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• Lighttpd not cleanly restarting (address already in use)

  - by NilObject

  When doing a dist-upgrade recently, my lighttpd-1.4.19 install on Ubuntu 8.0.4 has begun failing to restart or reload properly with the /etc/init.d/lighttpd restart command. ~$ sudo /etc/init.d/lighttpd restart * Stopping web server lighttpd ...done. * Starting web server lighttpd 2009-06-13 04:06:36: (network.c.300) can't bind to port: 80 Address already in use ...fail! The same error occurs when I do a reload. The way I get around it is to kill lighttpd and then issue the start command, but it seems like I shouldn't have to do that :) I've looked at my config files, and can't spot any immediate errors. Does anyone have any ideas what can be causing this error? This seems to be the latest version as of writing this question that is available via the apt-get route. My config file is: # Debian lighttpd configuration file # ############ Options you really have to take care of #################### ## modules to load # mod_access, mod_accesslog and mod_alias are loaded by default # all other module should only be loaded if neccesary # - saves some time # - saves memory server.modules = ( "mod_access", "mod_alias", "mod_accesslog", "mod_compress", "mod_fastcgi", "mod_rewrite", "mod_redirect", ) ## a static document-root, for virtual-hosting take look at the ## server.virtual-* options server.document-root = "/var/www/" ## where to send error-messages to server.errorlog = "/var/log/lighttpd/error.log" fastcgi.server = (".php" => (( "bin-path" => "/usr/bin/php5-cgi", "socket" => "/tmp/php.socket" ))) ## files to check for if .../ is requested index-file.names = ( "index.php", "index.html", "index.htm", "default.htm", "index.lighttpd.html" ) ## Use the "Content-Type" extended attribute to obtain mime type if possible # mimetype.use-xattr = "enable" #### accesslog module accesslog.filename = "/var/log/lighttpd/access.log" ## deny access the file-extensions # # ~ is for backupfiles from vi, emacs, joe, ... # .inc is often used for code includes which should in general not be part # of the document-root url.access-deny = ( "~", ".inc" ) ## # which extensions should not be handle via static-file transfer # # .php, .pl, .fcgi are most often handled by mod_fastcgi or mod_cgi static-file.exclude-extensions = ( ".php", ".pl", ".fcgi" ) mimetype.assign = ( ".pdf" => "application/pdf", ".sig" => "application/pgp-signature", ".spl" => "application/futuresplash", ".class" => "application/octet-stream", ".ps" => "application/postscript", ".torrent" => "application/x-bittorrent", ".dvi" => "application/x-dvi", ".gz" => "application/x-gzip", ".pac" => "application/x-ns-proxy-autoconfig", ".swf" => "application/x-shockwave-flash", ".tar.gz" => "application/x-tgz", ".tgz" => "application/x-tgz", ".tar" => "application/x-tar", ".zip" => "application/zip", ".mp3" => "audio/mpeg", ".m3u" => "audio/x-mpegurl", ".wma" => "audio/x-ms-wma", ".wax" => "audio/x-ms-wax", ".ogg" => "audio/x-wav", ".wav" => "audio/x-wav", ".gif" => "image/gif", ".jpg" => "image/jpeg", ".jpeg" => "image/jpeg", ".png" => "image/png", ".xbm" => "image/x-xbitmap", ".xpm" => "image/x-xpixmap", ".xwd" => "image/x-xwindowdump", ".css" => "text/css", ".html" => "text/html", ".htm" => "text/html", ".js" => "text/javascript", ".asc" => "text/plain", ".c" => "text/plain", ".conf" => "text/plain", ".text" => "text/plain", ".txt" => "text/plain", ".dtd" => "text/xml", ".xml" => "text/xml", ".rss" => "application/rss+xml", ".mpeg" => "video/mpeg", ".mpg" => "video/mpeg", ".mov" => "video/quicktime", ".qt" => "video/quicktime", ".avi" => "video/x-msvideo", ".asf" => "video/x-ms-asf", ".asx" => "video/x-ms-asf", ".wmv" => "video/x-ms-wmv", ".bz2" => "application/x-bzip", ".tbz" => "application/x-bzip-compressed-tar", ".tar.bz2" => "application/x-bzip-compressed-tar" ) include_shell "/usr/share/lighttpd/include-conf-enabled.pl" My /etc/init.d/lighttpd script is (untouched from installation): #!/bin/sh ### BEGIN INIT INFO # Provides: lighttpd # Required-Start: networking # Required-Stop: networking # Default-Start: 2 3 4 5 # Default-Stop: 0 1 6 # Short-Description: Start the lighttpd web server. ### END INIT INFO PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin DAEMON=/usr/sbin/lighttpd NAME=lighttpd DESC="web server" PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid SCRIPTNAME=/etc/init.d/$NAME ENV="env -i LANG=C PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin" SSD="/sbin/start-stop-daemon" DAEMON_OPTS="-f /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf" test -x $DAEMON || exit 0 set -e # be sure there is a /var/run/lighttpd, even with tmpfs mkdir -p /var/run/lighttpd > /dev/null 2> /dev/null chown www-data:www-data /var/run/lighttpd chmod 0750 /var/run/lighttpd . /lib/lsb/init-functions case "$1" in start) log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" $NAME if ! $ENV $SSD --start --quiet\ --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- $DAEMON_OPTS ; then log_end_msg 1 else log_end_msg 0 fi ;; stop) log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" $NAME if $SSD --quiet --stop --oknodo --retry 30\ --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON; then rm -f $PIDFILE log_end_msg 0 else log_end_msg 1 fi ;; reload) log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC configuration" $NAME if $SSD --stop --signal 2 --oknodo --retry 30\ --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON; then if $ENV $SSD --start --quiet \ --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- $DAEMON_OPTS ; then log_end_msg 0 else log_end_msg 1 fi else log_end_msg 1 fi ;; restart|force-reload) $0 stop [ -r $PIDFILE ] && while pidof lighttpd |\ grep -q `cat $PIDFILE 2>/dev/null` 2>/dev/null ; do sleep 1; done $0 start ;; *) echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|restart|reload|force-reload}" >&2 exit 1 ;; esac exit 0

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• Using an alternate JSON Serializer in ASP.NET Web API

  - by Rick Strahl

  The new ASP.NET Web API that Microsoft released alongside MVC 4.0 Beta last week is a great framework for building REST and AJAX APIs. I've been working with it for quite a while now and I really like the way it works and the complete set of features it provides 'in the box'. It's about time that Microsoft gets a decent API for building generic HTTP endpoints into the framework. DataContractJsonSerializer sucks As nice as Web API's overall design is one thing still sucks: The built-in JSON Serialization uses the DataContractJsonSerializer which is just too limiting for many scenarios. The biggest issues I have with it are: No support for untyped values (object, dynamic, Anonymous Types) MS AJAX style Date Formatting Ugly serialization formats for types like Dictionaries To me the most serious issue is dealing with serialization of untyped objects. I have number of applications with AJAX front ends that dynamically reformat data from business objects to fit a specific message format that certain UI components require. The most common scenario I have there are IEnumerable query results from a database with fields from the result set rearranged to fit the sometimes unconventional formats required for the UI components (like jqGrid for example). Creating custom types to fit these messages seems like overkill and projections using Linq makes this much easier to code up. Alas DataContractJsonSerializer doesn't support it. Neither does DataContractSerializer for XML output for that matter. What this means is that you can't do stuff like this in Web API out of the box:public object GetAnonymousType() { return new { name = "Rick", company = "West Wind", entered= DateTime.Now }; } Basically anything that doesn't have an explicit type DataContractJsonSerializer will not let you return. FWIW, the same is true for XmlSerializer which also doesn't work with non-typed values for serialization. The example above is obviously contrived with a hardcoded object graph, but it's not uncommon to get dynamic values returned from queries that have anonymous types for their result projections. Apparently there's a good possibility that Microsoft will ship Json.NET as part of Web API RTM release.  Scott Hanselman confirmed this as a footnote in his JSON Dates post a few days ago. I've heard several other people from Microsoft confirm that Json.NET will be included and be the default JSON serializer, but no details yet in what capacity it will show up. Let's hope it ends up as the default in the box. Meanwhile this post will show you how you can use it today with the beta and get JSON that matches what you should see in the RTM version. What about JsonValue? To be fair Web API DOES include a new JsonValue/JsonObject/JsonArray type that allow you to address some of these scenarios. JsonValue is a new type in the System.Json assembly that can be used to build up an object graph based on a dictionary. It's actually a really cool implementation of a dynamic type that allows you to create an object graph and spit it out to JSON without having to create .NET type first. JsonValue can also receive a JSON string and parse it without having to actually load it into a .NET type (which is something that's been missing in the core framework). This is really useful if you get a JSON result from an arbitrary service and you don't want to explicitly create a mapping type for the data returned. For serialization you can create an object structure on the fly and pass it back as part of an Web API action method like this:public JsonValue GetJsonValue() { dynamic json = new JsonObject(); json.name = "Rick"; json.company = "West Wind"; json.entered = DateTime.Now; dynamic address = new JsonObject(); address.street = "32 Kaiea"; address.zip = "96779"; json.address = address; dynamic phones = new JsonArray(); json.phoneNumbers = phones; dynamic phone = new JsonObject(); phone.type = "Home"; phone.number = "808 123-1233"; phones.Add(phone); phone = new JsonObject(); phone.type = "Home"; phone.number = "808 123-1233"; phones.Add(phone); //var jsonString = json.ToString(); return json; } which produces the following output (formatted here for easier reading):{ name: "rick", company: "West Wind", entered: "2012-03-08T15:33:19.673-10:00", address: { street: "32 Kaiea", zip: "96779" }, phoneNumbers: [ { type: "Home", number: "808 123-1233" }, { type: "Mobile", number: "808 123-1234" }] } If you need to build a simple JSON type on the fly these types work great. But if you have an existing type - or worse a query result/list that's already formatted JsonValue et al. become a pain to work with. As far as I can see there's no way to just throw an object instance at JsonValue and have it convert into JsonValue dictionary. It's a manual process. Using alternate Serializers in Web API So, currently the default serializer in WebAPI is DataContractJsonSeriaizer and I don't like it. You may not either, but luckily you can swap the serializer fairly easily. If you'd rather use the JavaScriptSerializer built into System.Web.Extensions or Json.NET today, it's not too difficult to create a custom MediaTypeFormatter that uses these serializers and can replace or partially replace the native serializer. Here's a MediaTypeFormatter implementation using the ASP.NET JavaScriptSerializer:using System; using System.Net.Http.Formatting; using System.Threading.Tasks; using System.Web.Script.Serialization; using System.Json; using System.IO; namespace Westwind.Web.WebApi { public class JavaScriptSerializerFormatter : MediaTypeFormatter { public JavaScriptSerializerFormatter() { SupportedMediaTypes.Add(new System.Net.Http.Headers.MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/json")); } protected override bool CanWriteType(Type type) { // don't serialize JsonValue structure use default for that if (type == typeof(JsonValue) || type == typeof(JsonObject) || type== typeof(JsonArray) ) return false; return true; } protected override bool CanReadType(Type type) { if (type == typeof(IKeyValueModel)) return false; return true; } protected override System.Threading.Tasks.Taskobject OnReadFromStreamAsync(Type type, System.IO.Stream stream, System.Net.Http.Headers.HttpContentHeaders contentHeaders, FormatterContext formatterContext) { var task = Taskobject.Factory.StartNew(() = { var ser = new JavaScriptSerializer(); string json; using (var sr = new StreamReader(stream)) { json = sr.ReadToEnd(); sr.Close(); } object val = ser.Deserialize(json,type); return val; }); return task; } protected override System.Threading.Tasks.Task OnWriteToStreamAsync(Type type, object value, System.IO.Stream stream, System.Net.Http.Headers.HttpContentHeaders contentHeaders, FormatterContext formatterContext, System.Net.TransportContext transportContext) { var task = Task.Factory.StartNew( () = { var ser = new JavaScriptSerializer(); var json = ser.Serialize(value); byte[] buf = System.Text.Encoding.Default.GetBytes(json); stream.Write(buf,0,buf.Length); stream.Flush(); }); return task; } } } Formatter implementation is pretty simple: You override 4 methods to tell which types you can handle and then handle the input or output streams to create/parse the JSON data. Note that when creating output you want to take care to still allow JsonValue/JsonObject/JsonArray types to be handled by the default serializer so those objects serialize properly - if you let either JavaScriptSerializer or JSON.NET handle them they'd try to render the dictionaries which is very undesirable. If you'd rather use Json.NET here's the JSON.NET version of the formatter:// this code requires a reference to JSON.NET in your project #if true using System; using System.Net.Http.Formatting; using System.Threading.Tasks; using System.Web.Script.Serialization; using System.Json; using Newtonsoft.Json; using System.IO; using Newtonsoft.Json.Converters; namespace Westwind.Web.WebApi { public class JsonNetFormatter : MediaTypeFormatter { public JsonNetFormatter() { SupportedMediaTypes.Add(new System.Net.Http.Headers.MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/json")); } protected override bool CanWriteType(Type type) { // don't serialize JsonValue structure use default for that if (type == typeof(JsonValue) || type == typeof(JsonObject) || type == typeof(JsonArray)) return false; return true; } protected override bool CanReadType(Type type) { if (type == typeof(IKeyValueModel)) return false; return true; } protected override System.Threading.Tasks.Taskobject OnReadFromStreamAsync(Type type, System.IO.Stream stream, System.Net.Http.Headers.HttpContentHeaders contentHeaders, FormatterContext formatterContext) { var task = Taskobject.Factory.StartNew(() = { var settings = new JsonSerializerSettings() { NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore, }; var sr = new StreamReader(stream); var jreader = new JsonTextReader(sr); var ser = new JsonSerializer(); ser.Converters.Add(new IsoDateTimeConverter()); object val = ser.Deserialize(jreader, type); return val; }); return task; } protected override System.Threading.Tasks.Task OnWriteToStreamAsync(Type type, object value, System.IO.Stream stream, System.Net.Http.Headers.HttpContentHeaders contentHeaders, FormatterContext formatterContext, System.Net.TransportContext transportContext) { var task = Task.Factory.StartNew( () = { var settings = new JsonSerializerSettings() { NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore, }; string json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(value, Formatting.Indented, new JsonConverter[1] { new IsoDateTimeConverter() } ); byte[] buf = System.Text.Encoding.Default.GetBytes(json); stream.Write(buf,0,buf.Length); stream.Flush(); }); return task; } } } #endif   One advantage of the Json.NET serializer is that you can specify a few options on how things are formatted and handled. You get null value handling and you can plug in the IsoDateTimeConverter which is nice to product proper ISO dates that I would expect any Json serializer to output these days. Hooking up the Formatters Once you've created the custom formatters you need to enable them for your Web API application. To do this use the GlobalConfiguration.Configuration object and add the formatter to the Formatters collection. Here's what this looks like hooked up from Application_Start in a Web project:protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { // Action based routing (used for RPC calls) RouteTable.Routes.MapHttpRoute( name: "StockApi", routeTemplate: "stocks/{action}/{symbol}", defaults: new { symbol = RouteParameter.Optional, controller = "StockApi" } ); // WebApi Configuration to hook up formatters and message handlers // optional RegisterApis(GlobalConfiguration.Configuration); } public static void RegisterApis(HttpConfiguration config) { // Add JavaScriptSerializer formatter instead - add at top to make default //config.Formatters.Insert(0, new JavaScriptSerializerFormatter()); // Add Json.net formatter - add at the top so it fires first! // This leaves the old one in place so JsonValue/JsonObject/JsonArray still are handled config.Formatters.Insert(0, new JsonNetFormatter()); } One thing to remember here is the GlobalConfiguration object which is Web API's static configuration instance. I think this thing is seriously misnamed given that GlobalConfiguration could stand for anything and so is hard to discover if you don't know what you're looking for. How about WebApiConfiguration or something more descriptive? Anyway, once you know what it is you can use the Formatters collection to insert your custom formatter. Note that I insert my formatter at the top of the list so it takes precedence over the default formatter. I also am not removing the old formatter because I still want JsonValue/JsonObject/JsonArray to be handled by the default serialization mechanism. Since they process in sequence and I exclude processing for these types JsonValue et al. still get properly serialized/deserialized. Summary Currently DataContractJsonSerializer in Web API is a pain, but at least we have the ability with relatively limited effort to replace the MediaTypeFormatter and plug in our own JSON serializer. This is useful for many scenarios - if you have existing client applications that used MVC JsonResult or ASP.NET AJAX results from ASMX AJAX services you can plug in the JavaScript serializer and get exactly the same serializer you used in the past so your results will be the same and don't potentially break clients. JSON serializers do vary a bit in how they serialize some of the more complex types (like Dictionaries and dates for example) and so if you're migrating it might be helpful to ensure your client code doesn't break when you switch to ASP.NET Web API. Going forward it looks like Microsoft is planning on plugging in Json.Net into Web API and make that the default. I think that's an awesome choice since Json.net has been around forever, is fast and easy to use and provides a ton of functionality as part of this great library. I just wish Microsoft would have figured this out sooner instead of now at the last minute integrating with it especially given that Json.Net has a similar set of lower level JSON objects JsonValue/JsonObject etc. which now will end up being duplicated by the native System.Json stuff. It's not like we don't already have enough confusion regarding which JSON serializer to use (JavaScriptSerializer, DataContractJsonSerializer, JsonValue/JsonObject/JsonArray and now Json.net). For years I've been using my own JSON serializer because the built in choices are both limited. However, with an official encorsement of Json.Net I'm happily moving on to use that in my applications. Let's see and hope Microsoft gets this right before ASP.NET Web API goes gold.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Web Api  AJAX  ASP.NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• E-Business Suite Technology Sessions at OpenWorld 2012

  - by Max Arderius

