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• Fixing up Visual Studio&rsquo;s gitignore , using IFix

  - by terje

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/terje/archive/2014/06/13/fixing-up-visual-studiorsquos-gitignore--using-ifix.aspxDownload tool Is there anything wrong with the built-in Visual Studio gitignore ???? Yes, there is !  First, some background: When you set up a git repo, it should be small and not contain anything not really needed.  One thing you should not have in your git repo is binary files. These binary files may come from two sources, one is the output files, in the bin and obj folders.  If you have a  gitignore file present, which you should always have (!!), these folders are excluded by the standard included file (the one included when you choose Team Explorer/Settings/GitIgnore – Add.) The other source are the packages folder coming from your NuGet setup.  You do use NuGet, right ?  Of course you do !  But, that gitignore file doesn’t have any exclude clause for those folders.  You have to add that manually.  (It will very probably be included in some upcoming update or release).  This is one thing that is missing from the built-in gitignore. To add those few lines is a no-brainer, you just include this: # NuGet Packages packages/* *.nupkg # Enable "build/" folder in the NuGet Packages folder since # NuGet packages use it for MSBuild targets. # This line needs to be after the ignore of the build folder # (and the packages folder if the line above has been uncommented) !packages/build/ Now, if you are like me, and you probably are, you add git repo’s faster than you can code, and you end up with a bunch of repo’s, and then start to wonder: Did I fix up those gitignore files, or did I forget it? The next thing you learn, for example by reading this blog post, is that the “standard” latest Visual Studio gitignore file exist at https://github.com/github/gitignore, and you locate it under the file name VisualStudio.gitignore.  Here you will find all the new stuff, for example, the exclusion of the roslyn ide folders was commited on May 24th.  So, you think, all is well, Visual Studio will use this file …..     I am very sorry, it won’t. Visual Studio comes with a gitignore file that is baked into the release, and that is by this time “very old”.  The one at github is the latest.  The included gitignore miss the exclusion of the nuget packages folder, it also miss a lot of new stuff, like the Roslyn stuff. So, how do you fix this ?  … note .. while we wait for the next version… You can manually update it for every single repo you create, which works, but it does get boring after a few times, doesn’t it ? IFix Enter IFix ,  install it from here. IFix is a command line utility (and the installer adds it to the system path, you might need to reboot), and one of the commands is gitignore If you run it from a directory, it will check and optionally fix all gitignores in all git repo’s in that folder or below.  So, start up by running it from your C:/<user>/source/repos folder. To run it in check mode – which will not change anything, just do a check: IFix  gitignore --check What it will do is to check if the gitignore file is present, and if it is, check if the packages folder has been excluded.  If you want to see those that are ok, add the --verbose command too.  The result may look like this: Fixing missing packages Let us fix a single repo by adding the missing packages structure,  using IFix --fix We first check, then fix, then check again to verify that the gitignore is correct, and that the “packages/” part has been added. If we open up the .gitignore, we see that the block shown below has been added to the end of the .gitignore file.   Comparing and fixing with latest standard Visual Studio gitignore (from github) Now, this tells you if you miss the nuget packages folder, but what about the latest gitignore from github ? You can check for this too, just add the option –merge (why this is named so will be clear later down) So, IFix gitignore --check –merge The result may come out like this  (sorry no colors, not got that far yet here): As you can see, one repo has the latest gitignore (test1), the others are missing either 57 or 150 lines.  IFix has three ways to fix this: --add --merge --replace The options work as follows: Add:  Used to add standard gitignore in the cases where a .gitignore file is missing, and only that, that means it won’t touch other existing gitignores. Merge: Used to merge in the missing lines from the standard into the gitignore file.  If gitignore file is missing, the whole standard will be added. Replace: Used to force a complete replacement of the existing gitignore with the standard one. The Add and Replace options can be used without Fix, which means they will actually do the action. If you combine with --check it will otherwise not touch any files, just do a verification.  So a Merge Check will  tell you if there is any difference between the local gitignore and the standard gitignore, a Compare in effect. When you do a Fix Merge it will combine the local gitignore with the standard, and add what is missing to the end of the local gitignore. It may mean some things may be doubled up if they are spelled a bit differently.  You might also see some extra comments added, but they do no harm. Init new repo with standard gitignore One cool thing is that with a new repo, or a repo that is missing its gitignore, you can grab the latest standard just by using either the Add or the Replace command, both will in effect do the same in this case. So, IFix gitignore --add will add it in, as in the complete example below, where we set up a new git repo and add in the latest standard gitignore: Notes The project is open sourced at github, and you can also report issues there.

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• Clean up after Visual Studio

  - by psheriff

  As programmer’s we know that if we create a temporary file during the running of our application we need to make sure it is removed when the application or process is complete. We do this, but why can’t Microsoft do it? Visual Studio leaves tons of temporary files all over your hard drive. This is why, over time, your computer loses hard disk space. This blog post will show you some of the most common places where these files are left and which ones you can safely delete..NET Left OversVisual Studio is a great development environment for creating applications quickly. However, it will leave a lot of miscellaneous files all over your hard drive. There are a few locations on your hard drive that you should be checking to see if there are left-over folders or files that you can delete. I have attempted to gather as much data as I can about the various versions of .NET and operating systems. Of course, your mileage may vary on the folders and files I list here. In fact, this problem is so prevalent that PDSA has created a Computer Cleaner specifically for the Visual Studio developer.  Instructions for downloading our PDSA Developer Utilities (of which Computer Cleaner is one) are at the end of this blog entry.Each version of Visual Studio will create “temporary” files in different folders. The problem is that the files created are not always “temporary”. Most of the time these files do not get cleaned up like they should. Let’s look at some of the folders that you should periodically review and delete files within these folders.Temporary ASP.NET FilesAs you create and run ASP.NET applications from Visual Studio temporary files are placed into the <sysdrive>:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework[64]\<vernum>\Temporary ASP.NET Files folder. The folders and files under this folder can be removed with no harm to your development computer. Do not remove the "Temporary ASP.NET Files" folder itself, just the folders underneath this folder. If you use IIS for ASP.NET development, you may need to run the iisreset.exe utility from the command prompt prior to deleting any files/folder under this folder. IIS will sometimes keep files in use in this folder and iisreset will release the locks so the files/folders can be deleted.Website CacheThis folder is similar to the ASP.NET Temporary Files folder in that it contains files from ASP.NET applications run from Visual Studio. This folder is located in each users local settings folder. The location will be a little different on each operating system. For example on Windows Vista/Windows 7, the folder is located at <sysdrive>:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WebsiteCache. If you are running Windows XP this folder is located at <sysdrive>:\ Documents and Settings\<UserName>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\WebsiteCache. Check these locations periodically and delete all files and folders under this directory.Visual Studio BackupThis backup folder is used by Visual Studio to store temporary files while you develop in Visual Studio. This folder never gets cleaned out, so you should periodically delete all files and folders under this directory. On Windows XP, this folder is located at <sysdrive>:\Documents and Settings\<UserName>\My Documents\Visual Studio 200[5|8]\Backup Files. On Windows Vista/Windows 7 this folder is located at <sysdrive>:\Users\<UserName>\Documents\Visual Studio 200[5|8]\.Assembly CacheNo, this is not the global assembly cache (GAC). It appears that this cache is only created when doing WPF or Silverlight development with Visual Studio 2008 or Visual Studio 2010. This folder is located in <sysdrive>:\ Users\<UserName>\AppData\Local\assembly\dl3 on Windows Vista/Windows 7. On Windows XP this folder is located at <sysdrive>:\ Documents and Settings\<UserName>\Local Settings\Application Data\assembly. If you have not done any WPF or Silverlight development, you may not find this particular folder on your machine.Project AssembliesThis is yet another folder where Visual Studio stores temporary files. You will find a folder for each project you have opened and worked on. This folder is located at <sysdrive>:\Documents and Settings\<UserName>Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Visual Studio\[8|9].0\ProjectAssemblies on Windows XP. On Microsoft Vista/Windows 7 you will find this folder at <sysdrive>:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Visual Studio\[8|9].0\ProjectAssemblies.Remember not all of these folders will appear on your particular machine. Which ones do show up will depend on what version of Visual Studio you are using, whether or not you are doing desktop or web development, and the operating system you are using.SummaryTaking the time to periodically clean up after Visual Studio will aid in keeping your computer running quickly and increase the space on your hard drive. Another place to make sure you are cleaning up is your TEMP folder. Check your OS settings for the location of your particular TEMP folder and be sure to delete any files in here that are not in use. I routinely clean up the files and folders described in this blog post and I find that I actually eliminate errors in Visual Studio and I increase my hard disk space.NEW! PDSA has just published a “pre-release” of our PDSA Developer Utilities at http://www.pdsa.com/DeveloperUtilities that contains a Computer Cleaner utility which will clean up the above-mentioned folders, as well as a lot of other miscellaneous folders that get Visual Studio build-up. You can download a free trial at http://www.pdsa.com/DeveloperUtilities. If you wish to purchase our utilities through the month of November, 2011 you can use the RSVP code: DUNOV11 to get them for only $39. This is $40 off the regular price.NOTE: You can download this article and many samples like the one shown in this blog entry at my website. http://www.pdsa.com/downloads. Select “Tips and Tricks”, then “Developer Machine Clean Up” from the drop down list.Good Luck with your Coding,Paul Sheriff** SPECIAL OFFER FOR MY BLOG READERS **We frequently offer a FREE gift for readers of my blog. Visit http://www.pdsa.com/Event/Blog for your FREE gift!

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• Computer Networks UNISA - Chap 14 &ndash; Insuring Integrity &amp; Availability

