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• Restore Your PC from Windows Home Server

  - by Mysticgeek

  If your computer crashes or you get a virus infection that makes it unrecoverable, doing a clean install can be a hassle, let alone getting your data back. If you’re backing up your computers to Windows Home Server, you can completely restore them to the last successful backup. Note: For this process to work you need to verify the PC you want to restore is connected to your network via Ethernet. If you have it connected wirelessly it won’t work. Restore a PC from Windows Home Server On the computer you want to restore, pop in the Windows Home Server Home Computer Restore disc and boot from it. If you don’t have one already made, you can easily make one following these instructions. We have also included the link to the restore disc below. Boot from the CD then select if your machine has 512MB or RAM or more. The disc will initialize… Then choose your language and keyboard settings. Hopefully if everything goes correctly, your network card will be detected and you can continue. However, if it doesn’t like in our example, click on the Show Details button. In the Detect Hardware screen click on the Install Drivers button. Now you will need to have a USB flash drive with the correct drivers on it. It has to be a flash drive or a floppy (if you happen to still have one of those) because you can’t take out the Restore CD. If you want to make sure you have the correct drivers on the USB flash drive, open the Windows Home Server Console on another computer on your network. In the Computers and Backup section right-click on the computer you want to restore and select View Backups. Select the backup you want to restore from and click the Open button in the Restore or view Files section. Now drag the entire contents of the folder named Windows Home Server Drivers for Restore to the USB flash drive. Back to the machine you’re trying to restore, insert the USB flash drive with the correct drivers and click the Scan button. Wait a few moments while the drivers are found then click Ok then Continue.   The Restore Computer Wizard starts up… Enter in your home server password and click Next. Select the computer you want to restore. If it isn’t selected by default you can pull it up from the dropdown list under Another Computer. Make certain you’re selecting the correct machine. Now select the backup you want to restore. In this example we only have one but chances are you’ll have several. If you have several backups to choose from, you might want to check out the details for them. Now you can select the disk from backup and and restore it to the destination volume. You might need to initialize a disk, change a drive letter, or other disk management tasks, if so, then click on Run Disk Manger. For example we want to change the destination drive letter to (C:).   After you’ve made all the changes to the destination disk you can continue with the restore process. If everything looks correct, confirm the restore configuration. If you need to make any changes at this point, you can still go back and make them. Now Windows Home Server will restore your drive. The amount of time it takes will vary depend on the amount of data you have to restore, network connection speed, and hardware. You are notified when the restore successfully completes. Click Finish and the PC will reboot and be restored and should be working correctly. All the updates, programs, and files will be back that were saved to the last successful backup. Anything you might have installed after that backup will be gone. If you have your computers set to backup every night, then hopefully it won’t be a big issue.   Conclusion Backing up the computers on your network to Windows Home Server is a valuable tool in your backup strategy. Sometimes you may only need to restore a couple files and we’ve covered how to restore them from backups on WHS and that works really well. If the unthinkable happens and you need to restore the entire computer, WHS makes that easy too.  Download Windows Home Server Home Computer Restore CD Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Restore Files from Backups on Windows Home ServerCreate A Windows Home Server Home Computer Restore DiscGMedia Blog: Setting Up a Windows Home ServerShare Ubuntu Home Directories using SambaInstalling Windows Home Server TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier Design Your Web Pages Using the Golden Ratio Worldwide Growth of the Internet How to Find Your Mac Address Use My TextTools to Edit and Organize Text

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• SQL SERVER – SSMS: Backup and Restore Events Report

  - by Pinal Dave

  A DBA wears multiple hats and in fact does more than what an eye can see. One of the core task of a DBA is to take backups. This looks so trivial that most developers shrug this off as the only activity a DBA might be doing. I have huge respect for DBA’s all around the world because even if they seem cool with all the scripting, automation, maintenance works round the clock to keep the business working almost 365 days 24×7, their worth is knowing that one day when the systems / HDD crashes and you have an important delivery to make. So these backup tasks / maintenance jobs that have been done come handy and are no more trivial as they might seem to be as considered by many. So the important question like: “When was the last backup taken?”, “How much time did the last backup take?”, “What type of backup was taken last?” etc are tricky questions and this report lands answers to the same in a jiffy. So the SSMS report, we are talking can be used to find backups and restore operation done for the selected database. Whenever we perform any backup or restore operation, the information is stored in the msdb database. This report can utilize that information and provide information about the size, time taken and also the file location for those operations. Here is how this report can be launched.   Once we launch this report, we can see 4 major sections shown as listed below. Average Time Taken For Backup Operations Successful Backup Operations Backup Operation Errors Successful Restore Operations Let us look at each section next. Average Time Taken For Backup Operations Information shown in “Average Time Taken For Backup Operations” section is taken from a backupset table in the msdb database. Here is the query and the expanded version of that particular section USE msdb; SELECT (ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY t1.TYPE))%2 AS l1 ,       1 AS l2 ,       1 AS l3 ,       t1.TYPE AS [type] ,       (AVG(DATEDIFF(ss,backup_start_date, backup_finish_date)))/60.0 AS AverageBackupDuration FROM backupset t1 INNER JOIN sys.databases t3 ON ( t1.database_name = t3.name) WHERE t3.name = N'AdventureWorks2014' GROUP BY t1.TYPE ORDER BY t1.TYPE On my small database the time taken for differential backup was less than a minute, hence the value of zero is displayed. This is an important piece of backup operation which might help you in planning maintenance windows. Successful Backup Operations Here is the expanded version of this section.   This information is derived from various backup tracking tables from msdb database.  Here is the simplified version of the query which can be used separately as well. SELECT * FROM sys.databases t1 INNER JOIN backupset t3 ON (t3.database_name = t1.name) LEFT OUTER JOIN backupmediaset t5 ON ( t3.media_set_id = t5.media_set_id) LEFT OUTER JOIN backupmediafamily t6 ON ( t6.media_set_id = t5.media_set_id) WHERE (t1.name = N'AdventureWorks2014') ORDER BY backup_start_date DESC,t3.backup_set_id,t6.physical_device_name; The report does some calculations to show the data in a more readable format. For example, the backup size is shown in KB, MB or GB. I have expanded first row by clicking on (+) on “Device type” column. That has shown me the path of the physical backup file. Personally looking at this section, the Backup Size, Device Type and Backup Name are critical and are worth a note. As mentioned in the previous section, this section also has the Duration embedded inside it. Backup Operation Errors This section of the report gets data from default trace. You might wonder how. One of the event which is tracked by default trace is “ErrorLog”. This means that whatever message is written to errorlog gets written to default trace file as well. Interestingly, whenever there is a backup failure, an error message is written to ERRORLOG and hence default trace. This section takes advantage of that and shows the information. We can read below message under this section, which confirms above logic. No backup operations errors occurred for (AdventureWorks2014) database in the recent past or default trace is not enabled. Successful Restore Operations This section may not be very useful in production server (do you perform a restore of database?) but might be useful in the development and log shipping secondary environment, where we might be interested to see restore operations for a particular database. Here is the expanded version of the section. To fill this section of the report, I have restored the same backups which were taken to populate earlier sections. Here is the simplified version of the query used to populate this output. USE msdb; SELECT * FROM restorehistory t1 LEFT OUTER JOIN restorefile t2 ON ( t1.restore_history_id = t2.restore_history_id) LEFT OUTER JOIN backupset t3 ON ( t1.backup_set_id = t3.backup_set_id) WHERE t1.destination_database_name = N'AdventureWorks2014' ORDER BY restore_date DESC,  t1.restore_history_id,t2.destination_phys_name Have you ever looked at the backup strategy of your key databases? Are they in sync and do we have scope for improvements? Then this is the report to analyze after a week or month of maintenance plans running in your database. Do chime in with what are the strategies you are using in your environments. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Backup and Restore, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Server Management Studio, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: SQL Reports

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• Why Software Sucks...and What You Can Do About It – book review

  - by DigiMortal

      How do our users see the products we are writing for them and how happy they are with our work? Are they able to get their work done without fighting with cool features and crashes or are they just switching off resistance part of their brain to survive our software? Yeah, the overall picture of software usability landscape is not very nice. Okay, it is not even nice. But, fortunately, Why Software Sucks...and What You Can Do About It by David S. Platt explains everything. Why Software Sucks… is book for software users but I consider it as a-must reading also for developers and specially for their managers whose politics often kills all usability topics as soon as they may appear. For managers usability is soft topic that can be manipulated the way it is best in current state of project. Although developers are not UI designers and usability experts they are still very often forced to deal with these topics and this is how usability problems start (of course, also designers are able to produce designs that are stupid and too hard to use for users, but this blog here is about development). I found this book to be very interesting and funny reading. It is not humor book but it explains you all so you remember later very well what you just read. It took me about three evenings to go through this book and I am still enjoying what I found and how author explains our weird young working field to end users. I suggest this book to all developers – while you are demanding your management to hire or outsource usability expert you are at least causing less pain to end users. So, go and buy this book, just like I did. And… they thanks to mr. Platt :) There is one book more I suggest you to read if you are interested in usability - Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition by Steve Krug. Editorial review from Amazon Today’s software sucks. There’s no other good way to say it. It’s unsafe, allowing criminal programs to creep through the Internet wires into our very bedrooms. It’s unreliable, crashing when we need it most, wiping out hours or days of work with no way to get it back. And it’s hard to use, requiring large amounts of head-banging to figure out the simplest operations. It’s no secret that software sucks. You know that from personal experience, whether you use computers for work or personal tasks. In this book, programming insider David Platt explains why that’s the case and, more importantly, why it doesn’t have to be that way. And he explains it in plain, jargon-free English that’s a joy to read, using real-world examples with which you’re already familiar. In the end, he suggests what you, as a typical user, without a technical background, can do about this sad state of our software—how you, as an informed consumer, don’t have to take the abuse that bad software dishes out. As you might expect from the book’s title, Dave’s expose is laced with humor—sometimes outrageous, but always dead on. You’ll laugh out loud as you recall incidents with your own software that made you cry. You’ll slap your thigh with the same hand that so often pounded your computer desk and wished it was a bad programmer’s face. But Dave hasn’t written this book just for laughs. He’s written it to give long-overdue voice to your own discovery—that software does, indeed, suck, but it shouldn’t. Table of contents Acknowledgments xiii Introduction Chapter 1: Who’re You Calling a Dummy? Where We Came From Why It Still Sucks Today Control versus Ease of Use I Don’t Care How Your Program Works A Bad Feature and a Good One Stopping the Proceedings with Idiocy Testing on Live Animals Where We Are and What You Can Do Chapter 2: Tangled in the Web Where We Came From How It Works Why It Still Sucks Today Client-Centered Design versus Server-Centered Design Where’s My Eye Opener? It’s Obvious—Not! Splash, Flash, and Animation Testing on Live Animals What You Can Do about It Chapter 3: Keep Me Safe The Way It Was Why It Sucks Today What Programmers Need to Know, but Don’t A Human Operation Budgeting for Hassles Users Are Lazy Social Engineering Last Word on Security What You Can Do Chapter 4: Who the Heck Are You? Where We Came From Why It Still Sucks Today Incompatible Requirements OK, So Now What? Chapter 5: Who’re You Looking At? Yes, They Know You Why It Sucks More Than Ever Today Users Don’t Know Where the Risks Are What They Know First Milk You with Cookies? Privacy Policy Nonsense Covering Your Tracks The Google Conundrum Solution Chapter 6: Ten Thousand Geeks, Crazed on Jolt Cola See Them in Their Native Habitat All These Geeks Who Speaks, and When, and about What Selling It The Next Generation of Geeks—Passing It On Chapter 7: Who Are These Crazy Bastards Anyway? Homo Logicus Testosterone Poisoning Control and Contentment Making Models Geeks and Jocks Jargon Brains and Constraints Seven Habits of Geeks Chapter 8: Microsoft: Can’t Live With ’Em and Can’t Live Without ’Em They Run the World Me and Them Where We Came From Why It Sucks Today Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don’t We Love to Hate Them Plus ça Change Growing-Up Pains What You Can Do about It The Last Word Chapter 9: Doing Something About It 1. Buy 2. Tell 3. Ridicule 4. Trust 5. Organize Epilogue About the Author

