.i686 0:2.5-81.el5_8.1 set to be updated ---> Package glibc.x86_64 0:2.5-81.el5_8.1 set to be updated ---> Package glibc-common.x86_64 0:2.5-81.el5_8.1 set to be updated ---> Package glibc-devel.x86_64 0:2.5-81.el5_8.1 set to be updated ---> Package glibc-headers.x86_64 0:2.5-81.el5_8.1 set to be updated ---> Package gnutls.x86_64 0:1.4.1-7.el5_8.2 set to be updated ---> Package groff.x86_64 0:1.18.1.1-13.el5 set to be updated ---> Package gtk2.x86_64 0:2.10.4-21.el5_7.7 set to be updated ---> Package gzip.x86_64 0:1.3.5-13.el5.centos set to be updated ---> Package hmaccalc.x86_64 0:0.9.6-4.el5 set to be updated ---> Package htop.x86_64 0:1.0.1-2.el5.rf set to be updated ---> Package hwdata.noarch 0:0.213.26-1.el5 set to be updated ---> Package ifd-egate.x86_64 0:0.05-17.el5 set to be updated ---> Package initscripts.x86_64 0:8.45.42-1.el5.centos set to be updated ---> Package iproute.x86_64 0:2.6.18-13.el5 set to be updated ---> Package iptables.x86_64 0:1.3.5-9.1.el5 set to be updated ---> Package iptables-ipv6.x86_64 0:1.3.5-9.1.el5 set to be updated ---> Package iscsi-initiator-utils.x86_64 0:6.2.0.872-13.el5 set to be updated ---> Package kernel.x86_64 0:2.6.18-308.1.1.el5 set to be installed ---> Package kernel-headers.x86_64 0:2.6.18-308.1.1.el5 set to be updated ---> Package kpartx.x86_64 0:0.4.7-48.el5_8.1 set to be updated ---> Package krb5-devel.x86_64 0:1.6.1-70.el5 set to be updated ---> Package krb5-libs.x86_64 0:1.6.1-70.el5 set to be updated ---> Package krb5-workstation.x86_64 0:1.6.1-70.el5 set to be updated ---> Package ksh.x86_64 0:20100621-5.el5_8.1 set to be updated ---> Package kudzu.x86_64 0:1.2.57.1.26-3.el5.centos set to be updated ---> Package less.x86_64 0:436-9.el5 set to be updated ---> Package lftp.x86_64 0:3.7.11-7.el5 set to be updated ---> Package libX11.x86_64 0:1.0.3-11.el5_7.1 set to be updated ---> Package libX11-devel.x86_64 0:1.0.3-11.el5_7.1 set to be updated ---> Package libXcursor.x86_64 0:1.1.7-1.2 set to be updated ---> Package libacl.x86_64 0:2.2.39-8.el5 set to be updated ---> Package libgcc.x86_64 0:4.1.2-52.el5 set to be updated ---> Package libgomp.x86_64 0:4.4.6-3.el5.1 set to be updated ---> Package libpng.x86_64 2:1.2.10-16.el5_8 set to be updated ---> Package libpng-devel.x86_64 2:1.2.10-16.el5_8 set to be updated ---> Package libsmbios.x86_64 0:2.2.27-3.2.el5 set to be updated ---> Package libstdc++.x86_64 0:4.1.2-52.el5 set to be updated ---> Package libstdc++-devel.x86_64 0:4.1.2-52.el5 set to be updated ---> Package libsysfs.x86_64 0:2.1.0-1.el5 set to be updated ---> Package libusb.x86_64 0:0.1.12-6.el5 set to be updated ---> Package libvolume_id.x86_64 0:095-14.27.el5_7.1 set to be updated ---> Package libxml2.x86_64 0:2.6.26-2.1.15.el5_8.2 set to be updated ---> Package libxml2-python.x86_64 0:2.6.26-2.1.15.el5_8.2 set to be updated ---> Package logrotate.x86_64 0:3.7.4-12 set to be updated ---> Package lsof.x86_64 0:4.78-6 set to be updated ---> Package lvm2.x86_64 0:2.02.88-7.el5 set to be updated ---> Package m2crypto.x86_64 0:0.16-8.el5 set to be updated ---> Package man.x86_64 0:1.6d-2.el5 set to be updated ---> Package man-pages.noarch 0:2.39-20.el5 set to be updated ---> Package mcelog.x86_64 1:0.9pre-1.32.el5 set to be updated ---> Package mesa-libGL.x86_64 0:6.5.1-7.10.el5 set to be updated ---> Package mesa-libGL-devel.x86_64 0:6.5.1-7.10.el5 set to be updated ---> Package microcode_ctl.x86_64 2:1.17-1.56.el5 set to be updated ---> Package mkinitrd.x86_64 0:5.1.19.6-75.el5 set to be updated ---> Package mktemp.x86_64 3:1.5-24.el5 set to be updated --> Processing Dependency: nash = 5.1.19.6-68.el5_6.1 for package: mkinitrd ---> Package