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People, Process & Engagement: WebCenter Partner Keste

- by Michael Snow

v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Within the WebCenter group here at Oracle, discussions about people, process and engagement cross over many vertical industries and products. Amidst our growing partner ecosystem, the community provides us insight into great customer use cases every day. Such is the case with our partner, Keste, who provides us a guest post on our blog today with an overview of their innovative solution for a customer in the transportation industry. Keste is an Oracle software solutions and development company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. As a Platinum member of the Oracle® PartnerNetwork, Keste designs, develops and deploys custom solutions that automate complex business processes. Seamless Customer Self-Service Experience in the Trucking Industry with Oracle WebCenter Portal Keste, Oracle Platinum Partner Customer Overview Omnitracs, Inc., a Qualcomm company provides mobility solutions for trucking fleets to companies in the transportation industry. Omnitracs’ mobility services include basic communications such as text as well as advanced monitoring services such as GPS tracking, temperature tracking of perishable goods, load tracking and weighting distribution, and many others. Customer Business Needs Already the leading provider of mobility solutions for large trucking fleets, they chose to target smaller trucking fleets as new customers. However their existing high-touch customer support method would not be a cost effective or scalable method to manage and service these smaller customers. Omnitracs needed to provide several self-service features to make customer support more scalable while keeping customer satisfaction levels high and the costs manageable. The solution also had to be very intuitive and easy to use. The systems that Omnitracs sells to these trucking customers require professional installation and smaller customers need to track and schedule the installation. Information captured in Oracle eBusiness Suite needed to be readily available for new customers to track these purchases and delivery details. Omnitracs wanted a high impact User Interface to significantly improve customer experience with the ability to integrate with EBS, provisioning systems as well as CRM systems that were already implemented. Omnitracs also wanted to build an architecture platform that could potentially be extended to other Portals. Omnitracs’ stated goal was to deliver an “eBay-like” or “Amazon-like” experience for all of their customers so that they could reach a much broader market beyond their large company customer base. Solution Overview In order to manage the increased complexity, the growing support needs of global customers and improve overall product time-to-market in a cost-effective manner, IT began to deliver a self-service model. This self service model not only transformed numerous business processes but is also allowing the business to keep up with the growing demands of the (internal and external) customers. This solution was a customer service Portal that provided self service capabilities for large and small customers alike for Activation of mobility products, managing add-on applications for the devices (much like the Apple App Store), transferring services when trucks are sold to other companies as well as deactivation all without the involvement of a call service agent or sending multiple emails to different Omnitracs contacts. This is a conceptual view of the Customer Portal showing the details of the components that make up the solution. 12.00 The portal application for transactions was entirely built using ADF 11g R2. Omnitracs’ business had a pressing requirement to have a portal available 24/7 for its customers. Since there were interactions with EBS in the back-end, the downtimes on the EBS would negate this availability. Omnitracs devised a decoupling strategy at the database side for the EBS data. The decoupling of the database was done using Oracle Data Guard and completely insulated the solution from any eBusiness Suite down time. The customer has no knowledge whether eBS is running or not. Here are two sample screenshots of the portal application built in Oracle ADF. Customer Benefits The Customer Portal not only provided the scalability to grow the business but also provided the seamless integration with other disparate applications. Some of the key benefits are: Improved Customer Experience: With a modern look and feel and a Portal that has the aspects of an App Store, the customer experience was significantly improved. Page response times went from several seconds to sub-second for all of the pages. Enabled new product launches: After successfully dominating the large fleet market, Omnitracs now has a scalable solution to sell and manage smaller fleet customers giving them a huge advantage over their nearest competitors. Dozens of new customers have been acquired via this portal through an onboarding process that now takes minutes Seamless Integrations Improves Customer Support: ADF 11gR2 allowed Omnitracs to bring a diverse list of applications into one integrated solution. This provided a seamless experience for customers to route them from Marketing focused application to a customer-oriented portal. Internally, it also allowed Sales Representatives to have an integrated flow for taking a prospect through the various steps to onboard them as a customer. Key integrations included: Unity Core Salesforce.com Merchant e-Solution for credit card Custom Omnitracs Applications like CUPS and AUTO Security utilizing OID and OVD Back end integration with EBS (Data Guard) and iQ Database Business Impact Significant business impacts were realized through the launch of customer portal. It not only allows the business to push through in underserved segments, but also reduces the time it needs to spend on customer support—allowing the business to focus more on sales and identifying the market for new products. Some of the Immediate Benefits are The entire onboarding process is now completely automated and now completes in minutes. This represents an 85% productivity improvement over their previous processes. And it was 160 times faster! With the success of this self-service solution, the business is now targeting about 3X customer growth in the next five years. This represents a tripling of their overall customer base and significant downstream revenue for the ongoing services. 90%+ improvement of customer onboarding and management process by utilizing, single sign on integration using OID/OAM solution, performance improvements and new self-service functionality Unified login for all Customers, Partners and Internal Users enables login to a common portal and seamless access to all other integrated applications targeted at the respective audience Significantly improved customer experience with a better look and feel with a more user experience focused Portal screens. Helped sales of the new product by having an easy way of ordering and activating the product. Data Guard helped increase availability of the Portal to 99%+ and make it independent of EBS downtime. This gave customers the feel of high availability of the portal application. Some of the anticipated longer term Benefits are: Platform that can be leveraged to launch any new product introduction and enable all product teams to reach new customers and new markets Easy integration with content management to allow business owners more control of the product catalog Overall reduced TCO with standardization of the Oracle platform Managed IT support cost savings through optimization of technology skills needed to support and modify this solution ------------------------------------------------------------ 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 -"/ /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}

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Rapid Evolution of Society & Technology

- by Michael Snow

We caught up with Brian Solis on the phone the other day and Christie Flanagan had a chance to chat with him and learn a bit more about him and some of the concepts he'll be addressing in our Social Business Thought Leaders Webcast on Thursday 12/13/12. «--- Interview with Brian Solis Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast- mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Be sure and register for this week's webcast ---» ------------------- Guest post by Brian Solis. Reposted (Borrowed) from his posting of May 24, 2012 Dear [insert business name], what’s your promise? - Brian Solis You say you want to get closer to customers, but your actions are different than your words. You say you want to “surprise and delight” customers, but your product development teams are too busy building against a roadmap without consideration of the 5th P of marketing…people. Your employees are your number one asset, however the infrastructure of the organization has turned once optimistic and ambitious intrapreneurs into complacent cogs or worse, your greatest detractors. You question the adoption of disruptive technology by your internal champions yet you’ve not tried to find the value for yourself. You’re a change agent and you truly wish to bring about change, but you’ve not invested time or resources to answer “why” in your endeavors to become a connected or social business. If we are to truly change, we must find purpose. We must uncover the essence of our business and the value it delivers to traditional and connected consumers. We must rethink the spirit of today’s embrace and clearly articulate how transformation is going to improve customer and employee experiences and relationships now and over time. Without doing so, any attempts at evolution will be thwarted by reality. In an era of Digital Darwinism, no business is too big to fail or too small to succeed. These are undisciplined times which require alternative approaches to recognize and pursue new opportunities. But everything begins with acknowledging the 360 view of the world that you see today is actually a filtered view of managed and efficient convenience. Today, many organizations that were once inspired by innovation and engagement have fallen into a process of marketing, operationalizing, managing, and optimizing. That might have worked for the better part of the last century, but for the next 10 years and beyond, new vision, leadership and supporting business models will be written to move businesses from rigid frameworks to adaptive and agile entities. I believe that today’s executives will undergo a great test; a test of character, vision, intention, and universal leadership. It starts with a simple, but essential question…what is your promise? Notice, I didn’t ask about your brand promise. Nor did I ask for you to cite your mission and vision statements. This is much more than value propositions or manufactured marketing language designed to hook audiences and stakeholders. I asked for your promise to me as your consumer, stakeholder, and partner. This isn’t about B2B or B2C, but instead, people to people, person to person. It is this promise that will breathe new life into an organization that on the outside, could be misdiagnosed as catatonic by those who are disrupting your markets. A promise, for example, is meant to inspire. It creates alignment. It serves as the foundation for your vision, mission, and all business strategies and it must come from the top to mean anything. For without it, we cannot genuinely voice what it is we stand for or stand behind. Think for a moment about the definition of community. It’s easy to confuse a workplace or a market where everyone simply shares common characteristics. However, a community in this day and age is much more than belonging to something, it’s about doing something together that makes belonging matter The next few years will force a divide where companies are separated by intention as measured by actions and words. But, becoming a social business is not enough. Becoming more authentic and transparent doesn’t serve as a mantra for a renaissance. A promise is the ink that inscribes the spirit of the relationship between you and me. A promise serves as the words that influence change from within and change beyond the halls of our business. It is the foundation for a renewed embrace, one that must then find its way to every aspect of the organization. It’s the difference between a social business and an adaptive business. While an adaptive business can also be social, it is the culture of the organization that strives to not just use technology to extend current philosophies or processes into new domains, but instead give rise to a new culture where striving for relevance is among its goals. The tools and networks simply become enablers of a greater mission You are reading this because you believe in something more than what you’re doing today. While you fight for change within your organization, remember to aim for a higher purpose. Organizations that strive for innovation, imagination, and relevance will outperform those that do not. Part of your job is to lead a missionary push that unites the groundswell with a top down cascade. Change will only happen because you and other internal champions see what others can’t and will do what other won’t. It takes resolve. It takes the ability to translate new opportunities into business value. And, it takes courage. “This is a very noisy world, so we have to be very clear what we want them to know about us”-Steve Jobs ----------------------------------------------------------------- So -- where do you begin to evaluate the kind of experience you are delivering for your customers, partners, and employees? Take a look at this White Paper: Creating a Successful and Meaningful Customer Experience on the Web and then have a cup of coffee while you listen to the sage advice of Guy Kawasaki in a short video below. An interview with Guy Kawasaki on Maximizing Social Media Channels

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php remove duplicates from array..

- by SoulieBaby

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The Future of Project Management is Social

- by Natalia Rachelson

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} A guest post by Kazim Isfahani, Director, Product Marketing, Oracle Rapid Ascent. Breakneck Speed. Lightning Fast. Perhaps even overwhelming. No matter which set of adjectives we use to describe it, social media’s rise into the enterprise mainstream has been unprecedented. Indeed, the big 4 social media powerhouses (Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and Twitter), have nearly 2 Billion users between them. You may be asking (as you should really) “That’s all well and good for the consumer, but for me at my company, what’s your point? Beyond the fact that I can check and post updates, that is.” Good question, kind sir. Impact of Social and Collaboration on Project Management I’ll dovetail this discussion to the project management realm, since that’s what I’m writing about. Speed is a big challenge for project-driven organizations. Anything that can help speed up project delivery - be it a new product introduction effort or a geographical expansion project - fast is a good thing. So where does this whole social thing fit particularly since there are already a host of tools to help with traditional project execution? The fact is companies have seen improvements in their productivity by deploying departmental collaboration and other social-oriented solutions. McKinsey’s survey on social tools shows we have reached critical scale: 72% of respondents report that their companies use at least one and over 40% say they are using social networks and blogs. We don’t hear as much about the impact of social media technologies at the project and project manager level, but that does not mean there is none. Consider the new hire. The type of individual entering the workforce and executing on projects is a generation of worker expecting visually appealing, easy to use and easy to understand technology meshing hand-in-hand with business processes. Consider the project manager. The social era has enhanced the role that the project manager must play. Today’s project manager must be a supreme communicator, an influencer, a sympathizer, a negotiator, and still manage to keep all stakeholders in the loop on project progress. Social tools play a significant role in this effort. Now consider the impact to the project team. The way that a project team functions has changed, with newer, social oriented technologies making the process of information dissemination and team communications much more fluid. It’s clear that a shift is occurring where “social” is intersecting with project management. The Rise of Social Project Management We refer to the melding of project management and social networking as Social Project Management. Social Project Management is based upon the philosophy that the project team is one part of an integrated whole, and that valuable and unique abilities exist within the larger organization. For this reason, Social Project Management systems should be integrated into the collaborative platform(s) of an organization, allowing communication to proceed outside the project boundaries. What makes social project management "social" is an implicit awareness where distributed teams build connected links in ways that were previously restricted to teams that were co-located. Just as critical, Social Project Management embraces the vision of seamless online collaboration within a project team, but also provides for, (and enhances) the use of rigorous project management techniques. Social Project Management acknowledges that projects (particularly large projects) are a social activity - people doing work with people, for other people, with commitments to yet other people. The more people (larger projects), the more interpersonal the interactions, and the more social affects the project. The Epitome of Social - Fusion Project Portfolio Management If I take this one level further to discuss Fusion Project Portfolio Management, the notion of Social Project Management is on full display. With Fusion Project Portfolio Management, project team members have a single place for interaction on projects and access to any other resources working within the Fusion ERP applications. This allows team members the opportunity to be informed with greater participation and provide better information. The application’s the visual appeal, and highly graphical nature makes it easy to navigate information. The project activity stream adds to the intuitive user experience. The goal of productivity is pervasive throughout Fusion Project Portfolio Management. Field research conducted with Oracle customers and partners showed that users needed a way to stay in the context of their core transactions and yet easily access social networking tools. This is manifested in the application so when a user executes a business process, they not only have the transactional application at their fingertips, but also have things like e-mail, SMS, text, instant messaging, chat – all providing a number of different ways to interact with people and/or groups of people, both internal and external to the project and enterprise. But in the end, connecting people is relatively easy. The larger issue is finding a way to serve up relevant, system-generated, actionable information, in real time, which will allow for more streamlined execution on key business processes. Fusion Project Portfolio Management’s design concept enables users to create project communities, establish discussion threads, manage event calendars as well as deliver project based work spaces to organize communications within the context of a project – all within a secure business environment. We’d love to hear from you and get your thoughts and ideas about how Social Project Management is impacting your organization. To learn more about Oracle Fusion Project Portfolio Management, please visit this link

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5 Best Practices - Laying the Foundation for WebCenter Projects