  Oracle OpenWorld 2012 is almost here! We're looking forward to updating you on our products, strategy, and roadmaps. This year, the E-Business Suite Applications Technology Group (ATG) will participate in 25 speaker sessions, two Meet the Experts round-table discussions, five demoground booths and seven Special Interest Group meetings as guest speakers. We hope to see you at our sessions.  Please join us to hear the latest news and connect with senior ATG development staff. Here's a downloadable listing of all Applications Technology Group-related sessions with times and locations: FOCUS ON Oracle E-Business Suite - Applications Tools and Technology (PDF) General Sessions GEN8474 - Oracle E-Business Suite - Strategy, Update, and RoadmapCliff Godwin, SVP, Oracle Monday, Oct 1, 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM - Moscone West 2002/2004 In this session, hear Oracle E-Business Suite General Manager Cliff Godwin deliver an update on the Oracle E-Business Suite product line. This session covers the value delivered by the current release of Oracle E-Business Suite, the momentum, and how Oracle E-Business Suite applications integrate into Oracle’s overall applications strategy. You’ll come away with an understanding of the value Oracle E-Business Suite applications deliver now and will deliver in the future. GEN9173 - Optimize and Extend Oracle Applications - The Path to Oracle Fusion ApplicationsNadia Bendjedou, Oracle; Corre Curtice, Bhavish Madurai (CSC) Tuesday, Oct 2, 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM - Moscone West 3002/3004 One of the main objectives of this session is to help organizations build their IT roadmap for the next five years and be aligned with the Oracle Applications strategy in general and the Oracle Fusion Applications strategy in particular. Come hear about some of the common sense, practical steps you can take to optimize the performance of your Oracle Applications today and prepare your path to Oracle Fusion Applications for when your organization is ready to embrace them. Each step you take in adopting Oracle Fusion technology gets you partway to Oracle Fusion Applications. Conference Sessions CON9024 - Oracle E-Business Suite Technology: Latest Features and Roadmap Lisa Parekh, Oracle Monday, Oct 1, 10:45 AM - 11:45 AM - Moscone West 2016 This Oracle development session provides a comprehensive overview of Oracle’s product strategy for Oracle E-Business Suite technology, the capabilities and associated business benefits of recent releases, and a review of capabilities on the product roadmap. This is the cornerstone session for the Oracle E-Business Suite technology stack. Come hear about the latest new usability enhancements of the user interface; systems administration and configuration management tools; security-related updates; and tools and options for extending, customizing, and integrating Oracle E-Business Suite with other applications. CON9021 - Oracle E-Business Suite Future Directions: Deployment and System AdministrationMax Arderius, Oracle Monday, Oct 1, 3:15 PM - 4:15 PM - Moscone West 2016  What’s coming in the next major version of Oracle E-Business Suite 12? This Oracle Development session covers the latest technology stack, including the use of Oracle WebLogic Server (Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g) and Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2). Topics include an architectural overview of the latest updates, installation and upgrade options, new configuration options, and new tools for hot cloning and automated “lights-out” cloning. Come learn how online patching (based on the Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Edition-Based Redefinition feature) will reduce your database patching downtimes to however long it takes to bounce your database server. CON9017 - Desktop Integration in Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 Padmaprabodh Ambale, Gustavo Jimenez, Oracle Monday, Oct 1, 4:45 PM - 5:45 PM - Moscone West 2016 This presentation covers the latest functional enhancements in Oracle Web Applications Desktop Integrator and Oracle Report Manager, enhanced Microsoft Office support, and greater support for building custom desktop integration solutions. The session also presents tips and tricks for upgrading from Oracle Applications Desktop Integrator to Oracle Web Applications Desktop Integrator and Oracle Report Manager. CON9023 - Oracle E-Business Suite Technology Certification Primer and Roadmap Steven Chan, Oracle Tuesday, Oct 2, 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM - Moscone West 2016  Is your Oracle E-Business Suite technology stack up to date? Are you taking advantage of all the latest options and capabilities? This Oracle development session summarizes the latest certifications and roadmap for the Oracle E-Business Suite technology stack, including elements such as database releases and options, Java, Oracle Forms, Oracle Containers for J2EE, desktop operating systems, browsers, JRE releases, development and Web authoring tools, user authentication and management, business intelligence, Oracle Application Management Packs, security options, clouds, Oracle VM, and virtualization. The session also covers the most commonly asked questions about tech stack component support dates and upgrade implications. CON9028 - Minimizing Oracle E-Business Suite Maintenance DowntimesSantiago Bastidas, Elke Phelps, Oracle Tuesday, Oct 2, 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM - Moscone West 2016 This Oracle development session features a survey of the best techniques sysadmins can use to minimize patching downtimes. It starts with an architectural-level review of Oracle E-Business Suite fundamentals and then moves to a practical view of the various tools and approaches for downtimes. Topics include patching shortcuts, merging patches, distributing worker processes across multiple servers, running ADPatch in noninteractive mode, staged APPL_TOPs, shared file systems, deferring systemwide database tasks, avoiding resource bottlenecks, and more. An added bonus: hear about the upcoming Oracle E-Business Suite 12 online patching capabilities based on the groundbreaking Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Edition-Based Redefinition feature. CON9116 - Extending the Use of Oracle E-Business Suite with the Oracle Endeca PlatformOsama Elkady, Muhannad Obeidat, Oracle Tuesday, Oct 2, 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM - Moscone West 2018 The Oracle Endeca platform includes a leading unstructured data correlation and analytics engine, together with a best-in class catalog search and guided navigation solution, to improve the productivity of all types of users in your enterprise. This development session focuses on the details behind the Oracle Endeca platform’s integration into Oracle E-Business Suite. It demonstrates how easily you can extend the use of the Oracle Endeca platform into other areas of Oracle E-Business Suite and how you can bring in your own data and build new Oracle Endeca applications for Oracle E-Business Suite. CON9005 - Oracle E-Business Suite Integration Best PracticesVeshaal Singh, Oracle, Jeffrey Hand, Zebra Technologies Tuesday, Oct 2, 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM - Moscone West 2018 Oracle is investing across applications and technologies to make the application integration experience easier for customers. Today Oracle has certified Oracle E-Business Suite on Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g and provides a comprehensive set of integration technologies. Learn about Oracle’s integration offering across data- and process-centric integrations. These technologies can be used to address various application integration challenges and styles. In this session, you will get an understanding of how, when, and where you can leverage Oracle’s integration technologies to connect end-to-end business processes across your enterprise, including your Oracle Applications portfolio.  CON9026 - Latest Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 User Interface and Usability EnhancementsPadmaprabodh Ambale, Oracle Tuesday, Oct 2, 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM - Moscone West 2016 This Oracle development session details the latest UI enhancements to Oracle Application Framework in Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1. Developers will get a detailed look at new features to enhance usability, offer more capabilities for personalization and extensions, and support the development and use of dashboards and Web services. Topics include new rich UI capabilities such as new home page features, Navigator and Favorites pull-down menus, REST interface, embedded widgets for analytics content, Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF) task flows, third-party widgets, a look-ahead list of values, inline attachments, pop-ups, personalization and extensibility enhancements, business layer extensions, Oracle ADF integration, and mobile devices. CON8805 - Planning Your Oracle E-Business Suite Upgrade from 11i to Release 12.1 and BeyondAnne Carlson, Oracle Tuesday, Oct 2, 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM - Moscone West 3002/3004 Attend this session to hear the latest Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 upgrade planning tips from Oracle’s support, consulting, development, and IT organizations. You’ll get specific cross-product advice on how to understand the factors that affect your project’s duration, decide on your project’s scope, develop a robust testing strategy, leverage Oracle Support resources, and more. In a nutshell, this session tells you things you need to know before embarking upon your Release 12.1 upgrade project. CON9053 - Advanced Management of Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle Enterprise ManagerAngelo Rosado, Oracle Tuesday, Oct 2, 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM - Moscone West 2016 The task of managing and monitoring Oracle E-Business Suite environments can be very challenging. Oracle Enterprise Manager is the only product on the market that is designed to monitor and manage all the different technologies that constitute Oracle E-Business Suite applications, including end user, midtier, configuration, host, and database management—to name just a few. Customers that have implemented Oracle Enterprise Manager have experienced dramatic improvements in system visibility and diagnostic capability as well as administrator productivity. The purpose of this session is to highlight the key features and benefits of Oracle Enterprise Manager and Oracle Application Management Suite for Oracle E-Business Suite. CON8809 - Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 Upgrade Best Practices: Technical InsightIsam Alyousfi, Udayan Parvate, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM - Moscone West 3011 This session is ideal for organizations thinking about upgrading to Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1. It covers the fundamentals of upgrading to Release 12.1, including the technology stack components and supported upgrade paths. Hear from Oracle Development about the set of best practices for patching in general and executing the Release 12.1 technical upgrade, with special considerations for minimizing your downtime. Also get to know about relatively recent upgrade resources. CON9032 - Upgrading Your Customizations of Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1Sara Woodhull, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM - Moscone West 2016 Have you personalized Oracle Forms or Oracle Application Framework screens in Oracle E-Business Suite? Have you used mod_plsql in Release 11i? Have you extended or customized your Release 11i environment with other tools? The technical options for upgrading these customizations as part of your Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 upgrade can be bewildering. Come to this Oracle development session to learn about selecting the best upgrade approach for your existing customizations. The session will help you understand customization scenarios and use cases, tools, and technologies to ensure that your Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 environment fits your users’ needs closely and that any future customizations will be easy to upgrade. CON9259 - Oracle E-Business Suite Internationalization and Multilingual FeaturesMaher Al-Nubani, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM - Moscone West 2018 Oracle E-Business Suite supports more countries, languages, and regions than ever. Come to this Oracle development session to get an overview of internationalization features and capabilities and see new Release 12 features such as calendar support for Hijra and Thai, new group separators, lightweight multilingual support (MLS) setup, new character sets such as AL32UTF, newly supported languages, Mac certifications, Oracle iSetup support for moving MLS setups, new file export options for Unicode, new MLS number spelling options, and more. CON7188 - Mobile Apps for Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle ADF Mobile and Oracle SOA SuiteSrikant Subramaniam, Joe Huang, Veshaal Singh, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM - Moscone West 3001 Follow your mobile customers, employees, and partners with Oracle Fusion Middleware. See how native iPhone and iPad applications can easily be built for Oracle E-Business Suite with the new Oracle ADF Mobile and Oracle SOA Suite. Using Oracle ADF Mobile, developers can quickly develop native applications for Apple iOS and other mobile platforms. The Oracle SOA Suite/Oracle ADF Mobile combination can execute business transactions on Oracle E-Business Suite. This session includes a demo in which a mobile user approves a business transaction in Oracle E-Business Suite and a demo of the tools used to build a native on-device solution. These concepts for mobile applications also apply to other Oracle applications.CON9029 - Oracle E-Business Suite Directions: Slashing Downtimes with Online PatchingKevin Hudson, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM - Moscone West 2016 Oracle E-Business Suite will soon include online patching (based on the Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Edition-Based Redefinition feature), which will reduce your database patching downtimes to however long it takes to bounce your database server. This Oracle development session details how online patching works, with special attention to what’s happening at a database object level when database patches are applied to an Oracle E-Business Suite environment that’s still running. Come learn about the operational and system management implications for minimizing maintenance downtimes when applying database patches with this new technology and the related impact on customizations you might have built on top of Oracle E-Business Suite. CON8806 - Upgrading to Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1: Technical and Functional PanelAndrew Katz, Komori America Corporation; Sandra Vucinic, VLAD Group, Inc. ;Srini Chavali, Cummins Inc.; Amrita Mehrok, Nadia Bendjedou, Anne Carlson Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM - Moscone West 2018 In this panel discussion, Oracle experts, customers, and partners share their experiences in upgrading to the latest release of Oracle E-Business Suite, Release 12.1. The panelists cover aspects of a typical Release 12 upgrade, technical (upgrading the technical infrastructure) as well as functional (upgrading to the new financial infrastructure). Hear directly from the experts who either develop the product or support, implement, or upgrade it, and find out how to apply their lessons learned to your organization. CON9027 - Personalize and Extend Oracle E-Business Suite Applications with Rich MashupsGustavo Jimenez, Padmaprabodh Ambale, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM - Moscone West 2016 This session covers the use of several Oracle Fusion Middleware technologies to personalize and extend your existing Oracle E-Business Suite applications. The Oracle Fusion Middleware technologies covered include Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF), Oracle WebCenter, Oracle Endeca applications, and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition with Oracle E-Business Suite Oracle Application Framework applications. CON9036 - Advanced Oracle E-Business Suite Architectures: Maximum Availability, Security, and MoreElke Phelps, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 3:30 PM - 4:30 PM - Moscone West 2016 This session includes architecture diagrams and configuration instructions for building a maximum availability architecture (MAA) that will help you design a disaster recovery solution that fits the needs of your business. Database and application high-availability features it describes include Oracle Data Guard, Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC), Oracle Active Data Guard, load-balancing Web and forms services, parallel concurrent processing, and the use of Oracle Exalogic and Oracle Exadata to provide a highly available environment. The session also covers the latest updates to systems management tools, AutoConfig, cloud computing, virtualization, and Oracle WebLogic Server and provides sneak previews of upcoming functionality. CON9047 - Efficiently Scaling Oracle E-Business Suite on Oracle Exadata and Oracle ExalogicIsam Alyousfi, Nishit Rao, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM - Moscone West 2016 Oracle Exadata and Oracle Exalogic are designed from the ground up with optimizations in software and hardware to deliver superfast performance for mission-critical applications such as Oracle E-Business Suite. Oracle E-Business Suite applications run three to eight times as fast on the Oracle Exadata/Oracle Exalogic platform in standard benchmark tests. Besides performance, customers benefit from simplified support, enhanced manageability, and the ability to consolidate multiple Oracle E-Business Suite instances. Attend this session to understand best practices for Oracle E-Business Suite deployment on Oracle Exalogic and Oracle Exadata through customer case studies. Learn how adopting the Exa* platform increases efficiency, simplifies scaling, and boosts performance for peak loads. CON8716 - Web Services and SOA Integration Options for Oracle E-Business SuiteRekha Ayothi, Veshaal Singh, Oracle Thursday, Oct 4, 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM - Moscone West 2016 This Oracle development session provides a deep dive into a subset of the Web services and SOA-related integration options available to Oracle E-Business Suite systems integrators. It offers a technical look at Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway, Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle Application Adapters for Data Integration for Oracle E-Business Suite, and other Web services options for integrating Oracle E-Business Suite with other applications. Systems integrators and developers will get an overview of the latest integration capabilities and technologies available out of the box with Oracle E-Business Suite and possibly a sneak preview of upcoming functionality and features. CON9030 - Recommendations for Oracle E-Business Suite Performance TuningIsam Alyousfi, Samer Barakat, Oracle Thursday, Oct 4, 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM - Moscone West 2018 Need to squeeze more performance out of your existing servers? This packed Oracle development session summarizes practical tips and lessons learned from performance-tuning and benchmarking the world’s largest Oracle E-Business Suite environments. Apps sysadmins will learn concrete tips and techniques for identifying and resolving performance bottlenecks on all layers, with special attention to application- and database-tier servers. Learn about tuning Oracle Forms, Oracle Concurrent Manager, Apache, and Oracle Discoverer. Track down memory leaks and other issues at the Java and JVM layers. The session also covers Oracle E-Business Suite product-level tuning, including Oracle Workflow, Oracle Order Management, Oracle Payroll, and other modules. CON3429 - Using Oracle ADF with Oracle E-Business Suite: The Full Integration ViewSiva Puthurkattil, Lake County; Juan Camilo Ruiz, Sara Woodhull, Oracle Thursday, Oct 4, 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM - Moscone West 3003 Oracle E-Business Suite delivers functionality for handling the core business of your organization. However, user requirements and new technologies are driving an emerging need to implement new types of user interfaces for these applications. This session provides an overview of how to use Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF) to deliver cutting-edge Web 2.0 and mobile rich user interfaces that front existing Oracle E-Business Suite processes, and it also explores all the existing types of integration between the two worlds. CON9020 - Integrating Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle Identity Management SolutionsSunil Ghosh, Elke Phelps, Oracle