nash.x86_64 0:5.1.19.6-75.el5 set to be updated ---> Package net-snmp.x86_64 1:5.3.2.2-17.el5 set to be updated ---> Package net-snmp-devel.x86_64 1:5.3.2.2-17.el5 set to be updated ---> Package net-snmp-libs.x86_64 1:5.3.2.2-17.el5 set to be updated ---> Package net-snmp-utils.x86_64 1:5.3.2.2-17.el5 set to be updated ---> Package net-tools.x86_64 0:1.60-82.el5 set to be updated ---> Package nfs-utils.x86_64 1:1.0.9-60.el5 set to be updated ---> Package nfs-utils-lib.x86_64 0:1.0.8-7.9.el5 set to be updated ---> Package nscd.x86_64 0:2.5-81.el5_8.1 set to be updated ---> Package nspr.x86_64 0:4.8.9-1.el5_8 set to be updated ---> Package nspr-devel.x86_64 0:4.8.9-1.el5_8 set to be updated ---> Package nss.x86_64 0:3.13.1-5.el5_8 set to be updated ---> Package nss-devel.x86_64 0:3.13.1-5.el5_8 set to be updated ---> Package nss-tools.x86_64 0:3.13.1-5.el5_8 set to be updated ---> Package nss_ldap.x86_64 0:253-49.el5 set to be updated ---> Package ntp.x86_64 0:4.2.2p1-15.el5.centos.1 set to be updated ---> Package numactl.x86_64 0:0.9.8-12.el5_6 set to be updated ---> Package oddjob.x86_64 0:0.27-12.el5 set to be updated ---> Package oddjob-libs.x86_64 0:0.27-12.el5 set to be updated ---> Package openldap.x86_64 0:2.3.43-25.el5 set to be updated ---> Package openssh.x86_64 0:4.3p2-82.el5 set to be updated ---> Package openssh-clients.x86_64 0:4.3p2-82.el5 set to be updated ---> Package openssh-server.x86_64 0:4.3p2-82.el5 set to be updated ---> Package openssl.i686 0:0.9.8e-22.el5_8.1 set to be updated ---> Package openssl.x86_64 0:0.9.8e-22.el5_8.1 set to be updated ---> Package openssl-devel.x86_64 0:0.9.8e-22.el5_8.1 set to be updated ---> Package pam_krb5.x86_64 0:2.2.14-22.el5 set to be updated ---> Package pam_pkcs11.x86_64 0:0.5.3-26.el5 set to be updated ---> Package pango.x86_64 0:1.14.9-8.el5.centos.3 set to be updated ---> Package parted.x86_64 0:1.8.1-29.el5 set to be updated ---> Package pciutils.x86_64 0:3.1.7-5.el5 set to be updated ---> Package perl.x86_64 4:5.8.8-38.el5 set to be updated ---> Package perl-Compress-Raw-Bzip2.x86_64 0:2.037-1.el5.rf set to be updated ---> Package perl-Compress-Raw-Zlib.x86_64 0:2.037-1.el5.rf set to be updated ---> Package perl-rrdtool.x86_64 0:1.4.7-1.el5.rf set to be updated ---> Package poppler.x86_64 0:0.5.4-19.el5 set to be updated ---> Package poppler-utils.x86_64 0:0.5.4-19.el5 set to be updated ---> Package popt.x86_64 0:1.10.2.3-28.el5_8 set to be updated ---> Package postgresql-libs.x86_64 0:8.1.23-1.el5_7.3 set to be updated ---> Package procps.x86_64 0:3.2.7-18.el5 set to be updated ---> Package proftpd.x86_64 0:1.3.4a-1.el5.rf set to be updated --> Processing Dependency: perl(Mail::Sendmail) for package: proftpd ---> Package python.x86_64 0:2.4.3-46.el5 set to be updated ---> Package python-ctypes.x86_64 0:1.0.2-3.el5 set to be updated ---> Package python-libs.x86_64 0:2.4.3-46.el5 set to be updated ---> Package python-smbios.x86_64 0:2.2.27-3.2.el5 set to be updated ---> Package rhpl.x86_64 0:0.194.1-2 set to be updated ---> Package rmt.x86_64 0:0.4b41-6.el5 set to be updated ---> Package rng-utils.x86_64 1:2.0-5.el5 set to be updated ---> Package rpm.x86_64 0:4.4.2.3-28.el5_8 set to be updated ---> Package rpm-build.x86_64 0:4.4.2.3-28.el5_8 set to be updated ---> Package rpm-devel.x86_64 0:4.4.2.3-28.el5_8 set to be updated ---> Package rpm-libs.x86_64 0:4.4.2.3-28.el5_8 set to be updated ---> Package rpm-python.x86_64 0:4.4.2.3-28.el5_8 set to be updated ---> Package rrdtool.x86_64 0:1.4.7-1.el5.rf set to be updated ---> Package rsh.x86_64 0:0.17-40.el5_7.1 set to be updated ---> Package rsync.x86_64 0:3.0.6-4.el5_7.1 set to be updated ---> Package