- by Kellsey Ruppel

Today’s guest post comes from Oracle WebCenter expert John Brunswick. John specializes in enterprise portal and content management solutions and actively contributes to the enterprise software business community and has authored a series of articles about optimal business involvement in portal, business process management and SOA development, examining ways of helping organizations move away from monolithic application development. We’re happy to have John join us today! Maximizing success with Oracle WebCenter portal requires a strategic understanding of Oracle WebCenter capabilities. The following best practices enable the creation of portal solutions with minimal resource overhead, while offering the greatest flexibility for progressive elaboration. They are inherently project agnostic, enabling a strong foundation for future growth and an expedient return on your investment in the platform. If you are able to embrace even only a few of these practices, you will materially improve your deployment capability with WebCenter. 1. Segment Duties Around 3Cs - Content, Collaboration and Contextual Data "Agility" is one of the most common business benefits touted by modern web platforms. It sounds good - who doesn't want to be Agile, right? How exactly IT organizations go about supplying agility to their business counterparts often lacks definition - hamstrung by ambiguity. Ultimately, businesses want to benefit from reduced development time to deliver a solution to a particular constituent, which is augmented by as much self-service as possible to develop and manage the solution directly. All done in the absence of direct IT involvement. With Oracle WebCenter's depth in the areas of content management, pallet of native collaborative services, enterprise mashup capability and delegated administration, it is very possible to execute on this business vision at a technical level. To realize the benefits of the platform depth we can think of Oracle WebCenter's segmentation of duties along the lines of the 3 Cs - Content, Collaboration and Contextual Data. All three of which can have their foundations developed by IT, then provisioned to the business on a per role basis. Content – Oracle WebCenter benefits from an extremely mature content repository. Work flow, audit, notification, office integration and conversion capabilities for documents (HTML & PDF) make this a haven for business users to take control of content within external and internal portals, custom applications and web sites. When deploying WebCenter portal take time to think of areas in which IT can provide the "harness" for content to reside, then allow the business to manage any content items within the site, using the content foundation to ensure compliance with business rules and process. This frees IT to work on more mission critical challenges and allows the business to respond in short order to emerging market needs. Collaboration – Native collaborative services and WebCenter spaces are a perfect match for business users who are looking to enable document sharing, discussions and social networking. The ability to deploy the services is granular and on the basis of roles scoped to given areas of the system - much like the first C “content”. This enables business analysts to design the roles required and IT to provision with peace of mind that users leveraging the collaborative services are only able to do so in explicitly designated areas of a site. Bottom line - business will not need to wait for IT, but cannot go outside of the scope that has been defined based on their roles. Contextual Data – Collaborative capabilities are most powerful when included within the context of business data. The ability to supply business users with decision shaping data that they can include in various parts of a portal or portals, just as they would with content items, is one of the most powerful aspects of Oracle WebCenter. Imagine a discussion about new store selection for a retail chain that re-purposes existing information from business intelligence services about various potential locations and or custom backend systems - presenting it directly in the context of the discussion. If there are some data sources that are preexisting in your enterprise take a look at how they can be made into discrete offerings within the portal, then scoped to given business user roles for inclusion within collaborative activities. 2. Think Generically, Execute Specifically Constructs. Anyone who has spent much time around me knows that I am obsessed with this word. Why? Because Constructs offer immense power - more than APIs, Web Services or other technical capability. Constructs offer organizations the ability to leverage a platform's native characteristics to offer substantial business functionality - without writing code. This concept becomes more powerful with the additional understanding of the concepts from the platform that an organization learns over time. Let's take a look at an example of where an Oracle WebCenter construct can substantially reduce the time to get a subscription-based site out the door and into the hands of the end consumer. Imagine a site that allows members to subscribe to specific disciplines to access information and application data around that various discipline. A space is a collection of secured pages within Oracle WebCenter. Spaces are not only secured, but also default content stored within it to be scoped automatically to that space. Taking this a step further, Oracle WebCenter’s Activity Stream surfaces events, discussions and other activities that are scoped to the given user on the basis of their space affiliations. In order to have a portal that would allow users to "subscribe" to information around various disciplines - spaces could be used out of the box to achieve this capability and without using any APIs or low level technical work to achieve this. 3. Make Governance Work for You Imagine driving down the street without the painted lines on the road. The rules of the road are so ingrained in our minds, we often do not think about the process, but seemingly mundane lane markers are critical enablers. Lane markers allow us to travel at speeds that would be impossible if not for the agreed upon direction of flow. Additionally and more importantly, it allows people to act autonomously - going where they please at any given time. The return on the investment for mobility is high enough for people to buy into globally agreed up governance processes. In Oracle WebCenter we can use similar enablers to lane markers. Our goal should be to enable the flow of information and provide end users with the ability to arrive at business solutions as needed, not on the basis of cumbersome processes that cannot meet the business needs in a timely fashion. How do we do this? Just as with "Segmentation of Duties" Oracle WebCenter technologies offer the opportunity to compartmentalize various business initiatives from each other within the system due to constructs and security that are available to use within the platform. For instance, when a WebCenter space is created, any content added within that space by default will be secured to that particular space and inherits meta data that is associated with a folder created for the space. Oracle WebCenter content uses meta data to support a broad range of rich ECM functionality and can automatically impart retention, workflow and other policies automatically on the basis of what has been defaulted for that space. Depending on your business needs, this paradigm will also extend to sub sections of a space, offering some interesting possibilities to enable automated management around content. An example may be press releases within a particular area of an extranet that require a five year retention period and need to the reviewed by marketing and legal before release. The underlying content system will transparently take care of this process on the basis of the above rules, enabling peace of mind over unstructured data - which could otherwise become overwhelming. 4. Make Your First Project Your Second Imagine if Michael Phelps was competing in a swimming championship, but told right before his race that he had to use a brand new stroke. There is no doubt that Michael is an outstanding swimmer, but chances are that he would like to have some time to get acquainted with the new stroke. New technologies should not be treated any differently. Before jumping into the deep end it helps to take time to get to know the new approach - even though you may have been swimming thousands of times before. To quickly get a handle on Oracle WebCenter capabilities it can be helpful to deploy a sandbox for the team to use to share project documents, discussions and announcements in an effort to help the actual deployment get under way, while increasing everyone’s knowledge of the platform and its functionality that may be helpful down the road. Oracle Technology Network has made a pre-configured virtual machine available for download that can be a great starting point for this exercise. 5. Get to Know the Community If you are reading this blog post you have most certainly faced a software decision or challenge that was solved on the basis of a small piece of missing critical information - which took substantial research to discover. Chances were also good that somewhere, someone had already come across this information and would have been excited to share it. There is no denying the power of passionate, connected users, sharing key tips around technology. The Oracle WebCenter brand has a rich heritage that includes industry-leading technology and practitioners. With the new Oracle WebCenter brand, opportunities to connect with these experts has become easier. Oracle WebCenter Blog Oracle Social Enterprise LinkedIn WebCenter Group Oracle WebCenter Twitter Oracle WebCenter Facebook Oracle User Groups Additionally, there are various Oracle WebCenter related blogs by an excellent grouping of services partners.

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Corsair Hackers Reboot

It wasn't easy for me to attend but it was absolutely worth to go. The Linux User Group of Mauritius (LUGM) organised another get-together for any open source enthusiast here on the island. Strangely named "Corsair Hackers Reboot" but it stands for a positive cause: "Corsair Hackers Reboot Event A collaborative activity involving LUGM, UoM Computer Club, Fortune Way Shopping Mall and several geeks from around the island, striving to put FOSS into homes & offices. The public is invited to discover and explore Free Software & Open Source." And it was a good opportunity for me and the kids to visit the east coast of Mauritius, too. Perfect timing It couldn't have been better... Why? Well, for two important reasons (in terms of IT): End of support for Microsoft Windows XP - 08.04.2014 Release of Ubuntu 14.04 Long Term Support - 17.04.2014 Quite funnily, those two IT dates weren't the initial reasons and only during the weeks of preparations we put those together. And therefore it was even more positive to promote the use of Linux and open source software in general to a broader audience. Getting there ... Thanks to the new motor way M3 and all the additional road work which has been completed recently it was very simple to get across the island in a very quick and relaxed manner. Compared to my trips in the early days of living in Mauritius (and riding on a scooter) it was very smooth and within less than an hour we hit Centrale de Flacq. Well, being in the city doesn't necessarily mean that one has arrived at the destination. But thanks to modern technology I had a quick look on Google Maps, and we finally managed to get a parking behind the huge bus terminal in Flacq. From there it was just a short walk to Fortune Way. The children were trying to count the number of buses... Well, lots and lots of buses - really impressive actually. What was presented? There were different areas set up. Right at the entrance one's attention was directly drawn towards the elevated hacker's stage. Similar to rock stars performing their gig there was bunch of computers, laptops and networking equipment in order to cater the right working conditions for coding/programming challenge(s) on the one hand and for the pen-testing or system hacking competition on the other hand. Personally, I was very impresses that actually Nitin took care of the pen-testing competition. He hardly started one year back with Linux in general, and Kali Linux specifically. Seeing his personal development from absolute newbie to a decent Linux system administrator within such a short period of time, is really impressive. His passion to open source software made him a living. Next, clock-wise seen, was the Kid's Corner with face-painting as the main attraction. Additionally, there were numerous paper print outs to colour. Plus a decent workstation with the educational suite GCompris. Of course, my little ones were into that. They already know GCompris since a while as they are allowed to use it on an IGEL thin client terminal here at home. To simplify my life, I set up GCompris as full-screen guest session on the server, and they can pass the login screen without any further obstacles. And because it's a thin client hooked up to a XDMCP remote session I don't have to worry about the hardware on their desk, too. The next section was the main attraction of the event: BYOD - Bring Your Own Device Well, compared to the usual context of BYOD the corsairs had a completely different intention. Here, you could bring your own laptop and a team of knowledgeable experts - read: geeks and so on - offered to fully convert your system on any Linux distribution of your choice. And even though I came later, I was told that the USB pen drives had been in permanent use. From being prepared via dd command over launching LiveCD session to finally installing a fresh Linux system on bare metal. Most interestingly, I did a similar job already a couple of months ago, while upgrading an existing Windows XP system to Xubuntu 13.10. So far, the female owner is very happy and enjoys her system almost every evening to go shopping online, checking mails, and reading latest news from the Anime world. Back to the Hackers event, Ish told me that they managed approximately 20 conversion during the day. Furthermore, Ajay and others gladly assisted some visitors with some tricky issues and by the end of the day you can call is a success. While I was around, there was a elderly male visitor that got a full-fledged system conversion to a Linux system running completely in French language. A little bit more to the centre it was Yasir's turn to demonstrate his Arduino hardware that he hooked up with an experimental electrical circuit board connected to an LCD matrix display. That's the real spirit of hacking, and he showed some minor adjustments on the fly while demo'ing the system. Also, very interesting there was a thermal sensor around. Personally, I think that platforms like the Arduino as well as the Raspberry Pi have a great potential at a very affordable price in order to bring a better understanding of electronics as well as computer programming to a broader audience. It would be great to see more of those experiments during future activities. And last but not least there were a small number of vendors. Amongst them was Emtel - once again as sponsor of the general internet connectivity - and another hardware supplier from Riche Terre shopping mall. They had a good collection of Android related gimmicks, like a autonomous web cam that can convert any TV with HDMI connector into an online video chat system given WiFi. It's actually kind of awesome to have a Skype or Google hangout video session on the big screen rather than on the laptop. Some pictures of the event LUGM: Great conversations on Linux, open source and free software during the Corsair Hackers Reboot LUGM: Educational workstation running GCompris suite attracted the youngest attendees of the day. Of course, face painting had to be done prior to hacking... LUGM: Nadim demoing some Linux specifics to interested visitors. Everyone was pretty busy during the whole day LUGM: The hacking competition, here pen-testing a wireless connection and access point between multiple machines LUGM: Well prepared workstations to be able to 'upgrade' visitors' machines to any Linux operating system Final thoughts Gratefully, during the preparations of the event I was invited to leave some comments or suggestions, and the team of the LUGM did a great job. The outdoor banner was a eye-catcher, the various flyers and posters for the event were clearly written and as far as I understood from the quick chats I had with Ish, Nadim, Nitin, Ajay, and of course others all were very happy about the event execution. Great job, LUGM! And I'm already looking forward to the next Corsair Hackers Reboot event ... Crossing fingers: Very soon and hopefully this year again :) Update: In the media The event had been announced in local media, too. L'Express: Salon informatique: Hacking Challenge à Flacq

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Delivering the Integrated Portal Experience!

- by Michael Snow

v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Guest post by Richard Maldonado, Principal Product Manager, Oracle WebCenter Portal Organizations are still struggling to standardize on a user interaction platform which can meet the needs of all their target audiences. This has not only resulted in inefficient and inconsistent experiences for their users, but it also creates inefficiencies (productivity and costs) for the departments that manage the applications and information systems. Portals have historically been the unifying platform that provide IT with a common interface which can securely surface the most relevant interactions for a given user and/or group of users. However, organizations have found that the technologies available have either not provided the flexibility necessary to address all of their use cases, or they rely too much on IT resources to manage, maintain, and evolve. Empowering the Business Groups The core issue that IT departments face with delivering portal experiences is having enough resources to respond and address the influx of requirements which come in from the business. Commonly, when a business group wants a new portal site established for their group, they will submit a request to the IT dept, the IT dept then assigns a resource to an administrator and/or developer to build. Unfortunately, this approach is not scalable, it can be a time consuming activity which requires significant interaction between the business owner and the IT resource. A modern user interaction platforms should empower the business groups by providing them tools which they can use to build and manage the portal experiences without the need for IT's involvement. And because business groups rarely have technical resources (developers) on staff, the tools must be easy enough that virtually any business user could use. In addition, the tool must be powerful enough to allow them to build the experience that they need, things such as creating a whole new portal, add/manage page and page hierarchy, manage user/group access, add/modify components within the page, etc. This balance between ease-of-use and flexibility is key to the successful adoption of tools which will ultimately reduce the burden on IT, respond to the needs of the business, and deliver high-value experiences for the users. Ready or Not, Here They Come: Smartphones and Tablets Recently, several studies have highlighted that smartphone and tablet-style devices have overtaken PC's in both sales and usage. This shift is further driving organizations to revaluate how they're delivering data, information, and applications to their users. Users are expecting to get the same level of access and interaction, but in a ways which are optimized for the capabilities of the device that they are using. Expect More With the ever growing number of new IT projects and flat/shrinking budgets, organizations are looking for comprehensive solutions which can deliver integrated web experiences that are tailored for the users and optimized for mobile devices. Piecing together a number of point solutions is no longer an option. A modern portal technology should not only address the traditional needs of integrating and surfacing back-end applications/information, but it should enable the business through easy-to-use tools and accelerate the delivery of mobile optimized experiences. v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} WebCenter in Action Series: Qualcomm Provides a Seamless Experience for Customers with Oracle WebCenter Featuring Qualcomm & Keste 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 -"/ /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} 12.00 Normal 0 false false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-fareast- mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}

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Webcast Q&A: ING on How to Scale Role Management and Compliance

- by Tanu Sood

Thanks to all who attended the live webcast we hosted on ING: Scaling Role Management and Access Certifications to Thousands of Applications on Wed, April 11th. Those of you who couldn’t join us, the webcast replay is now available. Many thanks to our guest speaker, Mark Robison, Enterprise Architect at ING for walking us through ING’s drivers and rationale for the platform approach, the phased implementation strategy, results & metrics, roadmap and recommendations. We greatly appreciate the insight he shared with us all on the deployment synergies between Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) and Oracle Identity Analytics (OIA) to enforce streamlined user and role management and scalable compliance. Mark was also kind enough to walk us through specific solutions features that helped ING manage the problem of role explosion and implement closed loop remediation. Our host speaker, Neil Gandhi, Principal Product Manager, Oracle rounded off the presentation by discussing common use cases and deployment scenarios we see organizations implement to automate user/identity administration and enforce closed-loop scalable compliance. Neil also called out the specific features in Oracle Identity Analytics 11gR1 that cater to expediting and streamlining compliance processes such as access certifications. While we tackled a few questions during the webcast, we have captured the responses to those that we weren’t able to get to here; our sincere thanks to Mark Robison for taking the time to respond to questions specific to ING’s implementation and strategy. Q. Did you include business friendly entitlment descriptions, or is the business seeing application descriptors A. We include very business friendly descriptions. The OIA tool has the facility to allow this. Q. When doing attestation on job change, who is in the workflow to review and confirm that the employee should continue to have access? Is that a best practice? A. The new and old manager are in the workflow. The tool can check for any Separation of Duties (SOD) violations with both having similiar accesses. It may not be a best practice, but it is a reality of doing your old and new job for a transition period on a transfer. Q. What versions of OIM and OIA are being used at ING? A. OIM 11gR1 and OIA 11gR1; the very latest versions available. Q. Are you using an entitlements / role catalog? A. Yes. We use both roles and entitlements. Q. What specific unexpected benefits did the Identity Warehouse provide ING? A. The most unanticipated was to help Legal Hold identify user ID's in the various applications. Other benefits included providing a one stop shop for all aggregated ID information. Q. How fine grained are your application and entitlements? Did OIA, OIM support that level of granularity? A. We have some very fine grained entitlements, but we role this up into approved Roles to allow for easier management. For managing very fine grained entitlements, Oracle offers the Oracle Entitlement Server. We currently do not own this software but are considering it. Q. Do you allow any individual access or is everything truly role based? A. We are a hybrid environment with roles and individual positive and negative entitlements Q. Did you use an Agile methodology like scrum to deliver functionality during your project? A. We started with waterfall, but used an agile approach to provide benefits after the initial implementation Q. How did you handle rolling out the standard ID format to existing users? A. We just used the standard IDs for new users. We have not taken on a project to address the existing nonstandard IDs. Q. To avoid role explosion, how do you deal with apps that require more than a couple of entitlement TYPES? For example, an app may have different levels of access and it may need to know the user's country/state to associate them with particular customers. A. We focus on the functional user and craft the role around their daily job requirements. The role captures the required application entitlements. To keep role explosion down, we use role mining in OIA and also meet and interview the business. It is an iterative process to get role consensus. Q. Great presentation! How many rounds of Certifications has ING performed so far? A. Around 7 quarters and constant certifications on transfer. Q. Did you have executive support from the top down A. Yes The executive support was key to our success. Q. For your cloud instance are you using OIA or OIM as SaaS? A. No. We are just provisioning and deprovisioning to various Cloud providers. (Service Now is an example) Q. How do you ensure a role owner does not get more priviliges as are intended and thus violates another role, e,g, a DBA Roles should not get tor rigt to run somethings as root, as this would affect the root role? A. We have SOD checks. Also all Roles are initially approved by external audit and the role owners have to certify the roles and any changes Q. What is your ratio of employees to roles? A. We are still in process going through our various lines of business, so I do not have a final ratio. From what we have seen, the ratio varies greatly depending on the Line of Business and the diversity of Job Functions. For standardized lines of business such as call centers, the ratio is very good where we can have a single role that covers many employees. For specialized lines of business like treasury, it can be one or two people per role. Q. Is ING using Oracle On Demand service ? A. No Q. Do you have to implement or migrate to OIM in order to get the Identity Warehouse, or can OIA provide the identity warehouse as well if you haven't reached OIM yet? A. No, OIM deployment is not required to implement OIA’s Identity Warehouse but as you heard during the webcast, there are tremendous deployment synergies in deploying both OIA and OIM together. Q. When is the Security Governor product coming out? A. Oracle Security Governor for Healthcare is available today. Hope you enjoyed the webcast and we look forward to having you join us for the next webcast in the Customers Talk: Identity as a Platform webcast series: Toyota: Putting Customers First – Identity Platform as a Business Enabler Wednesday, May 16th at 10 am PST/ 1 pm EST Register Today You can also register for a live event at a city near you where Aberdeen’s Derek Brink will discuss the survey results from the recently published report “Analyzing Platform vs. Point Solution Approach in Identity”. And, you can do a quick (& free) online assessment of your identity programs by benchmarking it against the 160 organizations surveyed in the Aberdeen report, compliments of Oracle. Here’s the slide deck from our ING webcast: ING webcast platform View more presentations from OracleIDM