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• Windows Phone 7 development: first impressions

  - by DigiMortal

  After hard week in work I got some free time to play with Windows Phone 7 CTP developer tools. Although my first test application is still unfinished I think it is good moment to share my first experiences to you. In this posting I will give you quick overview of Windows Phone 7 developer tools from developer perspective. If you are familiar with Visual Studio 2010 then you will feel comfortable because Windows Phone 7 CTP developer tools base on Visual Studio 2010 Express. Project templates There are five project templates available. Three of them are based on Silverlight and two on XNA Game Studio: Windows Phone Application (Silverlight) Windows Phone List Application (Silverlight) Windows Phone Class Library (Silverlight) Windows Phone Game (XNA Game Studio) Windows Phone Game Library (XNA Game Studio) Currently I am writing to test applications. One of them is based on Windows Phone Application and the other on Windows Phone List Application project template. After creating these projects you see the following views in Visual Studio. Windows Phone Application. Click on image to enlarge. Windows Phone List Application. Click on image to enlarge.  I suggest you to use some of these templates to get started more easily. Windows Phone 7 emulator You can run your Windows Phone 7 applications on Windows Phone 7 emulator that comes with developer tools CTP. If you run your application then emulator is started automatically and you can try out how your application works in phone-like emulator. You can see screenshot of emulator on right. Currently there is opened Windows Phone List Application as it is created by default. Click on image to enlarge it. Emulator is a little bit slow and uncomfortable but it works pretty well. This far I have caused only couple of crashes during my experiments. In these cases emulator works but Visual Studio gets stuck because it cannot communicate with emulator. One important note. Emulator is based on virtual machine although you can see only phone screen and options toolbar. If you want to run emulator you must close all virtual machines running on your machine and run Visual Studio 2010 as administrator. Once you run emulator you can keep it open because you can stop your application in Visual Studio, modify, compile and re-deploy it without restarting emulator. Designing user interfaces You can design user interface of your application in Visual Studio. When you open XAML-files it is displayed in window with two panels. Left panel shows you device screen and works as visual design environment while right panel shows you XAML mark-up and let’s you modify XML if you need it. As it is one of my very first Silverlight applications I felt more comfortable with XAML editor because property names in property boxes of visual designer confused me a little bit. Designer panel is not very good because it is visually hard to follow. It has black background that makes dark borders of controls very hard to see. If you have monitor with very high contrast then it is may be not a real problem. I have usual monitor and I have problem. :) Putting controls on design surface, dragging and resizing them is also pretty painful. Some controls are drawn correctly but for some controls you have to set width and height in XML so they can be resized. After some practicing it is not so annoying anymore. On the right you can see toolbox with some controllers. This is all you get out of the box. But it is sufficient to get started. After getting some experiences you can create your own controls or use existing ones from other vendors or developers. If it is your first time to do stuff with Silverlight then keep Google open – you need it hard. After getting over the first shock you get the point very quickly and start developing at normal speed. :) Writing source code Writing source code is the most familiar part of this action. Good old Visual Studio code editor with all nice features it has. But here you get also some surprises: The anatomy of Silverlight controls is a little bit different than the one of user controls in web and forms projects. Windows Phone 7 doesn’t run on full version of Windows (I bet it is some version of Windows CE or something like this) then there is less system classes you can use. Some familiar classes have less methods that in full version of .NET Framework and in these cases you have to write all the code by yourself or find libraries or source code from somewhere. These problems are really not so much problems than limitations and you get easily over them. Conclusion Windows Phone 7 CTP developer tools help you do a lot of things on Windows Phone 7. Although I expected better performance from tools I think that current performance is not a problem. This far my first test project is going very well and Google has answer for almost every question. Windows Phone 7 is mobile device and therefore it has less hardware resources than desktop computers. This is why toolset is so limited. The more you need memory the more slower is device and as you may guess it needs the more battery. If you are writing apps for mobile devices then make your best to get your application use as few resources as possible and act as fast as possible.

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• Forcing an External Activation with Service Broker

  - by Davide Mauri

  In these last days I’ve been working quite a lot with Service Broker, a technology I’m really happy to work with, since it can give a lot of satisfaction. The scale-out solution one can easily build is simply astonishing. I’m helping a company to build a very scalable and – yet almost inexpensive – invoicing system that has to be able to scale out using commodity hardware. To offload the work from the main server to satellite “compute nodes” (yes, I’ve borrowed this term from PDW) we’re using Service Broker and the External Activator application available in the SQL Server Feature Pack. For those who are not used to work with SSB, the External Activation is a feature that allows you to intercept the arrival of a message in a queue right from your application code. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms171617.aspx (Look for “Event-Based Activation”) In order to make life even more easier, Microsoft released the External Activation application that saves you even from writing even this code. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sql_service_broker/archive/tags/external+activator/ The External Activator application can be configured to execute your own application so that each time a message – an invoice in my case – arrives in the target queue, the invoking application is executed and the invoice is calculated. The very nice feature of External Activator is that it can automatically execute as many configured application in order to process as many messages as your system can handle.  This also a lot of create a scale-out solution, leaving to the developer only a fraction of the problems that usually came with asynchronous programming. Developers are also shielded from Service Broker since everything can be encapsulated in Stored Procedures, so that – for them – developing such scale-out asynchronous solution is not much more complex than just executing a bunch of Stored Procedures. Now, if everything works correctly, you don’t have to bother of anything else. You put messages in the queue and your application, invoked by the External Activator, process them. But what happen if for some reason your application fails to process the messages. For examples, it crashes? The message is safe in the queue so you just need to process it again. But your application is invoked by the External Activator application, so now the question is, how do you wake up that app? Service Broker will engage the activation process only if certain conditions are met: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms171601.aspx But how we can invoke the activation process manually, without having to wait for another message to arrive (the arrival of a new message is a condition that can fire the activation process)? The “trick” is to do manually with the activation process does: sending a system message to a queue in charge of handling External Activation messages: declare @conversationHandle uniqueidentifier; declare @n xml = N' <EVENT_INSTANCE>   <EventType>QUEUE_ACTIVATION</EventType>   <PostTime>' + CONVERT(CHAR(24),GETDATE(),126) + '</PostTime>   <SPID>' + CAST(@@SPID AS VARCHAR(9)) + '</SPID>   <ServerName>[your_server_name]</ServerName>   <LoginName>[your_login_name]</LoginName>   <UserName>[your_user_name]</UserName>   <DatabaseName>[your_database_name]</DatabaseName>   <SchemaName>[your_queue_schema_name]</SchemaName>   <ObjectName>[your_queue_name]</ObjectName>   <ObjectType>QUEUE</ObjectType> </EVENT_INSTANCE>' begin dialog conversation     @conversationHandle from service        [<your_initiator_service_name>] to service          '<your_event_notification_service>' on contract         [http://schemas.microsoft.com/SQL/Notifications/PostEventNotification] with     encryption = off,     lifetime = 6000 ; send on conversation     @conversationHandle message type     [http://schemas.microsoft.com/SQL/Notifications/EventNotification] (@n) ;     end conversation @conversationHandle; That’s it! Put the code in a Stored Procedure and you can add to your application a button that says “Force Queue Processing” (or something similar) in order to start the activation process whenever you need it (which should not occur too frequently but it may happen). PS I know that the “fire-and-forget” (ending the conversation without waiting for an answer) technique is not a best practice, but in this case I don’t see how it can hurts so I decided to stay very close to the KISS principle []

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• The illusion of Competence

  - by tony_lombardo

  Working as a contractor opened my eyes to the developer food chain.  Even though I had similar experiences earlier in my career, the challenges seemed much more vivid this time through.  I thought I’d share a couple of experiences with you, and the lessons that can be taken from them. Lesson 1: Beware of the “funnel” guy.  The funnel guy is the one who wants you to funnel all thoughts, ideas and code changes through him.  He may say it’s because he wants to avoid conflicts in source control, but the real reason is likely that he wants to hide your contributions.  Here’s an example.  When I finally got access to the code on one of my projects, I was told by the developer that I had to funnel all of my changes through him.  There were 4 of us coding on the project, but only 2 of us working on the UI.  The other 2 were working on a separate application, but part of the overall project.  So I figured, I’ll check it into SVN, he reviews and accepts then merges in.  Not even close.  I didn’t even have checkin rights to SVN, I had to email my changes to the developer so he could check those changes in.  Lesson 2: If you point out flaws in code to someone supposedly ‘higher’ than you in the developer chain, they’re going to get defensive.  My first task on this project was to review the code, familiarize myself with it.  So of course, that’s what I did.  And in familiarizing myself with it, I saw so many bad practices and code smells that I immediately started coming up with solutions to fix it.  Of course, when I reviewed these changes with the developer (guy who originally wrote the code), he smiled and nodded and said, we can’t make those changes now, it’s too destabilizing.  I recommended we create a new branch and start working on refactoring, but branching was a new concept for this guy and he was worried we would somehow break SVN. How about some concrete examples? I started out by recommending we remove NUnit dependency and tests from the application project, and create a separate Unit testing project.  This was met with a little bit of resistance because - “How do I access the private methods?”  As it turned out there weren’t really any private methods that weren’t exposed by public methods, so I quickly calmed this fear. Win 1 Loss 0 Next, I recommended that all of the File IO access be wrapped in Using clauses, or at least properly wrapped in try catch finally.  This recommendation was accepted.. but never implemented. Win 2  Loss 1 Next recommendation was to refactor the command pattern implementation.  The command pattern was implemented, but it wasn’t really necessary for the application.  More over, the fact that we had 100 different command classes, each with it’s own specific command parameters class, made maintenance a huge hassle.  The same code repeated over and over and over.  This recommendation was declined, the code was too fragile and this change would destabilize it.  I couldn’t disagree, though it was the commands themselves in many cases that were fragile. Win 2 Loss 2 Next recommendation was to aid performance (and responsiveness) of the application by using asynchronous service calls.  This on was accepted. Win 2 Loss 3 If you’re paying any attention, you’re wondering why the async service calls was scored as a loss.. Let me explain.  The service call was made using the async pattern.  Followed by a thread.sleep  <facepalm>. Now it’s easy to be harsh on this kind of code, especially if you’re an experienced developer.  But I understood how most of this happened.  One junior guy, working as hard as he can to build his first real world application, with little or no guidance from anyone else.  He had his pattern book and theory of programming to help him, but no real world experience.  He didn’t know how difficult it would be to trace the crashes to the coding issues above, but he will one day.  The part that amazed me was the management position that “this guy should be a team lead, because he’s worked so hard”.  I’m all for rewarding hard work, but when you reward someone by promoting them past the point of their competence, you’re setting yourself and them up for failure.  And that’s lesson 3.  Just because you’ve got a hard worker, doesn’t mean he should be leading a development project.  If you’re a junior guy busting your ass, keep at it.  I encourage you to try new things, but most importantly to learn from your mistakes.  And correct your mistakes.  And if someone else looks at your code and shows you a laundry list of things that should be done differently, don’t take it personally – they’re really trying to help you.  And if you’re a senior guy, working with a junior guy, it’s your duty to point out the flaws in the code.  Even if it does make you the bad guy.  And while I’ve used “guy” above, I mean both men and women.  And in some cases mutant dinosaurs. 