ruby.x86_64 0:1.8.5-24.el5 set to be updated ---> Package ruby-libs.x86_64 0:1.8.5-24.el5 set to be updated ---> Package sblim-sfcb.x86_64 0:1.3.11-49.el5 set to be updated ---> Package sblim-sfcc.x86_64 0:2.2.2-49.el5 set to be updated ---> Package selinux-policy.noarch 0:2.4.6-327.el5 set to be updated ---> Package selinux-policy-targeted.noarch 0:2.4.6-327.el5 set to be updated ---> Package setup.noarch 0:2.5.58-9.el5 set to be updated ---> Package shadow-utils.x86_64 2:4.0.17-20.el5 set to be updated ---> Package smartmontools.x86_64 1:5.38-3.el5 set to be updated ---> Package smbios-utils-bin.x86_64 0:2.2.27-3.2.el5 set to be updated ---> Package smbios-utils-python.x86_64 0:2.2.27-3.2.el5 set to be updated ---> Package sos.noarch 0:1.7-9.62.el5 set to be updated ---> Package srvadmin-omilcore.x86_64 0:6.5.0-1.452.1.el5 set to be updated ---> Package strace.x86_64 0:4.5.18-11.el5_8 set to be updated ---> Package subversion.x86_64 0:1.6.11-7.el5_6.4 set to be updated ---> Package sudo.x86_64 0:1.7.2p1-13.el5 set to be updated ---> Package sysfsutils.x86_64 0:2.1.0-1.el5 set to be updated ---> Package syslinux.x86_64 0:3.11-7 set to be updated ---> Package system-config-network-tui.noarch 0:1.3.99.21-1.el5 set to be updated ---> Package talk.x86_64 0:0.17-31.el5 set to be updated ---> Package tar.x86_64 2:1.15.1-31.el5 set to be updated ---> Package traceroute.x86_64 3:2.0.1-6.el5 set to be updated ---> Package tzdata.x86_64 0:2012b-3.el5 set to be updated ---> Package udev.x86_64 0:095-14.27.el5_7.1 set to be updated ---> Package util-linux.x86_64 0:2.13-0.59.el5 set to be updated ---> Package vixie-cron.x86_64 4:4.1-81.el5 set to be updated ---> Package wget.x86_64 0:1.11.4-3.el5_8.1 set to be updated ---> Package xinetd.x86_64 2:2.3.14-16.el5 set to be updated ---> Package yp-tools.x86_64 0:2.9-2.el5 set to be updated ---> Package ypbind.x86_64 3:1.19-12.el5_6.1 set to be updated ---> Package yum.noarch 0:3.2.22-39.el5.centos set to be updated ---> Package yum-dellsysid.x86_64 0:2.2.27-3.2.el5 set to be updated ---> Package yum-fastestmirror.noarch 0:1.1.16-21.el5.centos set to be updated ---> Package zlib.x86_64 0:1.2.3-4.el5 set to be updated ---> Package zlib-devel.x86_64 0:1.2.3-4.el5 set to be updated --> Running transaction check --> Processing Dependency: dbus = 1.1.2-15.el5_6 for package: dbus-libs --> Processing Dependency: nash = 5.1.19.6-68.el5_6.1 for package: mkinitrd ---> Package perl-Mail-Sendmail.noarch 0:0.79-1.2.el5.rf set to be updated base/filelists | 3.5 MB 00:00 dell-omsa-indep/filelists | 195 kB 00:01 dell-omsa-specific/filelists | 1.0 kB 00:00 extras/filelists_db | 224 kB 00:00 rpmforge/filelists | 4.8 MB 00:06 updates/filelists_db | 715 kB 00:00 --> Finished Dependency Resolution dbus-libs-1.1.2-15.el5_6.i386 from installed has depsolving problems --> Missing Dependency: dbus = 1.1.2-15.el5_6 is needed by package dbus-libs-1.1.2-15.el5_6.i386 (installed) mkinitrd-5.1.19.6-68.el5_6.1.i386 from installed has depsolving problems --> Missing Dependency: nash = 5.1.19.6-68.el5_6.1 is needed by package mkinitrd-5.1.19.6-68.el5_6.1.i386 (installed) Error: Missing Dependency: nash = 5.1.19.6-68.el5_6.1 is needed by package mkinitrd-5.1.19.6-68.el5_6.1.i386 (installed) Error: Missing Dependency: dbus = 1.1.2-15.el5_6 is needed by package dbus-libs-1.1.2-15.el5_6.i386 (installed) You could try using --skip-broken to work around the problem You could try running: package-cleanup --problems package-cleanup --dupes rpm -Va --nofiles --nodigest The program package-cleanup is found in the yum-utils package. I have tried running package-cleanup --dupes and package-cleanup --problems but to no avail.