  - by MarkPearl

  After reading this section you should be able to Identify the characteristics of a network that keep data safe from loss or damage Protect an enterprise-wide network from viruses Explain network and system level fault tolerance techniques Discuss issues related to network backup and recovery strategies Describe the components of a useful disaster recovery plan and the options for disaster contingencies What are integrity and availability? Integrity – the soundness of a networks programs, data, services, devices, and connections Availability – How consistently and reliably a file or system can be accessed by authorized personnel A number of phenomena can compromise both integrity and availability including… security breaches natural disasters malicious intruders power flaws human error users etc Although you cannot predict every type of vulnerability, you can take measures to guard against the most damaging events. The following are some guidelines… Allow only network administrators to create or modify NOS and application system users. Monitor the network for unauthorized access or changes Record authorized system changes in a change management system’ Install redundant components Perform regular health checks on the network Check system performance, error logs, and the system log book regularly Keep backups Implement and enforce security and disaster recovery policies These are just some of the basics… Malware Malware refers to any program or piece of code designed to intrude upon or harm a system or its resources. Types of Malware… Boot sector viruses Macro viruses File infector viruses Worms Trojan Horse Network Viruses Bots Malware characteristics Some common characteristics of Malware include… Encryption Stealth Polymorphism Time dependence Malware Protection There are various tools available to protect you from malware called anti-malware software. These monitor your system for indications that a program is performing potential malware operations. A number of techniques are used to detect malware including… Signature Scanning Integrity Checking Monitoring unexpected file changes or virus like behaviours It is important to decide where anti-malware tools will be installed and find a balance between performance and protection. There are several general purpose malware policies that can be implemented to protect your network including… Every compute in an organization should be equipped with malware detection and cleaning software that regularly runs Users should not be allowed to alter or disable the anti-malware software Users should know what to do in case the anti-malware program detects a malware virus Users should be prohibited from installing any unauthorized software on their systems System wide alerts should be issued to network users notifying them if a serious malware virus has been detected. Fault Tolerance Besides guarding against malware, another key factor in maintaining the availability and integrity of data is fault tolerance. Fault tolerance is the ability for a system to continue performing despite an unexpected hardware or software malfunction. Fault tolerance can be realized in varying degrees, the optimal level of fault tolerance for a system depends on how critical its services and files are to productivity. Generally the more fault tolerant the system, the more expensive it is. The following describe some of the areas that need to be considered for fault tolerance. Environment (Temperature and humidity) Power Topology and Connectivity Servers Storage Power Typical power flaws include Surges – a brief increase in voltage due to lightening strikes, solar flares or some idiot at City Power Noise – Fluctuation in voltage levels caused by other devices on the network or electromagnetic interference Brownout – A sag in voltage for just a moment Blackout – A complete power loss The are various alternate power sources to consider including UPS’s and Generators. UPS’s are found in two categories… Standby UPS – provides continuous power when mains goes down (brief period of switching over) Online UPS – is online all the time and the device receives power from the UPS all the time (the UPS is charged continuously) Servers There are various techniques for fault tolerance with servers. Server mirroring is an option where one device or component duplicates the activities of another. It is generally an expensive process. Clustering is a fault tolerance technique that links multiple servers together to appear as a single server. They share processing and storage responsibilities and if one unit in the cluster goes down, another unit can be brought in to replace it. Storage There are various techniques available including the following… RAID Arrays NAS (Storage (Network Attached Storage) SANs (Storage Area Networks) Data Backup A backup is a copy of data or program files created for archiving or safekeeping. Many different options for backups exist with various media including… These vary in cost and speed. Optical Media Tape Backup External Disk Drives Network Backups Backup Strategy After selecting the appropriate tool for performing your servers backup, devise a backup strategy to guide you through performing reliable backups that provide maximum data protection. Questions that should be answered include… What data must be backed up At what time of day or night will the backups occur How will you verify the accuracy of the backups Where and for how long will backup media be stored Who will take responsibility for ensuring that backups occurred How long will you save backups Where will backup and recovery documentation be stored Different backup methods provide varying levels of certainty and corresponding labour cost. There are also different ways to determine which files should be backed up including… Full backup – all data on all servers is copied to storage media Incremental backup – Only data that has changed since the last full or incremental backup is copied to a storage medium Differential backup – Only data that has changed since the last backup is coped to a storage medium Disaster Recovery Disaster recovery is the process of restoring your critical functionality and data after an enterprise wide outage has occurred. A disaster recovery plan is for extreme scenarios (i.e. fire, line fault, etc). A cold site is a place were the computers, devices, and connectivity necessary to rebuild a network exist but they are not appropriately configured. A warm site is a place where the computers, devices, and connectivity necessary to rebuild a network exists with some appropriately configured devices. A hot site is a place where the computers, devices, and connectivity necessary to rebuild a network exists and all are appropriately configured.

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• How Can I Safely Destroy Sensitive Data CDs/DVDs?

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  You have a pile of DVDs with sensitive information on them and you need to safely and effectively dispose of them so no data recovery is possible. What’s the most safe and efficient way to get the job done? Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader HaLaBi wants to know how he can safely destroy CDs and DVDs with personal data on them: I have old CDs/DVDs which have some backups, these backups have some work and personal files. I always had problems when I needed to physically destroy them to make sure no one will reuse them. Breaking them is dangerous, pieces could fly fast and may cause harm. Scratching them badly is what I always do but it takes long time and I managed to read some of the data in the scratched CDs/DVDs. What’s the way to physically destroy a CD/DVD safely? How should he approach the problem? The Answer SuperUser contributor Journeyman Geek offers a practical solution coupled with a slightly mad-scientist solution: The proper way is to get yourself a shredder that also handles cds – look online for cd shredders. This is the right option if you end up doing this routinely. I don’t do this very often – For small scale destruction I favour a pair of tin snips – they have enough force to cut through a cd, yet are blunt enough to cause small cracks along the sheer line. Kitchen shears with one serrated side work well too. You want to damage the data layer along with shearing along the plastic, and these work magnificently. Do it in a bag, cause this generates sparkly bits. There’s also the fun, and probably dangerous way – find yourself an old microwave, and microwave them. I would suggest doing this in a well ventilated area of course, and not using your mother’s good microwave. There’s a lot of videos of this on YouTube – such as this (who’s done this in a kitchen… and using his mom’s microwave). This results in a very much destroyed cd in every respect. If I was an evil hacker mastermind, this is what I’d do. The other options are better for the rest of us. Another contributor, Keltari, notes that the only safe (and DoD approved) way to dispose of data is total destruction: The answer by Journeyman Geek is good enough for almost everything. But oddly, that common phrase “Good enough for government work” does not apply – depending on which part of the government. It is technically possible to recover data from shredded/broken/etc CDs and DVDs. If you have a microscope handy, put the disc in it and you can see the pits. The disc can be reassembled and the data can be reconstructed — minus the data that was physically destroyed. So why not just pulverize the disc into dust? Or burn it to a crisp? While technically, that would completely eliminate the data, it leaves no record of the disc having existed. And in some places, like DoD and other secure facilities, the data needs to be destroyed, but the disc needs to exist. If there is a security audit, the disc can be pulled to show it has been destroyed. So how can a disc exist, yet be destroyed? Well, the most common method is grinding the disc down to destroy the data, yet keep the label surface of the disc intact. Basically, it’s no different than using sandpaper on the writable side, till the data is gone. Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.     

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• When -exactly- does the Rails3 application get initialized?

  - by bergyman

  I've been fighting left and right with rails 3 and bundler. There are a few gems out there that don't work properly if the rails application hasn't been loaded yet. factory_girl and shoulda are both examples, even on the rails3 branch. Taking shoulda as an example, when trying to run rake test:units I get the following error: DEPRECATION WARNING: RAILS_ROOT is deprecated! Use Rails.root instead. (called from autoload_macros at c:/code/test_harness/vendor/windows_gems/gems/shoulda-2.10.3/lib/shoulda/autoload_macros.rb:40) c:/code/test_harness/vendor/windows_gems/gems/shoulda-2.10.3/lib/shoulda/autoload_macros.rb:44:in 'join': can't convert #<Class:0x232b7c0> into String (TypeError) from c:/code/test_harness/vendor/windows_gems/gems/shoulda-2.10.3/lib/shoulda/autoload_macros.rb:44:in 'block in autoload_macros' from c:/code/test_harness/vendor/windows_gems/gems/shoulda-2.10.3/lib/shoulda/autoload_macros.rb:44:in 'map' from c:/code/test_harness/vendor/windows_gems/gems/shoulda-2.10.3/lib/shoulda/autoload_macros.rb:44:in 'autoload_macros' from c:/code/test_harness/vendor/windows_gems/gems/shoulda-2.10.3/lib/shoulda/rails.rb:17:in '<top (required)>' Digging a bit deeper into lib/shoulda/rails, I see this: root = if defined?(Rails.root) && Rails.root Rails.root else RAILS_ROOT end # load in the 3rd party macros from vendorized plugins and gems Shoulda.autoload_macros root, File.join("vendor", "{plugins,gems}", "*") So...what's happening here is while Rails.root is defined, Rails.root == nil, so RAILS_ROOT is used, and RAILS_ROOT==nil, which is then being passed on to Shoulda.autoload_macros. Obviously the rails app has yet to be initialized. With Rails3 using Bundler now, there's been some hubub over on the Bundler side about being able to specify an order in which the gems are required, but I'm not sure whether or not this would solve the problem at hand. Ultimately my questions is this: When exactly does the environment.rb file (which actually initializes the application) get pulled in? Is there any harm to bumping up when the app is initialized and have it happen before the Bundler.require line in config/application.rb? I've tried to hack bundler to specify the order myself, and have the rails gem pulled in first, but it doesn't appear to me that requiring the rails gem actually initializes the application. As this line (in config/application.rb) is being called before the app is initialized, any gem in the bundler Gemfile that requires rails to be initialized is going to tank. # Auto-require default libraries and those for the current Rails environment. Bundler.require :default, Rails.env

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• How do you programmatically set a Style on a View?

  - by Greg

  I would like to do something like this: <Button android:id="@+id/button" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_cotent" style="@style/SubmitButtonType" /> But in code The xml approach works fine provided that SubmitButtonType is defined. Now what I assume happens is that the appt parser runs through this xml, generates an AttributeSet. That AttributeSet when passed to context/theme#obtainStyledAttributes() will have the style ref mask anything that is not written inline in this tag. Great that's fine! Now how do we do this programmatically. Button, as well as other View types, has a constructor that has the form: <Widget>(Context context, AttributeSet set, int defStyle). So I thought this would work. Button button = new Button(context, null, R.style.SubmitButtonType); However, I am finding that defStyle is badly documented as it really should be written to be a resourceId to an attribute (from R.attrs) that will be passed to obtainStyledAttributes() as the attribute resource, and not the style resource. After looking at the code, all the view implementations seem to pass 0 as the styleRef. I don't see the harm in having it passed as both the attr and the style resource (more flexible and negligible overhead) However I might be approaching this all wrong. How do you do this in code then other than by setting each individual element of the style to the specific widget you want to style (only possible by looking a the code to see what param maps to which method or set of methods). The only way I have found to do this is: <declare-styleable> <attr name="totallyAdhoc_attribute_just_for_this_case" format="reference"> </declare-styleable> <style name="MyAlreadyExistantTheme" > ... ... <item name="totallyAdhoc_attribute_just_for_this_case">@style/SubmitButtonType</item> </style> And instead of passing R.style.SubmitButtonType as defStyle, I pass the new R.attr.totallyAdhoc_attribute_just_for_this_case. Button button = new Button(context, null, R.attr.totallyAdhoc_attribute_just_for_this_case); This works but sounds way too complicated.