Thursday, Oct 4, 12:45 PM - 1:45 PM - Moscone West 2016 Need to integrate Oracle E-Business Suite with Microsoft Windows Kerberos, Active Directory, CA Netegrity SiteMinder, or other third-party authentication systems? Want to understand your options when Oracle Premier Support for Oracle Single Sign-On ends in December 2011? This Oracle Development session covers the latest certified integrations with Oracle Access Manager 11g and Oracle Internet Directory 11g, which can be used individually or as bridges for integrating with third-party authentication solutions. The session presents an architectural overview of how Oracle Access Manager, its WebGate and AccessGate components, and Oracle Internet Directory work together, with implications for Oracle Discoverer, Oracle Portal, and other Oracle Fusion identity management products. CON9019 - Troubleshooting, Diagnosing, and Optimizing Oracle E-Business Suite TechnologyGustavo Jimenez, Oracle Thursday, Oct 4, 2:15 PM - 3:15 PM - Moscone West 2016 This session covers how you can proactively diagnose Oracle E-Business Suite applications, including extensions built with Oracle Fusion Middleware technologies such as Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF) and Oracle WebCenter to catch potential issues in the middle tier before they become more serious. Topics include debugging, logging infrastructure, warning signs, performance tuning, information required when logging service requests, general JVM optimization, and an overall picture of all the moving parts that make it possible for Oracle E-Business Suite to isolate and fix problems. Also learn how Oracle Diagnostics Framework will help prevent downtime caused by failures. CON9031 - The Top 10 Things You Can Do to Secure Your Oracle E-Business Suite InstanceEric Bing, Erik Graversen, Oracle Thursday, Oct 4, 2:15 PM - 3:15 PM - Moscone West 2018 Learn the top 10 things you can do to secure your applications and your sensitive data. This Oracle development session for system administrators and security professionals explores some of the most important and overlooked things you can do to secure your Oracle E-Business Suite instance. It also covers data masking and other mechanisms for protecting sensitive data. Special Interest Groups (SIG) Some of our most senior staff have been invited to participate on the following SIG meetings as guest speakers: SIG10525 - OAUG - Archive & Purge SIGBrian Bent - Pre-Sales Engineer, TierData, Inc. Sunday, Sep 30, 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM - Moscone West 3011 The Archive and Purge SIG is an organization in which users can share their experiences and solicit functional and technical advice on archiving and purging data in Oracle E-Business Suite. This session provides an opportunity for users to network and share best practices, tips, and tricks. Guest: Oracle E-Business Suite Database Performance, Archive & Purging - Q&A SessionIsam Alyousfi, Senior Director, Applications Performance, Oracle SIG10547 - OAUG - Oracle E-Business (EBS) Applications Technology SIGSrini Chavali - IT Director, Cummins Inc Sunday, Sep 30, 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM - Moscone West 3018 The general purpose of the EBS Applications Technology SIG is to inform and educate its members about current and future components of the tech stack as they relate to Oracle E-Business Suite. Attend this meeting for networking and education and to share best practices. Guest: Oracle E-Business Suite Technology Certification Roadmap - Presentation and Q&ASteven Chan, Sr. Director, Applications Technology Group, Oracle SIG10559 - OAUG - User Management SIGSusan Behn - VP of Oracle Delivery, Infosemantics, Inc. Sunday, Sep 30, 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM - Moscone West 3024 The E-Business Suite User Management SIG focuses on the components of user management that enable Oracle E-Business Suite users to define administrative functions and manage users’ access to functions and data based on roles within an organization—rather than the user’s individual identity—which is referred to as role-based access control (RBAC). This meeting includes an introduction to Oracle User Management that covers the Oracle User Management building blocks and presents an example of creating a security policy.Guest: Security and User Management - Q&A SessionEric Bing, Sr. Director, EBS Security, OracleSara Woodhull, Principal Product Manager, Applications Technology Group, Oracle SIG10515 - OAUG – Upgrade SIGBarbara Matthews - Consultant, On Call DBASandra Vucinic, VLAD Group, Inc. Sunday, Sep 30, 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM - Moscone West 3009 This Upgrade SIG session starts with a business meeting and then features a Q&A panel discussion on Oracle E-Business Suite upgrade topics. The session• Reviews Upgrade SIG goals and objectives• Provides answers, during the Q&A session, to questions related to Oracle E-Business Suite upgrades• Shares “real world” experiences, tips, and techniques for Oracle E-Business Suite upgrades to Release 12.1. Guest: Oracle E-Business Suite Upgrade - Q&A SessionAnne Carlson - Sr. Director, Oracle E-Business Suite Product Strategy, OracleUdayan Parvate - Director, EBS Release Engineering, OracleSuzana Ferrari, Sr. Principal Consultant, OracleIsam Alyousfi, Sr. Director, Applications Performance, Oracle SIG10552 - OAUG - Oracle E-Business Suite SIGDonna Rosentrater - Manager, Global Sourcing & Procurement Systems, TJX Sunday, Sep 30, 12:15 PM - 1:45 PM - Moscone West 3020 The E-Business Suite SIG, affiliated with OAUG, supports Oracle E-Business Suite users through networking, education, and sharing of best practices. This SIG meeting will feature a general discussion of Oracle E-Business Suite product strategies in Release 12 and migration to Oracle Fusion Applications. Guest: Oracle E-Business Suite - Q&A SessionJeanne Lowell, Vice President, EBS Product Strategy, OracleNadia Bendjedou, Sr. Director, Product Strategy, Oracle SIG10556 - OAUG - SysAdmin SIGRandy Giefer - Sr Systems and Security Architect, Solution Beacon, LLC Sunday, Sep 30, 12:15 PM - 1:45 PM - Moscone West 3022 The SysAdmin SIG provides a forum in which OAUG members and participants can share updates, tips, and successful practices relating to system administration in an Oracle applications environment. The SysAdmin SIG strives to enable system administrators to become more effective and efficient in their jobs by providing them with access to people and information that can increase their system administration knowledge and experience. Attend this meeting to network, share best practices, and benefit from educational content. Guest: Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2 Online Patching- Presentation and Q&AKevin Hudson, Sr. Director, Applications Technology Group, Oracle SIG10553 - OAUG - Database SIGMichael Brown - Senior DBA, COLIBRI LTD LC Sunday, Sep 30, 2:00 PM - 3:15 PM - Moscone West 3020 The OAUG Database SIG provides an opportunity for applications database administrators to learn from and share their experiences with supporting the various Oracle applications environments. This session will include a brief business meeting followed by a short presentation. It will end with an open discussion among the attendees about items of interest to those present. Guest: Oracle E-Business Suite Database Performance - Presentation and Q&AIsam Alyousfi, Sr. Director, Applications Performance, Oracle Meet the Experts We're planning two round-table discussions where you can review your questions with senior E-Business Suite ATG staff: MTE9648 - Meet the Experts for Oracle E-Business Suite: Planning Your Upgrade Jeanne Lowell - VP, EBS Product Strategy, Oracle John Abraham - Sr. Principal Product Manager, Oracle Nadia Bendjedou - Sr. Director - Product Strategy, Oracle Anne Carlson - Sr. Director, Applications Technology Group, Oracle Udayan Parvate - Director, EBS Release Engineering, Oracle Isam Alyousfi, Sr. Director, Applications Performance, Oracle Monday, Oct 1, 3:15 PM - 4:15 PM - Moscone West 2001A Don’t miss this Oracle Applications Meet the Experts session with experts who specialize in Oracle E-Business Suite upgrade best practices. This is the place where attendees can have informal and semistructured but open one-on-one discussions with Strategy and Development regarding Oracle Applications strategy and your specific business and IT strategy. The experts will be available to discuss the value of the latest releases and share insights into the best path for your enterprise, so come ready with your questions. Space is limited, so make sure you register. MTE9649 - Meet the Oracle E-Business Suite Tools and Technology Experts Lisa Parekh - Vice President, Technology Integration, Oracle Steven Chan - Sr. Director, Oracle Elke Phelps - Sr. Principal Product Manager, Applications Technology Group, Oracle Max Arderius - Manager, Applications Technology Group, Oracle Tuesday, Oct 2, 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM - Moscone West 2001A Don’t miss this Oracle Applications Meet the Experts session with experts who specialize in Oracle E-Business Suite technology. This is the place where attendees can have informal and semistructured but open one-on-one discussions with Strategy and Development regarding Oracle Applications strategy and your specific business and IT strategy. The experts will be available to discuss the value of the latest releases and share insights into the best path for your enterprise, so come ready with your questions. Space is limited, so make sure you register. Demos We have five booths in the exhibition demogrounds this year, where you can try ATG technologies firsthand and get your questions answered. Please stop by and meet our staff at the following locations: Advanced Architecture and Technology Stack for Oracle E-Business Suite (W-067) New User Productivity Capabilities in Oracle E-Business Suite (W-065) End-to-End Management of Oracle E-Business Suite (W-063) Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 Technical Upgrade Best Practices (W-066) SOA-Based Integration for Oracle E-Business Suite (W-064)

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• The Windows Store... why did I sign up with this mess again?