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FOUR questions to ask if you are implementing DATABASE-AS-A-SERVICE

- by Sudip Datta

During my ongoing tenure at Oracle, I have met all types of DBAs. Happy DBAs, unhappy DBAs, proud DBAs, risk-loving DBAs, cautious DBAs. These days, as Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) becomes more mainstream, I find some complacent DBAs who are basking in their achievement of having implemented DBaaS. Some others, however, are not that happy. They grudgingly complain that they did not have much of a say in the implementation, they simply had to follow what their cloud architects (mostly infrastructure admins) offered them. In most cases it would be a database wrapped inside a VM that would be labeled as “Database as a Service”. In other cases, it would be existing brute-force automation simply exposed in a portal. As much as I think that there is more to DBaaS than those approaches and often get tempted to propose Enterprise Manager 12c, I try to be objective. Neither do I want to dampen the spirit of the happy ones, nor do I want to stoke the pain of the unhappy ones. As I mentioned in my previous post, I don’t deny vanilla automation could be useful. I like virtualization too for what it has helped us accomplish in terms of resource management, but we need to scrutinize its merit on a case-by-case basis and apply it meaningfully. For DBAs who either claim to have implemented DBaaS or are planning to do so, I simply want to provide four key questions to ponder about: 1. Does it make life easier for your end users? Database-as-a-Service can have several types of end users. Junior DBAs, QA Engineers, Developers- each having their own skillset. The objective of DBaaS is to make their life simple, so that they can focus on their core responsibilities without having to worry about additional stuff. For example, if you are a Developer using Oracle Application Express (APEX), you want to deal with schema, objects and PL/SQL code and not with datafiles or listener configuration. If you are a QA Engineer needing database copies for functional testing, you do not want to deal with underlying operating system patching and compliance issues. The question to ask, therefore, is, whether DBaaS makes life easier for those users. It is often convenient to give them VM shells to deal with a la Amazon EC2 IaaS, but is that what they really want? Is it a productive use of a developer's time if he needs to apply RPM errata to his Linux operating system. Asking him to keep the underlying operating system current is like making a guest responsible for a restaurant's decor. 2. Does it make life easier for your administrators? Cloud, in general, is supposed to free administrators from attending to mundane tasks like provisioning services for every single end user request. It is supposed to enable a readily consumable platform and enforce standardization in the process. For example, if a Service Catalog exposes DBaaS of specific database versions and configurations, it, by its very nature, enforces certain discipline and standardization within the IT environment. What if, instead of specific database configurations, cloud allowed each end user to create databases of their liking resulting in hundreds of version and patch levels and thousands of individual databases. Therefore the right question to ask is whether the unwanted consequence of DBaaS is OS and database sprawl. And if so, who is responsible for tracking them, backing them up, administering them? Studies have shown that these administrative overheads increase exponentially with new targets, and it could result in a management nightmare. That leads us to our next question. 3. Does it satisfy your Security Officers and Compliance Auditors? Compliance Auditors need to know who did what and when. They also want the cloud platform to be secure, so that end users have little freedom in tampering with it. Dealing with VM sprawl is not the easiest of challenges, let alone dealing with them as they keep getting reconfigured and moved around. This leads to the proverbial needle in the haystack problem, and all it needs is one needle to cause a serious compliance issue in the enterprise. Bottomline is, flexibility and agility should not come at the expense of compliance and it is very important to get the balance right. Can we have security and isolation without creating compliance challenges? Instead of a ‘one size fits all approach’ i.e. OS level isolation, can we think smartly about database isolation or schema based isolation? This is where the appropriate resource modeling needs to be applied. The usual systems management vendors out there with heterogeneous common-denominator approach have compromised on these semantics. If you follow Enterprise Manager’s DBaaS solution, you will see that we have considered different models, not precluding virtualization, for different customer use cases. The judgment to use virtual assemblies versus databases on physical RAC versus Schema-as-a-Service in a single database, should be governed by the need of the applications and not by putting compliance considerations in the backburner. 4. Does it satisfy your CIO? Finally, does it satisfy your higher ups? As the sponsor of cloud initiative, the CIO is expected to lead an IT transformation project, not merely a run-of-the-mill IT operations. Simply virtualizing server resources and delivering them through self-service is a good start, but hardly transformational. CIOs may appreciate the instant benefit from server consolidation, but studies have revealed that the ROI from consolidation would flatten out at 20-25%. The question would be: what next? As we go higher up in the stack, the need to virtualize, segregate and optimize shifts to those layers that are more palpable to the business users. As Sushil Kumar noted in his blog post, " the most important thing to note here is the enterprise private cloud is not just an IT project, rather it is a business initiative to create an IT setup that is more aligned with the needs of today's dynamic and highly competitive business environment." Business users could not care less about infrastructure consolidation or virtualization - they care about business agility and service level assurance. Last but not the least, lot of CIOs get miffed if we ask them to throw away their existing hardware investments for implementing DBaaS. In Oracle, we always emphasize on freedom of choosing a platform; hence Enterprise Manager’s DBaaS solution is platform neutral. It can work on any Operating System (that the agent is certified on) Oracle’s hardware as well as 3rd party hardware. As a parting note, I urge you to remember these 4 questions. Remember that your satisfaction as an implementer lies in the satisfaction of others.

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Juniper SSG-5 subinterface vlan routing to the internet

- by catfish

I'm unable to get a brand new Juniper SSG-5 with latest 6.3.0r05 firmware routing to the internet from a subinterface I created on bgroup0 setup as vlan2 (bgroup0.1 on "wifi" zone). When connected on the default vlan it gets on the internet just fine. When I switch to vlan2 I'm unable to get to the internet. I am able to get the correct ip address (10.150.0.0/24) from dhcp, able to get to the juniper management page, etc but nothing past the firewall, can't ping 4.2.2.2 or the internet gateway. Even setting up logging on the wifi-to-untrust policy and it does shows the attempts (it's it's timeouts). 172.31.16.0/24 is the untrusted lan, it's already nat'ed but works fine for testing. Can ping this ip from the default vlan but not from vlan2 192.168.1.0/24 is the trusted main lan 10.150.0.0/24 is the wifi isolated lan on vlan2 The idea is to setup an AP with lan and guest access (AP supports multiple ssid's on different vlans). I know I can setup the juniper to use different ports for the wifi lan and use their procurve switch to do the vlan separation, but I never used vlan'ing on a Juniper firewall and I would like to try it out this way. Here is the complete config file: unset key protection enable set clock timezone -5 set vrouter trust-vr sharable set vrouter "untrust-vr" exit set vrouter "trust-vr" unset auto-route-export exit set alg appleichat enable unset alg appleichat re-assembly enable set alg sctp enable set auth-server "Local" id 0 set auth-server "Local" server-name "Local" set auth default auth server "Local" set auth radius accounting port 1646 set admin name "netscreen" set admin password "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" set admin auth web timeout 10 set admin auth dial-in timeout 3 set admin auth server "Local" set admin format dos set zone "Trust" vrouter "trust-vr" set zone "Untrust" vrouter "trust-vr" set zone "DMZ" vrouter "trust-vr" set zone "VLAN" vrouter "trust-vr" set zone id 100 "Wifi" set zone "Untrust-Tun" vrouter "trust-vr" set zone "Trust" tcp-rst set zone "Untrust" block unset zone "Untrust" tcp-rst set zone "MGT" block unset zone "V1-Trust" tcp-rst unset zone "V1-Untrust" tcp-rst set zone "DMZ" tcp-rst unset zone "V1-DMZ" tcp-rst unset zone "VLAN" tcp-rst unset zone "Wifi" tcp-rst set zone "Untrust" screen tear-drop set zone "Untrust" screen syn-flood set zone "Untrust" screen ping-death set zone "Untrust" screen ip-filter-src set zone "Untrust" screen land set zone "V1-Untrust" screen tear-drop set zone "V1-Untrust" screen syn-flood set zone "V1-Untrust" screen ping-death set zone "V1-Untrust" screen ip-filter-src set zone "V1-Untrust" screen land set interface "ethernet0/0" zone "Untrust" set interface "ethernet0/1" zone "Untrust" set interface "bgroup0" zone "Trust" set interface "bgroup0.1" tag 2 zone "Wifi" set interface "bgroup1" zone "DMZ" set interface bgroup0 port ethernet0/2 set interface bgroup0 port ethernet0/3 set interface bgroup0 port ethernet0/4 set interface bgroup0 port ethernet0/5 set interface bgroup0 port ethernet0/6 unset interface vlan1 ip set interface ethernet0/0 ip 172.31.16.243/24 set interface ethernet0/0 route set interface bgroup0 ip 192.168.1.1/24 set interface bgroup0 nat set interface bgroup0.1 ip 10.150.0.1/24 set interface bgroup0.1 nat set interface bgroup0.1 mtu 1500 unset interface vlan1 bypass-others-ipsec unset interface vlan1 bypass-non-ip set interface ethernet0/0 ip manageable set interface bgroup0 ip manageable set interface bgroup0.1 ip manageable set interface ethernet0/0 manage ping set interface ethernet0/1 manage ping set interface bgroup0.1 manage ping set interface bgroup0.1 manage telnet set interface bgroup0.1 manage web unset interface bgroup1 manage ping set interface bgroup0 dhcp server service set interface bgroup0.1 dhcp server service set interface bgroup0 dhcp server auto set interface bgroup0.1 dhcp server enable set interface bgroup0 dhcp server option gateway 192.168.1.1 set interface bgroup0 dhcp server option netmask 255.255.255.0 set interface bgroup0 dhcp server option dns1 8.8.8.8 set interface bgroup0.1 dhcp server option lease 1440 set interface bgroup0.1 dhcp server option gateway 10.150.0.1 set interface bgroup0.1 dhcp server option netmask 255.255.255.0 set interface bgroup0.1 dhcp server option dns1 8.8.8.8 set interface bgroup0 dhcp server ip 192.168.1.33 to 192.168.1.126 set interface bgroup0.1 dhcp server ip 10.150.0.50 to 10.150.0.100 unset interface bgroup0 dhcp server config next-server-ip unset interface bgroup0.1 dhcp server config next-server-ip set interface "serial0/0" modem settings "USR" init "AT&F" set interface "serial0/0" modem settings "USR" active set interface "serial0/0" modem speed 115200 set interface "serial0/0" modem retry 3 set interface "serial0/0" modem interval 10 set interface "serial0/0" modem idle-time 10 set flow tcp-mss unset flow no-tcp-seq-check set flow tcp-syn-check unset flow tcp-syn-bit-check set flow reverse-route clear-text prefer set flow reverse-route tunnel always set pki authority default scep mode "auto" set pki x509 default cert-path partial set crypto-policy exit set ike respond-bad-spi 1 set ike ikev2 ike-sa-soft-lifetime 60 unset ike ikeid-enumeration unset ike dos-protection unset ipsec access-session enable set ipsec access-session maximum 5000 set ipsec access-session upper-threshold 0 set ipsec access-session lower-threshold 0 set ipsec access-session dead-p2-sa-timeout 0 unset ipsec access-session log-error unset ipsec access-session info-exch-connected unset ipsec access-session use-error-log set url protocol websense exit set policy id 1 from "Trust" to "Untrust" "Any" "Any" "ANY" permit set policy id 1 exit set policy id 2 from "Wifi" to "Untrust" "Any" "Any" "ANY" permit log set policy id 2 exit set nsmgmt bulkcli reboot-timeout 60 set ssh version v2 set config lock timeout 5 unset license-key auto-update set telnet client enable set snmp port listen 161 set snmp port trap 162 set snmpv3 local-engine id "0162122009006149" set vrouter "untrust-vr" exit set vrouter "trust-vr" unset add-default-route set route 0.0.0.0/0 interface ethernet0/0 gateway 172.31.16.1 exit set vrouter "untrust-vr" exit set vrouter "trust-vr" exit

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PHP pages working slow from time to time