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• avoiding enums as interface identifiers c++ OOP

  - by AlasdairC

  Hi I'm working on a plugin framework using dynamic loaded shared libraries which is based on Eclipse's (and probally other's) extension-point model. All plugins share similar properties (name, id, version etc) and each plugin could in theory satisfy any extension-point. The actual plugin (ie Dll) handling is managed by another library, all I am doing really is managing collections of interfaces for the application. I started by using an enum PluginType to distinguish the different interfaces, but I have quickly realised that using template functions made the code far cleaner and would leave the grunt work up to the compiler, rather than forcing me to use lots of switch {...} statements. The only issue is where I need to specify like functionality for class members - most obvious example is the default plugin which provides a particular interface. A Settings class handles all settings, including the default plugin for an interface. ie Skin newSkin = settings.GetDefault<ISkin>(); How do I store the default ISkin in a container without resorting to some other means of identifying the interface? As I mentioned above, I currently use a std::map<PluginType, IPlugin> Settings::defaults member to achieve this (where IPlugin is an abstract base class which all plugins derive from. I can then dynamic_cast to the desired interface when required, but this really smells of bad design to me and introduces more harm than good I think. would welcome any tips edit: here's an example of the current use of default plugins typedef boost::shared_ptr<ISkin> Skin; typedef boost::shared_ptr<IPlugin> Plugin; enum PluginType { skin, ..., ... } class Settings { public: void SetDefault(const PluginType type, boost::shared_ptr<IPlugin> plugin) { m_default[type] = plugin; } boost::shared_ptr<IPlugin> GetDefault(const PluginType type) { return m_default[type]; } private: std::map<PluginType, boost::shared_ptr<IPlugin> m_default; }; SkinManager::Initialize() { Plugin thedefault = g_settings.GetDefault(skinplugin); Skin defaultskin = boost::dynamic_pointer_cast<ISkin>(theskin); defaultskin->Initialize(); } I would much rather call the getdefault as the following, with automatic casting to the derived class. However I need to specialize for every class type. template<> Skin Settings::GetDefault<ISkin>() { return boost::dynamic_pointer_cast<ISkin>(m_default(skin)); }

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• install python2.7.3 + numpy + scipy + matplotlib + scikits.statsmodels + pandas0.7.3 correctly

  - by boldnik

  ...using Linux (xubuntu). How to install python2.7.3 + numpy + scipy + matplotlib + scikits.statsmodels + pandas0.7.3 correctly ? My final aim is to have them working. The problem: ~$ python --version Python 2.7.3 so i already have a system-default 2.7.3, which is good! ~$ dpkg -s python-numpy Package: python-numpy Status: install ok installed and i already have numpy installed! great! But... ~$ python Python 2.7.3 (default, Oct 23 2012, 01:07:38) [GCC 4.6.1] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> import numpy as nmp Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> ImportError: No module named numpy this module couldn't be find by python. The same with scipy, matplotlib. Why? ~$ sudo apt-get install python-numpy [...] Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done python-numpy is already the newest version. [...] why it does not see numpy and others ? update: >>> import sys >>> print sys.path ['', '/usr/local/lib/python27.zip', '/usr/local/lib/python2.7', '/usr/local/lib/python2.7/plat-linux2', '/usr/local/lib/python2.7/lib-tk', '/usr/local/lib/python2.7/lib-old', '/usr/local/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload', '/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages'] >>> so i do have /usr/local/lib/python2.7 ~$ pip freeze Warning: cannot find svn location for distribute==0.6.16dev-r0 BzrTools==2.4.0 CDApplet==1.0 [...] matplotlib==1.0.1 mutagen==1.19 numpy==1.5.1 [...] pandas==0.7.3 papyon==0.5.5 [...] pytz==2012g pyxdg==0.19 reportlab==2.5 scikits.statsmodels==0.3.1 scipy==0.11.0 [...] zope.interface==3.6.1 as you can see, those modules are already installed! But! ls -la /usr/local/lib/ gives ONLY python2.7 dir. And still ~$ python -V Python 2.7.3 and import sys sys.version '2.7.3 (default, Oct 23 2012, 01:07:38) \n[GCC 4.6.1]' updated: Probably I've missed another instance... One at /usr/Python-2.7.3/ and second (seems to be installed "by hands" far far ago) at /usr/python2.7.3/Python-2.7.3/ But how two identical versions can work at the same time??? Probably, one of them is "disabled" (not used by any program, but I don't know how to check if any program uses it). ~$ ls -la /usr/bin/python* lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2011-11-01 11:11 /usr/bin/python -> python2.7 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2476800 2012-09-28 19:48 /usr/bin/python2.6 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1452 2012-09-28 19:45 /usr/bin/python2.6-config -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2586060 2012-07-21 01:42 /usr/bin/python2.7 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1652 2012-07-21 01:40 /usr/bin/python2.7-config lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2011-10-05 23:53 /usr/bin/python3 -> python3.2 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 2011-09-06 02:04 /usr/bin/python3.2 -> python3.2mu -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2852896 2011-09-06 02:04 /usr/bin/python3.2mu lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 2011-10-08 19:50 /usr/bin/python-config -> python2.7-config there is a symlink python-python2.7, maybe I can ln -f -s this link to exact /usr/Python-2.7.3/python destination without harm ?? And how correctly to remove the 'copy' of 2.7.3?

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• overriding new ubuntu installation

  - by tkoomzaaskz

  I've got a ubuntu 11.10 which has lost its support in May 2013, now I'd like to reintall up to the most up-to-date LTS, which is 12.04. My question is regarding my current partitions and doing backups. Is there a safe way to backup my data on some local partitions instead of copying files into DVDs/external drives (this is very uncormortable in my situation). Following are system commands shoing my disk: $ lsblk NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO MOUNTPOINT sda 8:0 0 232,9G 0 +-sda1 8:1 0 48,8G 0 +-sda2 8:2 0 63G 0 +-sda3 8:3 0 1K 0 +-sda4 8:4 0 53,7G 0 / +-sda5 8:5 0 18,6G 0 +-sda6 8:6 0 25,5G 0 +-sda7 8:7 0 23,3G 0 [SWAP] sr0 11:0 1 1024M 0 and $ sudo fdisk -l [sudo] password for xyz: Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes glowic: 255, sektorów/sciezke: 63, cylindrów: 30401, w sumie sektorów: 488397168 Jednostka = sektorów, czyli 1 * 512 = 512 bajtów Rozmiar sektora (logiczny/fizyczny) w bajtach: 512 / 512 Rozmiar we/wy (minimalny/optymalny) w bajtach: 512 / 512 Identyfikator dysku: 0xc3ffc3ff Device Boot Beginning End Blocks ID System /dev/sda1 * 2048 102402047 51200000 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda2 215044096 347080703 66018304 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda3 347082750 488392064 70654657+ 5 Extended /dev/sda4 102402048 215042047 56320000 83 Linux /dev/sda5 395905923 434975939 19535008+ 83 Linux /dev/sda6 434976003 488392064 26708031 83 Linux /dev/sda7 347082752 395905023 24411136 82 Linux swap / Solaris In the beginning I had Windows Vista pre-installed with the machine when it was bought (damn!) and I installed linux (the one I have now). The windows-program in master boot record has been overriden by grub and now I can boot with both Windows and Linux. This is list of mounted devices: $ mount /dev/sda4 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro,commit=0) proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw) none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw) none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw) udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755) devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620) tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,size=10%,mode=0755) none on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=5242880) none on /run/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev) binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/tomasz/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=tomasz) It's strange (I don't remember such thing) that my current linux uses only one partition (/dev/sda4). But, anyway, it seems like that. My final question is: am I able to use one of the existing linux partitions for a backup and install ubuntu 12.04 without removing neither windows nor ubuntu 11.04? I mean - will grub automatically accept both old windows vista and 2 linuxes (old 11.10 and "new" 12.04)? Is there any hidden operation done while installation that could harm my custom-backup-partition while installing? my fstab file: proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0 # / was on /dev/sda4 during installation UUID=d44e89f5-9da2-48eb-83b3-887652ec95d2 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1 # swap was on /dev/sda7 during installation UUID=bbe50535-ba57-434a-9272-211d859f0e00 none swap sw 0 0 sda5 and sda6 are trash partitions created during unsuccessful linux installation (this was linux installation before my current installation), I didn't delete these partitions, but I have access to them (and I can use them as backup partitions). edit: second question is: why does lsblk show /dev/sda having 232,9G while fdisk shows that it has 250.1GB? Where does the difference come from?

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• Starting MySQL database server: mysqld . . . . . . . . . . . . . . failed!

  - by meder

  I restarted my VPS box ( manually/hard restart ) and ever since, mysql fails to start for whatever reason. I did a tail /var/log/syslog and I get this: Feb 20 11:49:33 kyrgyznews mysqld[11461]: ) ;InnoDB: End of page dump 575 Feb 20 11:49:33 kyrgyznews mysqld[11461]: 110220 11:49:33 InnoDB: Page checksum 1045788239, prior-to-4.0.14-form checksum 236985105 576 Feb 20 11:49:33 kyrgyznews mysqld[11461]: InnoDB: stored checksum 1178062585, prior-to-4.0.14-form stored checksum 236985105 577 Feb 20 11:49:33 kyrgyznews mysqld[11461]: InnoDB: Page lsn 0 10651, low 4 bytes of lsn at page end 10651 578 Feb 20 11:49:33 kyrgyznews mysqld[11461]: InnoDB: Page number (if stored to page already) 3, 579 Feb 20 11:49:33 kyrgyznews mysqld[11461]: InnoDB: space id (if created with >= MySQL-4.1.1 and stored already) 0 580 Feb 20 11:49:33 kyrgyznews mysqld[11461]: InnoDB: Database page corruption on disk or a failed 581 Feb 20 11:49:33 kyrgyznews mysqld[11461]: InnoDB: file read of page 3. 582 Feb 20 11:49:33 kyrgyznews mysqld[11461]: InnoDB: You may have to recover from a backup. 583 Feb 20 11:49:33 kyrgyznews mysqld[11461]: InnoDB: It is also possible that your operating 584 Feb 20 11:49:33 kyrgyznews mysqld[11461]: InnoDB: system has corrupted its own file cache 585 Feb 20 11:49:33 kyrgyznews mysqld[11461]: InnoDB: and rebooting your computer removes the 586 Feb 20 11:49:33 kyrgyznews mysqld[11461]: InnoDB: error. 587 Feb 20 11:49:33 kyrgyznews mysqld[11461]: InnoDB: If the corrupt page is an index page 588 Feb 20 11:49:33 kyrgyznews mysqld[11461]: InnoDB: you can also try to fix the corruption 589 Feb 20 11:49:33 kyrgyznews mysqld[11461]: InnoDB: by dumping, dropping, and reimporting 590 Feb 20 11:49:33 kyrgyznews mysqld[11461]: InnoDB: the corrupt table. You can use CHECK 591 Feb 20 11:49:33 kyrgyznews mysqld[11461]: InnoDB: TABLE to scan your table for corruption. 592 Feb 20 11:49:33 kyrgyznews mysqld[11461]: InnoDB: See also InnoDB: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/forcing-recovery.html 593 Feb 20 11:49:33 kyrgyznews mysqld[11461]: InnoDB: about forcing recovery. 594 Feb 20 11:49:33 kyrgyznews mysqld[11461]: InnoDB: Ending processing because of a corrupt database page. 595 Feb 20 11:49:33 kyrgyznews mysqld_safe[11469]: ended 596 Feb 20 11:49:47 kyrgyznews /etc/init.d/mysql[12228]: 0 processes alive and '/usr/bin/mysqladmin --defaults-file=/etc/mysql/debian.cnf ping' resulted in 597 Feb 20 11:49:47 kyrgyznews /etc/init.d/mysql[12228]: ^G/usr/bin/mysqladmin: connect to server at 'localhost' failed 598 Feb 20 11:49:47 kyrgyznews /etc/init.d/mysql[12228]: error: 'Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2)' 599 Feb 20 11:49:47 kyrgyznews /etc/init.d/mysql[12228]: Check that mysqld is running and that the socket: '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' exists! 600 Feb 20 11:49:47 kyrgyznews /etc/init.d/mysql[12228]: 601 Feb 20 11:49:56 kyrgyznews mysqld_safe[13437]: started 602 Feb 20 11:49:56 kyrgyznews mysqld[13440]: InnoDB: The log sequence number in ibdata files does not match 603 Feb 20 11:49:56 kyrgyznews mysqld[13440]: InnoDB: the log sequence number in the ib_logfiles! 604 Feb 20 11:49:56 kyrgyznews mysqld[13440]: 110220 11:49:56 InnoDB: Database was not shut down normally! 605 Feb 20 11:49:56 kyrgyznews mysqld[13440]: InnoDB: Starting crash recovery. 606 Feb 20 11:49:56 kyrgyznews mysqld[13440]: InnoDB: Reading tablespace information from the .ibd files... 607 Feb 20 11:49:56 kyrgyznews mysqld[13440]: InnoDB: Restoring possible half-written data pages from the doublewrite 608 Feb 20 11:49:56 kyrgyznews mysqld[13440]: InnoDB: buffer... 609 Feb 20 11:49:56 kyrgyznews mysqld[13440]: InnoDB: Database page corruption on disk or a failed 610 Feb 20 11:49:56 kyrgyznews mysqld[13440]: InnoDB: file read of page 3. 611 Feb 20 11:49:56 kyrgyznews mysqld[13440]: InnoDB: You may have to recover from a backup. I have looked at the page it referenced, http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/forcing-innodb-recovery.html, but before messing with any settings I was wondering what experienced DBAs would suggest doing? Is there any harm in forcing the recovery? PS - I did not make any updates to mysql. Version is mysql Ver 14.12 Distrib 5.0.51a, for debian-linux-gnu (i486) using readline 5.2.