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• ubuntu bind9 AppArmor read permission denied (chroot jail)

  - by Richard Whitman

  I am trying to run bind9 with chroot jail. I followed the steps mentioned at : http://www.howtoforge.com/debian_bind9_master_slave_system I am getting the following errors in my syslog: Jul 27 16:53:49 conf002 named[3988]: starting BIND 9.7.3 -u bind -t /var/lib/named Jul 27 16:53:49 conf002 named[3988]: built with '--prefix=/usr' '--mandir=/usr/share/man' '--infodir=/usr/share/info' '--sysconfdir=/etc/bind' '--localstatedir=/var' '--enable-threads' '--enable-largefile' '--with-libtool' '--enable-shared' '--enable-static' '--with-openssl=/usr' '--with-gssapi=/usr' '--with-gnu-ld' '--with-dlz-postgres=no' '--with-dlz-mysql=no' '--with-dlz-bdb=yes' '--with-dlz-filesystem=yes' '--with-dlz-ldap=yes' '--with-dlz-stub=yes' '--with-geoip=/usr' '--enable-ipv6' 'CFLAGS=-fno-strict-aliasing -DDIG_SIGCHASE -O2' 'LDFLAGS=-Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions' 'CPPFLAGS=' Jul 27 16:53:49 conf002 named[3988]: adjusted limit on open files from 4096 to 1048576 Jul 27 16:53:49 conf002 named[3988]: found 4 CPUs, using 4 worker threads Jul 27 16:53:49 conf002 named[3988]: using up to 4096 sockets Jul 27 16:53:49 conf002 named[3988]: loading configuration from '/etc/bind/named.conf' Jul 27 16:53:49 conf002 named[3988]: none:0: open: /etc/bind/named.conf: permission denied Jul 27 16:53:49 conf002 named[3988]: loading configuration: permission denied Jul 27 16:53:49 conf002 named[3988]: exiting (due to fatal error) Jul 27 16:53:49 conf002 kernel: [74323.514875] type=1400 audit(1343433229.352:108): apparmor="DENIED" operation="open" parent=3987 profile="/usr/sbin/named" name="/var/lib/named/etc/bind/named.conf" pid=3992 comm="named" requested_mask="r" denied_mask="r" fsuid=103 ouid=103 Looks like the process can not read the file /var/lib/named/etc/bind/named.conf. I have made sure that the owner of this file is user bind, and it has the read/write access to it: root@test:/var/lib/named/etc/bind# ls -atl total 64 drwxr-xr-x 3 bind bind 4096 2012-07-27 16:35 .. drwxrwsrwx 2 bind bind 4096 2012-07-27 15:26 zones drwxr-sr-x 3 bind bind 4096 2012-07-26 21:36 . -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 666 2012-07-26 21:33 named.conf.options -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 514 2012-07-26 21:18 named.conf.local -rw-r----- 1 bind bind 77 2012-07-25 00:25 rndc.key -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 2544 2011-07-14 06:31 bind.keys -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 237 2011-07-14 06:31 db.0 -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 271 2011-07-14 06:31 db.127 -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 237 2011-07-14 06:31 db.255 -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 353 2011-07-14 06:31 db.empty -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 270 2011-07-14 06:31 db.local -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 2994 2011-07-14 06:31 db.root -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 463 2011-07-14 06:31 named.conf -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 490 2011-07-14 06:31 named.conf.default-zones -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 1317 2011-07-14 06:31 zones.rfc1918 What could be wrong here?

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• passwd ldap request to ActiveDirectory fails on half of 2500 users

  - by groovehunter

  We just setup ActiveDirectory in my company and imported all linux users and groups. On the linux client: (configured to ask ldap in nsswitch.conf): If i do a common ldapsearch to the AD ldap server i get the complete number of about 2580 users. But if i do this it only gets a part of all users, 1221 in number: getent passwd | wc -l Running it with strace shows kind of attempt to reconnect My ideas were: Does the linux authentication procedure run ldapsearch with a parameter incompatible to AD ldap ? Or probably it is a encoding issue. The windows user are entered in AD with all kind of characters. Maybe someone could shed light on this and give a hint how to debug that further!? Here's our ldap.conf host audc01.mycompany.de audc03.mycompany.de base ou=location,dc=mycompany,dc=de ldap_version 3 binddn cn=manager,ou=location,dc=mycompany,dc=de bindpw Password timelimit 120 idle_timelimit 3600 nss_base_passwd cn=users,cn=import,ou=location,dc=mycompany,dc=de?sub nss_base_group ou=location,dc=mycompany,dc=de?sub # RFC 2307 (AD) mappings nss_map_objectclass posixAccount User # nss_map_objectclass shadowAccount User nss_map_objectclass posixGroup Group nss_map_attribute uid sAMAccountName nss_map_attribute cn sAMAccountName # Display Name nss_map_attribute gecos cn ## nss_map_attribute homeDirectory unixHomeDirectory nss_map_attribute loginShell msSFU30LoginShell # PAM attributes pam_login_attribute sAMAccountName # Location based login pam_groupdn CN=Location-AU-Login,OU=au,OU=Location,DC=mycompany,DC=de pam_member_attribute msSFU30PosixMember ## pam_lookup_policy yes pam_filter objectclass=User nss_initgroups_ignoreusers avahi,avahi-autoipd,backup,bin,couchdb,daemon,games,gdm,gnats,haldaemon,hplip,irc,kernoops,libuuid,list,lp,mail,man,messagebus,news,proxy,pulse,root,rtkit,saned,speech-dispatcher,statd,sync,sys,syslog,usbmux,uucp,www-data and here the stacktrace from strace getent passwd poll([{fd=4, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI|POLLERR|POLLHUP}], 1, 120000) = 1 ([{fd=4, revents=POLLIN}]) read(4, "0\204\0\0\0A\2\1", 8) = 8 read(4, "\4e\204\0\0\0\7\n\1\0\4\0\4\0\240\204\0\0\0+0\204\0\0\0%\4\0261.2."..., 63) = 63 stat64("/etc/ldap.conf", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=1151, ...}) = 0 geteuid32() = 12560 getsockname(4, {sa_family=AF_INET, sin_port=htons(60334), sin_addr=inet_addr("10.1.35.51")}, [16]) = 0 getpeername(4, {sa_family=AF_INET, sin_port=htons(389), sin_addr=inet_addr("10.1.5.81")}, [16]) = 0 time(NULL) = 1297684722 rt_sigaction(SIGPIPE, {SIG_DFL, [], 0}, NULL, 8) = 0 munmap(0xb7617000, 1721) = 0 close(3) = 0 rt_sigaction(SIGPIPE, {SIG_IGN, [], 0}, {SIG_DFL, [], 0}, 8) = 0 rt_sigaction(SIGPIPE, {SIG_DFL, [], 0}, NULL, 8) = 0 rt_sigaction(SIGPIPE, {SIG_IGN, [], 0}, {SIG_DFL, [], 0}, 8) = 0 write(4, "0\5\2\1\5B\0", 7) = 7 shutdown(4, 2 /* send and receive */) = 0 close(4) = 0 shutdown(-1, 2 /* send and receive */) = -1 EBADF (Bad file descriptor) close(-1) = -1 EBADF (Bad file descriptor) exit_group(0) = ?