- by user1038179

I have VPS with limit of 2GB of ram and 8 CPU cores. I have 5 sites on that VPS (one of them is just for testing, no visitors exept me). All 5 sites are image galleries, like wallpaper sites. Last week I noticed problem on one site (main domain, used for name servers, and also with most traffic, visitors). That site has two image galleries, one is old static html gallery made few years ago and another, main, is powered by ZENPhoto CMS. Also I have that same gallery CMS on another two sites on that same VPS (on one running site and on one just for testing site). On other two sites I have diferent PHP driven gallery. Problem is that after some time (it vary from 10 minutes to few hours after apache restart), loading of pages on main site becomes very slow, or I get 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable error. So pages becomes unavailable. But just that part with new CMS gallery, old part of site with static html pages are working fast and just fine. Also other two sites with same CMS gallery and other two with different PHP driven gallery are working fine and fast at the same time. I thought it must be something with CMS on that main site, because other sites are working nice. Then I tryed to open contact and guest book pages on that main site which are outside of that CMS but also PHP pages, and they do not load too, but that same contact php scipts are working on other sites at the same time. So, when site starts to hangs, ONLY PHP generated content is not working, like I said other static pages are working. And, ONLY on that one main site I have problems. Then I need to restart Apache, after restart everything is vorking nice and fast, for some time, than again, just PHP pages on main site are becomming slower. If I do not restart apache that slowness take some time (several minutes, hours, depending ot traffic) and during that time PHP diven content is loading very slow or unavailable on that site. After sime time, on moments everything start to work and is fast again for some time, and again. In hours with more traffic PHP content is loading slowly or it is unavailable, in hours with less traffic it is sometimes fast and sometimes little bit slower than usually. And ones again, only on that main site, and only PHP driven pages, static pages are working fast even in most traffic hours also other sites with even same CMS are working fast. Currently I have about 7000 unique visitors on that site but site worked nice even with 11500 visitors per day. And about 17000 in total visitors on VPS, all sites ( about 3 pages per unique visitor). When site start to slow down sometimes in apache status I can see something like this: mod_fcgid status: Total FastCGI processes: 37 Process: php5 (/usr/local/cpanel/cgi-sys/php5)Pid Active Idle Accesses State 11300 39 28 7 Working 11274 47 28 7 Working 11296 40 29 3 Working 11283 45 30 3 Working 11304 36 31 1 Working 11282 46 32 3 Working 11292 42 33 1 Working 11289 44 34 1 Working 11305 35 35 0 Working 11273 48 36 2 Working 11280 47 39 1 Working 10125 133 40 12 Exiting(communication error) 11294 41 41 1 Exiting(communication error) 11277 47 42 2 Exiting(communication error) 11291 43 43 1 Exiting(communication error) 10187 108 43 10 Exiting(communication error) 10209 95 44 7 Exiting(communication error) 10171 113 44 5 Exiting(communication error) 11275 47 47 1 Exiting(communication error) 10144 125 48 8 Exiting(communication error) 10086 149 48 20 Exiting(communication error) 10212 94 49 5 Exiting(communication error) 10158 118 49 5 Exiting(communication error) 10169 114 50 4 Exiting(communication error) 10105 141 50 16 Exiting(communication error) 10094 146 50 15 Exiting(communication error) 10115 139 51 17 Exiting(communication error) 10213 93 51 9 Exiting(communication error) 10197 103 51 7 Exiting(communication error) Process: php5 (/usr/local/cpanel/cgi-sys/php5)Pid Active Idle Accesses State 7983 1079 2 149 Ready 7979 1079 11 151 Ready Process: php5 (/usr/local/cpanel/cgi-sys/php5)Pid Active Idle Accesses State 7990 1066 0 57 Ready 8001 1031 64 35 Ready 7999 1032 94 29 Ready 8000 1031 91 36 Ready 8002 1029 34 52 Ready Process: php5 (/usr/local/cpanel/cgi-sys/php5)Pid Active Idle Accesses State 7991 1064 29 115 Ready When it is working nicly there is no lines with "Exiting(communication error)" Active and Idle are time active and time since last request, in seconds. Here are system info. Sysem info: Total processors: 8 Processor #1 Vendor GenuineIntel Name Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5440 @ 2.83GHz Speed 88.320 MHz Cache 6144 KB All other seven are the same. System Information Linux vps.nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.nnn 2.6.18-028stab099.3 #1 SMP Wed Mar 7 15:20:22 MSK 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux Current Memory Usage total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 8388608 882164 7506444 0 0 0 -/+ buffers/cache: 882164 7506444 Swap: 0 0 0 Total: 8388608 882164 7506444 Current Disk Usage Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/vzfs 100G 34G 67G 34% / none System Details: Running on: Apache/2.2.22 System info: (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.22 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 DAV/2 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 mod_fcgid/2.3.6 Powered by: PHP/5.3.10 Current Configuration Default PHP Version (.php files) 5 PHP 5 Handler fcgi PHP 4 Handler suphp Apache suEXEC on Apache Ruid2 off PHP 4 Handler suphp Apache suEXEC on Apache Configuration The following settings have been saved: fileetag: All keepalive: On keepalivetimeout: 3 maxclients: 150 maxkeepaliverequests: 10 maxrequestsperchild: 10000 maxspareservers: 10 minspareservers: 5 root_options: ExecCGI, FollowSymLinks, Includes, IncludesNOEXEC, Indexes, MultiViews, SymLinksIfOwnerMatch serverlimit: 256 serversignature: Off servertokens: Full sslciphersuite: ALL:!ADH:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:-LOW:-SSLv2:-EXP:!kEDH startservers: 5 timeout: 30 I hope, I explained my problem nicely. Any help would be nice.

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"dig +trace fqdn" and "dig fqdn" do not give the same result on a LAN with windows DNS server, why?

- by Sulliwane

in my company LAN I have a Ubuntu 14.04 server running in Virtualbox (as guest) on a Windows 7 (the host) with network interface bridged (so the Ubuntu server belongs to the LAN, with its ip: 192.168.1.85). I have a website on this server: mywebsite.com The gateway for the LAN to the internet is 192.168.1.1 (Cisco 1841)--188.188.188.254 as public IP. There is a Windows 2008 server that acts as DNS server and DHCP server on the LAN. I added a Forward zone "mywebsite.com" with A record - 192.168.1.85. Outside the LAN, mywebsite.com has public Dns records that point on the Cisco 1841 public IP (188.188.188.254) Now when I ping mywebsite.com from the lan, I quickly get 192.168.1.85. But when I'm connecting through the browser on the clients, it's not always fast. So I'm wondering: Are my requests really/directly resolved and forwarded to 192.168.1.85, OR are they sent out of the LAN, and then forwarded back to the CISCO public 188.188.188.254:80 and NAT to the Ubuntu server before being served ??? To try to answer this question, I looked for tracking the DNS request from my linux client on the LAN: v@v-ss9:~$ dig mywebsite.com ; <<>> DiG 9.9.5-3-Ubuntu <<>> mywebsite.com ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 24850 ;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1 ;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION: ; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 4000 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;mywebsite.com. IN A ;; ANSWER SECTION: mywebsite.com. 3600 IN A 192.168.1.85 ;; Query time: 1 msec ;; SERVER: 127.0.1.1#53(127.0.1.1) ;; WHEN: Fri Aug 22 09:50:16 CST 2014 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 66 This answer looks right: 192.168.1.85. But then look at this: v@v-ss9:~$ dig +trace mywebsite.com ; <<>> DiG 9.9.5-3-Ubuntu <<>> +trace mywebsite.com ;; global options: +cmd . 12955 IN NS h.gtld-servers.net. . 12955 IN NS g.gtld-servers.net. . 12955 IN NS m.gtld-servers.net. . 12955 IN NS i.gtld-servers.net. . 12955 IN NS l.gtld-servers.net. . 12955 IN NS k.gtld-servers.net. . 12955 IN NS j.gtld-servers.net. . 12955 IN NS d.gtld-servers.net. . 12955 IN NS b.gtld-servers.net. . 12955 IN NS c.gtld-servers.net. . 12955 IN NS a.gtld-servers.net. . 12955 IN NS e.gtld-servers.net. . 12955 IN NS f.gtld-servers.net. ;; Received 516 bytes from 127.0.1.1#53(127.0.1.1) in 18 ms mywebsite.com. 172800 IN NS ns3.rmi.fr. mywebsite.com. 172800 IN NS ns4.rmi.fr. CK0POJMG874LJREF7EFN8430QVIT8BSM.com. 86400 IN NSEC3 1 1 0 - CK0QFMDQRCSRU0651QLVA1JQB21IF7UR NS SOA RRSIG DNSKEY NSEC3PARAM CK0POJMG874LJREF7EFN8430QVIT8BSM.com. 86400 IN RRSIG NSEC3 8 2 86400 20140825045016 20140818034016 6122 com. Imq8K9xlvFXlB4IjUkdxOc5YHoTEhqSQUlRSJ9QCIhd9wzGpWJ54AfVf WJ0SUKThalpzqS0cXdLGtNmuYgqLfwUMjpUlT4c+zJyx7I4QMPLImQZh Ov0xy3mUr7dLlymAJYGs9dLI2IaheLvpKTBwaV1gAvo8QEkU8VRiJ7gW 9dk= U0PIA23FHMVPTKSDHC9PJ1BEA9SIB65R.com. 86400 IN NSEC3 1 1 0 - U0PL33R61V6TCCPBS1171PROP57ASRD9 NS DS RRSIG U0PIA23FHMVPTKSDHC9PJ1BEA9SIB65R.com. 86400 IN RRSIG NSEC3 8 2 86400 20140825043502 20140818032502 6122 com. qsC5sJbwklao+OedCHpcYo56aQaY0N+7peKmPu8szvjAQoJFRWyuDfAh Nw/gvHXEMzG7tYLriQGVfsiK8GZdPXyG4Ghe1MNN4jOZnSahkT5LjlqL 5QyGC0QiClRMPDAYjUOFGQDkjOJcJYvTNkEyXC2BEpfLI5SwCbYqwqg3 RkE= ;; Received 585 bytes from 192.41.162.30#53(l.gtld-servers.net) in 297 ms mywebsite.com. 86400 IN A 188.188.188.254 mywebsite.com. 86400 IN NS ns3.rmi.fr. mywebsite.com. 86400 IN NS ns4.rmi.fr. ;; Received 204 bytes from 212.51.161.18#53(ns3.rmi.fr) in 310 ms Here I get my CISCO public IP 188.188.188.254!!! Is it normal? How to know if my browser (from the LAN) is really directly communicating with 192.168.1.85 when using mywebsite.com? Thank you for your help.

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All Xen domU LVM volumes corrupt after reboot

- by zcs

I'm running a Debian Squeeze dom0, and after rebooting it all 7 of my domUs have data corruption. Each is setup as ext3 partition directly on a separate lvm2 volume. None of the lvm volumes will mount; all have bad superblocks. I've tried e2fsck with each superblock to no avail. What else can I try? Each domU has two LVM volumes connected to it, one for the disk and one for swap. The disk is mounted at root, formatted as a normal ext3 partition as a xen-blk device. The volumes are never mounted outside of the guest OS. I'm running Ubuntu 11.04 using the instructions here. I'm not sure that they didn't shutdown properly, all I know is they were corrupt after I issues a clean 'reboot' on the dom0. Here's a sample Xen config file; the rest are the same except for name, vcpus, memory, vif and disk. name = 'load1' vcpus = 2 memory = 512 vif = ['bridge=prbr0', 'bridge=eth0'] disk = ['phy:/dev/VolGroup00/load1-disk,xvda,w','phy:/dev/VolGroup00/load1-swap,xvdb,w'] #============================================================================ # Debian Installer specific variables def check_bool(name, value): value = str(value).lower() if value in ('t', 'tr', 'tru', 'true'): return True return False global var_check_with_default def var_check_with_default(default, var, val): if val: return val return default xm_vars.var('install', use='Install Debian, default: false', check=check_bool) xm_vars.var("install-method", use='Installation method to use "cdrom" or "network" (default: network)', check=lambda var, val: var_check_with_default('network', var, val)) # install-method == "network" xm_vars.var("install-mirror", use='Debian mirror to install from (default: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu)', check=lambda var, val: var_check_with_default('http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu', var, val)) xm_vars.var("install-suite", use='Debian suite to install (default: natty)', check=lambda var, val: var_check_with_default('natty', var, val)) # install-method == "cdrom" xm_vars.var("install-media", use='Installation media to use (default: None)', check=lambda var, val: var_check_with_default(None, var, val)) xm_vars.var("install-cdrom-device", use='Installation media to use (default: xvdd)', check=lambda var, val: var_check_with_default('xvdd', var, val)) # Common options xm_vars.var("install-arch", use='Debian mirror to install from (default: amd64)', check=lambda var, val: var_check_with_default('amd64', var, val)) xm_vars.var("install-extra", use='Extra command line options (default: None)', check=lambda var, val: var_check_with_default(None, var, val)) xm_vars.var("install-installer", use='Debian installer to use (default: network uses install-mirror; cdrom uses /install.ARCH)', check=lambda var, val: var_check_with_default(None, var, val)) xm_vars.var("install-kernel", use='Debian installer kernel to use (default: uses install-installer)', check=lambda var, val: var_check_with_default(None, var, val)) xm_vars.var("install-ramdisk", use='Debian installer ramdisk to use (default: uses install-installer)', check=lambda var, val: var_check_with_default(None, var, val)) xm_vars.check() if not xm_vars.env.get('install'): bootloader="/usr/sbin/pygrub" elif xm_vars.env['install-method'] == "network": import os.path print "Install Mirror: %s" % xm_vars.env['install-mirror'] print "Install Suite: %s" % xm_vars.env['install-suite'] if xm_vars.env['install-installer']: installer = xm_vars.env['install-installer'] else: installer = xm_vars.env['install-mirror']+"/dists/"+xm_vars.env['install-suite'] + \ "/main/installer-"+xm_vars.env['install-arch']+"/current/images" print "Installer: %s" % installer print print "WARNING: Installer kernel and ramdisk are not authenticated." print if xm_vars.env.get('install-kernel'): kernelurl = xm_vars.env['install-kernel'] else: kernelurl = installer + "/netboot/xen/vmlinuz" if xm_vars.env.get('install-ramdisk'): ramdiskurl = xm_vars.env['install-ramdisk'] else: ramdiskurl = installer + "/netboot/xen/initrd.gz" import urllib class MyUrlOpener(urllib.FancyURLopener): def http_error_default(self, req, fp, code, msg, hdrs): raise IOError("%s %s" % (code, msg)) urlopener = MyUrlOpener() try: print "Fetching %s" % kernelurl kernel, _ = urlopener.retrieve(kernelurl) print "Fetching %s" % ramdiskurl ramdisk, _ = urlopener.retrieve(ramdiskurl) except IOError, _: raise elif xm_vars.env['install-method'] == "cdrom": arch_path = { 'i386': "/install.386", 'amd64': "/install.amd" } if xm_vars.env['install-media']: print "Install Media: %s" % xm_vars.env['install-media'] else: raise OptionError("No installation media given.") if xm_vars.env['install-installer']: installer = xm_vars.env['install-installer'] else: installer = arch_path[xm_vars.env['install-arch']] print "Installer: %s" % installer if xm_vars.env.get('install-kernel'): kernelpath = xm_vars.env['install-kernel'] else: kernelpath = installer + "/xen/vmlinuz" if xm_vars.env.get('install-ramdisk'): ramdiskpath = xm_vars.env['install-ramdisk'] else: ramdiskpath = installer + "/xen/initrd.gz" disk.insert(0, 'file:%s,%s:cdrom,r' % (xm_vars.env['install-media'], xm_vars.env['install-cdrom-device'])) bootloader="/usr/sbin/pygrub" bootargs="--kernel=%s --ramdisk=%s" % (kernelpath, ramdiskpath) print "From CD" else: print "WARNING: Unknown install-method: %s." % xm_vars.env['install-method'] if xm_vars.env.get('install'): # Figure out command line if xm_vars.env['install-extra']: extras=[xm_vars.env['install-extra']] else: extras=[] # Reboot will just restart the installer since this file is not # reparsed, so halt and restart that way. extras.append("debian-installer/exit/always_halt=true") extras.append("--") extras.append("quiet") console="hvc0" try: if len(vfb) >= 1: console="tty0" except NameError, e: pass extras.append("console="+ console) extra = str.join(" ", extras) print "command line is \"%s\"" % extra root There are two LVM logical volumes connected to each VM. Here's the fdisk -l output for the disk volume: Disk /dev/VolGroup00/VMNAME-disk: 8589 MB, 8589934592 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1044 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00029c01 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/VolGroup00/VMNAME-disk1 1 1045 8386560 83 Linux And the swap volume: Disk /dev/VolGroup00/VMNAME-swap: 536 MB, 536870912 bytes 37 heads, 35 sectors/track, 809 cylinders Units = cylinders of 1295 * 512 = 663040 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x0004faae Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/VolGroup00/VMNAME-swap1 2 809 522240 82 Linux swap / Solaris Partition 1 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?): phys=(0, 32, 33) logical=(1, 21, 19) Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings: phys=(65, 36, 35) logical=(808, 4, 28)

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How does one get rid of fishy behavior in Windows?