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• Windows XP Video Configuration Issues

  - by Matt

  Recently I had my motherboard burn out on me. Needing the machine for work, I purchased a different motherboard and installed that. Generally a reinstall of windows is good at that point but I am not in a position to do that so I just decided I would live with it for now. When I can log-in, everything works fine, what doesn't is getting to the log-in prompt to begin with. Basically when I first installed the new mobo, every time I rebooted the machine, I would not get the windows login prompt. One of the monitors would receive a signal but the screen would be black. Moving the mouse would not show the cursor and hitting the up arrow key and typing my password and hitting enter (which will normally log you in without mouse) wouldn't change anything. I would then change the monitor configuration around (2 lcd's and a crt) and reboot and at least one of the monitors would work and display the login prompt. I could then go into display properties and turn on the other monitors. However if I rebooted again, I would get the black screen on one monitor again. I would then have to change the configuration again to one not used before and I could re-do the manual setup at that point. I think windows saves the configurations so I had to keep giving it new ones. Needless to say I've been trying to not turn off my machine. Early this week I actually got the prompt to come up without playing musical monitors. Thinking everything was getting better, I found no harm in rebooting to install the latest windows updates. Boy was I wrong. Now no matter what I do I can't get a windows log-in prompt to display. I've tried almost every conceivable combination. The new mobo has onboard video so I set that in the bios (yea bios screen always displays fine, its not until windows boots that there is a problem) to be the primary video. Still no luck. I have two other graphics cards in the machine which I'm using. Tried all kinds of configurations between those and on-board but still get this black screen of death. I read somewhere that deleting the video drivers would reset the configurations. I logged into safe mode (which works on one monitor), and uninstalled the display drivers. Still no luck and when I booted back into safe mode, it wanted to install new hardware and the display adapters weren't there as expected. Anyone have any ideas? A fresh install would be a pain and I might be getting my old board back from RMA soon so not sure I want to go through with that just yet. Only thing I can think of is to continue to try other combinations like physically removing the graphics cards. They are both EVGA 8600 cards and the windows boot screen does display fwiw.

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• Router 2wire, Slackware desktop in DMZ mode, iptables policy aginst ping, but still pingable

  - by user135501

  I'm in DMZ mode, so I'm firewalling myself, stealthy all ok, but I get faulty test results from Shields Up that there are pings. Yesterday I couldn't make a connection to game servers work, because ping block was enabled (on the router). I disabled it, but this persists even due to my firewall. What is the connection between me and my router in DMZ mode (for my machine, there is bunch of others too behind router firewall)? When it allows router affecting if I'm pingable or not and if router has setting not blocking ping, rules in my iptables for this scenario do not work. Please ignore commented rules, I do uncomment them as I want. These two should do the job right? iptables -A INPUT -p icmp --icmp-type echo-request -j DROP echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/icmp_echo_ignore_all Here are my iptables: #!/bin/sh # Begin /bin/firewall-start # Insert connection-tracking modules (not needed if built into the kernel). #modprobe ip_tables #modprobe iptable_filter #modprobe ip_conntrack #modprobe ip_conntrack_ftp #modprobe ipt_state #modprobe ipt_LOG # allow local-only connections iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT # free output on any interface to any ip for any service # (equal to -P ACCEPT) iptables -A OUTPUT -j ACCEPT # permit answers on already established connections # and permit new connections related to established ones (eg active-ftp) iptables -A INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT #Gamespy&NWN #iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp -m multiport --ports 5120:5129 -j ACCEPT #iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 6667 --tcp-flags SYN,RST,ACK SYN -j ACCEPT #iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 28910 --tcp-flags SYN,RST,ACK SYN -j ACCEPT #iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 29900 --tcp-flags SYN,RST,ACK SYN -j ACCEPT #iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 29901 --tcp-flags SYN,RST,ACK SYN -j ACCEPT #iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 29920 --tcp-flags SYN,RST,ACK SYN -j ACCEPT #iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m udp -m multiport --ports 5120:5129 -j ACCEPT #iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 6500 -j ACCEPT #iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 27900 -j ACCEPT #iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 27901 -j ACCEPT #iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 29910 -j ACCEPT # Log everything else: What's Windows' latest exploitable vulnerability? iptables -A INPUT -j LOG --log-prefix "FIREWALL:INPUT" # set a sane policy: everything not accepted > /dev/null iptables -P INPUT DROP iptables -P FORWARD DROP iptables -P OUTPUT DROP iptables -A INPUT -p icmp --icmp-type echo-request -j DROP # be verbose on dynamic ip-addresses (not needed in case of static IP) echo 2 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_dynaddr # disable ExplicitCongestionNotification - too many routers are still # ignorant echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_ecn #ping death echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/icmp_echo_ignore_all # If you are frequently accessing ftp-servers or enjoy chatting you might # notice certain delays because some implementations of these daemons have # the feature of querying an identd on your box for your username for # logging. Although there's really no harm in this, having an identd # running is not recommended because some implementations are known to be # vulnerable. # To avoid these delays you could reject the requests with a 'tcp-reset': #iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 113 -j REJECT --reject-with tcp-reset #iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --sport 113 -m state --state RELATED -j ACCEPT # To log and drop invalid packets, mostly harmless packets that came in # after netfilter's timeout, sometimes scans: #iptables -I INPUT 1 -p tcp -m state --state INVALID -j LOG --log-prefix \ "FIREWALL:INVALID" #iptables -I INPUT 2 -p tcp -m state --state INVALID -j DROP # End /bin/firewall-start

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• Why are USB 2.0 devices crashing my system?

  - by BenAlabaster

  Background on the machine I'm having a problem with: The machine was inherited and appears to be circa 2003 (there's a date stamp on the power supply which leads me to this conclusion). I've got it set up as a Skype terminal for my 2 year old to keep in touch with her grandparents and other members of the family - which everyone loves. It has a generic baby-ATX motherboard with no identifying markings. CPU-Z identifies the motherboard model as VT8601 but doesn't provide me with any manufacturer name. There's one stamp on the motherboard that says "Rev.B". On board it has 10/100 LAN, 2 x USB 1.0, VGA, PS/2 for KB and mouse, parallel port, 2 x serial ports, 2 x IDE, 1 x floppy, 2 x SDRAM slots, 1 x CPU housing that is seating a 1.3GHz Intel Celeron CPU, 3 x PCI, 1 x AGP - although you can only use 2 of the PCI slots if you use the AGP slot due to the physical layout of the board. It's got 768Mb PC133 SDRAM - 1 x 512Mb & 1 x 256Mb installed as well as a D-LINK WDA-2320 54G Wi-Fi network card and a generic USB 2.0 expansion board containing 3 x external + 1 x internal USB connectors. All this is sitting in a slimline case. I don't know the wattage of the PSU, but can post this later if this proves to be helpful. The motherboard is running a version of Award BIOS for which I don't have the version number to hand but can again post this later if it would be helpful. It has an 80Gb Western Digital hard drive freshly formatted and built with Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3 and all current patches. In addition to Windows XP, the only other software it's running is Skype 4.1 (4.2 crashes the machine as soon as it starts up). It's got a Daytek MV150 15" touch screen running through the VGA and COM1 with the most current drivers from the Daytek website and the most current version of ELO-Touchsystems drivers for the touch component. The webcam is a Logitech Webcam C200 with the latest drivers from the Logitech website. The problem If I hook any USB 2.0 devices to this machine, it hangs the whole machine and I have to hard boot it to get it back up. Workarounds found I can plug the same devices into the on board USB 1.0 connectors and everything works fine, albeit at reduced performance. I've tried 3 different kinds of USB thumb drives, 3 different makes/models of webcams and my iPhone all with the same effect. They're recognized and don't hang the machine when I hook them to the USB 1.0 but if I hook them to the USB 2.0 ports, the machine hangs within a couple of seconds of recognizing the devices were connected. Attempted solutions I've tried disabling all the on board devices that I'm not using - such as the on board LAN, the second COM port, the AGP connector etc. through the BIOS in an (perhaps misguided or futile) attempt to reduce the power consumption... I don't think it had any effect but it didn't do any harm. I was wondering if the PSU wattage just isn't enough to drive the USB 2.0 devices; I've seen this suggested but haven't found any confirmation that this could really be an issue - nor have I found a way to work around this issue - if indeed it is one. Any ideas? The only thing I haven't done which I only just thought of while writing this essay is trying the USB 2.0 card in a different PCI slot, or re-ordering the wi-fi and USB cards in the slots... although I'm not sure if this will make any difference. I've installed the USB card in another machine and it works without issue, so it's not a problem with the USB card itself. Other thoughts Perhaps this is an incompatibility between the USB 2.0 card and the BIOS, would re-flashing the BIOS with a newer version help? Do I need to be able to identify the manufacturer of the motherboard in order to be able to find a BIOS edition specific for this motherboard or will any version of Award BIOS function in its place? Question Does anyone have any ideas that could help me get my USB 2.0 devices hooked up to this machine?