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• ISACA Webcast follow up: Managing High Risk Access and Compliance with a Platform Approach to Privileged Account Management

  - by Darin Pendergraft

  Last week we presented how Oracle Privileged Account Manager (OPAM) could be used to manage high risk, privileged accounts.  If you missed the webcast, here is a link to the replay: ISACA replay archive (NOTE: you will need to use Internet Explorer to view the archive) For those of you that did join us on the call, you will know that I only had a little bit of time for Q&A, and was only able to answer a few of the questions that came in.  So I wanted to devote this blog to answering the outstanding questions.  Here they are. 1. Can OPAM track admin or DBA activity details during a password check-out session? Oracle Audit Vault is monitoring these activities which can be correlated to check-out events. 2. How would OPAM handle simultaneous requests? OPAM can be configured to allow for shared passwords.  By default sharing is turned off. 3. How long are the passwords valid?  Are the admins required to manually check them in? Password expiration can be configured and set in the password policy according to your corporate standards.  You can specify if you want forced check-in or not. 4. Can 2-factor authentication be used with OPAM? Yes - 2-factor integration with OPAM is provided by integration with Oracle Access Manager, and Oracle Adaptive Access Manager. 5. How do you control access to OPAM to ensure that OPAM admins don't override the functionality to access privileged accounts? OPAM provides separation of duties by using Admin Roles to manage access to targets and privileged accounts and to control which operations admins can perform. 6. How and where are the passwords stored in OPAM? OPAM uses Oracle Platform Security Services (OPSS) Credential Store Framework (CSF) to securely store passwords.  This is the same system used by Oracle Applications. 7. Does OPAM support hierarchical/level based privileges?  Is the log maintained for independent review/audit? Yes. OPAM uses the Fusion Middleware (FMW) Audit Framework to store all OPAM related events in a dedicated audit database.  8. Does OPAM support emergency access in the case where approvers are not available until later? Yes.  OPAM can be configured to release a password under a "break-glass" emergency scenario. 9. Does OPAM work with AIX? Yes supported UNIX version are listed in the "certified component section" of the UNIX connector guide at:http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E22999_01/doc.111/e17694/intro.htm#autoId0 10. Does OPAM integrate with Sun Identity Manager? Yes.  OPAM can be integrated with SIM using the REST  APIs.  OPAM has direct integration with Oracle Identity Manager 11gR2. 11. Is OPAM available today and what does it cost? Yes.  OPAM is available now.  Ask your Oracle Account Manager for pricing. 12. Can OPAM be used in SAP environments? Yes, supported SAP version are listed in the "certified component section" of the SAP  connector guide here: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E22999_01/doc.111/e25327/intro.htm#autoId0 13. How would this product integrate, if at all, with access to a particular field in the DB that need additional security such as SSN's? OPAM can work with DB Vault and DB Firewall to provide the fine grained access control for databases. 14. Is VM supported? As a deployment platform Oracle VM is supported. For further details about supported Virtualization Technologies see Oracle Fusion Middleware Supported System configurations here: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/ias/downloads/fusion-certification-100350.html 15. Where did this (OPAM) technology come from? OPAM was built by Oracle Engineering. 16. Are all Linux flavors supported?  How about BSD? BSD is not supported. For supported UNIX version see the "certified component section" of the UNIX connector guide http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E22999_01/doc.111/e17694/intro.htm#autoId0 17. What happens if users don't check passwords in at the end of a work task? In OPAM a time frame can be defined how long a password can be checked out. The security admin can force a check-in at any given time. 18. is MySQL supported? Yes, supported DB version are listed in the "certified component section" of the DB connector guide here: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E22999_01/doc.111/e28315/intro.htm#BABGJJHA 19. What happens when OPAM crashes and you need to use the password? OPAM can be configured for high availability, but if required, OPAM data can be backed up/recovered.  See the OPAM admin guide. 20. Is OPAM Standalone product or does it leverage other components from IDM? OPAM can be run stand-alone, but will also leverage other IDM components

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• Big Data – Buzz Words: What is HDFS – Day 8 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we learned what is MapReduce. In this article we will take a quick look at one of the four most important buzz words which goes around Big Data – HDFS. What is HDFS ? HDFS stands for Hadoop Distributed File System and it is a primary storage system used by Hadoop. It provides high performance access to data across Hadoop clusters. It is usually deployed on low-cost commodity hardware. In commodity hardware deployment server failures are very common. Due to the same reason HDFS is built to have high fault tolerance. The data transfer rate between compute nodes in HDFS is very high, which leads to reduced risk of failure. HDFS creates smaller pieces of the big data and distributes it on different nodes. It also copies each smaller piece to multiple times on different nodes. Hence when any node with the data crashes the system is automatically able to use the data from a different node and continue the process. This is the key feature of the HDFS system. Architecture of HDFS The architecture of the HDFS is master/slave architecture. An HDFS cluster always consists of single NameNode. This single NameNode is a master server and it manages the file system as well regulates access to various files. In additional to NameNode there are multiple DataNodes. There is always one DataNode for each data server. In HDFS a big file is split into one or more blocks and those blocks are stored in a set of DataNodes. The primary task of the NameNode is to open, close or rename files and directory and regulate access to the file system, whereas the primary task of the DataNode is read and write to the file systems. DataNode is also responsible for the creation, deletion or replication of the data based on the instruction from NameNode. In reality, NameNode and DataNode are software designed to run on commodity machine build in Java language. Visual Representation of HDFS Architecture Let us understand how HDFS works with the help of the diagram. Client APP or HDFS Client connects to NameSpace as well as DataNode. Client App access to the DataNode is regulated by NameSpace Node. NameSpace Node allows Client App to connect to the DataNode based by allowing the connection to the DataNode directly. A big data file is divided into multiple data blocks (let us assume that those data chunks are A,B,C and D. Client App will later on write data blocks directly to the DataNode. Client App does not have to directly write to all the node. It just has to write to any one of the node and NameNode will decide on which other DataNode it will have to replicate the data. In our example Client App directly writes to DataNode 1 and detained 3. However, data chunks are automatically replicated to other nodes. All the information like in which DataNode which data block is placed is written back to NameNode. High Availability During Disaster Now as multiple DataNode have same data blocks in the case of any DataNode which faces the disaster, the entire process will continue as other DataNode will assume the role to serve the specific data block which was on the failed node. This system provides very high tolerance to disaster and provides high availability. If you notice there is only single NameNode in our architecture. If that node fails our entire Hadoop Application will stop performing as it is a single node where we store all the metadata. As this node is very critical, it is usually replicated on another clustered as well as on another data rack. Though, that replicated node is not operational in architecture, it has all the necessary data to perform the task of the NameNode in the case of the NameNode fails. The entire Hadoop architecture is built to function smoothly even there are node failures or hardware malfunction. It is built on the simple concept that data is so big it is impossible to have come up with a single piece of the hardware which can manage it properly. We need lots of commodity (cheap) hardware to manage our big data and hardware failure is part of the commodity servers. To reduce the impact of hardware failure Hadoop architecture is built to overcome the limitation of the non-functioning hardware. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss the importance of the relational database in Big Data. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• Dealing with "I-am-cool-and-you-are-dumb" manager [closed]

  - by Software Guy

  I have been working with a software company for about 6 months now. I like the projects I work on there and I really like all the people there except for 1 guy. That guy is technically smart, and he is a co-founder of the company. He is an okay guy in person (the kind you wouldn't want to care about much) but things get tricky when he is your manager. In general I am all okay but there are times when I feel I am not being treated fairly: He doesn't give much thought to when he makes mistakes and when I do something similar, he is super critical. Recently he went as far as to say "I am not sure if I can trust you with this feature". The detais of this specific case are this: I was working on this feature, and I was already a couple of hours over my normal working hours, and then I decided to stop and continue tomorrow. We use git, and I like to commit changes locally and only push when I feel they are ready. This manager insists that I push all the changes to the central repo (in case my hard drive crashes). So I push the change, and the ticket is marked as "to be tested". Next day I come in, he sits next to me and starts complaining and says that I posted above. I really didn't know what to say, I tried to explain to him that the ticket is still being worked upon but he didn't seem to listen. He interrupts me in-between when I am coding, which I do not mind, but when I do that same, his face turns like this :| and reacts as if his work was super important and I am just wasting his time. He asks me to accumulate all questions, and then ask him altogether which is not always possible, as you need a clarification before you can continue on a feature implementation. And when I am coding, he talks on the phone with his customers next to me (when he can go to the meeting room with his laptop) and doesn't care. He made me switch to a whole new IDE (from Netbeans to a commercial IDE costing a lot of money) for a really tiny feature (which I later found out was in Netbeans as well!). I didn't make a big deal out of it as I am equally comfortable working with this new IDE, but I couldn't get the science behind his obsession. He said this feature makes sure that if any method is updated by a programmer, the IDE will turn the method name to red in places where it is used. I told him that I do not have a problem since I always search for method usage in the project and make sure its updated. IDEs even have refactoring features for exactly that, but... I recently implemented a feature for a project, and I was happy about it and considering him a senior, I asked him his comments about the implementation quality.. he thought long and hard, made a few funny faces, and when he couldn't find anything, he said "ummm, your program will crash if JS is disabled" - he was wrong, since I had made sure it would work fine with default values even if JS was disabled. I told him that and then he said "oh okay". BUT, the funny thing is, a few days back, he implemented something and I objected with "But that would not run if JS is disabled" and his response was "We don't have to care about people who disable JS" :-/ Once he asked me to investigate if there was a way to modify a CMS generated menu programmatically by extending the CMS, I did my research and told him that the only was is to inject a menu item using JavaScript / jQuery and his reaction was "ah that's ugly, and hacky, not acceptable" and two days later, I see that feature implemented in the same way as I had suggested. The point is, his reaction was not respectful at all, even if what I proposed was hacky, he should be respectful, that I know what's hacky and if I am suggesting something hacky, there must be a reason for it. There are plenty of other reasons / examples where I feel I am not being treated fairly. I want your advice as to what is it that I am doing wrong and how to deal with such a situation. The other guys in the team are actually very good people, and I do not want to leave the job either (although I could, if I want to). All I want is respect and equal treatment. I have thought about talking to this guy in a face to face meeting, but that worries me that his attitude might get worse and make things more difficult for me (since he doesn't seem to be the guy who thinks he can be wrong too). I am also considering talking to the other co-founder but I am not sure how he will take it (as both founders have been friends forever). Thanks for reading the long message, I really appreciate your help.