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• tproxy squid bridge very slow when cache is full

  - by Roberto

  I have installed a bridge tproxy proxy in a fast server with 8GB ram. The traffic is around 60Mb/s. When I start for first time the proxy (with the cache empty) the proxy works very well but when the cache becomes full (few hours later) the bridge goes very slow, the traffic goes below 10Mb/s and the proxy server becomes unusable. Any hints of what may be happening? I'm using: linux-2.6.30.10 iptables-1.4.3.2 squid-3.1.1 compiled with these options: ./configure --prefix=/usr --mandir=/usr/share/man --infodir=/usr/share/info --datadir=/usr/share --localstatedir=/var/lib --sysconfdir=/etc/squid --libexecdir=/usr/libexec/squid --localstatedir=/var --datadir=/usr/share/squid --enable-removal-policies=lru,heap --enable-icmp --disable-ident-lookups --enable-cache-digests --enable-delay-pools --enable-arp-acl --with-pthreads --with-large-files --enable-htcp --enable-carp --enable-follow-x-forwarded-for --enable-snmp --enable-ssl --enable-async-io=32 --enable-linux-netfilter --enable-epoll --disable-poll --with-maxfd=16384 --enable-err-languages=Spanish --enable-default-err-language=Spanish My squid.conf: cache_mem 100 MB memory_pools off acl manager proto cache_object acl localhost src 127.0.0.1/32 acl localhost src ::1/128 acl to_localhost dst 127.0.0.0/8 0.0.0.0/32 acl to_localhost dst ::1/128 acl localnet src 10.0.0.0/8 # RFC1918 possible internal network acl localnet src 172.16.0.0/12 # RFC1918 possible internal network acl localnet src 192.168.0.0/16 # RFC1918 possible internal network acl localnet src fc00::/7 # RFC 4193 local private network range acl localnet src fe80::/10 # RFC 4291 link-local (directly plugged) machines acl net-g1 src xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/24 acl SSL_ports port 443 acl Safe_ports port 80 # http acl Safe_ports port 21 # ftp acl Safe_ports port 443 # https acl Safe_ports port 70 # gopher acl Safe_ports port 210 # wais acl Safe_ports port 1025-65535 # unregistered ports acl Safe_ports port 280 # http-mgmt acl Safe_ports port 488 # gss-http acl Safe_ports port 591 # filemaker acl Safe_ports port 777 # multiling http acl CONNECT method CONNECT http_access allow manager localhost http_access deny manager http_access deny !Safe_ports http_access deny CONNECT !SSL_ports http_access allow net-g1 from where browsing should be allowed http_access allow localnet http_access allow localhost http_access deny all http_port 3128 http_port 3129 tproxy hierarchy_stoplist cgi-bin ? cache_dir ufs /var/spool/squid 8000 16 256 access_log none cache_log /var/log/squid/cache.log coredump_dir /var/spool/squid refresh_pattern ^ftp: 1440 20% 10080 refresh_pattern ^gopher: 1440 0% 1440 refresh_pattern -i (/cgi-bin/|\?) 0 0% 0 refresh_pattern . I have this issue when the cache is full, but do not really know if it is because of that. Thanks in advance and sorry my english. roberto

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• How to create a Windows 7 installation usb media from linux ? (to install Windows 7) - Help need to know better method

  - by Abel Coto

  I have been reading some web pages and posts here and in other forums about how to create a Windows 7 installation Usb media (to install windows 7 using a usb) from linux. I asked in technet about this , and they give me general ideas about how to do it I personally am not very familiar with linux, but basicaly all that you need to do... in whatever way you do it is the following: Format a usb flash drive, either fat32 or ntfs create a partition that is large enough to host the windows installation (give or take 3GB for 64bit, aroudn 2.5gb for 32bit) and mark that partition as active/bootable. Since this can be done with windows, but just as well with a tool like gparted, you should be able to do the same in debian. Once you have created that partition, mount the iso that you download, and copy all files starting from the root, into the root of the usb flash drive. That's all there's to it. There is a method that i found in various places,that is almost the same that the man of technet has said. But,there is a step,that in that method is done,that i don't know if it is really necessary,or not. Not allways dd works.Basically, the missing step was to write a proper boot sector to the usb stick, which can be done from linux with ms-sys. This works with the Win7 retail version. Here is the complete rundown again: Install ms-sys Check what device your usb media is asigned - here we will assume it is /dev/sdb. Delete all partitions, create a new one taking up all the space, set type to NTFS, and set it bootable: *# cfdisk /dev/sdb* Create NTFS filesystem: *# mkfs.ntfs -f /dev/sdb1* Mount iso and usb media: *# mount -o loop win7.iso /mnt/iso # mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb* Copy over all files: *# cp -r /mnt/iso/* /mnt/usb/* Write Windows 7 MBR on usb stick: *# ms-sys -7 /dev/sdb* ...and you're done. Shouldn't the usb work without doing the last step "# ms-sys -7 /dev/sdb" or to make the usb bootable , is a must , not only to mark the partition as bootable ? Would be better use rsync instead of cp -r ? All this steps should be done as root, i suppose , or if not , chmod to 664 and chown the directories where are mounted the usb and the iso, no ? But i suppose that the easier thing is to copy the data as root , and that this will not affect to the data. Has anyone tried this method or some similar like copying the iso with dd ?