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• Full-text Indexing Books Online

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  While preparing for a recent SQL Saturday presentation, I was struck by a crazy idea (shocking, I know): Could someone import the content of SQL Server Books Online into a database and apply full-text indexing to it?  The answer is yes, and it's really quite easy to do. The first step is finding the installed help files.  If you have SQL Server 2012, BOL is installed under the Microsoft Help Library.  You can find the install location by opening SQL Server Books Online and clicking the gear icon for the Help Library Manager.  When the new window pops up click the Settings link, you'll get the following: You'll see the path under Library Location. Once you navigate to that path you'll have to drill down a little further, to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\HelpLibrary\content\Microsoft\store.  This is where the help file content is kept if you downloaded it for offline use. Depending on which products you've downloaded help for, you may see a few hundred files.  Fortunately they're named well and you can easily find the "SQL_Server_Denali_Books_Online_" files.  We are interested in the .MSHC files only, and can skip the Installation and Developer Reference files. Despite the .MHSC extension, these files are compressed with the standard Zip format, so your favorite archive utility (WinZip, 7Zip, WinRar, etc.) can open them.  When you do, you'll see a few thousand files in the archive.  We are only interested in the .htm files, but there's no harm in extracting all of them to a folder.  7zip provides a command-line utility and the following will extract to a D:\SQLHelp folder previously created: 7z e –oD:\SQLHelp "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\HelpLibrary\content\Microsoft\store\SQL_Server_Denali_Books_Online_B780_SQL_110_en-us_1.2.mshc" *.htm Well that's great Rob, but how do I put all those files into a full-text index? I'll tell you in a second, but first we have to set up a few things on the database side.  I'll be using a database named Explore (you can certainly change that) and the following setup is a fragment of the script I used in my presentation: USE Explore; GO CREATE SCHEMA help AUTHORIZATION dbo; GO -- Create default fulltext catalog for later FT indexes CREATE FULLTEXT CATALOG FTC AS DEFAULT; GO CREATE TABLE help.files(file_id int not null IDENTITY(1,1) CONSTRAINT PK_help_files PRIMARY KEY, path varchar(256) not null CONSTRAINT UNQ_help_files_path UNIQUE, doc_type varchar(6) DEFAULT('.xml'), content varbinary(max) not null); CREATE FULLTEXT INDEX ON help.files(content TYPE COLUMN doc_type LANGUAGE 1033) KEY INDEX PK_help_files; This will give you a table, default full-text catalog, and full-text index on that table for the content you're going to insert.  I'll be using the command line again for this, it's the easiest method I know: for %a in (D:\SQLHelp\*.htm) do sqlcmd -S. -E -d Explore -Q"set nocount on;insert help.files(path,content) select '%a', cast(c as varbinary(max)) from openrowset(bulk '%a', SINGLE_CLOB) as c(c)" You'll need to copy and run that as one line in a command prompt.  I'll explain what this does while you run it and watch several thousand files get imported: The "for" command allows you to loop over a collection of items.  In this case we want all the .htm files in the D:\SQLHelp folder.  For each file it finds, it will assign the full path and file name to the %a variable.  In the "do" clause, we'll specify another command to be run for each iteration of the loop.  I make a call to "sqlcmd" in order to run a SQL statement.  I pass in the name of the server (-S.), where "." represents the local default instance. I specify -d Explore as the database, and -E for trusted connection.  I then use -Q to run a query that I enclose in double quotes. The query uses OPENROWSET(BULK…SINGLE_CLOB) to open the file as a data source, and to treat it as a single character large object.  In order for full-text indexing to work properly, I have to convert the text content to varbinary. I then INSERT these contents along with the full path of the file into the help.files table created earlier.  This process continues for each file in the folder, creating one new row in the table. And that's it! 5 SQL Statements and 2 command line statements to unzip and import SQL Server Books Online!  In case you're wondering why I didn't use FILESTREAM or FILETABLE, it's simply because I haven't learned them…yet. I may return to this blog after I figure that out and update it with the steps to do so.  I believe that will make it even easier. In the spirit of exploration, I'll leave you to work on some fulltext queries of this content.  I also recommend playing around with the sys.dm_fts_xxxx DMVs (I particularly like sys.dm_fts_index_keywords, it's pretty interesting).  There are additional example queries in the download material for my presentation linked above. Many thanks to Kevin Boles (t) for his advice on (re)checking the content of the help files.  Don't let that .htm extension fool you! The 2012 help files are actually XML, and you'd need to specify '.xml' in your document type column in order to extract the full-text keywords.  (You probably noticed this in the default definition for the doc_type column.)  You can query sys.fulltext_document_types to get a complete list of the types that can be full-text indexed. I also need to thank Hilary Cotter for giving me the original idea. I believe he used MSDN content in a full-text index for an article from waaaaaaaaaaay back, that I can't find now, and had forgotten about until just a few days ago.  He is also co-author of Pro Full-Text Search in SQL Server 2008, which I highly recommend.  He also has some FTS articles on Simple Talk: http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/learn-sql-server/sql-server-full-text-search-language-features/ http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/learn-sql-server/sql-server-full-text-search-language-features,-part-2/

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• Why people don't patch and upgrade?!?

  - by Mike Dietrich

  Discussing the topic "Why Upgrade" or "Why not Upgrade" is not always fun. Actually the arguments repeat from customer to customer. Typically we hear things such as: A PSU or Patch Set introduces new bugs A new PSU or Patch Set introduces new features which lead to risk and require application verification  Patching means risk Patching changes the execution plans Patching requires too much testing Patching is too much work for our DBAs Patching costs a lot of money and doesn't pay out And to be very honest sometimes it's hard for me to stay calm in such discussions. Let's discuss some of these points a bit more in detail. A PSU or Patch Set introduces new bugsWell, yes, that is true as no software containing more than some lines of code is bug free. This applies to Oracle's code as well as too any application or operating system code. But first of all, does that mean you never patch your OS because the patch may introduce new flaws? And second, what is the point of saying "it introduces new bugs"? Does that mean you will never get rid of the mean issues we know about and we fixed already? Scroll down from MOS Note:161818.1 to the patch release you are on, no matter if it's 10.2.0.4 or 11.2.0.3 and check for the Known Issues And Alerts.Will you take responsibility to know about all these issues and refuse to upgrade to 11.2.0.4? I won't. A new PSU or Patch Set introduces new featuresOk, we can discuss that. Offering new functionality within a database patch set is a dubious thing. It has advantages such as in 11.2.0.4 where we backported Database Redaction to. But this is something you will only use once you have an Advanced Security license. I interpret that statement I've heard quite often from customers in a different way: People don't want to get surprises such as new behaviour. This certainly gives everybody a hard time. And we've had many examples in the past (SESSION_CACHED_CURSROS in 10.2.0.4,  _DATAFILE_WRITE_ERRORS_CRASH_INSTANCE in 11.2.0.2 and others) where those things weren't documented, not even in the README. Thanks to many friends out there I learned about those as well. So new behaviour is the topic people consider as risky - not really new features. And just to point this out: A PSU never brings in new features or new behaviour by definition! Patching means riskDoes it really mean risk? Yes, there were issues in the past (and sometimes in the present as well) where a patch didn't get installed correctly. But personally I consider it way more risky to not patch. Keep that in mind: The day Oracle publishes an PSU (or CPU) containing security fixes all the great security experts out there go public with their findings as well. So from that day on even my grandma can find out about those issues and try to attack somebody. Now a lot of people say: "My database does not face the internet." And I will answer: "The enemy is sitting already behind your firewalls. And knows potentially about these things." My statement: Not patching introduces way more risk to your environment than patching. Seriously! Patching changes the execution plansDo they really? I agree - there's a very small risk for this happening with Patch Sets. But not with PSUs or CPUs as they contain no optimizer fixes changing behaviour (but they may contain fixes curing wrong-query-result-bugs). But what's the point of a changing execution plan? In Oracle Database 11g it is so simple to be prepared. SQL Plan Management is a free EE feature - so once that occurs you'll put the plan into the Plan Baseline. Basta! Yes, you wouldn't like to get such surprises? Than please use the SQL Performance Analyzer (SPA) from Real Application Testing and you'll detect that easily upfront in minutes. And not to forget this, a plan change can also be very positive!Yes, there's a little risk with a database patchset - and we have many possibilites to detect this before patching. Patching requires too much testingWell, does it really? I have seen in the past 12 years how people test. There are very different efforts and approaches on this. I have seen people spending a hell of money on licenses or on project team staffing. And I have seen people sailing blindly without any tests just going the John-Wayne-approach.Proper tools will allow you to test easily without too much efforts. See the paragraph above. We have used Real Application Testing in so many customer projects reducing the amount of work spend on testing by over 50%. But apart from that at some point you will have to stop testing. If you don't you'll get lost and you'll burn money. There's no 100% guaranty. You will have to deal with a little risk as reaching the final 5% of certainty will cost you the same as it did cost to reach 95%. And doing this will lead to abnormal long product cycles that you'll run behind forever. And this will cost even more money. Patching is too much work for our DBAsPatching is a lot of work. I agree. And it's no fun work. It's boring, annoying. You don't learn much from that. That's why you should try to automate this task. Use the Database's Lifecycle Management Pack. And don't cry about the fact that it costs money. Yes it does. But it will ease the process and you'll save a lot of costs as you don't waste your valuable time with patching. Or use Oracle Database 12c Oracle Multitenant and patch either by unplug/plug or patch an entire container database with all PDBs with one patch in one task. We have customer reference cases proofing it saved them 75% of time, effort and cost since they've used Lifecycle Management Pack. So why don't you use it? Patching costs a lot of money and doesn't pay outWell, see my statements in the paragraph above. And it pays out as flying with a database with 100 known critical flaws in it which are already fixed by Oracle (such as in the Oct 2013 PSU for Oracle Database 12c) will cost ways more in case of failure or even data loss. Bet with me? Let me finally ask you some questions. What cell phone are you using and which OS does it run? Do you have an iPhone 5 and did you upgrade already to iOS 7.0.3? I've just encountered on mine that the alarm (which I rely on when traveling) has gotten now a dependency on the physical switch "sound on/off". If it is switched to "off" physically the alarm rings "silently". What a wonderful example of a behaviour change coming in with a patch set. Will this push you to stay with iOS5 or iOS6? No, because those have security flaws which won't be fixed anymore. What browser are you surfing with? Do you use Mozilla 3.6? Well, congratulations to all the hackers. It will be easy for them to attack you and harm your system. I'd guess you have the auto updater on.  Same for Google Chrome, Safari, IE. Right? -Mike The T.htmtableborders, .htmtableborders td, .htmtableborders th {border : 1px dashed lightgrey ! important;} html, body { border: 0px; } body { background-color: #ffffff; } img, hr { cursor: default }

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• puppet master REST API returns 403 when running under passenger works when master runs from command line