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• What Counts for a DBA: Humility

  - by drsql

  In football (the American sort, naturally,) there are a select group of players who really hope to never have their names called during the game. They are members of the offensive line, and their job is to protect other players so they can deliver the ball to the goal to score points. When you do hear their name called, it is usually because they made a mistake and the player that they were supposed to protect ended up flat on his back admiring the clouds in the sky instead of advancing towards the goal to scoring point. Even on the rare occasion their name is called for a good reason, it is usually because they were making up for a teammate who had made a mistake and they covered up for them. The role of offensive lineman is a very good analogy for the role of the admin DBA. As a DBA, you are called on to be barely visible and rarely heard, protecting the company data assets tenaciously, even though the enemies to our craft surround us on all sides:. Developers: Cries of ‘foul!’ often ensue when the DBA says that they want data integrity to be stringently enforced and that documentation is needed so they can support systems, mostly because every error occurrence in the enterprise will be initially blamed on the database and fall to the DBA to troubleshoot. Insisting too loudly may bring those cries of ‘foul’ that somewhat remind you of when your 2 year old daughter didn't want to go to bed. The result of this petulance is that the next "enemy" gets involved. Managers: The concerns that motivate DBAs to argue will not excite the kind of manager who gets his technical knowledge from a glossy magazine filled with buzzwords, charts, and pretty pictures. However, the other programmers in the organization will tickle the buzzword void with a stream of new-sounding ideas and technologies constantly, along with warnings that if we did care about data integrity and document things, the budget would explode! In contrast, the arguments for integrity of data and supportability tend to be about as exciting as watching grass grow, and far too many manager types seem to prefer to smoke it than watch it. Packaged Applications: The DBA is rarely given a chance to review a new application that is being demonstrated for the enterprise, and rarer still is the DBA that gets a veto of an application because the database it uses has clearly been created by an architect that won't read a data modeling book because he is already married. More often than not this leads to hours of work for the DBA trying to performance-tune a database with a menagerie of rules that must be followed to stay within the  application support agreement, such as no changing indexes on a third party schema even though there are 10 billion rows instead of the 10 thousand when the system was last optimized. Hardware Failures: Physical disks, networking devices, memory, and backup devices all come with a measure known as ‘mean time before failure’ and it is never listed in centuries or eons. More like years, and the term ‘mean’ indicates that half of the devices are expected to fail before that, which by my calendar means any hour of any day that it wants to fail it will. But the DBA sucks it up and does the task at hand with a humility that makes them nearly invisible to all but the most observant person in the organization. The best DBAs I know are so proactive in their relentless pursuit of perfection that they detect many of the bugs (which they seldom caused) in the system well before they become a problem. In the end the DBA gets noticed for one of same two reasons as the offensive lineman. You make a mistake, like dropping a critical production database that had never been backed up; or when a system crashes for any reason whatsoever and they are on the spot with troubleshooting and system restoration plans that have been well thought out, tested, and tested again. Not because there is any glory in it, but because it is what they do.   Note: The characteristics of the professions referred to in this blog are meant to be overstated stereotypes for humorous effect, and even some DBAs aren't quite this perfect. If you are reading this far and haven’t hand written a 10 page flaming comment about how you are a _______ and you aren’t like this, that is awesome. Not every situation applies to everyone, but if you have never worked with a bad packaged app, a magazine trained manager, programmers that aren’t team players, or hardware that occasionally failed, relax and go have a unicorn sandwich before you wake up.

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• Data Binding to Attached Properties

  - by Chris Gardner

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/freestylecoding/archive/2013/06/14/data-binding-to-attached-properties.aspx When I was working on my C#/XAML game framework, I discovered I wanted to try to data bind my sprites to background objects. That way, I could update my objects and the draw functionality would take care of the work for me. After a little experimenting and web searching, it appeared this concept was an impossible dream. Of course, when has that ever stopped me? In my typical way, I started to massively dive down the rabbit hole. I created a sprite on a canvas, and I bound it to a background object. <Canvas Name="GameField" Background="Black"> <Image Name="PlayerStrite" Source="Assets/Ship.png" Width="50" Height="50" Canvas.Left="{Binding X}" Canvas.Top="{Binding Y}"/> </Canvas> Now, we wire the UI item to the background item. public MainPage() { this.InitializeComponent(); this.Loaded += StartGame; }   void StartGame( object sender, RoutedEventArgs e ) { BindingPlayer _Player = new BindingPlayer(); _Player.X = Window.Current.Bounds.Height - PlayerSprite.Height; _Player.X = ( Window.Current.Bounds.Width - PlayerSprite.Width ) / 2.0; } Of course, now we need to actually have our background object. public class BindingPlayer : INotifyPropertyChanged { private double m_X; public double X { get { return m_X; } set { m_X = value; NotifyPropertyChanged(); } }   private double m_Y; public double Y { get { return m_Y; } set { m_Y = value; NotifyPropertyChanged(); } }   public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged; protected void NotifyPropertyChanged( [CallerMemberName] string p_PropertyName = null ) { if( PropertyChanged != null ) PropertyChanged( this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs( p_PropertyName ) ); } } I fired this baby up, and my sprite was correctly positioned on the screen. Maybe the sky wasn't falling after all. Wouldn't it be great if that was the case? I created some code to allow me to move the sprite, but nothing happened. This seems odd. So, I start debugging the application and stepping through code. Everything appears to be working. Time to dig a little deeper. After much profanity was spewed, I stumbled upon a breakthrough. The code only looked like it was working. What was really happening is that there was an exception being thrown in the background thread that I never saw. Apparently, the key call was the one to PropertyChanged. If PropertyChanged is not called on the UI thread, the UI thread ignores the call. Actually, it throws an exception and the background thread silently crashes. Of course, you'll never see this unless you're looking REALLY carefully. This seemed to be a simple problem. I just need to marshal this to the UI thread. Unfortunately, this object has no knowledge of this mythical UI Thread in which we speak. So, I had to pull the UI Thread out of thin air. Let's change our PropertyChanged call to look this. public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged; protected void NotifyPropertyChanged( [CallerMemberName] string p_PropertyName = null ) { if( PropertyChanged != null ) Windows.ApplicationModel.Core.CoreApplication.MainView.CoreWindow.Dispatcher.RunAsync( Windows.UI.Core.CoreDispatcherPriority.Normal, new Windows.UI.Core.DispatchedHandler( () => { PropertyChanged( this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs( p_PropertyName ) ); } ) ); } Now, we raised our notification on the UI thread. Everything is fine, people are happy, and the world moves on. You may have noticed that I didn't await my call to the dispatcher. This was intentional. If I am trying to update a slew of sprites, I don't want thread being hung while I wait my turn. Thus, I send the message and move on. It is worth nothing that this is NOT the most efficient way to do this for game programming. We'll get to that in another blog post. However, it is perfectly acceptable for a business app that is running a background task that would like to notify the UI thread of progress on a periodic basis. It is worth noting that this code was written for a Windows Store App. You can do the same thing with WP8 and WPF. The call to the marshaler changes, but it is the same idea.

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• WMemoryProfiler is Released

  - by Alois Kraus

  What is it? WMemoryProfiler is a managed profiling Api to aid integration testing. This free library can get managed heap statistics and memory usage for your own process (remember testing) and other processes as well. The best thing is that it does work from .NET 2.0 up to .NET 4.5 in x86 and x64. To make it more interesting it can attach to any running .NET process. The reason why I do mention this is that commercial profilers do support this functionality only for their professional editions. An normally only since .NET 4.0 since the profiling API only since then does support attaching to a running process. This thing does differ in many aspects from “normal” profilers because while profiling yourself you can get all objects from all managed heaps back as an object array. If you ever wanted to change the state of an object which does only exist a method local in another thread you can get your hands on it now … Enough theory. Show me some code /// <summary> /// Show feature to not only get statisics out of a process but also the newly allocated /// instances since the last call to MarkCurrentObjects. /// GetNewObjects does return the newly allocated objects as object array /// </summary> static void InstanceTracking() { using (var dumper = new MemoryDumper()) // if you have problems use to see the debugger windows true,true)) { dumper.MarkCurrentObjects(); Allocate(); ILookup<Type, object> newObjects = dumper.GetNewObjects() .ToLookup( x => x.GetType() ); Console.WriteLine("New Strings:"); foreach (var newStr in newObjects[typeof(string)] ) { Console.WriteLine("Str: {0}", newStr); } } } … New Strings: Str: qqd Str: String data: Str: String data: 0 Str: String data: 1 … This is really hot stuff. Not only you can get heap statistics but you can directly examine the new objects and make queries upon them. When I do find more time I can reconstruct the object root graph from it from my own process. It this cool or what? You can also peek into the Finalization Queue to check if you did accidentally forget to dispose a whole bunch of objects … /// <summary> /// .NET 4.0 or above only. Get all finalizable objects which are ready for finalization and have no other object roots anymore. /// </summary> static void NotYetFinalizedObjects() { using (var dumper = new MemoryDumper()) { object[] finalizable = dumper.GetObjectsReadyForFinalization(); Console.WriteLine("Currently {0} objects of types {1} are ready for finalization. Consider disposing them before.", finalizable.Length, String.Join(",", finalizable.ToLookup( x=> x.GetType() ) .Select( x=> x.Key.Name)) ); } } How does it work? The W of WMemoryProfiler is a good hint. It does employ Windbg and SOS dll to do the heavy lifting and concentrates on an easy to use Api which does hide completely Windbg. If you do not want to see Windbg you will never see it. In my experience the most complex thing is actually to download Windbg from the Windows 8 Stanalone SDK. This is described in the Readme and the exception you are greeted with if it is missing in much greater detail. So I will not go into this here.   What Next? Depending on the feedback I do get I can imagine some features which might be useful as well Calculate first order GC Roots from the actual object graph Identify global statics in Types in object graph Support read out of finalization queue of .NET 2.0 as well. Support Memory Dump analysis (again a feature only supported by commercial profilers in their professional editions if it is supported at all) Deserialize objects from a memory dump into a live process back (this would need some more investigation but it is doable) The last item needs some explanation. Why on earth would you want to do that? The basic idea is to store in your live process some logging/tracing data which can become quite big but since it is never written to it is very fast to generate. When your process crashes with a memory dump you could transfer this data structure back into a live viewer which can then nicely display your program state at the point it did crash. This is an advanced trouble shooting technique I have not seen anywhere yet but it could be quite useful. You can have here a look at the current feature list of WMemoryProfiler with some examples.   How To Get Started? First I would download the released source package (it is tiny). And compile the complete project. Then you can compile the Example project (it has this name) and uncomment in the main method the scenario you want to check out. If you are greeted with an exception it is time to install the Windows 8 Standalone SDK which is described in great detail in the exception text. Thats it for the first round. I have seen something more limited in the Java world some years ago (now I cannot find the link anymore) but anyway. Now we have something much better.

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• Why do I get an exception when playing multiple sound instances?