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• autocomplete not working on one sever, works on others

  - by dogmatic69

  I have Ubuntu 10.10 x64 and x86 running on various servers and auto complete works on all of them bar one. The issue: apt-<tab> would show a list of options but sudo apt-<tab> would not. After fiddling with it for a few hours i've found that /etc/bash_autocomplete did not exist. on the broken server. Copying the one from a working one it now works. but still not properly. sudo apt-get ins<tab> does not show do anything. listing the files in /etc/bash_autocomplete.d/ on the working server has about 50 files, and the broken one only two or three. i dont think that i can just copy these files though as it might show commands for things that are not even installed. TL;DR autocomplete broken, how can i fix it. Seems like its disabled somewhere, why is this EDIT: Ok, it was not ever installed... $ sudo apt-get install bash-completion Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following NEW packages will be installed bash-completion 0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded. Need to get 140kB of archives. After this operation, 1,061kB of additional disk space will be used. Get:1 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick-updates/main bash-completion all 1:1.2-2ubuntu1.1 [140kB] Fetched 140kB in 0s (174kB/s) Selecting previously deselected package bash-completion. (Reading database ... 23808 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking bash-completion (from .../bash-completion_1%3a1.2-2ubuntu1.1_all.deb) ... Processing triggers for man-db ... Setting up bash-completion (1:1.2-2ubuntu1.1) ... its now kinda working, but still wonky... apt-get ins<tab> gives sudo apt-get insserv as the option. also apt-get install php5<tab> gives apt-get install php5/ not php5-* options.

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• dnsmasq acts as the DHCP server for selected nodes overriding the existing DHCP server on the same LAN?

  - by user183394

  I am trying to set up a small "lab" at home. Like many modern homes, I have a regular DSL service which comes with a 2Wire 3600HGV router, which acts also as a DHCP server. Since I would like to PXE boot a few computers in my "lab" The 2Wire is inflexible to adjustments that I want to do I have used dnsmasq at work so I would like to use dnsmasq as the DHCP server for the few nodes in my "lab" if feasible. In the dnsmasq man page, there is the following: [...] -K, --dhcp-authoritative (IPv4 only) Should be set when dnsmasq is definitely the only DHCP server on a network. It changes the behaviour from strict RFC compliance so that DHCP requests on unknown leases from unknown hosts are not ignored. This allows new hosts to get a lease without a tedious timeout under all circumstances. It also allows dnsmasq to rebuild its lease database without each client needing to reacquire a lease, if the database is lost. [...] As far as I know, the ISC DHCP server can use the following to do what I would like to accomplish: authoritative; [...] subnet 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 { host nb0 { # only give DHCP information to this computer: hardware ethernet e8:9a:8f:17:70:42; fixed-address 192.168.1.10; option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0; option routers 192.168.1.254; option domain-name-servers 192.168.1.254; # Non-essential DHCP options filename "/pxelinux.0"; } [...] But I much prefer dnsmasq's "all-in-one-ness". My question: do I have to couple the -K option with something else? As shown in the example above, the ISC DHCP server requires the mac addresses of managed nodes to be explicitly specified. Does dnsmasq have something similar? FYI, the machine on which I plan to run dnsmasq runs CentOS 6.3 64bit. It has a statically assigned IP address: 192.168.1.3.

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• Output php mail calls to log file