- by Tom Wijsman

After I had boot my computer this morning there suddenly flooded water from the top of the screen, after which some fishes dropped into it. Now I can barely see what I am doing because the water distorts the view. Sometimes the fish follow the cursor so I need to move it away or wait for the fish to mind their own business. This makes it very annoying to use my system. What have I tried? Reboot the system. This caused the water to deplete from the desktop. Upon reboot, the screen was refilled with water and fishes. Attach another monitor. Same problem, fills that monitor as well and gives me extra fish. Clicking the fish. Makes them turn direction. Right clicking the fish. Changes color of the fish, not really useful. I'm locked out of changing the background or screen saver settings. Hence, I had to post the lady below... Safe mode doesn't save me from the fishes. It does give me another background there, but I can't screenshot easily. Other user accounts experience this as well. The Guest account seems to experience more fish than the other accounts. Using HijackThis, OTL Timekeeper List, Syninternal Autoruns, RootKitRevealer, ShellExView and similar tools I can't seem to find any entries that could be it, the Sysinternals tools show everything as verified. I'm suspecting this to be a driver problem. Randomly removing drivers doesn't seem to alleviate the problem. When removing the Graphics Drivers, it makes my screen black. While that could be considered the solution, it's not what I want. Changing the time / date settings does also not seem to affect the fishes. Changing the time a few years in the future, I would have expected the fishes to be dead. But, the same fishes are still there... They simply won't die! Tried to get used to them. They are really bothering me, looks like they require food. I don't know how to give them food, but apparently they get it elsewhere during reboot... Tried to disable my mouse pointer and use the keyboard. This works, they now swim around more randomly. They do put their attention to huge changes on the screen, so I need to type slow. Or otherwise I can't see what I'm tying exactly. Hold my laptop upside down. This seems to affect the water and fishes, but the water stays in the screen. They seem super resistant against water sickness and confusion though... What does the problem look like? What do I need? A way to get rid of these fishes on my screen forever, they are really annoying me a lot and I'm about to crack the screen to see if that makes them escape. Do you have any idea why this problem is occurring? What are my considerations? Buying an USB fish tank could make the fish leave the screen, I am uncertain though whether the fish could leave the screen through the USB cable. Using the FISh (programming language) which seems to provide EXPRESSIVE POWER and EFFICIENT EXECUTION, I can however not find any examples on how to remove fish. What are my Specifications? I'm using a Sony Vaio Fishy laptop. Sony VAIO VGN-Fishy, VAIO. Processor: 1337 MHz, Intel Core 2 Duo, T5432, 1 MB, Intel PM965 Express, 667 MHz. Memory: 1024 MB, DDR2-SDRAM, 667 MHz, 2 x 1024 MB, 4 GB. Disk Drive: 50 GB, Serial ATA, 5400 RPM. Storage Media: Memory Stick™, Memory Stick PRO™. Display: 15.4 ", 1280 x 800 pixels, LCD. Video: GeForce 8400M GT, 128 MB. Optical Drive: DVD±R/RW DL, 24 x, 24 x, 24 x, 6 x, 4 x, 6 x, 4 x, 5 x, 5 x, 8 x, 8 x, 8 x, 8 x, 6 x, 6 x, 24 x, 24 x, 24 x, 16 x. Camera: 1.3 MP, 30 fps. Networking: 2.0+EDR. Keyboard: Touchpad, AZERTY. Operating System/Software: Windows Vista Home Premium. Security: Kensington. Weight & Dimensions: 98.8 oz (2800 g), 14 " (355.8 mm), 10 " (254.4 mm), 0.98 " (24.9 mm). Other features: 100 BASE-TX/10 BASE-T, 802.11a/b/g/n/Draft n, V92/V.90, fishes. Plz! Help me...

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Xen DomU on DRBD device: barrier errors

- by Halfgaar

I'm testing setting up a Xen DomU with a DRBD storage for easy failover. Most of the time, immediatly after booting the DomU, I get an IO error: [ 3.153370] EXT3-fs (xvda2): using internal journal [ 3.277115] ip_tables: (C) 2000-2006 Netfilter Core Team [ 3.336014] nf_conntrack version 0.5.0 (3899 buckets, 15596 max) [ 3.515604] init: failsafe main process (397) killed by TERM signal [ 3.801589] blkfront: barrier: write xvda2 op failed [ 3.801597] blkfront: xvda2: barrier or flush: disabled [ 3.801611] end_request: I/O error, dev xvda2, sector 52171168 [ 3.801630] end_request: I/O error, dev xvda2, sector 52171168 [ 3.801642] Buffer I/O error on device xvda2, logical block 6521396 [ 3.801652] lost page write due to I/O error on xvda2 [ 3.801755] Aborting journal on device xvda2. [ 3.804415] EXT3-fs (xvda2): error: ext3_journal_start_sb: Detected aborted journal [ 3.804434] EXT3-fs (xvda2): error: remounting filesystem read-only [ 3.814754] journal commit I/O error [ 6.973831] init: udev-fallback-graphics main process (538) terminated with status 1 [ 6.992267] init: plymouth-splash main process (546) terminated with status 1 The manpage of drbdsetup says that LVM (which I use) doesn't support barriers (better known as tagged command queuing or native command queing), so I configured the drbd device not to use barriers. This can be seen in /proc/drbd (by "wo:f, meaning flush, the next method drbd chooses after barrier): 3: cs:Connected ro:Primary/Secondary ds:UpToDate/UpToDate C r---- ns:2160152 nr:520204 dw:2680344 dr:2678107 al:3549 bm:9183 lo:0 pe:0 ua:0 ap:0 ep:1 wo:f oos:0 And on the other host: 3: cs:Connected ro:Secondary/Primary ds:UpToDate/UpToDate C r---- ns:0 nr:2160152 dw:2160152 dr:0 al:0 bm:8052 lo:0 pe:0 ua:0 ap:0 ep:1 wo:f oos:0 I also enabled the option disable_sendpage, as per the drbd docs: cat /sys/module/drbd/parameters/disable_sendpage Y I also tried adding barriers=0 to fstab as mount option. Still it sometimes says: [ 58.603896] blkfront: barrier: write xvda2 op failed [ 58.603903] blkfront: xvda2: barrier or flush: disabled I don't even know if ext3 has a nobarrier option. And, because only one of my storage systems is battery backed, it would not be smart anyway. Why does it still compain about barriers when I disabled that? Both host are: Debian: 6.0.4 uname -a: Linux 2.6.32-5-xen-amd64 drbd: 8.3.7 Xen: 4.0.1 Guest: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS uname -a: Linux 3.2.0-24-generic pvops drbd resource: resource drbdvm { meta-disk internal; device /dev/drbd3; startup { # The timeout value when the last known state of the other side was available. 0 means infinite. wfc-timeout 0; # Timeout value when the last known state was disconnected. 0 means infinite. degr-wfc-timeout 180; } syncer { # This is recommended only for low-bandwidth lines, to only send those # blocks which really have changed. #csums-alg md5; # Set to about half your net speed rate 60M; # It seems that this option moved to the 'net' section in drbd 8.4. (later release than Debian has currently) verify-alg md5; } net { # The manpage says this is recommended only in pre-production (because of its performance), to determine # if your LAN card has a TCP checksum offloading bug. #data-integrity-alg md5; } disk { # Detach causes the device to work over-the-network-only after the # underlying disk fails. Detach is not default for historical reasons, but is # recommended by the docs. # However, the Debian defaults in drbd.conf suggest the machine will reboot in that event... on-io-error detach; # LVM doesn't support barriers, so disabling it. It will revert to flush. Check wo: in /proc/drbd. If you don't disable it, you get IO errors. no-disk-barrier; } on host1 { # universe is a VG disk /dev/universe/drbdvm-disk; address 10.0.0.1:7792; } on host2 { # universe is a VG disk /dev/universe/drbdvm-disk; address 10.0.0.2:7792; } } DomU cfg: bootloader = '/usr/lib/xen-default/bin/pygrub' vcpus = '2' memory = '512' # # Disk device(s). # root = '/dev/xvda2 ro' disk = [ 'phy:/dev/drbd3,xvda2,w', 'phy:/dev/universe/drbdvm-swap,xvda1,w', ] # # Hostname # name = 'drbdvm' # # Networking # # fake IP for posting vif = [ 'ip=1.2.3.4,mac=00:16:3E:22:A8:A7' ] # # Behaviour # on_poweroff = 'destroy' on_reboot = 'restart' on_crash = 'restart' In my test setup: the primary host's storage is 9650SE SATA-II RAID PCIe with battery. The secondary is software RAID1. Isn't DRBD+Xen widely used? With these problems, it's not going to work.

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Why is the latency on one LVM volume consistently higher?

- by David Schmitt

I've got a server with LVM over RAID1. One of the volumes has a consistently higher IO latency (as measured by the diskstats_latency munin plugin) than the other volumes from the same group. As you can see, the dark orange /root volume has consistently high IO latency. Actually ten times the average latency of the physical devices. It also has the highest Min and Max values. My main concern are not the peaks, which occur under high load, but the constant load on (semi-)idle. The server is running Debian Squeeze with the VServer kernel and has four VServer containers and one KVM guest. I'm looking for ways to fix - or at least understand - this situation. Here're some parts of the system configuration: root@kvmhost2:~# df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/system--host-root 19G 3.8G 14G 22% / tmpfs 16G 0 16G 0% /lib/init/rw udev 16G 224K 16G 1% /dev tmpfs 16G 0 16G 0% /dev/shm /dev/md0 942M 37M 858M 5% /boot /dev/mapper/system--host-isos 28G 19G 8.1G 70% /srv/isos /dev/mapper/system--host-vs_a 30G 23G 6.0G 79% /var/lib/vservers/a /dev/mapper/system--host-vs_b 5.0G 594M 4.1G 13% /var/lib/vservers/b /dev/mapper/system--host-vs_c 5.0G 555M 4.2G 12% /var/lib/vservers/c /dev/loop0 4.4G 4.4G 0 100% /media/debian-6.0.0-amd64-DVD-1 /dev/loop1 4.4G 4.4G 0 100% /media/debian-6.0.0-i386-DVD-1 /dev/mapper/system--host-vs_d 74G 55G 16G 78% /var/lib/vservers/d root@kvmhost2:~# cat /proc/mounts rootfs / rootfs rw 0 0 none /sys sysfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0 none /proc proc rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0 none /dev devtmpfs rw,relatime,size=16500836k,nr_inodes=4125209,mode=755 0 0 none /dev/pts devpts rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000 0 0 /dev/mapper/system--host-root / ext3 rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro,data=ordered 0 0 tmpfs /lib/init/rw tmpfs rw,nosuid,relatime,mode=755 0 0 tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime 0 0 fusectl /sys/fs/fuse/connections fusectl rw,relatime 0 0 /dev/md0 /boot ext3 rw,sync,relatime,errors=continue,data=ordered 0 0 /dev/mapper/system--host-isos /srv/isos ext3 rw,relatime,errors=continue,data=ordered 0 0 /dev/mapper/system--host-vs_a /var/lib/vservers/a ext3 rw,relatime,errors=continue,data=ordered 0 0 /dev/mapper/system--host-vs_b /var/lib/vservers/b ext3 rw,relatime,errors=continue,data=ordered 0 0 /dev/mapper/system--host-vs_c /var/lib/vservers/c ext3 rw,relatime,errors=continue,data=ordered 0 0 /dev/loop0 /media/debian-6.0.0-amd64-DVD-1 iso9660 ro,relatime 0 0 /dev/loop1 /media/debian-6.0.0-i386-DVD-1 iso9660 ro,relatime 0 0 /dev/mapper/system--host-vs_d /var/lib/vservers/d ext3 rw,relatime,errors=continue,data=ordered 0 0 root@kvmhost2:~# cat /proc/mdstat Personalities : [raid1] md1 : active raid1 sda2[0] sdb2[1] 975779968 blocks [2/2] [UU] md0 : active raid1 sda1[0] sdb1[1] 979840 blocks [2/2] [UU] unused devices: <none> root@kvmhost2:~# iostat -x Linux 2.6.32-5-vserver-amd64 (kvmhost2) 06/28/2012 _x86_64_ (8 CPU) avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle 3.09 0.14 2.92 1.51 0.00 92.35 Device: rrqm/s wrqm/s r/s w/s rsec/s wsec/s avgrq-sz avgqu-sz await svctm %util sda 23.25 161.12 7.46 37.90 855.27 1596.62 54.05 0.13 2.80 1.76 8.00 sdb 22.82 161.36 7.36 37.66 850.29 1596.62 54.35 0.54 12.01 1.80 8.09 md0 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.14 0.02 38.44 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 md1 0.00 0.00 53.55 198.16 768.01 1585.25 9.35 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 dm-0 0.00 0.00 0.48 20.21 16.70 161.71 8.62 0.26 12.72 0.77 1.60 dm-1 0.00 0.00 3.62 10.03 28.94 80.21 8.00 0.19 13.68 1.59 2.17 dm-2 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 9.17 0.00 9.64 6.42 0.00 dm-3 0.00 0.00 6.73 0.41 53.87 3.28 8.00 0.02 3.44 0.12 0.09 dm-4 0.00 0.00 17.45 18.18 139.57 145.47 8.00 0.42 11.81 0.76 2.69 dm-5 0.00 0.00 2.50 46.38 120.50 371.07 10.06 0.69 14.20 0.46 2.26 dm-6 0.00 0.00 0.02 0.10 0.67 0.81 12.53 0.01 75.53 18.58 0.22 dm-7 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 7.99 0.00 11.24 9.45 0.00 dm-8 0.00 0.00 22.69 102.76 407.25 822.09 9.80 0.97 7.71 0.39 4.95 dm-9 0.00 0.00 0.06 0.08 0.50 0.62 8.00 0.07 481.23 11.72 0.16 root@kvmhost2:~# ls -l /dev/mapper/ total 0 crw------- 1 root root 10, 59 May 11 11:19 control lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Jun 5 15:08 system--host-kvm1 -> ../dm-4 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Jun 5 15:08 system--host-kvm2 -> ../dm-3 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Jun 5 15:06 system--host-isos -> ../dm-2 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 May 11 11:19 system--host-root -> ../dm-0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Jun 5 15:06 system--host-swap -> ../dm-9 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Jun 5 15:06 system--host-vs_d -> ../dm-8 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Jun 5 15:06 system--host-vs_b -> ../dm-6 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Jun 5 15:06 system--host-vs_c -> ../dm-7 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Jun 5 15:06 system--host-vs_a -> ../dm-5 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Jun 5 15:08 system--host-kvm3 -> ../dm-1 root@kvmhost2:~#

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LXC Container Networking

- by digitaladdictions

I just started to experiment with LXC containers. I was able to create a container and start it up but I cannot get dhcp to assign the container an IP address. If I assign a static address the container can ping the host IP but not outside the host IP. The host is CentOS 6.5 and the guest is Ubuntu 14.04LTS. I used the template downloaded by lxc-create -t download -n cn-01 command. If I am trying to get an IP address on the same subnet as the host I don't believe I should need the IP tables rule for masquerading but I added it anyways. Same with IP forwarding. I compiled LXC by hand from the following source https://linuxcontainers.org/downloads/lxc-1.0.4.tar.gz Host Operating System Version #> cat /etc/redhat-release CentOS release 6.5 (Final) #> uname -a Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.32-431.20.3.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Thu Jun 19 21:14:45 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux Container Config #> cat /usr/local/var/lib/lxc/cn-01/config # Template used to create this container: /usr/local/share/lxc/templates/lxc-download # Parameters passed to the template: # For additional config options, please look at lxc.container.conf(5) # Distribution configuration lxc.include = /usr/local/share/lxc/config/ubuntu.common.conf lxc.arch = x86_64 # Container specific configuration lxc.rootfs = /usr/local/var/lib/lxc/cn-01/rootfs lxc.utsname = cn-01 # Network configuration lxc.network.type = veth lxc.network.flags = up lxc.network.link = br0 LXC default.confu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP qlen 1000 link/ether 00:0c:29:12:30:f2 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:f #> cat /usr/local/etc/lxc/default.conf lxc.network.type = veth lxc.network.link = br0 lxc.network.flags = up #> lxc-checkconfig Kernel configuration not found at /proc/config.gz; searching... Kernel configuration found at /boot/config-2.6.32-431.20.3.el6.x86_64 --- Namespaces --- Namespaces: enabled Utsname namespace: enabled Ipc namespace: enabled Pid namespace: enabled User namespace: enabled Network namespace: enabled Multiple /dev/pts instances: enabled --- Control groups --- Cgroup: enabled Cgroup namespace: enabled Cgroup device: enabled Cgroup sched: enabled Cgroup cpu account: enabled Cgroup memory controller: /usr/local/bin/lxc-checkconfig: line 103: [: too many arguments enabled Cgroup cpuset: enabled --- Misc --- Veth pair device: enabled Macvlan: enabled Vlan: enabled File capabilities: /usr/local/bin/lxc-checkconfig: line 118: [: -gt: unary operator expected Note : Before booting a new kernel, you can check its configuration usage : CONFIG=/path/to/config /usr/local/bin/lxc-checkconfig Network Config (HOST) #> cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-br0 DEVICE=br0 TYPE=Bridge BOOTPROTO=dhcp ONBOOT=yes #> cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 DEVICE=eth0 ONBOOT=yes TYPE=Ethernet IPV6INIT=no USERCTL=no BRIDGE=br0 #> cat /etc/networks default 0.0.0.0 loopback 127.0.0.0 link-local 169.254.0.0 #> ip a s 1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 16436 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00 inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo inet6 ::1/128 scope host valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever 2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP qlen 1000 link/ether 00:0c:29:12:30:f2 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff inet6 fe80::20c:29ff:fe12:30f2/64 scope link valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever 3: pan0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN link/ether 42:7e:43:b3:61:c5 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff 4: br0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN link/ether 00:0c:29:12:30:f2 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff inet 10.60.70.121/24 brd 10.60.70.255 scope global br0 inet6 fe80::20c:29ff:fe12:30f2/64 scope link valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever 12: vethT6BGL2: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP qlen 1000 link/ether fe:a1:69:af:50:17 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff inet6 fe80::fca1:69ff:feaf:5017/64 scope link valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever #> brctl show bridge name bridge id STP enabled interfaces br0 8000.000c291230f2 no eth0 vethT6BGL2 pan0 8000.000000000000 no #> cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward 1 # Generated by iptables-save v1.4.7 on Fri Jul 11 15:11:36 2014 *nat :PREROUTING ACCEPT [34:6287] :POSTROUTING ACCEPT [0:0] :OUTPUT ACCEPT [0:0] -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE COMMIT # Completed on Fri Jul 11 15:11:36 2014 Network Config (Container) #> cat /etc/network/interfaces # This file describes the network interfaces available on your system # and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5). # The loopback network interface auto lo iface lo inet loopback auto eth0 iface eth0 inet dhcp #> ip a s 11: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP qlen 1000 link/ether 02:69:fb:42:ee:d7 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff inet6 fe80::69:fbff:fe42:eed7/64 scope link valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever 13: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 16436 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00 inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo inet6 ::1/128 scope host valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