  - by FransBouma

  Yesterday, Microsoft revealed that the Windows Store is now open to all developers in a wide range of countries and locations. For the people who think "wtf is the 'Windows Store'?", it's the central place where Windows 8 users will be able to find, download and purchase applications (or as we now have to say to not look like a computer illiterate: <accent style="Kentucky">aaaaappss</accent>) for Windows 8. As this is the store which is integrated into Windows 8, it's an interesting place for ISVs, as potential customers might very well look there first. This of course isn't true for all kinds of software, and developer tools in general aren't the kind of applications most users will download from the Windows store, but a presence there can't hurt. Now, this Windows Store hosts two kinds of applications: 'Metro-style' applications and 'Desktop' applications. The 'Metro-style' applications are applications created for the new 'Metro' UI which is present on Windows 8 desktop and Windows RT (the single color/big font fingerpaint-oriented UI). 'Desktop' applications are the applications we all run and use on Windows today. Our software are desktop applications. The Windows Store hosts all Metro-style applications locally in the store and handles the payment for these applications. This means you upload your application (sorry, 'app') to the store, jump through a lot of hoops, Microsoft verifies that your application is not violating a tremendous long list of rules and after everything is OK, it's published and hopefully you get customers and thus earn money. Money which Microsoft will pay you on a regular basis after customers buy your application. Desktop applications are not following this path however. Desktop applications aren't hosted by the Windows Store. Instead, the Windows Store more or less hosts a page with the application's information and where to get the goods. I.o.w.: it's nothing more than a product's Facebook page. Microsoft will simply redirect a visitor of the Windows Store to your website and the visitor will then use your site's system to purchase and download the application. This last bit of information is very important. So, this morning I started with fresh energy to register our company 'Solutions Design bv' at the Windows Store and our two applications, LLBLGen Pro and ORM Profiler. First I went to the Windows Store dashboard page. If you don't have an account, you have to log in or sign up if you don't have a live account. I signed in with my live account. After that, it greeted me with a page where I had to fill in a code which was mailed to me. My local mail server polls every several minutes for email so I had to kick it to get it immediately. I grabbed the code from the email and I was presented with a multi-step process to register myself as a company or as an individual. In red I was warned that this choice was permanent and not changeable. I chuckled: Microsoft apparently stores its data on paper, not in digital form. I chose 'company' and was presented with a lengthy form to fill out. On the form there were two strange remarks: Per company there can just be 1 (one, uno, not zero, not two or more) registered developer, and only that developer is able to upload stuff to the store. I have no idea how this works with large companies, oh the overhead nightmares... "Sorry, but John, our registered developer with the Windows Store is on holiday for 3 months, backpacking through Australia, no, he's not reachable at this point. M'yeah, sorry bud. Hey, did you fill in those TPS reports yesterday?" A separate Approver has to be specified, which has to be a different person than the registered developer. Apparently to Microsoft a company with just 1 person is not a company. Luckily we're with two people! *pfew*, dodged that one, otherwise I would be stuck forever: the choice I already made was not reversible! After I had filled out the form and it was all well and good and accepted by the Microsoft lackey who had to write it all down in some paper notebook ("Hey, be warned! It's a permanent choice! Written down in ink, can't be changed!"), I was presented with the question how I wanted to pay for all this. "Pay for what?" I wondered. Must be the paper they were scribbling the information on, I concluded. After all, there's a financial crisis going on! How could I forget! Silly me. "Ok fair enough". The price was 75 Euros, not the end of the world. I could only pay by credit card, so it was accepted quickly. Or so I thought. You see, Microsoft has a different idea about CC payments. In the normal world, you type in your CC number, some date, a name and a security code and that's it. But Microsoft wants to verify this even more. They want to make a verification purchase of a very small amount and are doing that with a special code in the description. You then have to type in that code in a special form in the Windows Store dashboard and after that you're verified. Of course they'll refund the small amount they pull from your card. Sounds simple, right? Well... no. The problem starts with the fact that I can't see the CC activity on some website: I have a bank issued CC card. I get the CC activity once a month on a piece of paper sent to me. The bank's online website doesn't show them. So it's possible I have to wait for this code till October 12th. One month. "So what, I'm not going to use it anyway, Desktop applications don't use the payment system", I thought. "Haha, you're so naive, dear developer!" Microsoft won't allow you to publish any applications till this verification is done. So no application publishing for a month. Wouldn't it be nice if things were, you know, digital, so things got done instantly? But of course, that lackey who scribbled everything in the Big Windows Store Registration Book isn't that quick. Can't blame him though. He's just doing his job. Now, after the payment was done, I was presented with a page which tells me Microsoft is going to use a third party company called 'Symantec', which will verify my identity again. The page explains to me that this could be done through email or phone and that they'll contact the Approver to verify my identity. "Phone?", I thought... that's a little drastic for a developer account to publish a single page of information about an external hosted software product, isn't it? On Facebook I just added a page, done. And paying you, Microsoft, took less information: you were happy to take my money before my identity was even 'verified' by this 3rd party's minions! "Double standards!", I roared. No-one cared. But it's the thought of getting it off your chest, you know. Luckily for me, everyone at Symantec was asleep when I was registering so they went for the fallback option in case phone calls were not possible: my Approver received an email. Imagine you have to explain the idiot web of security theater I was caught in to someone else who then has to reply a random person over the internet that I indeed was who I said I was. As she's a true sweetheart, she gave me the benefit of the doubt and assured that for now, I was who I said I was. Remember, this is for a desktop application, which is only a link to a website, some pictures and a piece of text. No file hosting, no payment processing, nothing, just a single page. Yeah, I also thought I was crazy. But we're not at the end of this quest yet. I clicked around in the confusing menus of the Windows Store dashboard and found the 'Desktop' section. I get a helpful screen with a warning in red that it can't find any certified 'apps'. True, I'm just getting started, buddy. I see a link: "Check the Windows apps you submitted for certification". Well, I haven't submitted anything, but let's see where it brings me. Oh the thrill of adventure! I click the link and I end up on this site: the hardware/desktop dashboard account registration. "Erm... but I just registered...", I mumbled to no-one in particular. Apparently for desktop registration / verification I have to register again, it tells me. But not only that, the desktop application has to be signed with a certificate. And not just some random el-cheapo certificate you can get at any mall's discount store. No, this certificate is special. It's precious. This certificate, the 'Microsoft Authenticode' Digital Certificate, is the only certificate that's acceptable, and jolly, it can be purchased from VeriSign for the price of only ... $99.-, but be quick, because this is a limited time offer! After that it's, I kid you not, $499.-. 500 dollars for a certificate to sign an executable. But, I do feel special, I got a special price. Only for me! I'm glowing. Not for long though. Here I started to wonder, what the benefit of it all was. I now again had to pay money for a shiny certificate which will add 'Solutions Design bv' to our installer as the publisher instead of 'unknown', while our customers download the file from our website. Not only that, but this was all about a Desktop application, which wasn't hosted by Microsoft. They only link to it. And make no mistake. These prices aren't single payments. Every year these have to be renewed. Like a membership of an exclusive club: you're special and privileged, but only if you cough up the dough. To give you an example how silly this all is: I added LLBLGen Pro and ORM Profiler to the Visual Studio Gallery some time ago. It's the same thing: it's a central place where one can find software which adds to / extends / works with Visual Studio. I could simply create the pages, add the information and they show up inside Visual Studio. No files are hosted at Microsoft, they're downloaded from our website. Exactly the same system. As I have to wait for the CC transcripts to arrive anyway, I can't proceed with publishing in this new shiny store. After the verification is complete I have to wait for verification of my software by Microsoft. Even Desktop applications need to be verified using a long list of rules which are mainly focused on Metro-style applications. Even while they're not hosted by Microsoft. I wonder what they'll find. "Your application wasn't approved. It violates rule 14 X sub D: it provides more value than our own competing framework". While I was writing this post, I tried to check something in the Windows Store Dashboard, to see whether I remembered it correctly. I was presented again with the question, after logging in with my live account, to enter the code that was just mailed to me. Not the previous code, a brand new one. Again I had to kick my mail server to pull the email to proceed. This was it. This 'experience' is so beyond miserable, I'm afraid I have to say goodbye for now to the 'Windows Store'. It's simply not worth my time. Now, about live accounts. You might know this: live accounts are tied to everything you do with Microsoft. So if you have an MSDN subscription, e.g. the one which costs over $5000.-, it's tied to this same live account. But the fun thing is, you can login with your live account to the MSDN subscriptions with just the account id and password. No additional code is mailed to you. While it gives you access to all Microsoft software available, including your licenses. Why the draconian security theater with this Windows Store, while all I want is to publish some desktop applications while on other Microsoft sites it's OK to simply sign in with your live account: no codes needed, no verification and no certificates? Microsoft, one thing you need with this store and that's: apps. Apps, apps, apps, apps, aaaaaaaaapps. Sorry, my bad, got carried away. I just can't stand the word 'app'. This store's shelves have to be filled to the brim with goods. But instead of being welcomed into the store with open arms, I have to fight an uphill battle with an endless list of rules and bullshit to earn the privilege to publish in this shiny store. As if I have to be thrilled to be one of the exclusive club called 'Windows Store Publishers'. As if Microsoft doesn't want it to succeed. Craig Stuntz sent me a link to an old blog post of his regarding code signing and uploading to Microsoft's old mobile store from back in the WinMo5 days: http://blogs.teamb.com/craigstuntz/2006/10/11/28357/. Good read and good background info about how little things changed over the years. I hope this helps Microsoft make things more clearer and smoother and also helps ISVs with their decision whether to go with the Windows Store scheme or ignore it. For now, I don't see the advantage of publishing there, especially not with the nonsense rules Microsoft cooked up. Perhaps it changes in the future, who knows.