  - by Boreal

  Right now, I'm adding a rudimentary sound engine to my game. So far, I am able to load in a WAV file and play it once, then free up the memory when I close the game. However, the game crashes with a nice ArgumentOutOfBoundsException when I try to play another sound instance. Specified argument was out of the range of valid values. Parameter name: readLength I'm following this tutorial pretty much exactly, but I still keep getting the aforementioned error. Here's my sound-related code. /// <summary> /// Manages all sound instances. /// </summary> public static class Audio { static XAudio2 device; static MasteringVoice master; static List<SoundInstance> instances; /// <summary> /// The XAudio2 device. /// </summary> internal static XAudio2 Device { get { return device; } } /// <summary> /// Initializes the audio device and master track. /// </summary> internal static void Initialize() { device = new XAudio2(); master = new MasteringVoice(device); instances = new List<SoundInstance>(); } /// <summary> /// Releases all XA2 resources. /// </summary> internal static void Shutdown() { foreach(SoundInstance i in instances) i.Dispose(); master.Dispose(); device.Dispose(); } /// <summary> /// Registers a sound instance with the system. /// </summary> /// <param name="instance">Sound instance</param> internal static void AddInstance(SoundInstance instance) { instances.Add(instance); } /// <summary> /// Disposes any sound instance that has stopped playing. /// </summary> internal static void Update() { List<SoundInstance> temp = new List<SoundInstance>(instances); foreach(SoundInstance i in temp) if(!i.Playing) { i.Dispose(); instances.Remove(i); } } } /// <summary> /// Loads sounds from various files. /// </summary> internal class SoundLoader { /// <summary> /// Loads a .wav sound file. /// </summary> /// <param name="format">The decoded format will be sent here</param> /// <param name="buffer">The data will be sent here</param> /// <param name="soundName">The path to the WAV file</param> internal static void LoadWAV(out WaveFormat format, out AudioBuffer buffer, string soundName) { WaveStream wave = new WaveStream(soundName); format = wave.Format; buffer = new AudioBuffer(); buffer.AudioData = wave; buffer.AudioBytes = (int)wave.Length; buffer.Flags = BufferFlags.EndOfStream; } } /// <summary> /// Manages the data for a single sound. /// </summary> public class Sound : IAsset { WaveFormat format; AudioBuffer buffer; /// <summary> /// Loads a sound from a file. /// </summary> /// <param name="soundName">The path to the sound file</param> /// <returns>Whether the sound loaded successfully</returns> public bool Load(string soundName) { if(soundName.EndsWith(".wav")) SoundLoader.LoadWAV(out format, out buffer, soundName); else return false; return true; } /// <summary> /// Plays the sound. /// </summary> public void Play() { Audio.AddInstance(new SoundInstance(format, buffer)); } /// <summary> /// Unloads the sound from memory. /// </summary> public void Unload() { buffer.Dispose(); } } /// <summary> /// Manages a single sound instance. /// </summary> public class SoundInstance { SourceVoice source; bool playing; /// <summary> /// Whether the sound is currently playing. /// </summary> public bool Playing { get { return playing; } } /// <summary> /// Starts a new instance of a sound. /// </summary> /// <param name="format">Format of the sound</param> /// <param name="buffer">Buffer holding sound data</param> internal SoundInstance(WaveFormat format, AudioBuffer buffer) { source = new SourceVoice(Audio.Device, format); source.BufferEnd += (s, e) => playing = false; source.Start(); source.SubmitSourceBuffer(buffer); // THIS IS WHERE THE EXCEPTION IS THROWN playing = true; } /// <summary> /// Releases memory used by the instance. /// </summary> internal void Dispose() { source.Dispose(); } } The exception occurs on line 156 when I am playing the sound: source.SubmitSourceBuffer(buffer);

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• How do I pass vertex and color positions to OpenGL shaders?

  - by smoth190

  I've been trying to get this to work for the past two days, telling myself I wouldn't ask for help. I think you can see where that got me... I thought I'd try my hand at a little OpenGL, because DirectX is complex and depressing. I picked OpenGL 3.x, because even with my OpenGL 4 graphics card, all my friends don't have that, and I like to let them use my programs. There aren't really any great tutorials for OpenGL 3, most are just "type this and this will happen--the end". I'm trying to just draw a simple triangle, and so far, all I have is a blank screen with my clear color (when I set the draw type to GL_POINTS I just get a black dot). I have no idea what the problem is, so I'll just slap down the code: Here is the function that creates the triangle: void CEntityRenderable::CreateBuffers() { m_vertices = new Vertex3D[3]; m_vertexCount = 3; m_vertices[0].x = -1.0f; m_vertices[0].y = -1.0f; m_vertices[0].z = -5.0f; m_vertices[0].r = 1.0f; m_vertices[0].g = 0.0f; m_vertices[0].b = 0.0f; m_vertices[0].a = 1.0f; m_vertices[1].x = 1.0f; m_vertices[1].y = -1.0f; m_vertices[1].z = -5.0f; m_vertices[1].r = 1.0f; m_vertices[1].g = 0.0f; m_vertices[1].b = 0.0f; m_vertices[1].a = 1.0f; m_vertices[2].x = 0.0f; m_vertices[2].y = 1.0f; m_vertices[2].z = -5.0f; m_vertices[2].r = 1.0f; m_vertices[2].g = 0.0f; m_vertices[2].b = 0.0f; m_vertices[2].a = 1.0f; //Create the VAO glGenVertexArrays(1, &m_vaoID); //Bind the VAO glBindVertexArray(m_vaoID); //Create a vertex buffer glGenBuffers(1, &m_vboID); //Bind the buffer glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, m_vboID); //Set the buffers data glBufferData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, sizeof(m_vertices), m_vertices, GL_STATIC_DRAW); //Set its usage glVertexAttribPointer(0, 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, sizeof(Vertex3D), 0); glVertexAttribPointer(1, 4, GL_FLOAT, GL_TRUE, sizeof(Vertex3D), (void*)(3*sizeof(float))); //Enable glEnableVertexAttribArray(0); glEnableVertexAttribArray(1); //Check for errors if(glGetError() != GL_NO_ERROR) { Error("Failed to create VBO: %s", gluErrorString(glGetError())); } //Unbind... glBindVertexArray(0); } The Vertex3D struct is as such... struct Vertex3D { Vertex3D() : x(0), y(0), z(0), r(0), g(0), b(0), a(1) {} float x, y, z; float r, g, b, a; }; And finally the render function: void CEntityRenderable::RenderEntity() { //Render... glBindVertexArray(m_vaoID); //Use our attribs glDrawArrays(GL_POINTS, 0, m_vertexCount); glBindVertexArray(0); //unbind OnRender(); } (And yes, I am binding and unbinding the shader. That is just in a different place) I think my problem is that I haven't fully wrapped my mind around this whole VertexAttribArray thing (the only thing I like better in DirectX was input layouts D:). This is my vertex shader: #version 330 //Matrices uniform mat4 projectionMatrix; uniform mat4 viewMatrix; uniform mat4 modelMatrix; //In values layout(location = 0) in vec3 position; layout(location = 1) in vec3 color; //Out values out vec3 frag_color; //Main shader void main(void) { //Position in world gl_Position = vec4(position, 1.0); //gl_Position = projectionMatrix * viewMatrix * modelMatrix * vec4(in_Position, 1.0); //No color changes frag_color = color; } As you can see, I've disable the matrices, because that just makes debugging this thing so much harder. I tried to debug using glslDevil, but my program just crashes right before the shaders are created... so I gave up with that. This is my first shot at OpenGL since the good old days of LWJGL, but that was when I didn't even know what a shader was. Thanks for your help :)

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• Copies of GameScene created when called additional times

  - by Orin MacGregor

  I have a game with a level select managed by a SceneManager, which basically just uses ReplaceScene. The first time I load a level everything works fine. On subsequent calls, for example: completing the level and continuing to the next, things blow up. The level loads fine, but when I try to pan the map or try to move the player the game crashes. Debugging through I found that there are multiple occurrences of self and related children like player and mapLayer. As a test, I put this code in my ccTouchesBegan: NSLog(@"test %i", [self retainCount]); The first time a level is loaded, it gives: test 2 The second time I load a level it gives: test 2 test 1 as in it spits out both values by looping through twice, not just appending an output to the last. It continues with this pattern for each subsequent load. So the third time will give 2 1 1. Particular code that causes the game to crash involve calling _tileMap.tileSize because there is a second GameScene with a tileMap that was supposedly destroyed, so it has tileSize and mapSize of 0. I noticed dealloc doesn't really ever get called, so I tried to manage some things with -(void) onExit -(void) onExit { [self unscheduleAllSelectors]; [_player stopAllActions]; //stop any animations just in case. normally handled in ccTouchesEnded [self removeAllChildrenWithCleanup:YES]; } I never replace the GameScene while I'm in a GameScene; if the level is completed it goes to a GameOver scene, or I use a back button that goes to the LevelSelect scene. This is [the relevant parts of] my init, in case something like the adding of children matters: -(id) init { _mapLayer = [CCLayer node]; //load data for level GameData *gameData = [GameDataParser loadData]; int selectedChapter = gameData.selectedChapter; int selectedLevel = gameData.selectedLevel; Levels *chapterLevels = [LevelParser loadLevelsForChapter:selectedChapter]; //loop until we get selected level, then do stuff for (Level *level in chapterLevels.levels) { if (level.number == selectedLevel) { //load the level map _tileMap = [CCTMXTiledMap tiledMapWithTMXFile:level.file]; } } _background = [_tileMap layerNamed:@"Background"]; _foreground = [_tileMap layerNamed:@"Foreground"]; _meta = [_tileMap layerNamed:@"Meta"]; _meta.visible = NO; //initialize Spawn Point object and place player there CCTMXObjectGroup *objects = [_tileMap objectGroupNamed:@"Objects"]; NSAssert(objects != nil, @"'Objects' object group not found"); NSMutableDictionary *spawnPoint = [objects objectNamed:@"SpawnPoint"]; NSAssert(spawnPoint != nil, @"SpawnPoint object not found"); int x = [[spawnPoint valueForKey:@"x"] intValue] / retinaScaling; int y = [[spawnPoint valueForKey:@"y"] intValue] / retinaScaling; //setup animations [[CCSpriteFrameCache sharedSpriteFrameCache] addSpriteFramesWithFile:@"MouseRightAnim_24x21.plist"]; CCSpriteBatchNode *spriteSheet = [CCSpriteBatchNode batchNodeWithFile:@"MouseRightAnim_24x21.png"]; [_mapLayer addChild:spriteSheet z:1]; NSMutableArray *rightAnimFrames = [NSMutableArray array]; for(int i = 1; i <= 3; ++i) { [rightAnimFrames addObject: [[CCSpriteFrameCache sharedSpriteFrameCache] spriteFrameByName: [NSString stringWithFormat:@"MouseRight%d_24x21.png", i]]]; } CCAnimation *rightAnim = [CCAnimation animationWithSpriteFrames:rightAnimFrames delay:0.1f]; self.player = [CCSprite spriteWithSpriteFrameName:@"MouseRight2_24x21.png"]; _player.position = ccp(x, y); self.rightAction = [CCRepeatForever actionWithAction:[CCAnimate actionWithAnimation:rightAnim]]; rightAnim.restoreOriginalFrame = NO; [spriteSheet addChild:_player]; //get map size in pixels mapHeight = _tileMap.contentSize.height; mapWidth = _tileMap.contentSize.width; //setup defaults //this value works well for the calculation later, trial and error really distance = 150; lastGoodDistance = 150; mapScale = 1; [self setViewpointCenter:_player.position]; [_mapLayer addChild:_tileMap]; [self addChild:_mapLayer z:-1]; self.isTouchEnabled = YES; } return self; } And here's the SceneManager code for replacing scenes: +(void) goGameScene { CCLayer *gameLayer = [GameScene node]; [SceneManager go:gameLayer:[GameHUD node]]; } //this is what every call looks like besides the GameScene one above +(void) goLevelSelect { [SceneManager go:[LevelSelect node]:nil]; } +(void) go:(CCLayer *)layer: (CCLayer *)hudLayer { CCDirector *director = [CCDirector sharedDirector]; CCScene *newScene = [SceneManager wrap:layer:hudLayer]; if ([director runningScene]) { [director replaceScene:newScene]; } else { [director runWithScene:newScene]; } } +(CCScene *) wrap:(CCLayer *)layer: (CCLayer *)hudLayer { CCScene *newScene = [CCScene node]; [newScene addChild: layer]; if (hudLayer != nil) { [newScene addChild: hudLayer z:1]; } return newScene; } Any ideas why I'm getting these fatal artifacts? I'm hoping this isn't considered too localized since it basically combines 3 tutorials that anyone could end up following. (Ray Wenderlich Animations, Tim Roadley Scene Manager, Pan and Zoom with Tiled Maps.