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I would like to filter XSL output based on a Radio button selection

- by Phil Speth

Here is my example I am trying to filter by year based on user selection: I assume some js or jQuery code would be needed: XML file: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <catalog> <cd> <title>Empire Burlesque3</title> <artist>Bob Dylan</artist> <country>USA</country> <company>Columbia</company> <price>10.90</price> <year>1985</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Hide your heart</title> <artist>Bonnie Tyler</artist> <country>UK</country> <company>CBS Records</company> <price>9.90</price> <year>1988</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Greatest Hits</title> <artist>Dolly Parton</artist> <country>USA</country> <company>RCA</company> <price>9.90</price> <year>1982</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Still got the blues</title> <artist>Gary Moore</artist> <country>UK</country> <company>Virgin records</company> <price>10.20</price> <year>1990</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Eros</title> <artist>Eros Ramazzotti</artist> <country>EU</country> <company>BMG</company> <price>9.90</price> <year>1997</year> </cd> <cd> <title>One night only</title> <artist>Bee Gees</artist> <country>UK</country> <company>Polydor</company> <price>10.90</price> <year>1998</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Sylvias Mother</title> <artist>Dr.Hook</artist> <country>UK</country> <company>CBS</company> <price>8.10</price> <year>1973</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Maggie May</title> <artist>Rod Stewart</artist> <country>UK</country> <company>Pickwick</company> <price>8.50</price> <year>1990</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Romanza</title> <artist>Andrea Bocelli</artist> <country>EU</country> <company>Polydor</company> <price>10.80</price> <year>1996</year> </cd> <cd> <title>When a man loves a woman</title> <artist>Percy Sledge</artist> <country>USA</country> <company>Atlantic</company> <price>8.70</price> <year>1987</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Black angel</title> <artist>Savage Rose</artist> <country>EU</country> <company>Mega</company> <price>10.90</price> <year>1995</year> </cd> <cd> <title>1999 Grammy Nominees</title> <artist>Many</artist> <country>USA</country> <company>Grammy</company> <price>10.20</price> <year>1999</year> </cd> <cd> <title>For the good times</title> <artist>Kenny Rogers</artist> <country>UK</country> <company>Mucik Master</company> <price>8.70</price> <year>1995</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Big Willie style</title> <artist>Will Smith</artist> <country>USA</country> <company>Columbia</company> <price>9.90</price> <year>1997</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Tupelo Honey</title> <artist>Van Morrison</artist> <country>UK</country> <company>Polydor</company> <price>8.20</price> <year>1971</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Soulsville</title> <artist>Jorn Hoel</artist> <country>Norway</country> <company>WEA</company> <price>7.90</price> <year>1996</year> </cd> <cd> <title>The very best of</title> <artist>Cat Stevens</artist> <country>UK</country> <company>Island</company> <price>8.90</price> <year>1990</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Stop</title> <artist>Sam Brown</artist> <country>UK</country> <company>A and M</company> <price>8.90</price> <year>1988</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Bridge of Spies</title> <artist>T`Pau</artist> <country>UK</country> <company>Siren</company> <price>7.90</price> <year>1987</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Private Dancer</title> <artist>Tina Turner</artist> <country>UK</country> <company>Capitol</company> <price>8.90</price> <year>1983</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Midt om natten</title> <artist>Kim Larsen</artist> <country>EU</country> <company>Medley</company> <price>7.80</price> <year>1983</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Pavarotti Gala Concert</title> <artist>Luciano Pavarotti</artist> <country>UK</country> <company>DECCA</company> <price>9.90</price> <year>1991</year> </cd> <cd> <title>The dock of the bay</title> <artist>Otis Redding</artist> <country>USA</country> <company>Atlantic</company> <price>7.90</price> <year>1987</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Picture book</title> <artist>Simply Red</artist> <country>EU</country> <company>Elektra</company> <price>7.20</price> <year>1985</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Red</title> <artist>The Communards</artist> <country>UK</country> <company>London</company> <price>7.80</price> <year>1987</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Unchain my heart</title> <artist>Joe Cocker</artist> <country>USA</country> <company>EMI</company> <price>8.20</price> <year>1987</year> </cd> </catalog> XSL File: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>  <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"> <xsl:template match="/"> <html> <body> <input type="radio" name="Cost" value="1980" checked="checked" /> 1980 <input type="radio" name="Cost" value="1990" /> 1990 <h2>My CD Collection</h2> <table border="1"> <tr bgcolor="#9acd32"> <th>Title</th> <th>Artist</th> </tr> <xsl:for-each select="catalog/cd"> <xsl:if test="year>1990"> <tr> <td><xsl:value-of select="title"/></td> <td><xsl:value-of select="artist"/></td> <td><xsl:value-of select="year"/></td> </tr> </xsl:if> </xsl:for-each> </table> </body> </html> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet>

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Select number of rows for each group where two column values makes one group

- by Fábio Antunes

I have a two select statements joined by UNION ALL. In the first statement a where clause gathers only rows that have been shown previously to the user. The second statement gathers all rows that haven't been shown to the user, therefore I end up with the viewed results first and non-viewed results after. Of course this could simply be achieved with the same select statement using a simple ORDER BY, however the reason for two separate selects is simple after you realize what I hope to accomplish. Consider the following structure and data. +----+------+-----+--------+------+ | id | from | to | viewed | data | +----+------+-----+--------+------+ | 1 | 1 | 10 | true | .... | | 2 | 10 | 1 | true | .... | | 3 | 1 | 10 | true | .... | | 4 | 6 | 8 | true | .... | | 5 | 1 | 10 | true | .... | | 6 | 10 | 1 | true | .... | | 7 | 8 | 6 | true | .... | | 8 | 10 | 1 | true | .... | | 9 | 6 | 8 | true | .... | | 10 | 2 | 3 | true | .... | | 11 | 1 | 10 | true | .... | | 12 | 8 | 6 | true | .... | | 13 | 10 | 1 | false | .... | | 14 | 1 | 10 | false | .... | | 15 | 6 | 8 | false | .... | | 16 | 10 | 1 | false | .... | | 17 | 8 | 6 | false | .... | | 18 | 3 | 2 | false | .... | +----+------+-----+--------+------+ Basically I wish all non viewed rows to be selected by the statement, that is accomplished by checking weather the viewed column is true or false, pretty simple and straightforward, nothing to worry here. However when it comes to the rows already viewed, meaning the column viewed is TRUE, for those records I only want 3 rows to be returned for each group. The appropriate result in this instance should be the 3 most recent rows of each group. +----+------+-----+--------+------+ | id | from | to | viewed | data | +----+------+-----+--------+------+ | 6 | 10 | 1 | true | .... | | 7 | 8 | 6 | true | .... | | 8 | 10 | 1 | true | .... | | 9 | 6 | 8 | true | .... | | 10 | 2 | 3 | true | .... | | 11 | 1 | 10 | true | .... | | 12 | 8 | 6 | true | .... | +----+------+-----+--------+------+ As you see from the ideal result set we have three groups. Therefore the desired query for the viewed results should show a maximum of 3 rows for each grouping it finds. In this case these groupings were 10 with 1 and 8 with 6, both which had three rows to be shown, while the other group 2 with 3 only had one row to be shown. Please note that where from = x and to = y, makes the same grouping as if it was from = y and to = x. Therefore considering the first grouping (10 with 1), from = 10 and to = 1 is the same group if it was from = 1 and to = 10. However there are plenty of groups in the whole table that I only wish the 3 most recent of each to be returned in the select statement, and thats my problem, I not sure how that can be accomplished in the most efficient way possible considering the table will have hundreds if not thousands of records at some point. Thanks for your help. Note: The columns id, from, to and viewed are indexed, that should help with performance. PS: I'm unsure on how to name this question exactly, if you have a better idea, be my guest and edit the title.

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Creating a second login page that automatically logs in the user

- by nsilva

I have a login page as follows: <form action="?" method="post" id="frm-useracc-login" name="frm-useracc-login" > <div id="login-username-wrap" > <div class="login-input-item left"> <div class="div-search-label left"> <div id="div-leftheader-wrap"> <p class="a-topheader-infotext left"><strong>Username: </strong></p> </div> </div> <div class="login-input-content left div-subrow-style ui-corner-all"> <input type="text" tabindex="1" name="txt-username" id="txt-username" class="input-txt-med required addr-search-input txt-username left"> </div> </div> </div> <div id="login-password-wrap" > <div class="login-input-item left"> <div class="div-search-label left"> <div id="div-leftheader-wrap"> <p class="a-topheader-infotext left"><strong>Password: </strong></p> </div> </div> <div class="login-input-content left div-subrow-style ui-corner-all"> <input type="password" tabindex="1" name="txt-password" id="txt-password" class="input-txt-med required addr-search-input txt-password left"> </div> </div> </div> <div id="login-btn-bottom" class="centre-div"> <div id="login-btn-right"> <button name="btn-login" id="btn-login" class="btn-med ui-button ui-state-default ui-button-text-only ui-corner-all btn-hover-anim btn-row-wrapper left">Login</button> <button name="btn-cancel" id="btn-cancel" class="btn-med ui-button ui-state-default ui-button-text-only ui-corner-all btn-hover-anim btn-row-wrapper left">Cancel</button><br /><br /> </div> </div> </form> And here my session.controller.php file: Click Here Basically, what I want to do is create a second login page that automatically passes the value to the session controller and logs in. For example, if I go to login-guest.php, I would put the default values for username and password and then have a jquery click event that automatically logs them in using $("#btn-login").trigger('click'); The problem is that the session controller automatically goes back to login.php if the session has timed out and I'm not sure how I could go about achieving this. Any help would be much appreciated!

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Rails: (Devise) Two different methods for new users?

- by neezer

I have a Rails 3 app with authentication setup using Devise with the registerable module enabled. I want to have new users who sign up using our outside register form to use the full Devise registerable module, which is happening now. However, I also want the admin user to be able to create new users directly, bypassing (I think) Devise's registerable module. With registerable disabled, my standard UsersController works as I want it to for the admin user, just like any other Rail scaffold. However, now new users can't register on their own. With registerable enabled, my standard UsersController is never called for the new user action (calling Devise::RegistrationsController instead), and my CRUD actions don't seem to work at all (I get dumped back onto my root page with no new user created and no flash message). Here's the log from the request: Started POST "/users" for 127.0.0.1 at 2010-12-20 11:49:31 -0500 Processing by Devise::RegistrationsController#create as HTML Parameters: {"utf8"=>"?", "authenticity_token"=>"18697r4syNNWHfMTkDCwcDYphjos+68rPFsaYKVjo8Y=", "user"=>{"email"=>"[email protected]", "password"=>"[FILTERED]", "password_confirmation"=>"[FILTERED]", "role"=>"manager"}, "commit"=>"Create User"} SQL (0.9ms) ... User Load (0.6ms) SELECT "users".* FROM "users" WHERE ("users"."id" = 2) LIMIT 1 SQL (0.9ms) ... Redirected to http://test-app.local/ Completed 302 Found in 192ms ... but I am able to register new users through the outside form. How can I get both of these methods to work together, such that my admin user can manually create new users and guest users can register on their own? I have my Users controller setup for standard CRUD: class UsersController < ApplicationController load_and_authorize_resource def index @users = User.where("id NOT IN (?)", current_user.id) # don't display the current user in the users list; go to account management to edit current user details end def new @user = User.new end def create @user = User.new(params[:user]) if @user.save flash[:notice] = "#{ @user.email } created." redirect_to users_path else render :action => 'new' end end def edit end def update params[:user].delete(:password) if params[:user][:password].blank? params[:user].delete(:password_confirmation) if params[:user][:password].blank? and params[:user][:password_confirmation].blank? if @user.update_attributes(params[:user]) flash[:notice] = "Successfully updated User." redirect_to users_path else render :action => 'edit' end end def delete end def destroy redirect_to users_path and return if params[:cancel] if @user.destroy flash[:notice] = "#{ @user.email } deleted." redirect_to users_path end end end And my routes setup as follows: TestApp::Application.routes.draw do devise_for :users devise_scope :user do get "/login", :to => "devise/sessions#new", :as => :new_user_session get "/logout", :to => "devise/sessions#destroy", :as => :destroy_user_session end resources :users do get :delete, :on => :member end authenticate :user do root :to => "application#index" end root :to => "devise/session#new" end

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Issue 15: Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ Oracle OpenWorld