  - by Tom McQuarrie

  This question relates to the question found here: Find the php script thats sending mails Trying to do the exact same thing but can't get the log to output what I need. Not too experienced with serverfault and ideally I'd post my followup on the original question, or PM adam to see if he ever found a solution, but looks as though server fault doesn't work that way. I can post an "answer" but that's definitely not what this is. I have a script located at /usr/local/bin/sendmail-php-logged, with the following: #!/bin/sh logger -p mail.info sendmail-php: site=${HTTP_HOST}, client=${REMOTE_ADDR}, script=${SCRIPT_NAME}, filename=${SCRIPT_FILENAME}, docroot=${DOCUMENT_ROOT}, pwd=${PWD}, uid=${UID}, user=$(whoami) /usr/sbin/sendmail -t -i $* This is logging to /var/log/maillog, but as Adam mentions in his question, none of the server variables work. Output I'm getting is: Oct 4 12:16:21 fluke logger: sendmail-php: site=, client=, script=, filename=, docroot=, pwd=/var/www/html/aro_chroot/sites/arocms, uid=48, user=apache Oct 4 12:16:21 fluke logger: sendmail-php: site=, client=, script=, filename=, docroot=, pwd=/var/www/html/aro_chroot/sites/arocms, uid=48, user=apache Oct 4 12:17:03 fluke logger: sendmail-php: site=, client=, script=, filename=, docroot=, pwd=/var/www/html/aro_chroot/sites/arocms, uid=48, user=apache Oct 4 12:17:05 fluke logger: sendmail-php: site=, client=, script=, filename=, docroot=, pwd=/root, uid=0, user=root Oct 4 12:17:11 fluke logger: sendmail-php: site=, client=, script=, filename=, docroot=, pwd=/var/www/html/aro_chroot/sites/arocms, uid=48, user=apache Oct 4 12:17:14 fluke logger: sendmail-php: site=, client=, script=, filename=, docroot=, pwd=/root, uid=0, user=root Oct 4 12:17:29 fluke logger: sendmail-php: site=, client=, script=, filename=, docroot=, pwd=/root, uid=0, user=root Oct 4 12:17:41 fluke logger: sendmail-php: site=, client=, script=, filename=, docroot=, pwd=/root, uid=0, user=root User ID, current user, and pwd are all working, probably because they're globally accessible script resources, and not specific to PHP, like all the others are. I've tried using other server variables as per labradort's instructions, but no joy. Here's some sample tests: logger -p mail.info sendmail-php SCRIPT_NAME: ${SCRIPT_NAME} logger -p mail.info sendmail-php SCRIPT_FILENAME: ${SCRIPT_FILENAME} logger -p mail.info sendmail-php PATH_INFO: ${PATH_INFO} logger -p mail.info sendmail-php PHP_SELF: ${PHP_SELF} logger -p mail.info sendmail-php DOCUMENT_ROOT: ${DOCUMENT_ROOT} logger -p mail.info sendmail-php REMOTE_ADDR: ${REMOTE_ADDR} logger -p mail.info sendmail-php SCRIPT_NAME: $SCRIPT_NAME logger -p mail.info sendmail-php SCRIPT_FILENAME: $SCRIPT_FILENAME logger -p mail.info sendmail-php PATH_INFO: $PATH_INFO logger -p mail.info sendmail-php PHP_SELF: $PHP_SELF logger -p mail.info sendmail-php DOCUMENT_ROOT: $DOCUMENT_ROOT logger -p mail.info sendmail-php REMOTE_ADDR: $REMOTE_ADDR And the output: Oct 4 12:58:02 fluke logger: sendmail-php SCRIPT_NAME: Oct 4 12:58:02 fluke logger: sendmail-php SCRIPT_FILENAME: Oct 4 12:58:02 fluke logger: sendmail-php PATH_INFO: Oct 4 12:58:02 fluke logger: sendmail-php PHP_SELF: Oct 4 12:58:02 fluke logger: sendmail-php DOCUMENT_ROOT: Oct 4 12:58:02 fluke logger: sendmail-php REMOTE_ADDR: Oct 4 12:58:02 fluke logger: sendmail-php SCRIPT_NAME: Oct 4 12:58:02 fluke logger: sendmail-php SCRIPT_FILENAME: Oct 4 12:58:02 fluke logger: sendmail-php PATH_INFO: Oct 4 12:58:02 fluke logger: sendmail-php PHP_SELF: Oct 4 12:58:02 fluke logger: sendmail-php DOCUMENT_ROOT: Oct 4 12:58:02 fluke logger: sendmail-php REMOTE_ADDR: I'm running php 5.3.10. Unfortunately register_globals is on, for compatibility with legacy systems, but you wouldn't think that would cause the environment variables to stop working. If someone can give me some hints as to why this might not be working I'll be a very happy man :)

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• radvd is not assigning prefix