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• NSFetchedResultsController crashing on performFetch: when using a cache

  - by Oliver

  I make use of NSFetchedResultsController to display a bunch of objects, which are sectioned using dates. On a fresh install, it all works perfectly and the objects are displayed in the table view. However, it seems that when the app is relaunched I get a crash. I specify a cache when initialising the NSFetchedResultsController, and when I don't it works perfectly. Here is how I create my NSFetchedResultsController: - (NSFetchedResultsController *)results { // If we are not nil, stop here if (results != nil) return results; // Create the fetch request, entity and sort descriptors NSFetchRequest *fetch = [[NSFetchRequest alloc] init]; NSEntityDescription *entity = [NSEntityDescription entityForName:@"Event" inManagedObjectContext:self.managedObjectContext]; NSSortDescriptor *descriptor = [[NSSortDescriptor alloc] initWithKey:@"utc_start" ascending:YES]; NSArray *descriptors = [[NSArray alloc] initWithObjects:descriptor, nil]; // Set properties on the fetch [fetch setEntity:entity]; [fetch setSortDescriptors:descriptors]; // Create a fresh fetched results controller NSFetchedResultsController *fetched = [[NSFetchedResultsController alloc] initWithFetchRequest:fetch managedObjectContext:self.managedObjectContext sectionNameKeyPath:@"day" cacheName:@"Events"]; fetched.delegate = self; self.results = fetched; // Release objects and return our controller [fetched release]; [fetch release]; [descriptor release]; [descriptors release]; return results; } These are the messages I get when the app crashes: FATAL ERROR: The persistent cache of section information does not match the current configuration. You have illegally mutated the NSFetchedResultsController's fetch request, its predicate, or its sort descriptor without either disabling caching or using +deleteCacheWithName: *** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInternalInconsistencyException', reason: 'FATAL ERROR: The persistent cache of section information does not match the current configuration. You have illegally mutated the NSFetchedResultsController's fetch request, its predicate, or its sort descriptor without either disabling caching or using +deleteCacheWithName:' I really have no clue as to why it's saying that, as I don't believe I'm doing anything special that would cause this. The only potential issue is the section header (day), which I construct like this when creating a new object: // Set the new format [formatter setDateFormat:@"dd MMMM"]; // Set the day of the event [event setValue:[formatter stringFromDate:[event valueForKey:@"utc_start"]] forKey:@"day"]; Like I mentioned, all of this works fine if there is no cache involved. Any help appreciated!

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• Wierd Haml 3 error with ruby 1.9.1 and rails 3

  - by Micke

  I'm getting this wierd error on my windows 7 computer when i am using the html2haml command with Haml 3 and Rails on ruby 1.9: -- control frame ---------- c:0017 p:-9593720 s:0052 b:0052 l:000051 d:000051 TOP c:0016 p:---- s:0050 b:0050 l:000049 d:000049 CFUNC :require c:0015 p:0026 s:0046 b:0046 l:000045 d:000045 TOP C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/hpricot-0.8.2-x86-mswin32/lib/hpricot.rb:20 c:0014 p:---- s:0044 b:0044 l:000043 d:000043 FINISH c:0013 p:---- s:0042 b:0042 l:000041 d:000041 CFUNC :require c:0012 p:0095 s:0038 b:0038 l:000037 d:000037 TOP C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/haml-3.0.0/lib/haml/html.rb:101 c:0011 p:---- s:0036 b:0036 l:000035 d:000035 FINISH c:0010 p:---- s:0034 b:0034 l:000033 d:000033 CFUNC :require c:0009 p:0022 s:0030 b:0030 l:000029 d:000029 METHOD C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/haml-3.0.0/lib/haml/exec.rb:559 c:0008 p:0050 s:0023 b:0023 l:000022 d:000022 METHOD C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/haml-3.0.0/lib/haml/exec.rb:41 c:0007 p:0013 s:0020 b:0020 l:000019 d:000019 METHOD C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/haml-3.0.0/lib/haml/exec.rb:22 c:0006 p:0078 s:0016 b:0016 l:000015 d:000015 TOP C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/haml-3.0.0/bin/html2haml:7 c:0005 p:---- s:0013 b:0013 l:000012 d:000012 FINISH c:0004 p:---- s:0011 b:0011 l:000010 d:000010 CFUNC :load c:0003 p:0127 s:0007 b:0007 l:000e54 d:0020c0 EVAL C:/Ruby/bin/html2haml:19 c:0002 p:---- s:0004 b:0004 l:000003 d:000003 FINISH c:0001 p:0000 s:0002 b:0002 l:000e54 d:000e54 TOP --------------------------- -- Ruby level backtrace information----------------------------------------- C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/hpricot-0.8.2-x86-mswin32/lib/hpricot.rb:20:in `require' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/hpricot-0.8.2-x86-mswin32/lib/hpricot.rb:20:in `<top (required)>' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/haml-3.0.0/lib/haml/html.rb:101:in `require' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/haml-3.0.0/lib/haml/html.rb:101:in `<top (required)>' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/haml-3.0.0/lib/haml/exec.rb:559:in `require' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/haml-3.0.0/lib/haml/exec.rb:559:in `process_result' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/haml-3.0.0/lib/haml/exec.rb:41:in `parse' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/haml-3.0.0/lib/haml/exec.rb:22:in `parse!' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/haml-3.0.0/bin/html2haml:7:in `<top (required)>' C:/Ruby/bin/html2haml:19:in `load' C:/Ruby/bin/html2haml:19:in `<main>' [NOTE] You may encounter a bug of Ruby interpreter. Bug reports are welcome. For details: http://www.ruby-lang.org/bugreport.html This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way. Please contact the application's support team for more information. And then ruby crashes. I have reinstalled all the gems but nothing will help. Please help me

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• iPad application crash in Apple review - cannot replicate in simulator, have crash log

  - by Mike

  I am clearly missing something obvious here and would really appreciate some input. I have tried repeatedly to submit an application to Apple (iPad in this case) that is crashing on their end when testing but I cannot replicated the situation on my end (obviously I only have the damned simulator to work with at this point). The crash log is as follows: Date/Time: 2010-04-01 05:39:47.226 -0700 OS Version: iPhone OS 3.2 (7B367) Report Version: 104 Exception Type: EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT) Exception Codes: 0x00000000, 0x00000000 Crashed Thread: 0 Thread 0 Crashed: 0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x000790a0 __kill + 8 1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00079090 kill + 4 2 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00079082 raise + 10 3 libSystem.B.dylib 0x0008d20a abort + 50 4 libstdc++.6.dylib 0x00044a1c __gnu_cxx::__verbose_terminate_handler() + 376 5 libobjc.A.dylib 0x000057c4 _objc_terminate + 104 6 libstdc++.6.dylib 0x00042dee __cxxabiv1::__terminate(void (*)()) + 46 7 libstdc++.6.dylib 0x00042e42 std::terminate() + 10 8 libstdc++.6.dylib 0x00042f12 __cxa_throw + 78 9 libobjc.A.dylib 0x000046a4 objc_exception_throw + 64 10 CoreFoundation 0x00090c6e +[NSException raise:format:arguments:] + 74 11 CoreFoundation 0x00090d38 +[NSException raise:format:] + 28 12 Foundation 0x00002600 -[NSCFDictionary setObject:forKey:] + 184 13 iPadMosaic 0x00003282 -[iPadMosaicViewController getAlbumThumbs] (iPadMosaicViewController.m:468) 14 Foundation 0x000728fe __NSFireDelayedPerform + 314 15 CoreFoundation 0x00022d1c CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 2092 16 CoreFoundation 0x000224da CFRunLoopRunInMode + 42 17 GraphicsServices 0x000030d4 GSEventRunModal + 108 18 GraphicsServices 0x00003180 GSEventRun + 56 19 UIKit 0x000034c2 -[UIApplication _run] + 374 20 UIKit 0x000019ec UIApplicationMain + 636 21 iPadMosaic 0x00002234 main (main.m:14) 22 iPadMosaic 0x00002204 start + 32 My understanding here is that I am botching the Dictionary add somehow. The relevant lines of code are: for (NSDictionary *album in self.albumList) { // Get image for each album cover UIImage *albumCover; // Loop through photos to get URL of cover based on photo ID match NSString *coverURL = @""; for (NSDictionary *photo in self.photoList) { if ([[photo objectForKey:@"pid"] isEqualToString:[album objectForKey:@"cover_pid"]]) { coverURL = [photo objectForKey:@"src"]; } } NSURL *albumCoverURL = [NSURL URLWithString:coverURL]; NSData *albumCoverData = [NSData dataWithContentsOfURL:albumCoverURL]; albumCover = [UIImage imageWithData:albumCoverData]; if (albumCover == nil || albumCover == NULL) { //NSLog(@"No album cover for some reason"); albumCover = [UIImage imageNamed:@"noImage.png"]; } [[self.albumList objectAtIndex:albumCurrent] setObject:albumCover forKey:@"coverThumb"]; } This is part of a loop that runs over the existing dictionaries stored in an array. If retrieving the album cover fails for some reason the object is filled with a default image and then added. The last line of the code is what's showing up in the crash log. It runs fine in the simulator but crashes 100% in testing on device apparently. Can anyone tell me what I am missing here?