- by rituchhibber

ORACLE FOCUS Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange@ ORACLE OpenWorld Sylvie MichouSenior DirectorPartner Marketing & Communications and Strategic Programs RESOURCES -- Oracle OpenWorld 2012 Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ OpenWorld Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ OpenWorld Registration Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange SpecializationTest Fest Oracle OpenWorld Schedule Builder Oracle OpenWorld Promotional Toolkit for Partners Oracle Partner Events Oracle Partner Webcasts Oracle EMEA Partner News SUBSCRIBE FEEDBACK PREVIOUS ISSUES If you are attending our forthcoming Oracle OpenWorld 2012 conference in San Francisco from 30 September to 4 October, you will discover a new dedicated programme of keynotes and sessions tailored especially for you, our valued partners. Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ OpenWorld has been created to enhance the opportunities for you to learn from and network with Oracle executives and experts. The programme also provides more informal opportunities than ever throughout the week to meet up with the people who are most important to your business: customers, prospects, colleagues and the Oracle EMEA Alliances & Channels management team. Oracle remains fully focused on building the industry's most admired partner ecosystem—which today spans over 25,000 partners. This new OPN Exchange programme offers an exciting change of pace for partners throughout the conference. Now it will be possible to enjoy a fully-integrated, partner-dedicated session schedule throughout the week, as well as key social events such as the Sunday night Welcome Reception, networking lunches from Monday to Thursday at the Howard Street Tent, and a fantastic closing event on the last Thursday afternoon. In addition to the regular Oracle OpenWorld conference schedule, if you have registered for the Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ OpenWorld programme, you will be invited to attend a much anticipated global partner keynote presentation, plus more than 40 conference sessions aimed squarely at what's most important to you, as partners. Prominent topics for discussion will include: Oracle technologies and roadmaps and how they fit with partners' business plans; business development; regional distinctions in business practices; and much more. Each session will provide plenty of food for thought ahead of the numerous networking opportunities throughout the week, encouraging the knowledge exchange with Oracle executives, customers, prospects, and colleagues that will make this conference of even greater value for you. At Oracle we always work closely with our partners to deliver solution offerings that improve business value, simplify the IT experience and drive innovation and efficiencies for joint customers. The most important element of our new OPN Exchange is content that helps you get more from technology investments, more from your peer-to-peer connections, and more from your interactions with customers. To this end we've created some partner-specific tools which can be used by OPN members ahead of the conference itself. Crucially, a comprehensive Content Catalog already lists and organises details of every OPN Exchange session, speaker, exhibitor, demonstration and related materials. This Content Catalog can be used by all our partners to identify interesting content that you can add to your own personalised Oracle OpenWorld Schedule Builder, allowing more effective planning and pre-enrolment for vital sessions. There are numerous highlights that you will definitely want to include in those personal schedules. On Sunday morning, 30 September we will start the week with partner dedicated OPN Exchange sessions, following our Global Partner Keynote at 13:00 with Judson Althoff, SVP, Worldwide Alliances & Channels and Embedded Sales and senior executives, giving insight into Oracle's partner vision, strategy, and resources—all designed to help build and strengthen market opportunities for you. This will be followed by a number of OPN Exchange general sessions, the Oracle OpenWorld Opening Keynote with Larry Ellison, CEO, Oracle and concluded with the OPN Exchange AfterDark Welcome Reception, starting at 19:30 at the Metreon. From Monday 1 to Thursday 4 October, you can attend the OPN Exchange sessions that are most relevant to your business today and over the coming year. Oracle's top product and sales leaders will be on hand to discuss Oracle's strategic direction in 40+ targeted and in-depth sessions focussing on critical success factors to develop your business. Oracle's dedication to innovation, specialization, enablement and engineering provides Oracle partners with a huge opportunity to create new services and solutions, differentiate themselves and deliver extreme value to joint customers across the globe. Oracle will even be helping over 1000 partners to earn OPN Specialization certification during the Oracle OpenWorld OPN Exchange Test Fest, which will be providing all the study materials and exams required to drive Specialization for free at the conference. You simply need to check the list of current certification tracks available, and make sure you pre-register to reserve a seat in one of the ten sessions being offered free to OPN Exchange registered attendees. And finally, let's not forget those all-important networking opportunities, which can so often provide partners with valuable long-term alliances as well as exciting new business leads. The Oracle PartnerNetwork Lounge, located at Moscone South, exhibition hall, room 100 is the place where partners can meet formally or informally with colleagues, customers, prospects, and other industry professionals. OPN Specialized partners with OPN Exchange passes can also visit the OPN Video Blogging room to record and share ideas, and at the OPN Information Station you will find consultants available to answer your questions. "For the first time ever we will have a full partner conference within OpenWorld. OPN Exchange @ OpenWorld will kick-off on the first Sunday and run the entire week. We'll have over 40 sessions throughout that time and partners will hear from our top development executives, with special sessions dedicated to partnering throughout. It's going to be a phenomenal event, and we look forward to seeing our partners there." Judson Althoff, SVP, Oracle Worldwide Alliances & Channels and Embedded Sales So if you haven't done so already, please register for Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ OpenWorld today or add OPN Exchange to your existing registration for just $100 through My Account. And if you have any further questions regarding partner activities at Oracle OpenWorld, please don't hesitate to contact the Oracle PartnerNetwork team at [email protected] will be on hand to share the very latest information about: Oracle's SPARC Superclusters: the latest Engineered Systems from Oracle, delivering radically improved performance, faster deployment and greatly reduced operational costs for mixed database and enterprise application consolidation Oracle's SPARC T4 servers: with the newly developed T4 processor and Oracle Solaris providing up to five times the single threaded performance and better overall system throughput for expanded application versatility Oracle Database Appliance: a new way to take advantage of the world's most popular database, Oracle Database 11g, in a single, easy-to-deploy and manage system. It's a complete package engineered to deliver simple, reliable and affordable database services to small and medium size businesses and departmental systems. All hardware and software components are supported together and offer customers unique pay-as-you-grow software licensing to quickly scale from two to 24 processor cores without incurring the costs and downtime usually associated with hardware upgrades Oracle Exalogic: the world's only integrated cloud machine, featuring server hardware and middleware software engineered together for maximum performance with minimum set-up and operational cost Oracle Exadata Database Machine: the only database machine that provides extreme performance for both data warehousing and online transaction processing (OLTP) applications, making it the ideal platform for consolidating onto grids or private clouds. It is a complete package of servers, storage, networking and software that is massively scalable, secure and redundant Oracle Sun ZFS Storage Appliances: providing enterprise-class NAS performance, price-performance, manageability and TCO by combining third-generation software with high-performance controllers, flash-based caches and disks Oracle Pillar Axiom Quality-of-Service: confidently consolidate storage for multiple applications into a single datacentre storage solution Oracle Solaris 11: delivering secure enterprise cloud deployments with the ability to run hundreds of virtual application with no overhead and co-engineered with other Oracle software products to provide the highest levels of security, manageability and performance Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c: Oracle's integrated enterprise IT management product, providing the industry's only complete, integrated and business-driven enterprise cloud management solution Oracle VM 3.0: the latest release of Oracle's server virtualisation and management solution, helping to move datacentres beyond server consolidation to improve application deployment and management. Register today and ensure your place at the Extreme Performance Tour! Extreme Performance Tour events are free to attend, but places are limited. To make sure that you don't miss out, please visit Oracle's Extreme Performance Tour website, select the city that you'd be interest in attending an event in, and then click on the 'Register Now' button for that city to secure your interest. Each individual city page also contains more in-depth information about your local event, including logistics, agenda and maybe even a preview of VIP guest speakers. -- Oracle OpenWorld 2010 Whether you attended Oracle OpenWorld 2009 or not, don't forget to save the date now for Oracle OpenWorld 2010. The event will be held a little earlier next year, from 19th-23rd September, so please don't miss out. With thousands of sessions and hundreds of exhibits and demos already lined up, there's no better place to learn how to optimise your existing systems, get an inside line on upcoming technology breakthroughs, and meet with your partner peers, Oracle strategists and even the developers responsible for the products and services that help you get better results for your end customers. Register Now for Oracle OpenWorld 2010! Perhaps you are interested in learning more about Oracle OpenWorld 2010, but don't wish to register at this time? Great! Please just enter your contact information here and we will contact you at a later date. How to Exhibit at Oracle OpenWorld 2010 Sponsorship Opportunities at Oracle OpenWorld 2010 Advertising Opportunities at Oracle OpenWorld 2010 -- Back to the welcome page

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Ten - oh, wait, eleven - Eleven things you should know about the ASP.NET Fall 2012 Update

- by Jon Galloway

Today, just a little over two months after the big ASP.NET 4.5 / ASP.NET MVC 4 / ASP.NET Web API / Visual Studio 2012 / Web Matrix 2 release, the first preview of the ASP.NET Fall 2012 Update is out. Here's what you need to know: There are no new framework bits in this release - there's no change or update to ASP.NET Core, ASP.NET MVC or Web Forms features. This means that you can start using it without any updates to your server, upgrade concerns, etc. This update is really an update to the project templates and Visual Studio tooling, conceptually similar to the ASP.NET MVC 3 Tools Update. It's a relatively lightweight install. It's a 41MB download. I've installed it many times and usually takes 5-7 minutes; it's never required a reboot. It adds some new project templates to ASP.NET MVC: Facebook Application and Single Page Application templates. It adds a lot of cool enhancements to ASP.NET Web API. It adds some tooling that makes it easy to take advantage of features like SignalR, Friendly URLs, and Windows Azure Authentication. Most of the new features are installed via NuGet packages. Since ASP.NET is open source, nightly NuGet packages are available, and the roadmap is published, most of this has really been publicly available for a while. The official name of this drop is the ASP.NET Fall 2012 Update BUILD Prerelease. Please do not attempt to say that ten times fast. While the EULA doesn't prohibit it, it WILL legally change your first name to Scott. As with all new releases, you can find out everything you need to know about the Fall Update at http://asp.net/vnext (especially the release notes!) I'm going to be showing all of this off, assisted by special guest code monkey Scott Hanselman, this Friday at BUILD: Bleeding edge ASP.NET: See what is next for MVC, Web API, SignalR and more… (and I've heard it will be livestreamed). Let's look at some of those things in more detail. No new bits ASP.NET 4.5, MVC 4 and Web API have a lot of great core features. I see the goal of this update release as making it easier to put those features to use to solve some useful scenarios by taking advantage of NuGet packages and template code. If you create a new ASP.NET MVC application using one of the new templates, you'll see that it's using the ASP.NET MVC 4 RTM NuGet package (4.0.20710.0): This means you can install and use the Fall Update without any impact on your existing projects and no worries about upgrading or compatibility. New Facebook Application Template ASP.NET MVC 4 (and ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms) included the ability to authenticate your users via OAuth and OpenID, so you could let users log in to your site using a Facebook account. One of the new changes in the Fall Update is a new template that makes it really easy to create full Facebook applications. You could create Facebook application in ASP.NET already, you'd just need to go through a few steps: Search around to find a good Facebook NuGet package, like the Facebook C# SDK (written by my friend Nathan Totten and some other Facebook SDK brainiacs). Read the Facebook developer documentation to figure out how to authenticate and integrate with them. Write some code, debug it and repeat until you got something working. Get started with the application you'd originally wanted to write. What this template does for you: eliminate steps 1-3. Erik Porter, Nathan and some other experts built out the Facebook Application template so it automatically pulls in and configures the Facebook NuGet package and makes it really easy to take advantage of it in an ASP.NET MVC application. One great example is the the way you access a Facebook user's information. Take a look at the following code in a File / New / MVC / Facebook Application site. First, the Home Controller Index action: [FacebookAuthorize(Permissions = "email")] public ActionResult Index(MyAppUser user, FacebookObjectList<MyAppUserFriend> userFriends) { ViewBag.Message = "Modify this template to jump-start your Facebook application using ASP.NET MVC."; ViewBag.User = user; ViewBag.Friends = userFriends.Take(5); return View(); } First, notice that there's a FacebookAuthorize attribute which requires the user is authenticated via Facebook and requires permissions to access their e-mail address. It binds to two things: a custom MyAppUser object and a list of friends. Let's look at the MyAppUser code: using Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc.Facebook.Attributes; using Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc.Facebook.Models; // Add any fields you want to be saved for each user and specify the field name in the JSON coming back from Facebook // https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/user/ namespace MvcApplication3.Models { public class MyAppUser : FacebookUser { public string Name { get; set; } [FacebookField(FieldName = "picture", JsonField = "picture.data.url")] public string PictureUrl { get; set; } public string Email { get; set; } } } You can add in other custom fields if you want, but you can also just bind to a FacebookUser and it will automatically pull in the available fields. You can even just bind directly to a FacebookUser and check for what's available in debug mode, which makes it really easy to explore. For more information and some walkthroughs on creating Facebook applications, see: Deploying your first Facebook App on Azure using ASP.NET MVC Facebook Template (Yao Huang Lin) Facebook Application Template Tutorial (Erik Porter) Single Page Application template Early releases of ASP.NET MVC 4 included a Single Page Application template, but it was removed for the official release. There was a lot of interest in it, but it was kind of complex, as it handled features for things like data management. The new Single Page Application template that ships with the Fall Update is more lightweight. It uses Knockout.js on the client and ASP.NET Web API on the server, and it includes a sample application that shows how they all work together. I think the real benefit of this application is that it shows a good pattern for using ASP.NET Web API and Knockout.js. For instance, it's easy to end up with a mess of JavaScript when you're building out a client-side application. This template uses three separate JavaScript files (delivered via a Bundle, of course): todoList.js - this is where the main client-side logic lives todoList.dataAccess.js - this defines how the client-side application interacts with the back-end services todoList.bindings.js - this is where you set up events and overrides for the Knockout bindings - for instance, hooking up jQuery validation and defining some client-side events This is a fun one to play with, because you can just create a new Single Page Application and hit F5. Quick, easy install (with one gotcha) One of the cool engineering changes for this release is a big update to the installer to make it more lightweight and efficient. I've been running nightly builds of this for a few weeks to prep for my BUILD demos, and the install has been really quick and easy to use. The install takes about 5 minutes, has never required a reboot for me, and the uninstall is just as simple. There's one gotcha, though. In this preview release, you may hit an issue that will require you to uninstall and re-install the NuGet VSIX package. The problem comes up when you create a new MVC application and see this dialog: The solution, as explained in the release notes, is to uninstall and re-install the NuGet VSIX package: Start Visual Studio 2012 as an Administrator Go to Tools->Extensions and Updates and uninstall NuGet. Close Visual Studio Navigate to the ASP.NET Fall 2012 Update installation folder: For Visual Studio 2012: Program Files\Microsoft ASP.NET\ASP.NET Web Stack\Visual Studio 2012 For Visual Studio 2012 Express for Web: Program Files\Microsoft ASP.NET\ASP.NET Web Stack\Visual Studio Express 2012 for Web Double click on the NuGet.Tools.vsix to reinstall NuGet This took me under a minute to do, and I was up and running. ASP.NET Web API Update Extravaganza! Uh, the Web API team is out of hand. They added a ton of new stuff: OData support, Tracing, and API Help Page generation. OData support Some people like OData. Some people start twitching when you mention it. If you're in the first group, this is for you. You can add a [Queryable] attribute to an API that returns an IQueryable<Whatever> and you get OData query support from your clients. Then, without any extra changes to your client or server code, your clients can send filters like this: /Suppliers?$filter=Name eq ‘Microsoft’ For more information about OData support in ASP.NET Web API, see Alex James' mega-post about it: OData support in ASP.NET Web API ASP.NET Web API Tracing Tracing makes it really easy to leverage the .NET Tracing system from within your ASP.NET Web API's. If you look at the \App_Start\WebApiConfig.cs file in new ASP.NET Web API project, you'll see a call to TraceConfig.Register(config). That calls into some code in the new \App_Start\TraceConfig.cs file: public static void Register(HttpConfiguration configuration) { if (configuration == null) { throw new ArgumentNullException("configuration"); } SystemDiagnosticsTraceWriter traceWriter = new SystemDiagnosticsTraceWriter() { MinimumLevel = TraceLevel.Info, IsVerbose = false }; configuration.Services.Replace(typeof(ITraceWriter), traceWriter); } As you can see, this is using the standard trace system, so you can extend it to any other trace listeners you'd like. To see how it works with the built in diagnostics trace writer, just run the application call some API's, and look at the Visual Studio Output window: iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Request, Method=GET, Url=http://localhost:11147/api/Values, Message='http://localhost:11147/api/Values' iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Message='Values', Operation=DefaultHttpControllerSelector.SelectController iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Message='WebAPI.Controllers.ValuesController', Operation=DefaultHttpControllerActivator.Create iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Message='WebAPI.Controllers.ValuesController', Operation=HttpControllerDescriptor.CreateController iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Message='Selected action 'Get()'', Operation=ApiControllerActionSelector.SelectAction iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Operation=HttpActionBinding.ExecuteBindingAsync iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Operation=QueryableAttribute.ActionExecuting iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Message='Action returned 'System.String[]'', Operation=ReflectedHttpActionDescriptor.ExecuteAsync iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Message='Will use same 'JsonMediaTypeFormatter' formatter', Operation=JsonMediaTypeFormatter.GetPerRequestFormatterInstance iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Message='Selected formatter='JsonMediaTypeFormatter', content-type='application/json; charset=utf-8'', Operation=DefaultContentNegotiator.Negotiate iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Operation=ApiControllerActionInvoker.InvokeActionAsync, Status=200 (OK) iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Operation=QueryableAttribute.ActionExecuted, Status=200 (OK) iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Operation=ValuesController.ExecuteAsync, Status=200 (OK) iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Response, Status=200 (OK), Method=GET, Url=http://localhost:11147/api/Values, Message='Content-type='application/json; charset=utf-8', content-length=unknown' iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Operation=JsonMediaTypeFormatter.WriteToStreamAsync iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Operation=ValuesController.Dispose API Help Page When you create a new ASP.NET Web API project, you'll see an API link in the header: Clicking the API link shows generated help documentation for your ASP.NET Web API controllers: And clicking on any of those APIs shows specific information: What's great is that this information is dynamically generated, so if you add your own new APIs it will automatically show useful and up to date help. This system is also completely extensible, so you can generate documentation in other formats or customize the HTML help as much as you'd like. The Help generation code is all included in an ASP.NET MVC Area: SignalR SignalR is a really slick open source project that was started by some ASP.NET team members in their spare time to add real-time communications capabilities to ASP.NET - and .NET applications in general. It allows you to handle long running communications channels between your server and multiple connected clients using the best communications channel they can both support - websockets if available, falling back all the way to old technologies like long polling if necessary for old browsers. SignalR remains an open source project, but now it's being included in ASP.NET (also open source, hooray!). That means there's real, official ASP.NET engineering work being put into SignalR, and it's even easier to use in an ASP.NET application. Now in any ASP.NET project type, you can right-click / Add / New Item... SignalR Hub or Persistent Connection. And much more... There's quite a bit more. You can find more info at http://asp.net/vnext, and we'll be adding more content as fast as we can. Watch my BUILD talk to see as I demonstrate these and other features in the ASP.NET Fall 2012 Update, as well as some other even futurey-er stuff!