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• Dynamic XAP loading in Task-It - Part 1

  Download Source Code NOTE 1: The source code provided is running against the RC versions of Silverlight 4 and VisualStudio 2010, so you will need to update to those bits to run it. NOTE 2: After downloading the source, be sure to set the .Web project as the StartUp Project, and Default.aspx as the Start Page In my MEF into post, MEF to the rescue in Task-It, I outlined a couple of issues I was facing and explained why I chose MEF (the Managed Extensibility Framework) to solve these issues. Other posts to check out There are a few other resources out there around dynamic XAP loading that you may want to review (by the way, Glenn Block is the main dude when it comes to MEF): Glenn Blocks 3-part series on a dynamically loaded dashboard Glenn and John Papas Silverlight TV video on dynamic xap loading These provide some great info, but didnt exactly cover the scenario I wanted to achieve in Task-Itand that is dynamically loading each of the apps pages the first time the user enters a page. The code In the code I provided for download above, I created a simple solution that shows the technique I used for dynamic XAP loading in Task-It, but without all of the other code that surrounds it. Taking all that other stuff away should make it easier to grasp. Having said that, there is still a fair amount of code involved. I am always looking for ways to make things simpler, and to achieve the desired result with as little code as possible, so if I find a better/simpler way I will blog about it, but for now this technique works for me. When I created this solution I started by creating a new Silverlight Navigation Application called DynamicXAP Loading. I then added the following line to my UriMappings in MainPage.xaml: <uriMapper:UriMapping Uri="/{assemblyName};component/{path}" MappedUri="/{assemblyName};component/{path}"/> In the section of MainPage.xaml that produces the page links in the upper right, I kept the Home link, but added a couple of new ones (page1 and page 2). These are the pages that will be dynamically (lazy) loaded: <StackPanel x:Name="LinksStackPanel" Style="{StaticResource LinksStackPanelStyle}">      <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" NavigateUri="/Home" TargetName="ContentFrame" Content="home"/>      <Rectangle Style="{StaticResource DividerStyle}"/>      <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" Content="page 1" Command="{Binding NavigateCommand}" CommandParameter="{Binding ModulePage1}"/>      <Rectangle Style="{StaticResource DividerStyle}"/>      <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" Content="page 2" Command="{Binding NavigateCommand}" CommandParameter="{Binding ModulePage2}"/>  </StackPanel> In App.xaml.cs I added a bit of MEF code. In Application_Startup I call a method called InitializeContainer, which creates a PackageCatalog (a MEF thing), then I create a CompositionContainer and pass it to the CompositionHost.Initialize method. This is boiler-plate MEF stuff that allows you to do 'composition' and import 'packages'. You're welcome to do a bit more MEF research on what is happening here if you'd like, but for the purpose of this example you can just trust that it works. :-) private void Application_Startup(object sender, StartupEventArgs e) {     InitializeContainer();     this.RootVisual = new MainPage(); }   private static void InitializeContainer() {     var catalog = new PackageCatalog();     catalog.AddPackage(Package.Current);     var container = new CompositionContainer(catalog);     container.ComposeExportedValue(catalog);     CompositionHost.Initialize(container); } Infrastructure In the sample code you'll notice that there is a project in the solution called DynamicXAPLoading.Infrastructure. This is simply a Silverlight Class Library project that I created just to move stuff I considered application 'infrastructure' code into a separate place, rather than cluttering the main Silverlight project (DynamicXapLoading). I did this same thing in Task-It, as the amount of this type of code was starting to clutter up the Silverlight project, and it just seemed to make sense to move things like Enums, Constants and the like off to a separate place. In the DynamicXapLoading.Infrastructure project you'll see 3 classes: Enums - There is only one enum in here called ModuleEnum. We'll use these later. PageMetadata - We will use this class later to add metadata to a new dynamically loaded project. ViewModelBase - This is simply a base class for view models that we will use in this, as well as future samples. As mentioned in my MVVM post, I will be using the MVVM pattern throughout my code for reasons detailed in the post. By the way, the ViewModelExtension class in there allows me to do strongly-typed property changed notification, so rather than OnPropertyChanged("MyProperty"), I can do this.OnPropertyChanged(p => p.MyProperty). It's just a less error-prown approach, because if you don't spell "MyProperty" correctly using the first method, nothing will break, it just won't work. Adding a new page We currently have a couple of pages that are being dynamically (lazy) loaded, but now let's add a third page. 1. First, create a new Silverlight Application project: In this example I call it Page3. In the future you may prefer to use a different name, like DynamicXAPLoading.Page3, or even DynamicXAPLoading.Modules.Page3. It can be whatever you want. In my Task-It application I used the latter approach (with 'Modules' in the name). I do think of these application as 'modules', but Prism uses the same term, so some folks may not like that. Use whichever naming convention you feel is appropriate, but for now Page3 will do. When you change the name to Page3 and click OK, you will be presented with the Add New Project dialog: It is important that you leave the 'Host the Silverlight application in a new or existing Web site in the solution' checked, and the .Web project will be selected in the dropdown below. This will create the .xap file for this project under ClientBin in the .Web project, which is where we want it. 2. Uncheck the 'Add a test page that references the application' checkbox, and leave everything else as is. 3. Once the project is created, you can delete App.xaml and MainPage.xaml. 4. You will need to add references your new project to the following: DynamicXAPLoading.Infrastructure.dll (this is a Project reference) DynamicNavigation.dll (this is in the Libs directory under the DynamicXAPLoading project) System.ComponentModel.Composition.dll System.ComponentModel.Composition.Initialization.dll System.Windows.Controls.Navigation.dll If you have installed the latest RC bits you will find the last 3 dll's under the .NET tab in the Add Referenced dialog. They live in the following location, or if you are on a 64-bit machine like me, it will be Program Files (x86).       C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v4.0\Libraries\Client Now let's create some UI for our new project. 5. First, create a new Silverlight User Control called Page3.dyn.xaml 6. Paste the following code into the xaml: <dyn:DynamicPageShim xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"     xmlns:dyn="clr-namespace:DynamicNavigation;assembly=DynamicNavigation"     xmlns:my="clr-namespace:Page3;assembly=Page3">     <my:Page3Host /> </dyn:DynamicPageShim> This is just a 'shim', part of David Poll's technique for dynamic loading. 7. Expand the icon next to Page3.dyn.xaml and delete the code-behind file (Page3.dyn.xaml.cs). 8. Next we will create a control that will 'host' our page. Create another Silverlight User Control called Page3Host.xaml and paste in the following XAML: <dyn:DynamicPage x:Class="Page3.Page3Host"     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"     xmlns:dyn="clr-namespace:DynamicNavigation;assembly=DynamicNavigation"     xmlns:Views="clr-namespace:Page3.Views"      mc:Ignorable="d"     d:DesignHeight="300" d:DesignWidth="400"     Title="Page 3">       <Views:Page3/>   </dyn:DynamicPage> 9. Now paste the following code into the code-behind for this control: using DynamicXAPLoading.Infrastructure;   namespace Page3 {     [PageMetadata(NavigateUri = "/Page3;component/Page3.dyn.xaml", Module = Enums.Page3)]     public partial class Page3Host     {         public Page3Host()         {             InitializeComponent();         }     } } Notice that we are now using that PageMetadata custom attribute class that we created in the Infrastructure project, and setting its two properties. NavigateUri - This tells it that the assembly is called Page3 (with a slash beforehand), and the page we want to load is Page3.dyn.xaml...our 'shim'. That line we added to the UriMapper in MainPage.xaml will use this information to load the page. Module - This goes back to that ModuleEnum class in our Infrastructure project. However, setting the Module to ModuleEnum.Page3 will cause a compilation error, so... 10. Go back to that Enums.cs under the Infrastructure project and add a 3rd entry for Page3: public enum ModuleEnum {     Page1,     Page2,     Page3 } 11. Now right-click on the Page3 project and add a folder called Views. 12. Right-click on the Views folder and create a new Silverlight User Control called Page3.xaml. We won't bother creating a view model for this User Control as I did in the Page 1 and Page 2 projects, just for the sake of simplicity. Feel free to add one if you'd like though, and copy the code from one of those other projects. Right now those view models aren't really doing anything anyway...though they will in my next post. :-) 13. Now let's replace the xaml for Page3.xaml with the following: <dyn:DynamicPage x:Class="Page3.Views.Page3"     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"     xmlns:dyn="clr-namespace:DynamicNavigation;assembly=DynamicNavigation"     mc:Ignorable="d"     d:DesignHeight="300" d:DesignWidth="400"     Style="{StaticResource PageStyle}">       <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot">         <ScrollViewer x:Name="PageScrollViewer" Style="{StaticResource PageScrollViewerStyle}">             <StackPanel x:Name="ContentStackPanel">                 <TextBlock x:Name="HeaderText" Style="{StaticResource HeaderTextStyle}" Text="Page 3"/>                 <TextBlock x:Name="ContentText" Style="{StaticResource ContentTextStyle}" Text="Page 3 content"/>             </StackPanel>         </ScrollViewer>     </Grid>   </dyn:DynamicPage> 14. And in the code-behind remove the inheritance from UserControl, so it should look like this: namespace Page3.Views {     public partial class Page3     {         public Page3()         {             InitializeComponent();         }     } } One thing you may have noticed is that the base class for the last two User Controls we created is DynamicPage. Once again, we are using the infrastructure that David Poll created. 