  - by Anadi Misra

  I am using the standard auth.conf provided in puppet install for the puppet master which is running through passenger under Nginx. However for most of the catalog, files and certitifcate request I get a 403 response. ### Authenticated paths - these apply only when the client ### has a valid certificate and is thus authenticated # allow nodes to retrieve their own catalog path ~ ^/catalog/([^/]+)$ method find allow $1 # allow nodes to retrieve their own node definition path ~ ^/node/([^/]+)$ method find allow $1 # allow all nodes to access the certificates services path ~ ^/certificate_revocation_list/ca method find allow * # allow all nodes to store their reports path /report method save allow * # unconditionally allow access to all file services # which means in practice that fileserver.conf will # still be used path /file allow * ### Unauthenticated ACL, for clients for which the current master doesn't ### have a valid certificate; we allow authenticated users, too, because ### there isn't a great harm in letting that request through. # allow access to the master CA path /certificate/ca auth any method find allow * path /certificate/ auth any method find allow * path /certificate_request auth any method find, save allow * path /facts auth any method find, search allow * # this one is not stricly necessary, but it has the merit # of showing the default policy, which is deny everything else path / auth any Puppet master however does not seems to be following this as I get this error on client [amisr1@blramisr195602 ~]$ sudo puppet agent --no-daemonize --verbose --server bangvmpllda02.XXXXX.com [sudo] password for amisr1: Starting Puppet client version 3.0.1 Warning: Unable to fetch my node definition, but the agent run will continue: Warning: Error 403 on SERVER: Forbidden request: XX.XXX.XX.XX(XX.XXX.XX.XX) access to /certificate_revocation_list/ca [find] at :110 Info: Retrieving plugin Error: /File[/var/lib/puppet/lib]: Failed to generate additional resources using 'eval_generate: Error 403 on SERVER: Forbidden request: XX.XXX.XX.XX(XX.XXX.XX.XX) access to /file_metadata/plugins [search] at :110 Error: /File[/var/lib/puppet/lib]: Could not evaluate: Error 403 on SERVER: Forbidden request: XX.XXX.XX.XX(XX.XXX.XX.XX) access to /file_metadata/plugins [find] at :110 Could not retrieve file metadata for puppet://devops.XXXXX.com/plugins: Error 403 on SERVER: Forbidden request: XX.XXX.XX.XX(XX.XXX.XX.XX) access to /file_metadata/plugins [find] at :110 Error: Could not retrieve catalog from remote server: Error 403 on SERVER: Forbidden request: XX.XXX.XX.XX(XX.XXX.XX.XX) access to /catalog/blramisr195602.XXXXX.com [find] at :110 Using cached catalog Error: Could not retrieve catalog; skipping run Error: Could not send report: Error 403 on SERVER: Forbidden request: XX.XXX.XX.XX(XX.XXX.XX.XX) access to /report/blramisr195602.XXXXX.com [save] at :110 and the server logs show XX.XXX.XX.XX - - [10/Dec/2012:14:46:52 +0530] "GET /production/certificate_revocation_list/ca? HTTP/1.1" 403 102 "-" "Ruby" XX.XXX.XX.XX - - [10/Dec/2012:14:46:52 +0530] "GET /production/file_metadatas/plugins?links=manage&recurse=true&&ignore=---+%0A++-+%22.svn%22%0A++-+CVS%0A++-+%22.git%22&checksum_type=md5 HTTP/1.1" 403 95 "-" "Ruby" XX.XXX.XX.XX - - [10/Dec/2012:14:46:52 +0530] "GET /production/file_metadata/plugins? HTTP/1.1" 403 93 "-" "Ruby" XX.XXX.XX.XX - - [10/Dec/2012:14:46:53 +0530] "POST /production/catalog/blramisr195602.XXXXX.com HTTP/1.1" 403 106 "-" "Ruby" XX.XXX.XX.XX - - [10/Dec/2012:14:46:53 +0530] "PUT /production/report/blramisr195602.XXXXX.com HTTP/1.1" 403 105 "-" "Ruby" thefile server conf file is as follows (and goin by what they say on puppet site, It is better to regulate access in auth.conf for reaching file server and then allow file server to server all) [files] path /apps/puppet/files allow * [private] path /apps/puppet/private/%H allow * [modules] allow * I am using server and client version 3 Nginx has been compiled using the following options nginx version: nginx/1.3.9 built by gcc 4.4.6 20120305 (Red Hat 4.4.6-4) (GCC) TLS SNI support enabled configure arguments: --prefix=/apps/nginx --conf-path=/apps/nginx/nginx.conf --pid-path=/apps/nginx/run/nginx.pid --error-log-path=/apps/nginx/logs/error.log --http-log-path=/apps/nginx/logs/access.log --with-http_ssl_module --with-http_gzip_static_module --add-module=/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-3.0.18/ext/nginx --add-module=/apps/Downloads/nginx/nginx-auth-ldap-master/ and the standard nginx puppet master conf server { ssl on; listen 8140 ssl; server_name _; passenger_enabled on; passenger_set_cgi_param HTTP_X_CLIENT_DN $ssl_client_s_dn; passenger_set_cgi_param HTTP_X_CLIENT_VERIFY $ssl_client_verify; passenger_min_instances 5; access_log logs/puppet_access.log; error_log logs/puppet_error.log; root /apps/nginx/html/rack/public; ssl_certificate /var/lib/puppet/ssl/certs/bangvmpllda02.XXXXXX.com.pem; ssl_certificate_key /var/lib/puppet/ssl/private_keys/bangvmpllda02.XXXXXX.com.pem; ssl_crl /var/lib/puppet/ssl/ca/ca_crl.pem; ssl_client_certificate /var/lib/puppet/ssl/certs/ca.pem; ssl_ciphers SSLv2:-LOW:-EXPORT:RC4+RSA; ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on; ssl_verify_client optional; ssl_verify_depth 1; ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:128m; ssl_session_timeout 5m; } Puppet is picking up the correct settings from the files mentioned because config print command points to /etc/puppet [amisr1@bangvmpllDA02 puppet]$ sudo puppet config print | grep conf async_storeconfigs = false authconfig = /etc/puppet/namespaceauth.conf autosign = /etc/puppet/autosign.conf catalog_cache_terminus = store_configs confdir = /etc/puppet config = /etc/puppet/puppet.conf config_file_name = puppet.conf config_version = "" configprint = all configtimeout = 120 dblocation = /var/lib/puppet/state/clientconfigs.sqlite3 deviceconfig = /etc/puppet/device.conf fileserverconfig = /etc/puppet/fileserver.conf genconfig = false hiera_config = /etc/puppet/hiera.yaml localconfig = /var/lib/puppet/state/localconfig name = config rest_authconfig = /etc/puppet/auth.conf storeconfigs = true storeconfigs_backend = puppetdb tagmap = /etc/puppet/tagmail.conf thin_storeconfigs = false I checked the firewall rules on this VM; 80, 443, 8140, 3000 are allowed. Do I still have to tweak any specifics to auth.conf for getting this to work?

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• Why are my USB 2.0 devices hanging Windows XP?

  - by BenAlabaster

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

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• Router 2wire, Slackware desktop in DMZ mode, iptables policy aginst ping, but still pingable

  - by skriatok

  I'm in DMZ mode, so I'm firewalling myself, stealthy all ok, but I get faulty test results from Shields Up that there are pings. Yesterday I couldn't make a connection to game servers work, because ping block was enabled (on the router). I disabled it, but this persists even due to my firewall. What is the connection between me and my router in DMZ mode (for my machine, there is bunch of others too behind router firewall)? When it allows router affecting if I'm pingable or not and if router has setting not blocking ping, rules in my iptables for this scenario do not work. Please ignore commented rules, I do uncomment them as I want. These two should do the job right? iptables -A INPUT -p icmp --icmp-type echo-request -j DROP echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/icmp_echo_ignore_all Here are my iptables: #!/bin/sh # Begin /bin/firewall-start # Insert connection-tracking modules (not needed if built into the kernel). #modprobe ip_tables #modprobe iptable_filter #modprobe ip_conntrack #modprobe ip_conntrack_ftp #modprobe ipt_state #modprobe ipt_LOG # allow local-only connections iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT # free output on any interface to any ip for any service # (equal to -P ACCEPT) iptables -A OUTPUT -j ACCEPT # permit answers on already established connections # and permit new connections related to established ones (eg active-ftp) iptables -A INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT #Gamespy&NWN #iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp -m multiport --ports 5120:5129 -j ACCEPT #iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 6667 --tcp-flags SYN,RST,ACK SYN -j ACCEPT #iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 28910 --tcp-flags SYN,RST,ACK SYN -j ACCEPT #iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 29900 --tcp-flags SYN,RST,ACK SYN -j ACCEPT #iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 29901 --tcp-flags SYN,RST,ACK SYN -j ACCEPT #iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 29920 --tcp-flags SYN,RST,ACK SYN -j ACCEPT #iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m udp -m multiport --ports 5120:5129 -j ACCEPT #iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 6500 -j ACCEPT #iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 27900 -j ACCEPT #iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 27901 -j ACCEPT #iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 29910 -j ACCEPT # Log everything else: What's Windows' latest exploitable vulnerability? iptables -A INPUT -j LOG --log-prefix "FIREWALL:INPUT" # set a sane policy: everything not accepted > /dev/null iptables -P INPUT DROP iptables -P FORWARD DROP iptables -P OUTPUT DROP iptables -A INPUT -p icmp --icmp-type echo-request -j DROP # be verbose on dynamic ip-addresses (not needed in case of static IP) echo 2 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_dynaddr # disable ExplicitCongestionNotification - too many routers are still # ignorant echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_ecn #ping death echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/icmp_echo_ignore_all # If you are frequently accessing ftp-servers or enjoy chatting you might # notice certain delays because some implementations of these daemons have # the feature of querying an identd on your box for your username for # logging. Although there's really no harm in this, having an identd # running is not recommended because some implementations are known to be # vulnerable. # To avoid these delays you could reject the requests with a 'tcp-reset': #iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 113 -j REJECT --reject-with tcp-reset #iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --sport 113 -m state --state RELATED -j ACCEPT # To log and drop invalid packets, mostly harmless packets that came in # after netfilter's timeout, sometimes scans: #iptables -I INPUT 1 -p tcp -m state --state INVALID -j LOG --log-prefix \ "FIREWALL:INVALID" #iptables -I INPUT 2 -p tcp -m state --state INVALID -j DROP # End /bin/firewall-start Active ruleset: bash-4.1# iptables -L -n -v Chain INPUT (policy DROP 38 packets, 2228 bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 0 0 ACCEPT all -- lo * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 844 542K ACCEPT all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 state RELATED,ESTABLISHED 38 2228 LOG all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 LOG flags 0 level 4 prefix `FIREWALL:INPUT' 0 0 ACCEPT all -- lo * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 0 0 ACCEPT all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 state RELATED,ESTABLISHED 38 2228 LOG all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 LOG flags 0 level 4 prefix `FIREWALL:INPUT' Chain FORWARD (policy DROP 0 packets, 0 bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination Chain OUTPUT (policy DROP 0 packets, 0 bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 1158 111K ACCEPT all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 0 0 ACCEPT all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 Active ruleset: (after editing iptables into below sugested form) bash-4.1# iptables -L -n -v Chain INPUT (policy DROP 2567 packets, 172K bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 49 4157 ACCEPT all -- lo * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 412K 441M ACCEPT all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 state RELATED,ESTABLISHED 2567 172K LOG all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 LOG flags 0 level 4 prefix `FIREWALL:INPUT' 0 0 DROP icmp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 icmp type 8 Chain FORWARD (policy DROP 0 packets, 0 bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT 312K packets, 25M bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination ping and syslog simultaneous screenshots from phone (pinger) and from laptop (being pinged) http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4160051/slckwr/pingfrom%20mobile.jpg http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4160051/slckwr/tailsyslog.jpg

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• Why are my USB 2.0 devices crashing Windows XP?