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• WpfToolkit DataGrid does not work in Windows Phone 7

  - by Igor Zevaka

  I am trying to use WpfToolkit DataGrid in Windows Phone 7 project (Silverligt 4) and it's not working. Here is the XAML: <UserControl x:Class="SilverlightControls.Grid" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" mc:Ignorable="d" xmlns:wtk="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Windows.Controls;assembly=WPFToolkit" d:DesignHeight="480" d:DesignWidth="480"> <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="#FF1F1F1F" Width="960"> <Grid x:Name="TitleGrid"> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Title}" Style="{StaticResource PhoneTextPageTitle2Style}"/> </Grid> <wtk:DataGrid> </wtk:DataGrid> </Grid> </UserControl> The project compiles fine but crashes at runtime trying to load this control. The best clue I got so far is from Visual Studio Designer. Once I add wtk:DataGrid to the control the visual designer does not load and below is the exception it displays. Could it be that WpfToolkit relies on PresentationFramework.dll and it's not available in SL4? System.Reflection.Adds.UnresolvedAssemblyException Type universe cannot resolve assembly: PresentationFramework, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35. at System.Reflection.Adds.AssemblyProxy.GetResolvedAssembly() at System.Reflection.Adds.AssemblyProxy.get_FullName() at Microsoft.Windows.Design.Metadata.ReflectionMetadataContext.PrepareAttributes(Reflectable`1 reflectableAssembly) at Microsoft.Windows.Design.Metadata.ReflectionMetadataContext.PrepareAttributes(Reflectable`1 reflectableType) at MS.Internal.Metadata.ClrType.GetAttributes[T](ReflectionMetadataContext context, IReflectable`1 member, ITypeMetadata attributeType, Boolean merge, AttributeMergeCache& cache) at MS.Internal.Metadata.ClrMember`1.GetLocalAttributes(ITypeMetadata attributeType) at MS.Internal.Design.Metadata.Xaml.XamlType.GetSpecialProperty(Int32 idx, PropertyIdentifier pid) at MS.Internal.Design.Metadata.Xaml.XamlType.get_ContentProperty() at Microsoft.Windows.Design.Metadata.Xaml.XamlExtensionImplementations.GetContentProperty(ITypeMetadata sourceType) at Microsoft.Windows.Design.Metadata.Xaml.XamlExtensions.GetContentProperty(ITypeMetadata source) at MS.Internal.Design.Metadata.ReflectionTypeNode.get_ContentProperty() at MS.Internal.Design.Markup.XmlElement.CalcChildWhitespaceImportant(XamlElement element) at MS.Internal.Design.Markup.XmlElement.ConvertChildrenToXaml(XamlElement result, PrefixScope scope, IParseContext context, IMarkupSourceProvider provider, Boolean childrenAsString) at MS.Internal.Design.Markup.XmlElement.ConvertToXaml(XamlElement parent, PrefixScope parentScope, IParseContext context, IMarkupSourceProvider provider) at MS.Internal.Design.Markup.XmlElement.ConvertChildrenToXaml(XamlElement result, PrefixScope scope, IParseContext context, IMarkupSourceProvider provider, Boolean childrenAsString) at MS.Internal.Design.Markup.XmlElement.ConvertToXaml(XamlElement parent, PrefixScope parentScope, IParseContext context, IMarkupSourceProvider provider) at MS.Internal.Design.DocumentModel.DocumentTrees.Markup.XamlSourceDocument.ParseElementFromSkeleton(XamlParseContext context, SkeletonNode node, XamlElement parent, Boolean fullElement) at MS.Internal.Design.DocumentModel.DocumentTrees.Markup.XamlSourceDocument.UpdateSkeleton(IDamageListener listener) at Microsoft.Windows.Design.DocumentModel.Trees.MarkupDocumentTreeManager.Update() at Microsoft.Windows.Design.DocumentModel.MarkupProducer.Update() at Microsoft.Windows.Design.DocumentModel.MarkupProducer.HandleMessage(DocumentTreeCoordinator sender, MessageKey key, MessageArguments args) at Microsoft.Windows.Design.DocumentModel.MarkupProducer.Microsoft.Windows.Design.DocumentModel.IDocumentTreeConsumer.HandleMessage(DocumentTreeCoordinator sender, MessageKey key, MessageArguments args) at Microsoft.Windows.Design.DocumentModel.DocumentTreeCoordinator.SendMessage[T](MessageKey`1 key, T args, Boolean isPrivateMessage) at Microsoft.Windows.Design.DocumentModel.DocumentTreeCoordinator.QueuedMessage`1.Microsoft.Windows.Design.DocumentModel.IQueuedMessage.Invoke() at Microsoft.Windows.Design.DocumentModel.DocumentTreeCoordinator.ProcessQueuedMessages(Object state) at System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.InternalRealCall(Delegate callback, Object args, Int32 numArgs) at MS.Internal.Threading.ExceptionFilterHelper.TryCatchWhen(Object source, Delegate method, Object args, Int32 numArgs, Delegate catchHandler)

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• Detect user logout / shutdown in Python / GTK under Linux - SIGTERM/HUP not received

  - by Ivo Wetzel

  OK this is presumably a hard one, I've got an pyGTK application that has random crashes due to X Window errors that I can't catch/control. So I created a wrapper that restarts the app as soon as it detects a crash, now comes the problem, when the user logs out or shuts down the system, the app exits with status 1. But on some X errors it does so too. So I tried literally anything to catch the shutdown/logout, with no success, here's what I've tried: import pygtk import gtk import sys class Test(gtk.Window): def delete_event(self, widget, event, data=None): open("delete_event", "wb") def destroy_event(self, widget, data=None): open("destroy_event", "wb") def destroy_event2(self, widget, event, data=None): open("destroy_event2", "wb") def __init__(self): gtk.Window.__init__(self, gtk.WINDOW_TOPLEVEL) self.show() self.connect("delete_event", self.delete_event) self.connect("destroy", self.destroy_event) self.connect("destroy-event", self.destroy_event2) def foo(): open("add_event", "wb") def ex(): open("sys_event", "wb") from signal import * def clean(sig): f = open("sig_event", "wb") f.write(str(sig)) f.close() exit(0) for sig in (SIGABRT, SIGILL, SIGINT, SIGSEGV, SIGTERM): signal(sig, lambda *args: clean(sig)) def at(): open("at_event", "wb") import atexit atexit.register(at) f = Test() sys.exitfunc = ex gtk.quit_add(gtk.main_level(), foo) gtk.main() open("exit_event", "wb") Not one of these succeeds, is there any low level way to detect the system shutdown? Google didn't find anything related to that. I guess there must be a way, am I right? :/ EDIT: OK, more stuff. I've created this shell script: #!/bin/bash trap test_term TERM trap test_hup HUP test_term(){ echo "teeeeeeeeeerm" >~/Desktop/term.info exit 0 } test_hup(){ echo "huuuuuuuuuuup" >~/Desktop/hup.info exit 1 } while [ true ] do echo "idle..." sleep 2 done And also created a .desktop file to run it: [Desktop Entry] Name=Kittens GenericName=Kittens Comment=Kitten Script Exec=kittens StartupNotify=true Terminal=false Encoding=UTF-8 Type=Application Categories=Network;GTK; Name[de_DE]=Kittens Normally this should create the term file on logout and the hup file when it has been started with &. But not on my System. GDM doesn't care about the script at all, when I relog, it's still running. I've also tried using shopt -s huponexit, with no success. EDIT2: Also here's some more information aboute the real code, the whole thing looks like this: Wrapper Script, that catches errors and restarts the programm -> Main Programm with GTK Mainloop -> Background Updater Thread The flow is like this: Start Wrapper -> enter restart loop while restarts < max: -> start program -> check return code -> write error to file or exit the wrapper on 0 Now on shutdown, start program return 1. That means either it did hanup or the parent process terminated, the main problem is to figure out which of these two did just happen. X Errors result in a 1 too. Trapping in the shellscript doesn't work. If you want to take a look at the actual code check it out over at GitHub: http://github.com/BonsaiDen/Atarashii

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• heroku mongohq and mongoid Mongo::ConnectionFailure

  - by Ole Morten Amundsen

  I have added the mongoHQ addon for mongodb at heroku. It crashes with something like this. connect_to_master': failed to connect to any given host:port (Mongo::ConnectionFailure) The descriptions online (heroku mongohq) are more directed towards mongomapper, as I see it. I'm running ruby 1.9.1 and rails 3-beta with mongoid. My feeling says that there's something with ENV['MONGOHQ_URL'], which it says the MongoHQ addon sets, but I haven't set MONGOHQ_URL anywhere in my app. I guess the problem is in my mongoid.yml ? defaults: &defaults host: localhost development: <<: *defaults database: aliado_development test: <<: *defaults database: aliado_test # set these environment variables on your prod server production: <<: *defaults host: <%= ENV['MONGOID_HOST'] %> port: <%= ENV['MONGOID_PORT'] %> username: <%= ENV['MONGOID_USERNAME'] %> password: <%= ENV['MONGOID_PASSWORD'] %> database: <%= ENV['MONGOID_DATABASE'] %> It works fine locally, but fails at heroku, more stack trace: ==> crashlog.log <== Cannot write to outdated .bundle/environment.rb to update it /disk1/home/slugs/176479_b14df52_b875/mnt/.bundle/gems/gems/rack-1.1.0/lib/rack.rb:14: warning: already initialized constant VERSION /disk1/home/slugs/176479_b14df52_b875/mnt/.bundle/gems/gems/mongo-0.20.1/lib/mongo/connection.rb:435:in `connect_to_master': failed to connect to any given host:port (Mongo::ConnectionFailure) from /disk1/home/slugs/176479_b14df52_b875/mnt/.bundle/gems/gems/mongo-0.20.1/lib/mongo/connection.rb:112:in `initialize' from /disk1/home/slugs/176479_b14df52_b875/mnt/.bundle/gems/gems/mongoid-2.0.0.beta4 /lib/mongoid/railtie.rb:32:in `new' from /disk1/home/slugs/176479_b14df52_b875/mnt/.bundle/gems/gems/mongoid-2.0.0.beta4/lib/mongoid/railtie.rb:32:in `block (2 levels) in <class:Railtie>' from /disk1/home/slugs/176479_b14df52_b875/mnt/.bundle/gems/gems/mongoid-2.0.0.beta4/lib/mongoid.rb:110:in `configure' from /disk1/home/slugs/176479_b14df52_b875/mnt/.bundle/gems/gems/mongoid-2.0.0.beta4/lib/mongoid/railtie.rb:21:in `block in <class:Railtie>' from /disk1/home/slugs/176479_b14df52_b875/mnt/.bundle/gems/gems/railties-3.0.0.beta3/lib/rails/initializable.rb:25:in `instance_exec' ..... It all works locally, both tests and app. I'm out of ideas... Any suggestions? PS: Somebody with high repu mind create the tag 'mongohq'?

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• Android "Trying to use recycled bitmap" error?