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GuestPost: Unit Testing Entity Framework (v1) Dependent Code using TypeMock Isolator

- by Eric Nelson

Time for another guest post (check out others in the series), this time bringing together the world of mocking with the world of Entity Framework. A big thanks to Moses for agreeing to do this. Unit Testing Entity Framework Dependent Code using TypeMock Isolator by Muhammad Mosa Introduction Unit testing data access code in my opinion is a challenging thing. Let us consider unit tests and integration tests. In integration tests you are allowed to have environmental dependencies such as a physical database connection to insert, update, delete or retrieve your data. However when performing unit tests it is often much more efficient and productive to remove environmental dependencies. Instead you will need to fake these dependencies. Faking a database (also known as mocking) can be relatively straight forward but the version of Entity Framework released with .Net 3.5 SP1 has a number of implementation specifics which actually makes faking the existence of a database quite difficult. Faking Entity Framework As mentioned earlier, to effectively unit test you will need to fake/simulate Entity Framework calls to the database. There are many free open source mocking frameworks that can help you achieve this but it will require additional effort to overcome & workaround a number of limitations in those frameworks. Examples of these limitations include: Not able to fake calls to non virtual methods Not able to fake sealed classes Not able to fake LINQ to Entities queries (replace database calls with in-memory collection calls) There is a mocking framework which is flexible enough to handle limitations such as those above. The commercially available TypeMock Isolator can do the job for you with less code and ultimately more readable unit tests. I’m going to demonstrate tackling one of those limitations using MoQ as my mocking framework. Then I will tackle the same issue using TypeMock Isolator. Mocking Entity Framework with MoQ One basic need when faking Entity Framework is to fake the ObjectContext. This cannot be done by passing any connection string. You have to pass a correct Entity Framework connection string that specifies CSDL, SSDL and MSL locations along with a provider connection string. Assuming we are going to do that, we’ll explore another limitation. The limitation we are going to face now is related to not being able to fake calls to non-virtual/overridable members with MoQ. I have the following repository method that adds an EntityObject (instance of a Blog entity) to Blogs entity set in an ObjectContext. public override void Add(Blog blog) { if(BlogContext.Blogs.Any(b=>b.Name == blog.Name)) { throw new InvalidOperationException("Blog with same name already exists!"); } BlogContext.AddToBlogs(blog); } The method does a very simple check that the name of the new Blog entity instance doesn’t exist. This is done through the simple LINQ query above. If the blog doesn’t already exist it simply adds it to the current context to be saved when SaveChanges of the ObjectContext instance (e.g. BlogContext) is called. However, if a blog with the same name exits, and exception (InvalideOperationException) will be thrown. Let us now create a unit test for the Add method using MoQ. [TestMethod] [ExpectedException(typeof(InvalidOperationException))] public void Add_Should_Throw_InvalidOperationException_When_Blog_With_Same_Name_Already_Exits() { //(1) We shouldn't depend on configuration when doing unit tests! But, //its a workaround to fake the ObjectContext string connectionString = ConfigurationManager .ConnectionStrings["MyBlogConnString"] .ConnectionString; //(2) Arrange: Fake ObjectContext var fakeContext = new Mock<MyBlogContext>(connectionString); //(3) Next Line will pass, as ObjectContext now can be faked with proper connection string var repo = new BlogRepository(fakeContext.Object); //(4) Create fake ObjectQuery<Blog>. Will be used to substitute MyBlogContext.Blogs property var fakeObjectQuery = new Mock<ObjectQuery<Blog>>("[Blogs]", fakeContext.Object); //(5) Arrange: Set Expectations //Next line will throw an exception by MoQ: //System.ArgumentException: Invalid setup on a non-overridable member fakeContext.SetupGet(c=>c.Blogs).Returns(fakeObjectQuery.Object); fakeObjectQuery.Setup(q => q.Any(b => b.Name == "NewBlog")).Returns(true); //Act repo.Add(new Blog { Name = "NewBlog" }); } This test method is checking to see if the correct exception ([ExpectedException(typeof(InvalidOperationException))]) is thrown when a developer attempts to Add a blog with a name that’s already exists. On (1) a connection string is initialized from configuration file. To retrieve the full connection string. On (2) a fake ObjectContext is being created. The ObjectContext here is MyBlogContext and its being created using this var fakeContext = new Mock<MyBlogContext>(connectionString); This way a fake context is being created using MoQ. On (3) a BlogRepository instance is created. BlogRepository has dependency on generate Entity Framework ObjectContext, MyObjectContext. And so the fake context is passed to the constructor. var repo = new BlogRepository(fakeContext.Object); On (4) a fake instance of ObjectQuery<Blog> is being created to use as a substitute to MyObjectContext.Blogs property as we will see in (5). On (5) setup an expectation for calling Blogs property of MyBlogContext and substitute the return result with the fake ObjectQuery<Blog> instance created on (4). When you run this test it will fail with MoQ throwing an exception because of this line: fakeContext.SetupGet(c=>c.Blogs).Returns(fakeObjectQuery.Object); This happens because the generate property MyBlogContext.Blogs is not virtual/overridable. And assuming it is virtual or you managed to make it virtual it will fail at the following line throwing the same exception: fakeObjectQuery.Setup(q => q.Any(b => b.Name == "NewBlog")).Returns(true); This time the test will fail because the Any extension method is not virtual/overridable. You won’t be able to replace ObjectQuery<Blog> with fake in memory collection to test your LINQ to Entities queries. Now lets see how replacing MoQ with TypeMock Isolator can help. Mocking Entity Framework with TypeMock Isolator The following is the same test method we had above for MoQ but this time implemented using TypeMock Isolator: [TestMethod] [ExpectedException(typeof(InvalidOperationException))] public void Add_New_Blog_That_Already_Exists_Should_Throw_InvalidOperationException() { //(1) Create fake in memory collection of blogs var fakeInMemoryBlogs = new List<Blog> {new Blog {Name = "FakeBlog"}}; //(2) create fake context var fakeContext = Isolate.Fake.Instance<MyBlogContext>(); //(3) Setup expected call to MyBlogContext.Blogs property through the fake context Isolate.WhenCalled(() => fakeContext.Blogs) .WillReturnCollectionValuesOf(fakeInMemoryBlogs.AsQueryable()); //(4) Create new blog with a name that already exits in the fake in memory collection in (1) var blog = new Blog {Name = "FakeBlog"}; //(5) Instantiate instance of BlogRepository (Class under test) var repo = new BlogRepository(fakeContext); //(6) Acting by adding the newly created blog () repo.Add(blog); } When running the above test method it will pass as the Add method of BlogRepository is going to throw an InvalidOperationException which is the expected behaviour. Nothing prevents us from faking out the database interaction! Even faking ObjectContext at (2) didn’t require a connection string. On (3) Isolator sets up a faking result for MyBlogContext.Blogs when its being called through the fake instance fakeContext created on (2). The faking result is just an in-memory collection declared an initialized on (1). Finally at (6) action we call the Add method of BlogRepository passing a new Blog instance that has a name that’s already exists in the fake in-memory collection which we set up at (1). As expected the test will pass because it will throw the expected exception defined on top of the test method - InvalidOperationException. TypeMock Isolator succeeded in faking Entity Framework with ease. Conclusion We explored how to write a simple unit test using TypeMock Isolator for code which is using Entity Framework. We also explored a few of the limitations of other mocking frameworks which TypeMock is successfully able to handle. There are workarounds that you can use to overcome limitations when using MoQ or Rhino Mock, however the workarounds will require you to write more code and your tests will likely be more complex. For a comparison between different mocking frameworks take a look at this document produced by TypeMock. You might also want to check out this open source project to compare mocking frameworks. I hope you enjoyed this post Muhammad Mosa http://mosesofegypt.net/ http://twitter.com/mosessaur Screencast of unit testing Entity Framework Related Links GuestPost: Introduction to Mocking GuesPost: Typemock Isolator – Much more than an Isolation framework

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Begin the Clone Wars Have!

- by Antony Reynolds

Creating a New Virtual Machine from an Existing Virtual Disk In previous posts I described how I set up an OEL6 machine under VirtualBox that can run an 11gR2 database and FMW 11.1.1.5. That is great if you want the DB and FMW running in the same virtual image and it has served me well for some proof of concepts and also for some testing of different JVMs. However I also wanted to run some testing of FMW with the database running on a separate physical machine. So in this post I will show how to take a VirtualBox image and create a new image based on the disks from that original image. What are my Options? There is more than one way to skin a cat, or in this case to create two separate VMs that can run on different hardware. Some of the options include: Create new virtual disk images for each new VM. Clone the existing disk images and point the new VM at the cloned images. Point the new VM at the existing snapshots. #1 is too much like hard work, install OEL twice, install a database again, install FMW again, run RCU again! Life is too short! #2 is probably the safest way of doing things. VirtualBox allows you to clone a disk image for use in a separate machine. However this of course duplicates the disk and means that it is now occupying 3 times the space, once for the original disk and twice more for the two clones I would need. #3 is the most space efficient way of doing things. It does mean however that I can only run the new “cloned” images if I have access to the original image because that is where the base snapshots reside. However this is not a problem for me as long as I remember to keep all threee images together. So this is the approach we will follow. Snapshot, What Snapshot? As we are going to create new virtual machines based on existing snapshots we need to figure out which snapshot to use. We do this by opening the “Media Manager” from within VirtualBox and moving the mouse over the snapshot images until we find the snapshots we want – the snapshot name is identified in the “Attached to:” comment. In my case I wanted the FMW installed snapshot because that had a database configured for FMW alongside the FMW software. I made a note of the filename of that snapshot (actually I just noted the first 5 characters as that was all that was needed to uniquely identify the snapshot file). When we create the new machines we will point them at the snapshot filename we have just checked. Network or NotWork? Because we want the two new machines to communicate with each other when hosted in different physical machines we can’t use the default NAT networking mode without a lot of hassle. But at the same time we need them to have fixed IP addresses relative to each other so that they can see each other whilst also being able to see the outside world. To achieve all these requirements I created two network adapters for each machine. Adapter 1 was a standard NAT mapping. This will allow each machine to get a dynamic IP address (10.0.2.15 by default) that can be used to access the external world through the VBox provided NAT gateway. This is the same as the existing configuration. The second adapter I created as a bridged adapter. This gives the virtual machine direct access to the host network card and by using fixed IP addresses each machine can see the other. It is important to choose fixed IP addresses that are not routable across your internal network so you don’t get any clashes with other machines on your network. Of course you could always get proper fixed IP addresses from your network people, but I have serveral people using my images and as long as I don’t have two instances of the same VM on the same network segment this is easier and avoids reconfiguring the network every time someone wants a copy of my VM. If it is available I would suggest using the 10.0.3.* network as 10.0.2.* is the default NAT network. You can check availability by pinging 10.0.3.1 and 10.0.3.2 from your host machine. If it times out then you are probably safe to use that. Creating the New VMs Now that I had collected the data that I needed I went ahead and created the new VMs. When asked for a “Boot Hard Disk” I used the “Choose a virtual hard disk file…” link to find the snapshot I had previously selected and set that to be the existing hard disk. I chose the previously existing SOA 11.1.1.5 install for both the new DB and FMW machines because that snapshot had the database with the RCU completed that I wanted for my DB machine and it had the SOA software installed which I wanted for my FMW machine. After the initial creation of the virtual machine go into the network setting section and enable a second adapter which will be bridged. Make a note of the MAC addresses (the last four digits should be sufficient) of the two adapters so that you can later set the bridged adapter to use fixed IP and the NAT adapter to use DHCP. We are now ready to start the VMs and reconfigure Linux. Reconfiguring Linux Because I now have two new machines I need to change their network configuration. In particular I need to change the hostname, update the hosts file and change the network settings. Changing the Hostname I renamed both hosts by running the hostname command as root: hostname vboxfmw.oracle.com I also edited the /etc/sysconfig file and set the correct hostname in there. HOSTNAME=vboxfmw.oracle.com Changing the Network Settings I needed to change the network configuration to give the bridged network a fixed IP address. I first explicitly set the MAC addresses of the two adapters, because the order of the virtual adapters in the VirtualBox Manager is not necessarily the same as the order of the adapters in the guest OS. So I went in to the System->Preferences->Network Connections screen and explicitly set the “Device MAC address” for the two adapters. Having correctly mapped the Linux adapters to the VirtualBox adapters I then set the Bridged adapter to use fixed IP addressing rather than DHCP. There is no need for additional routing or default gateways because we expect the two machine to be on the same LAN segment. Updating the Hosts File Having renamed the machines and reconfigured the network I then updated the /etc/hosts file to refer to the new machine name add a new line to the hosts file to provide an additional IP address for my server (the new fixed IP address) add a new line for the fixed IP address of the other virtual machine 10.0.3.101 vboxdb.oracle.com vboxdb # Added by NetworkManager 10.0.2.15 vboxdb.oracle.com vboxdb # Added by NetworkManager 10.0.3.102 vboxfmw.oracle.com vboxfmw # Added by NetworkManager 127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost ::1 vboxdb.oracle.com vboxdb localhost6.localdomain6 localhost6 To make sure everything takes effect I restarted the server. Reconfiguring the Database on the DB Machine Because we changed the hostname the listener and the EM console no longer start so I need to modify the listener.ora to use the new hostname and I also need to rebuild the EM configuration because it also relies on the hostname. I edited the $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin/listener.ora and changed the listening address to the new hostname: (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = vboxdb.oracle.com)(PORT = 1521)) After changing the listener.ora I was able to start the listener using: lsnrctl start I also had to reconfigure the EM database control. I first deconfigured it using the command: emca -deconfig dbcontrol db -repos drop This drops the repository and removes any existing registered dbcontrols. I then re-configured it using the following command: emca -config dbcontrol db -repos create This creates the EM repository and then configures and starts dbcontrol. Now my database machine is ready so I can close it down and take a snapshot. Disabling the Database on the FMW Machine I set up the database to start automatically by creating a service called “dbora”. On the FMW machine I do not need the database running so I can prevent it auto-starting by running the following command: chkconfig –del dbora Note that because I am using a snapshot it is not a waste of disk space to have the DB installed but not used. As long as I don’t run it, it won’t cost me anything. I can now close the FMW machine down and take a snapshot. Creating a New Domain The FMW machine is now ready to create a new domain. When creating the domain I can point it at the second machine which is running the database. I can potentially run these machines on two separate physical machines as long as I have the original virtual machine available to both of the physical machines. Gotchas in Snapshotting VirtualBox does not support the concept of linked machines in a network like some virtualization technologies so when creating a snapshot it is a good idea to shut both VMs down and then take a snapshot on both of them. This is because we want to keep the database in sync with the middleware. One way to make sure that this happens would be to place all the domain configuration files on the database server via an NFS share, this would mean that all we would need to snapshot would be the database machine because that would hold all the state and configuration. The Sky’s the Limit We have covered a simple case of having just two machines. I have a more complicated configuration in which two machine run a RAC database off the same base OS image, and two more machines run a SOA cluster based on the same OS image. Just remember what machine holds state and what are the consequences of taking a snapshot.

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