  - by BenAlabaster

  Background on the machine I'm having a problem with: The machine was inherited and appears to be circa 2003 (there's a date stamp on the power supply which leads me to this conclusion). I've got it set up as a Skype terminal for my 2 year old to keep in touch with her grandparents and other members of the family - which everyone loves. It has a generic ATX motherboard with no identifying markings other than one stamp that says "Rev.B". CPU-Z identifies the motherboard model as VT8601 but doesn't provide me with any manufacturer name. On board it has 1 x 10/100 LAN, 2 x USB 1.0, VGA, PS/2 for KB and mouse, parallel port, 2 x serial ports, 2 x IDE, 1 x floppy, 2 x SDRAM slots, 1 x CPU housing that is seating a 1.3GHz Intel Celeron CPU, 3 x PCI, 1 x AGP - although you can only use 2 of the PCI slots if you use the AGP slot due to the physical layout of the board. It's got 768Mb PC133 SDRAM - 1 x 512Mb & 1 x 256Mb installed as well as a D-LINK WDA-2320 54G Wi-Fi network card and a generic USB 2.0 expansion board containing 3 x external + 1 x internal USB connectors. It has a DVD+/-RW running as master on IDE1 and a 1.44Mb 3.5" floppy drive connected to the floppy connector. It has an 80Gb Western Digital hard drive running as master on IDE0. All this is sitting in a slimline case. I don't know the wattage of the PSU, but can post this later if this proves to be helpful. The motherboard is running a version of Award BIOS for which I don't have the version number to hand but can again post this later if it would be helpful. The hard disk is freshly formatted and built with Windows XP Professional/Service Pack 3 and is up to date with all current patches. In addition to Windows XP, the only other software it's running is Skype 4.1 (4.2 hangs the whole machine as soon as it starts up, requiring a hard boot to recover). It's got a Daytek MV150 15" touch screen hooked up to the on board VGA and COM1 sockets with the most current drivers from the Daytek website and the most current version of ELO-Touchsystems drivers for the touch component. The webcam is a Logitech Webcam C200 with the latest drivers from the Logitech website. The problem: If I hook any devices to the USB 2.0 sockets, it hangs the whole machine and I have to hard boot it to get it back up. If I have any devices attached to the USB 2.0 sockets when I boot up, it hangs before Windows gets to the login prompt and I have to hard boot it to recover. Workarounds found: I can plug the same devices into the on board USB 1.0 sockets and everything works fine, albeit at reduced performance. I've tried 3 different kinds of USB thumb drives, 3 different makes/models of webcams and my iPhone all with the same effect. They're recognized and don't hang the machine when I hook them to the USB 1.0 but if I hook them to the USB 2.0 ports, the machine hangs within a couple of seconds of recognizing the devices were connected. Attempted solutions: I've seen suggestions that this could be a power problem - that the PSU just doesn't have the wattage to drive these ports. While I'm doubtful this is the problem [after all the motherboard has the same standard connector regardless of the PSU wattage], I tried disabling all the on board devices that I'm not using - on board LAN, the second COM port, the AGP connector etc. through the BIOS in what I'm sure is a futile attempt to reduce the power consumption... I also modified the ACPI and power management settings. It didn't have any noticeable affect, although it didn't do any harm either. Could the wattage of the PSU really cause this problem? If it can, is there anything I need to be aware of when replacing it or do I just need to make sure it's got a higher wattage than the current one? My interpretation was that the wattage only affected the number of drives you could hook up to the power connectors, is that right? I've installed the USB card in another machine and it works without issue, so it's not a problem with the USB card itself, and Windows says the card is installed and working correctly... right up until I connect a device to it. The only thing I haven't done which I only just thought of while writing this essay is trying the USB 2.0 card in a different PCI slot, or re-ordering the wi-fi and USB cards in the slots... although I'm not sure if this will make any difference - does anyone have any experience that would suggest this might work? Other thoughts/questions: Perhaps this is an incompatibility between the USB 2.0 card and the BIOS, would re-flashing the BIOS with a newer version help? Do I need to be able to identify the manufacturer of the motherboard in order to be able to find a BIOS edition specific for this motherboard or will any version of Award BIOS function in its place? Question: Does anyone have any ideas that could help me get my USB 2.0 devices hooked up to this machine?

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• Why are my USB 2.0 devices hanging Windows XP?

  - by BenAlabaster

  Background on the machine I'm having a problem with: The machine was inherited and appears to be circa 2003 (there's a date stamp on the power supply which leads me to this conclusion). I've got it set up as a Skype terminal for my 2 year old to keep in touch with her grandparents and other members of the family - which everyone loves. It has a generic ATX motherboard with no identifying markings other than one stamp that says "Rev.B". CPU-Z identifies the motherboard model as VT8601 but doesn't provide me with any manufacturer name. On board it has 1 x 10/100 LAN, 2 x USB 1.0, VGA, PS/2 for KB and mouse, parallel port, 2 x serial ports, 2 x IDE, 1 x floppy, 2 x SDRAM slots, 1 x CPU housing that is seating a 1.3GHz Intel Celeron CPU, 3 x PCI, 1 x AGP - although you can only use 2 of the PCI slots if you use the AGP slot due to the physical layout of the board. It's got 768Mb PC133 SDRAM - 1 x 512Mb & 1 x 256Mb installed as well as a D-LINK WDA-2320 54G Wi-Fi network card and a generic USB 2.0 expansion board containing 3 x external + 1 x internal USB connectors - it has a NEC uPD720102 chipset. It has a DVD+/-RW running as master on IDE1 and a 1.44Mb 3.5" floppy drive connected to the floppy connector. It has an 80Gb Western Digital hard drive running as master on IDE0. All this is sitting in a slimline case. I don't know the wattage of the PSU, but can post this later if this proves to be helpful. The motherboard is running a version of Award BIOS for which I don't have the version number to hand but can again post this later if it would be helpful. The hard disk is freshly formatted and built with Windows XP Professional/Service Pack 3 and is up to date with all current patches. In addition to Windows XP, the only other software it's running is Skype 4.1 (4.2 hangs the whole machine as soon as it starts up, requiring a hard boot to recover). It's got a Daytek MV150 15" touch screen hooked up to the on board VGA and COM1 sockets with the most current drivers from the Daytek website and the most current version of ELO-Touchsystems drivers for the touch component. The webcam is a Logitech Webcam C200 with the latest drivers from the Logitech website. The problem: If I hook any devices to the USB 2.0 sockets, it hangs the whole machine and I have to hard boot it to get it back up. If I have any devices attached to the USB 2.0 sockets when I boot up, it hangs before Windows gets to the login prompt and I have to hard boot it to recover. Workarounds found: I can plug the same devices into the on board USB 1.0 sockets and everything works fine, albeit at reduced performance. I've tried 3 different kinds of USB thumb drives, 3 different makes/models of webcams and my iPhone all with the same effect. They're recognized and don't hang the machine when I hook them to the USB 1.0 but if I hook them to the USB 2.0 ports, the machine hangs within a couple of seconds of recognizing the devices were connected. Attempted solutions: I've seen suggestions that this could be a power problem - that the PSU just doesn't have the wattage to drive these ports. While I'm doubtful this is the problem [after all the motherboard has the same standard connector regardless of the PSU wattage], I tried disabling all the on board devices that I'm not using - on board LAN, the second COM port, the AGP connector etc. through the BIOS in what I'm sure is a futile attempt to reduce the power consumption... I also modified the ACPI and power management settings. It didn't have any noticeable affect, although it didn't do any harm either. Could the wattage of the PSU really cause this problem? If it can, is there anything I need to be aware of when replacing it or do I just need to make sure it's got a higher wattage than the current one? My interpretation was that the wattage only affected the number of drives you could hook up to the power connectors, is that right? I've installed the USB card in another machine and it works without issue, so it's not a problem with the USB card itself, and Windows says the card is installed and working correctly... right up until I connect a device to it. The only thing I haven't done which I only just thought of while writing this essay is trying the USB 2.0 card in a different PCI slot, or re-ordering the wi-fi and USB cards in the slots... although I'm not sure if this will make any difference - does anyone have any experience that would suggest this might work? Other thoughts/questions: Perhaps this is an incompatibility between the USB 2.0 card and the BIOS, would re-flashing the BIOS with a newer version help? Do I need to be able to identify the manufacturer of the motherboard in order to be able to find a BIOS edition specific for this motherboard or will any version of Award BIOS function in its place? Question: Does anyone have any ideas that could help me get my USB 2.0 devices hooked up to this machine? Edit: Updated the USB 2.0 info with reference to actual card - http://www.xpcgear.com/lpnec4u.html

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• Paying great programmers more than average programmers

  - by Kelly French

  It's fairly well recognized that some programmers are up to 10 times more productive than others. Joel mentions this topic on his blog. There is a whole blog devoted to the idea of the "10x productive programmer". In years since the original study, the general finding that "There are order-of-magnitude differences among programmers" has been confirmed by many other studies of professional programmers (Curtis 1981, Mills 1983, DeMarco and Lister 1985, Curtis et al. 1986, Card 1987, Boehm and Papaccio 1988, Valett and McGarry 1989, Boehm et al 2000). Fred Brooks mentions the wide range in the quality of designers in his "No Silver Bullet" article, The differences are not minor--they are rather like the differences between Salieri and Mozart. Study after study shows that the very best designers produce structures that are faster, smaller, simpler, cleaner, and produced with less effort. The differences between the great and the average approach an order of magnitude. The study that Brooks cites is: H. Sackman, W.J. Erikson, and E.E. Grant, "Exploratory Experimental Studies Comparing Online and Offline Programming Performance," Communications of the ACM, Vol. 11, No. 1 (January 1968), pp. 3-11. The way programmers are paid by employers these days makes it almost impossible to pay the great programmers a large multiple of what the entry-level salary is. When the starting salary for a just-graduated entry-level programmer, we'll call him Asok (From Dilbert), is $40K, even if the top programmer, we'll call him Linus, makes $120K that is only a multiple of 3. I'd be willing to be that Linus does much more than 3 times what Asok does, so why wouldn't we expect him to get paid more as well? Here is a quote from Stroustrup: "The companies are complaining because they are hurting. They can't produce quality products as cheaply, as reliably, and as quickly as they would like. They correctly see a shortage of good developers as a part of the problem. What they generally don't see is that inserting a good developer into a culture designed to constrain semi-skilled programmers from doing harm is pointless because the rules/culture will constrain the new developer from doing anything significantly new and better." This leads to two questions. I'm excluding self-employed programmers and contractors. If you disagree that's fine but please include your rationale. It might be that the self-employed or contract programmers are where you find the top-10 earners, but please provide a explanation/story/rationale along with any anecdotes. [EDIT] I thought up some other areas in which talent/ability affects pay. Financial traders (commodities, stock, derivatives, etc.) designers (fashion, interior decorators, architects, etc.) professionals (doctor, lawyer, accountant, etc.) sales Questions: Why aren't the top 1% of programmers paid like A-list movie stars? What would the industry be like if we did pay the "Smart and gets things done" programmers 6, 8, or 10 times what an intern makes? [Footnote: I posted this question after submitting it to the Stackoverflow podcast. It was included in episode 77 and I've written more about it as a Codewright's Tale post 'Of Rockstars and Bricklayers'] Epilogue: It's probably unfair to exclude contractors and the self-employed. One aspect of the highest earners in other fields is that they are free-agents. The competition for their skills is what drives up their earning power. This means they can not be interchangeable or otherwise treated as a plug-and-play resource. I liked the example in one answer of a major league baseball team trying to field two first-basemen. Also, something that Joel mentioned in the Stackoverflow podcast (#77). There are natural dynamics to shrink any extreme performance/pay ranges between the highs and lows. One is the peer pressure of organizations to pay within a given range, another is the likelyhood that the high performer will realize their undercompensation and seek greener pastures.