  - by Mike

  Hi all, I am running into a problem with bitmaps on an Android application I am working on. What is suppose to happen is that the application downloads images from a website, saves them to the device, loads them into memory as bitmaps into an arraylist, and displays them to the user. This all works fine when the application is first started. However, I have added a refresh option for the user where the images are deleted, and the process outlined above starts all over. My problem: By using the refresh option the old images were still in memory and I would quickly get OutOfMemoryErrors. Thus, if the images are being refreshed, I had it run through the arraylist and recycle the old images. However, when the application goes to load the new images into the arraylist, it crashes with a "Trying to use recycled bitmap" error. As far as I understand it, recycling a bitmap destroys the bitmap and frees up its memory for other objects. If I want to use the bitmap again, it has to be reinitialized. I believe that I am doing this when the new files are loaded into the arraylist, but something is still wrong. Any help is greatly appreciated as this is very frustrating. The problem code is below. Thank you! public void fillUI(final int refresh) { // Recycle the images to avoid memory leaks if(refresh==1) { for(int x=0; x<images.size(); x++) images.get(x).recycle(); images.clear(); selImage=-1; // Reset the selected image variable } final ProgressDialog progressDialog = ProgressDialog.show(this, null, this.getString(R.string.loadingImages)); // Create the array with the image bitmaps in it new Thread(new Runnable() { public void run() { Looper.prepare(); File[] fileList = new File("/data/data/[package name]/files/").listFiles(); if(fileList!=null) { for(int x=0; x<fileList.length; x++) { try { images.add(BitmapFactory.decodeFile("/data/data/[package name]/files/" + fileList[x].getName())); } catch (OutOfMemoryError ome) { Log.i(LOG_FILE, "out of memory again :("); } } Collections.reverse(images); } fillUiHandler.sendEmptyMessage(0); } }).start(); fillUiHandler = new Handler() { public void handleMessage(Message msg) { progressDialog.dismiss(); } }; }

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• How to debug nondeterministic access violation crash?

  - by Special Touch

  Our C#/COM/C++ application is crashing and I need help debugging it. Running with gflags enabled and WinDbg attached, we determined the crashes are caused by an access violation, but we haven't been able to narrow it down any more than that. We are not seeing the issue on all machines; there are a couple of machines that seem to reproduce the issue frequently but not deterministically. We have observed the application crash from simply switching away from the application (say, Alt-Tab) and then back. Output from WinDbg is below. We have been trying to systematically comment out areas of code that could be causing the problem, but we haven't had much success yet. Any suggestions on what debugging steps or tools we should try? !analyze -v EXCEPTION_RECORD: ffffffff -- (.exr 0xffffffffffffffff) ExceptionAddress: 1a584ff2 (+0x1a584ff1) ExceptionCode: c0000005 (Access violation) ExceptionFlags: 00000000 NumberParameters: 2 Parameter[0]: 00000000 Parameter[1]: 1a584ff2 Attempt to read from address 1a584ff2 PROCESS_NAME: ProcessFiles.exe ERROR_CODE: (NTSTATUS) 0xc0000005 - The instruction at 0x%08lx referenced memory at 0x%08lx. The memory could not be %s. EXCEPTION_CODE: (NTSTATUS) 0xc0000005 - The instruction at 0x%08lx referenced memory at 0x%08lx. The memory could not be %s. EXCEPTION_PARAMETER1: 00000000 EXCEPTION_PARAMETER2: 1a584ff2 READ_ADDRESS: 1a584ff2 FOLLOWUP_IP: Ed20+1a584ff1 1a584ff2 ?? ??? NTGLOBALFLAG: 2000000 APPLICATION_VERIFIER_FLAGS: 0 IP_MODULE_UNLOADED: Ed20+1a584ff1 1a584ff2 ?? ??? MANAGED_STACK: (TransitionMU) 0EC6F6F4 7B1D8CCE System_Windows_Forms_ni!System.Windows.Forms.Application+ComponentManager.System.Windows.Forms.UnsafeNativeMethods.IMsoComponentManager.FPushMessageLoop(Int32, Int32, Int32)+0x24e 0EC6F790 7B1D8937 System_Windows_Forms_ni!System.Windows.Forms.Application+ThreadContext.RunMessageLoopInner(Int32, System.Windows.Forms.ApplicationContext)+0x177 0EC6F7E4 7B1D8781 System_Windows_Forms_ni!System.Windows.Forms.Application+ThreadContext.RunMessageLoop(Int32, System.Windows.Forms.ApplicationContext)+0x61 0EC6F814 7B195911 System_Windows_Forms_ni!System.Windows.Forms.Application.Run(System.Windows.Forms.Form)+0x31 0EC6F828 0969D97A Extract_Utilities_Forms!Extract.Utilities.Forms.VerificationForm`1[[System.__Canon, mscorlib]].A(System.Object)+0x23a 0EC6F8C0 79A00EEE mscorlib_ni!System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart_Context(System.Object)+0x72a25e 0EC6F8CC 792E019F mscorlib_ni!System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(System.Threading.ExecutionContext, System.Threading.ContextCallback, System.Object)+0x6f 0EC6F8E4 797DB48A mscorlib_ni!System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart(System.Object)+0x4a (TransitionUM) LAST_CONTROL_TRANSFER: from 7e418734 to 1a584ff2 FAULTING_THREAD: ffffffff ADDITIONAL_DEBUG_TEXT: Followup set based on attribute [ip_not_executable] from Frame:[0] on thread:[e30] BUGCHECK_STR: APPLICATION_FAULT_BAD_INSTRUCTION_PTR_INVALID_POINTER_READ_WRONG_SYMBOLS_WINDOW_HOOK PRIMARY_PROBLEM_CLASS: BAD_INSTRUCTION_PTR DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID: BAD_INSTRUCTION_PTR STACK_TEXT: 7b1d8cce System_Windows_Forms_ni!System.Windows.Forms.Application+ComponentManager.System.Windows.Forms.UnsafeNativeMethods.IMsoComponentManager.FPushMessageLoop+0xc 7b1d8937 System_Windows_Forms_ni!System.Windows.Forms.Application+ThreadContext.RunMessageLoopInner+0x0 7b1d8781 System_Windows_Forms_ni!System.Windows.Forms.Application+ThreadContext.RunMessageLoop+0x0 7b195911 System_Windows_Forms_ni!System.Windows.Forms.Application.Run+0x31 0969d97a Extract_Utilities_Forms!Extract.Utilities.Forms.VerificationForm`1[[System.__Canon, mscorlib]].A+0x23a 79a00eee mscorlib_ni!System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart_Context+0x72a25e 792e019f mscorlib_ni!System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run+0x6f 797db48a mscorlib_ni!System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart+0x4a STACK_COMMAND: .ecxr ; ~~[e30] ; .frame 0 ; ** Pseudo Context ** ; kb FAILED_INSTRUCTION_ADDRESS: Ed20+1a584ff1 1a584ff2 ?? ??? SYMBOL_NAME: Ed20 FOLLOWUP_NAME: MachineOwner MODULE_NAME: Ed20 IMAGE_NAME: Ed20 DEBUG_FLR_IMAGE_TIMESTAMP: 0 FAILURE_BUCKET_ID: BAD_INSTRUCTION_PTR_c0000005_Ed20!Unloaded BUCKET_ID: APPLICATION_FAULT_BAD_INSTRUCTION_PTR_INVALID_POINTER_READ_WRONG_SYMBOLS_WINDOW_HOOK_BAD_IP_Ed20 Followup: MachineOwner

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• UITableView : crash when adding a section footer view in empty section

  - by Supernico

  Hi everyone, This is the first time I ask a question here, but I have to say this site has been a tremendous help for me over the last couple months (iphone-dev-wise), and I thank you for that. However, I didn't find any solution for this problem I'm having: I have a UITableView with 2 sections, and no rows when the app is launched for the first time. The user can fill the sections later on as he wishes (the content is not relevant here). The UITableView looks good when filled with rows, but looks pretty ugly when there is none (the 2 header sections are stuck together with no white space in between). That is why I'd like to add a nice "No row" view in between when there is no row. I used viewForFooterInSection: - (CGFloat)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView heightForFooterInSection:(NSInteger)section { if(section == 0) { if([firstSectionArray count] == 0) return 44; else return 0; } return 0; } - (UIView *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView viewForFooterInSection:(NSInteger)section{ if(section == 0) { UILabel *label = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(200, 10, 50, 44)]; label.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor]; label.textColor = [UIColor colorWithWhite:0.6 alpha:1.0]; label.textAlignment = UITextAlignmentCenter; label.lineBreakMode = UILineBreakModeWordWrap; label.numberOfLines = 0; label.text = @"No row"; return [label autorelease]; } return nil; } - (NSInteger)numberOfSectionsInTableView:(UITableView *)tableView { return 2; } - (NSInteger)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section { if(section == 0) { return [firstSectionArray count]; } return [secondSectionArray count]; } This works great : the footer view appears only when there is no row in section 0. But my app crashes when I enter edit mode and delete the last row in section 0: Assertion failure in -[UIViewAnimation initWithView:indexPath:endRect:endAlpha:startFraction:endFraction:curve:animateFromCurrentPosition:shouldDeleteAfterAnimation:editing:] Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInternalInconsistencyException', reason: 'Cell animation stop fraction must be greater than start fraction' This does not happen when there are several rows in section 0. It only happens when there is only one row left. Here's the code for edit mode: - (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView commitEditingStyle:(UITableViewCellEditingStyle)editingStyle forRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath { // If row is deleted, remove it from the list. if (editingStyle == UITableViewCellEditingStyleDelete) { // Find the book at the deleted row, and remove from application delegate's array. if(indexPath.section == 0) { [firstSectionArray removeObjectAtIndex:indexPath.row]; } else { [secondSectionArray removeObjectAtIndex:indexPath.row]; } // Animate the deletion from the table. [tableView deleteRowsAtIndexPaths:[NSArray arrayWithObject:indexPath] withRowAnimation:UITableViewRowAnimationBottom]; [tableView reloadData]; } } Does anyone have any idea why this is happening? Thanks

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• .NET Interface with AutoCAD -- SetXData errors.

  - by Jerry

  I am trying to use the SetXData method on the AutoCAD 2007 COM object, but it is throwing errors. Example Test: public AcadEntity getAcadEntity() { /// ... Basic code to return a single AutoCAD entity... } private void btnTagItem_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { AcadEntity ent = getAcadEntity(); short[] xDataType; string[] xDataStrings; DrawingXData xData = new DrawingXData(); xData.field1 = "Some Text Goes here"; xData.field2 = 1; xData.field3 = 100; xData.field4 = 1509.2; xData.field5 = "More Text"; BuildXData("AutoCad_App_Name", xData, out xDataType, out xDataStrings); ent.SetXData(xDataType, xDataStrings); // This line crashes. } private void BuildXData(string applicationName, DrawingXData xData, out short[] xDataType, out string[] xDataStrings) { List<short> dataTypes = new List<short>(); List<string> dataStrings = new List<string>(); /// Code types... /// 1000 == String up to 255 bytes /// 1001 == Application Name // Set Applicaiton Name dataTypes.Add(1001); dataStrings.Add(applicationName); // Set Application Data dataTypes.Add(1000); dataStrings.Add(xData.field1.ToString()); dataTypes.Add(1000); dataStrings.Add(xData.field2.ToString()); dataTypes.Add(1000); dataStrings.Add(xData.field3.ToString()); dataTypes.Add(1000); dataStrings.Add(xData.field4.ToString()); dataTypes.Add(1000); dataStrings.Add(xData.field5.ToString()); // ... etc. xDataType = dataTypes.ToArray(); xDataStrings = dataStrings.ToArray(); } The error I get is "Invalid argument data in SetXData method". The error code (if this helps anyone) is -2145320939. The main reason I'm posting is because the same code in a very old VB6 application works just fine. I'm stumped.

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