  - by Samik

  I'm currently trying to setup IPv6 address auto-configuration with router advertisement daemon (radvd) on a virtual machine running CentOS 6.5. But the eth0 interface is not obtaining that prefix. I've obtained the ULA prefix from here. Contents of /etc/sysctl.conf # Kernel sysctl configuration file for Red Hat Linux # # For binary values, 0 is disabled, 1 is enabled. See sysctl(8) and # sysctl.conf(5) for more details. # Controls IP packet forwarding net.ipv4.ip_forward = 0 net.ipv6.conf.all.forwarding = 1 # Controls source route verification net.ipv4.conf.default.rp_filter = 1 # Do not accept source routing net.ipv4.conf.default.accept_source_route = 0 # Controls the System Request debugging functionality of the kernel kernel.sysrq = 0 # Controls whether core dumps will append the PID to the core filename. # Useful for debugging multi-threaded applications. kernel.core_uses_pid = 1 # Controls the use of TCP syncookies net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies = 1 # Disable netfilter on bridges. net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-ip6tables = 0 net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-iptables = 0 net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-arptables = 0 # Controls the default maxmimum size of a mesage queue kernel.msgmnb = 65536 # Controls the maximum size of a message, in bytes kernel.msgmax = 65536 # Controls the maximum shared segment size, in bytes kernel.shmmax = 68719476736 # Controls the maximum number of shared memory segments, in pages kernel.shmall = 4294967296 Contents of /etc/radvd.conf # NOTE: there is no such thing as a working "by-default" configuration file. # At least the prefix needs to be specified. Please consult the radvd.conf(5) # man page and/or /usr/share/doc/radvd-*/radvd.conf.example for help. # # interface eth0 { AdvSendAdvert on; MinRtrAdvInterval 3; MaxRtrAdvInterval 10; AdvDefaultPreference low; AdvHomeAgentFlag off; prefix fd8a:8d9d:808f:1::/64 { AdvOnLink on; AdvAutonomous on; AdvRouterAddr on; }; }; Contents of /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 DEVICE=eth0 HWADDR=52:54:00:74:d7:46 TYPE=Ethernet UUID=af5db1cb-e809-4098-be1a-5a74dbb767b1 ONBOOT=yes NM_CONTROLLED=no BOOTPROTO=dhcp IPV6INIT=yes IPV6_AUTOCONF=yes I've also enabled radvd at startup through chkconfig. Though I noticed that radvd is starting after interfaces are brought up. I've tried restarting the network service afterwards but still I get the following link-local address only #ip -6 addr show 1: lo: mtu 16436 inet6 ::1/128 scope host valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever 2: eth0: mtu 1500 qlen 1000 inet6 fe80::5054:ff:fe74:d746/64 scope link valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever Edit: Based on the answer given by Sander Steffann I still need clarification on some points but I'm posting here what worked. Contents of /etc/sysconfig/network NETWORKING=yes HOSTNAME=syslog-ng-server NETWORKING_IPV6=yes IPV6FORWARDING=yes Contents of /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 DEVICE=eth0 HWADDR=52:54:00:74:d7:46 TYPE=Ethernet UUID=af5db1cb-e809-4098-be1a-5a74dbb767b1 ONBOOT=yes NM_CONTROLLED=no BOOTPROTO=dhcp IPV6INIT=yes IPV6_AUTOCONF=yes IPV6FORWARDING=no Removed following line from /etc/sysctl.conf net.ipv6.conf.all.forwarding = 1 Contents of /etc/radvd.conf is as previous.

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• Hylafax / Capi4hylafax: faxgetty does not recognize number of lines

  - by Wrikken

  We've got a T.30 card, 30 working lines on it, but for some reason, if I add more then 30 faxes in the queue at any time (and we're busy enough at peak times that this happens a lot), faxgetty sends faxes to non-existent lines and they appear in the error queue as a 'busy' signal on the line, which results in a lot of failed faxes because the counter of max 3 tries increases rapidly. This is using faxgetty (USE_FAXGETTY="y" in /etc/default/hylafax). I've inherited this thing, so I'm not entirely sure how faxgetty is supposed to know the number of lines. However, if I alter the script to faxmodem (USE_FAXGETTY="n" in /etc/default/hylafax and manually enabling 30 modems), this behavior goes away (new faxes 'wait' for a line to be available before trying to send, so each try / fail is a valid one on a working line, majorly descreasing the amount of failed faxes. However, when researching this almost anyone talks about faxgetty being the preferred, more robust, method, and on top of that for some unexplained reason all FIFO's disappeared for some reason after several errorless hours with faxmodem, forcing a hylafax restart using faxgetty until we figured out why this faxmodem solution failed (which is another question, and somewhat out of scope here). Environment: Debian 2.6.26-2-amd64 capi4hylafax 1:01.03.00.99.svn.300-12 hylafax-client 2:4.4.4-10.1 hylafax-server 2:4.4.4-10.1 Config --hfaxd.conf-- LogFacility: daemon ServerTracing: 0x1ff --hyla.conf-- Host: localhost Verbose: No VRes: 196 TimeZone: local DialRules: "/etc/hylafax/dialrules.europe" --/etc/hylafax/config -- InternationalPrefix: 00 LongDistancePrefix: 0 AreaCode: 99999 CountryCode: 31 DialStringRules: "etc/dialrules.europe" ModemGroup: any:faxCAPI SendFaxCmd: "/usr/bin/wrapc2faxsend" --/etc/hylafax/config.faxCAPI -- SpoolDir: /var/spool/hylafax FaxRcvdCmd: /var/spool/hylafax/bin/faxrcvd PollRcvdCmd: /var/spool/hylafax/bin/pollrcvd FaxReceiveUser: uucp FaxReceiveGroup: dialout LogFile: /var/spool/hylafax/log/capi4hylafax #no, checking this log did not yield anything interesting LogTraceLevel: 4 LogFileMode: 0600 ModemGroup: any:faxCAPI #repeats of faxCAPI2 = faxCAPI30, with of course another devicename/local ident: { HylafaxDeviceName: faxCAPI RecvFileMode: 0600 FAXNumber: ****redacted**** LocalIdentifier: ****some-ident-per-device*** MaxConcurrentRecvs: 0 OutgoingController: 1 OutgoingMSN: SuppressMSN: 0 NumberPrefix: NumberPlusReplacer: "00" UseISDNFaxService: 0 RingingDuration: 0 { Controller: 1 AcceptSpeech: 0 UseDDI: 0 DDIOffset: DDILength: 0 IncomingDDIs: IncomingMSNs: AcceptGlobalCall: 1 } } So in short: How does faxgetty determine the number of lines available? (the man page isn't terribly revealing, and I can't find an appropriate setting in hylafax-config. And how can I get a capi4hylafax/hylafax setup which queues more faxes then lines are available correctly without immediately incrementing the fail count? We will not be receiving any faxes on this machine b.t.w. As I said, I've inherited this thing, so if there are important configuration options I'm not including, please let me know.

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