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• I finished coding my program. What's next? what are the steps I should take that would enable me to

  - by Luay

  Hi, I finished developing a program and would like to sell it online. However, I am not really sure of what to do next. Here is my current plan (in-order): 1- Add a 'deployment' project (i'm using visual studio) to my project so I can create a setup file for my program. 2- Use visual studio 'testing' add ons to test the program. I have no idea how to do it, but will teach myself. 3- When all is done, install the program on my wife's, parents and in-laws computer to further test it under different environments. 3- Setup a small Ltd. company. ( I might start this earlier as it might take a few weeks to complete). 4- Build / finish building a website (actually I started on this step a few weeks ago but haven't devoted enough time for it to complete yet). 5- Find a software / service to protect my program from piracy. I know it is impossible to protect the program from piracy. I understand that fully. But I still want to implement some sort of solution that wouldn't harm or deter honest customers. 6- Set up a business paypal account. 7- Find a software / service to handle payments on my website 8- Find a software / service to handle issuing license codes 9- Set up all of the above and go 'live'. However, I have zero experience in this sort of thing and would like your guidance on some points. 1- Is it necessary to setup a company? Can I sell as an individual? Will selling as an individual deter persons or companies from buying my software? 2- What is a decent choice for as a software / service to protect my program from my piracy. I have done a quick search and found something called Quick License Manager by Interactive Studios. Is this the sort of thing I am looking for? Is it any good? At which stage do I use or implement their service (or any similar service you might point me too? I guess I am really asking: how does this work? Would they give me a file I just add to my project, rebuild it and that's it? 3- What should I implement to handle payments online and how complicated is it? could you point me to any such services, please? 4- What should I implement to handle issuing license codes and how will that software / service coordinate with the software / service that handles the anti-piracy stuff? could you point me to such services, please? 5- In a different Stack Overflow question (by another user) someone suggested a cms system called Software Droid (http://www.softwaredroid.com). Is this what I am after. Will it help? 6- If the steps i'm following are incorrect in order or logic could you please advise me on what I should actually do? I guess these are question for those of you who have 'been there and done that'. So any guidance will be vary much appreciated. Many thanks in advance for your help.

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• How to prevent client from accessing JSP page

  - by Ali Bassam

  In my web application, I use the .load() function in JQuery, to load some JSP pages inside a DIV. $("#myDiv").load("chat.jsp"); In chat.jsp, no Java codes is executed unless this client has Logged in, means, I check the session. String sessionId = session.getAttribute("SessionId"); if(sessionId.equals("100")){ //execute codes }else{ //redirect to log in page } Those java codes that will be executed, they will out.println(); some HTML elements. I don't want the client to write /chat.jsp in the browser to access this page, as it will look bad, and the other stuff in the main page won't be there, and this could do a harm to the web app security. How can I restrict someone from accessing chat.jsp directly, but yet keep it accessible via .load() ? UPDATE: JavaDB is a class that I made, it connects me to the Database. This is chat.jsp <body> <% String userId = session.getAttribute("SessionId").toString(); if (userId != null) { String roomId = request.getParameter("roomId"); String lastMessageId = request.getParameter("lastMessageId"); JavaDB myJavaDB = new JavaDB(); myJavaDB.Connect("Chat", "chat", "chat"); Connection conn = myJavaDB.getMyConnection(); Statement stmt = conn.createStatement(); String lastId = ""; int fi = 0; ResultSet rset = stmt.executeQuery("select message,message_id,first_name,last_name from users u,messages m where u.user_id=m.user_id and m.message_id>" + lastMessageId + " and room_id=" + roomId + " order by m.message_id asc"); while (rset.next()) { fi = 1; lastId = rset.getString(2); %> <div class="message"> <div class="messageSender"> <%=rset.getString(3) + " " + rset.getString(4)%> </div> <div class="messageContents"> <%=rset.getString(1)%> </div> </div> <% } %> <div class="lastId"> <% if (fi == 1) {%> <%=lastId%> <% } else {%> <%=lastMessageId%> <% }%></div> <% if (fi == 1) {%> <div class="messages"> </div> <% } } else { response.sendRedirect("index.jsp"); }%> </body> Guys I don't know what Filter means. UPDATE If I decided to send a parameter that tells me that this request came from Jquery. .load("chat.jsp",{ jquery : "yes" }); And then check it in chat.jsp String yesOrNo = request.getParameter("jquery"); Then they can simply hack this by using this URL. /chat.jsp?jquer=yes or something like that.. UPDATE I tried Maksim's advice, I got this when I tried to access chat.jsp. Is this the desired effect?

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• Routing to a Controller with no View in Angular

  - by Rick Strahl

  I've finally had some time to put Angular to use this week in a small project I'm working on for fun. Angular's routing is great and makes it real easy to map URL routes to controllers and model data into views. But what if you don't actually need a view, if you effectively need a headless controller that just runs code, but doesn't render a view?Preserve the ViewWhen Angular navigates a route and and presents a new view, it loads the controller and then renders the view from scratch. Views are not cached or stored, but displayed and then removed. So if you have routes configured like this:'use strict'; // Declare app level module which depends on filters, and services window.myApp = angular.module('myApp', ['myApp.filters', 'myApp.services', 'myApp.directives', 'myApp.controllers']). config(['$routeProvider', function($routeProvider) { $routeProvider.when('/map', { template: "partials/map.html ", controller: 'mapController', reloadOnSearch: false, animation: 'slide' }); … $routeProvider.otherwise({redirectTo: '/map'}); }]); Angular routes to the mapController and then re-renders the map.html template with the new data from the $scope filled in.But, but… I don't want a new View!Now in most cases this works just fine. If I'm rendering plain DOM content, or textboxes in a form interface that is all fine and dandy - it's perfectly fine to completely re-render the UI.But in some cases, the UI that's being managed has state and shouldn't be redrawn. In this case the main page in question has a Google Map on it. The map is  going to be manipulated throughout the lifetime of the application and the rest of the pages. In my application I have a toolbar on the bottom and the rest of the content is replaced/switched out by the Angular Views:The problem is that the map shouldn't be redrawn each time the Location view is activated. It should maintain its state, such as the current position selected (which can move), and shouldn't redraw due to the overhead of re-rendering the initial map.Originally I set up the map, exactly like all my other views - as a partial, that is rendered with a separate file, but that didn't work.The Workaround - Controller Only RoutesThe workaround for this goes decidedly against Angular's way of doing things:Setting up a Template-less RouteIn-lining the map view directly into the main pageHiding and showing the map view manuallyLet's see how this works.Controller Only RouteThe template-less route is basically a route that doesn't have any template to render. This is not directly supported by Angular, but thankfully easy to fake. The end goal here is that I want to simply have the Controller fire and then have the controller manage the display of the already active view by hiding and showing the map and any other view content, in effect bypassing Angular's view display management.In short - I want a controller action, but no view rendering.The controller-only or template-less route looks like this: $routeProvider.when('/map', { template: " ", // just fire controller controller: 'mapController', animation: 'slide' });Notice I'm using the template property rather than templateUrl (used in the first example above), which allows specifying a string template, and leaving it blank. The template property basically allows you to provide a templated string using Angular's HandleBar like binding syntax which can be useful at times. You can use plain strings or strings with template code in the template, or as I'm doing here a blank string to essentially fake 'just clear the view'. In-lined ViewSo if there's no view where does the HTML go? Because I don't want Angular to manage the view the map markup is in-lined directly into the page. So instead of rendering the map into the Angular view container, the content is simply set up as inline HTML to display as a sibling to the view container.<div id="MapContent" data-icon="LocationIcon" ng-controller="mapController" style="display:none"> <div class="headerbar"> <div class="right-header" style="float:right"> <a id="btnShowSaveLocationDialog" class="iconbutton btn btn-sm" href="#/saveLocation" style="margin-right: 2px;"> <i class="icon-ok icon-2x" style="color: lightgreen; "></i> Save Location </a> </div> <div class="left-header">GeoCrumbs</div> </div> <div class="clearfix"></div> <div id="Message"> <i id="MessageIcon"></i> <span id="MessageText"></span> </div> <div id="Map" class="content-area"> </div> </div> <div id="ViewPlaceholder" ng-view></div>Note that there's the #MapContent element and the #ViewPlaceHolder. The #MapContent is my static map view that is always 'live' and is initially hidden. It is initially hidden and doesn't get made visible until the MapController controller activates it which does the initial rendering of the map. After that the element is persisted with the map data already loaded and any future access only updates the map with new locations/pins etc.Note that default route is assigned to the mapController, which means that the mapController is fired right as the page loads, which is actually a good thing in this case, as the map is the cornerstone of this app that is manipulated by some of the other controllers/views.The Controller handles some UISince there's effectively no view activation with the template-less route, the controller unfortunately has to take over some UI interaction directly. Specifically it has to swap the hidden state between the map and any of the other views.Here's what the controller looks like:myApp.controller('mapController', ["$scope", "$routeParams", "locationData", function($scope, $routeParams, locationData) { $scope.locationData = locationData.location; $scope.locationHistory = locationData.locationHistory; if ($routeParams.mode == "currentLocation") { bc.getCurrentLocation(false); } bc.showMap(false,"#LocationIcon"); }]);bc.showMap is responsible for a couple of display tasks that hide/show the views/map and for activating/deactivating icons. The code looks like this:this.showMap = function (hide,selActiveIcon) { if (!hide) $("#MapContent").show(); else { $("#MapContent").hide(); } self.fitContent(); if (selActiveIcon) { $(".iconbutton").removeClass("active"); $(selActiveIcon).addClass("active"); } };Each of the other controllers in the app also call this function when they are activated to basically hide the map and make the View Content area visible. The map controller makes the map.This is UI code and calling this sort of thing from controllers is generally not recommended, but I couldn't figure out a way using directives to make this work any more easily than this. It'd be easy to hide and show the map and view container using a flag an ng-show, but it gets tricky because of scoping of the $scope. I would have to resort to storing this setting on the $rootscope which I try to avoid. The same issues exists with the icons.It sure would be nice if Angular had a way to explicitly specify that a View shouldn't be destroyed when another view is activated, so currently this workaround is required. Searching around, I saw a number of whacky hacks to get around this, but this solution I'm using here seems much easier than any of that I could dig up even if it doesn't quite fit the 'Angular way'.Angular nice, until it's notOverall I really like Angular and the way it works although it took me a bit of time to get my head around how all the pieces fit together. Once I got the idea how the app/routes, the controllers and views snap together, putting together Angular pages becomes fairly straightforward. You can get quite a bit done never going beyond those basics. For most common things Angular's default routing and view presentation works very well.But, when you do something a bit more complex, where there are multiple dependencies or as in this case where Angular doesn't appear to support a feature that's absolutely necessary, you're on your own. Finding information on more advanced topics is not trivial especially since versions are changing so rapidly and the low level behaviors are changing frequently so finding something that works is often an exercise in trial and error. Not that this is surprising. Angular is a complex piece of kit as are all the frameworks that try to hack JavaScript into submission to do something that it was really never designed to. After all everything about a framework like Angular is an elaborate hack. A lot of shit has to happen to make this all work together and at that Angular (and Ember, Durandel etc.) are pretty amazing pieces of JavaScript code. So no harm, no foul, but I just can't help feeling like working in toy sandbox at times :-)© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2013Posted in Angular  JavaScript   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Craftsmanship is ALL that Matters

  - by Wayne Molina

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

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