15. OK, a few last things. We need a link on our main page so that we can access our new page. In MainPage.xaml let's update our links to look like this: <StackPanel x:Name="LinksStackPanel" Style="{StaticResource LinksStackPanelStyle}">     <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" NavigateUri="/Home" TargetName="ContentFrame" Content="home"/>     <Rectangle Style="{StaticResource DividerStyle}"/>     <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" Content="page 1" Command="{Binding NavigateCommand}" CommandParameter="{Binding ModulePage1}"/>     <Rectangle Style="{StaticResource DividerStyle}"/>     <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" Content="page 2" Command="{Binding NavigateCommand}" CommandParameter="{Binding ModulePage2}"/>     <Rectangle Style="{StaticResource DividerStyle}"/>     <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" Content="page 3" Command="{Binding NavigateCommand}" CommandParameter="{Binding ModulePage3}"/> </StackPanel> 16. Next, we need to add the following at the bottom of MainPageViewModel in the ViewModels directory of our DynamicXAPLoading project: public ModuleEnum ModulePage3 {     get { return ModuleEnum.Page3; } } 17. And at last, we need to add a case for our new page to the switch statement in MainPageViewModel: switch (module) {     case ModuleEnum.Page1:         DownloadPackage("Page1.xap");         break;     case ModuleEnum.Page2:         DownloadPackage("Page2.xap");         break;     case ModuleEnum.Page3:         DownloadPackage("Page3.xap");         break;     default:         break; } Now fire up the application and click the page 1, page 2 and page 3 links. What you'll notice is that there is a 2-second delay the first time you hit each page. That is because I added the following line to the Navigate method in MainPageViewModel: Thread.Sleep(2000); // Simulate a 2 second initial loading delay The reason I put this in there is that I wanted to simulate a delay the first time the page loads (as the .xap is being downloaded from the server). You'll notice that after the first hit to the page though that there is no delay...that's because the .xap has already been downloaded. Feel free to comment out this 2-second delay, or remove it if you'd like. I just wanted to show how subsequent hits to the page would be quicker than the initial one. By the way, you may want to display some sort of BusyIndicator while the .xap is loading. I have that in my Task-It appplication, but for the sake of simplicity I did not include it here. In the future I'll blog about how I show and hide the BusyIndicator using events (I'm currently using the eventing framework in Prism for that, but may move to the one in the MVVM Light Toolkit some time soon). Whew, that felt like a lot of steps, but it does work quite nicely. As I mentioned earlier, I'll try to find ways to simplify the code (I'd like to get away from having things like hard-coded .xap file names) and will blog about it in the future if I find a better way. In my next post, I'll talk more about what is actually happening with the code that makes this all work.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Stored Procedures with SSRS? Hmm… not so much

  - by Rob Farley

  Little Bobby Tables’ mother says you should always sanitise your data input. Except that I think she’s wrong. The SQL Injection aspect is for another post, where I’ll show you why I think SQL Injection is the same kind of attack as many other attacks, such as the old buffer overflow, but here I want to have a bit of a whinge about the way that some people sanitise data input, and even have a whinge about people who insist on using stored procedures for SSRS reports. Let me say that again, in case you missed it the first time: I want to have a whinge about people who insist on using stored procedures for SSRS reports. Let’s look at the data input sanitisation aspect – except that I’m going to call it ‘parameter validation’. I’m talking about code that looks like this: create procedure dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson(@eomdate datetime) as begin     /* First check that @eomdate is a valid date */     if isdate(@eomdate) != 1     begin         select 'Please enter a valid date' as ErrorMessage;         return;     end     /* Then check that time has passed since @eomdate */     if datediff(day,@eomdate,sysdatetime()) < 5     begin         select 'Sorry - EOM is not complete yet' as ErrorMessage;         return;     end         /* If those checks have succeeded, return the data */     select SalesPersonID, count(*) as NumSales, sum(TotalDue) as TotalSales     from Sales.SalesOrderHeader     where OrderDate >= dateadd(month,-1,@eomdate)         and OrderDate < @eomdate     group by SalesPersonID     order by SalesPersonID; end Notice that the code checks that a date has been entered. Seriously??!! This must only be to check for NULL values being passed in, because anything else would have to be a valid datetime to avoid an error. The other check is maybe fair enough, but I still don’t like it. The two problems I have with this stored procedure are the result sets and the small fact that the stored procedure even exists in the first place. But let’s consider the first one of these problems for starters. I’ll get to the second one in a moment. If you read Jes Borland (@grrl_geek)’s recent post about returning multiple result sets in Reporting Services, you’ll be aware that Reporting Services doesn’t support multiple results sets from a single query. And when it says ‘single query’, it includes ‘stored procedure call’. It’ll only handle the first result set that comes back. But that’s okay – we have RETURN statements, so our stored procedure will only ever return a single result set.  Sometimes that result set might contain a single field called ErrorMessage, but it’s still only one result set. Except that it’s not okay, because Reporting Services needs to know what fields to expect. Your report needs to hook into your fields, so SSRS needs to have a way to get that information. For stored procs, it uses an option called FMTONLY. When Reporting Services tries to figure out what fields are going to be returned by a query (or stored procedure call), it doesn’t want to have to run the whole thing. That could take ages. (Maybe it’s seen some of the stored procedures I’ve had to deal with over the years!) So it turns on FMTONLY before it makes the call (and turns it off again afterwards). FMTONLY is designed to be able to figure out the shape of the output, without actually running the contents. It’s very useful, you might think. set fmtonly on exec dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson '20030401'; set fmtonly off Without the FMTONLY lines, this stored procedure returns a result set that has three columns and fourteen rows. But with FMTONLY turned on, those rows don’t come back. But what I do get back hurts Reporting Services. It doesn’t run the stored procedure at all. It just looks for anything that could be returned and pushes out a result set in that shape. Despite the fact that I’ve made sure that the logic will only ever return a single result set, the FMTONLY option kills me by returning three of them. It would have been much better to push these checks down into the query itself. alter procedure dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson(@eomdate datetime) as begin     select SalesPersonID, count(*) as NumSales, sum(TotalDue) as TotalSales     from Sales.SalesOrderHeader     where     /* Make sure that @eomdate is valid */         isdate(@eomdate) = 1     /* And that it's sufficiently past */     and datediff(day,@eomdate,sysdatetime()) >= 5     /* And now use it in the filter as appropriate */     and OrderDate >= dateadd(month,-1,@eomdate)     and OrderDate < @eomdate     group by SalesPersonID     order by SalesPersonID; end Now if we run it with FMTONLY turned on, we get the single result set back. But let’s consider the execution plan when we pass in an invalid date. First let’s look at one that returns data. I’ve got a semi-useful index in place on OrderDate, which includes the SalesPersonID and TotalDue fields. It does the job, despite a hefty Sort operation. …compared to one that uses a future date: You might notice that the estimated costs are similar – the Index Seek is still 28%, the Sort is still 71%. But the size of that arrow coming out of the Index Seek is a whole bunch smaller. The coolest thing here is what’s going on with that Index Seek. Let’s look at some of the properties of it. Glance down it with me… Estimated CPU cost of 0.0005728, 387 estimated rows, estimated subtree cost of 0.0044385, ForceSeek false, Number of Executions 0. That’s right – it doesn’t run. So much for reading plans right-to-left... The key is the Filter on the left of it. It has a Startup Expression Predicate in it, which means that it doesn’t call anything further down the plan (to the right) if the predicate evaluates to false. Using this method, we can make sure that our stored procedure contains a single query, and therefore avoid any problems with multiple result sets. If we wanted, we could always use UNION ALL to make sure that we can return an appropriate error message. alter procedure dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson(@eomdate datetime) as begin     select SalesPersonID, count(*) as NumSales, sum(TotalDue) as TotalSales, /*Placeholder: */ '' as ErrorMessage     from Sales.SalesOrderHeader     where     /* Make sure that @eomdate is valid */         isdate(@eomdate) = 1     /* And that it's sufficiently past */     and datediff(day,@eomdate,sysdatetime()) >= 5     /* And now use it in the filter as appropriate */     and OrderDate >= dateadd(month,-1,@eomdate)     and OrderDate < @eomdate     group by SalesPersonID     /* Now include the error messages */     union all     select 0, 0, 0, 'Please enter a valid date' as ErrorMessage     where isdate(@eomdate) != 1     union all     select 0, 0, 0, 'Sorry - EOM is not complete yet' as ErrorMessage     where datediff(day,@eomdate,sysdatetime()) < 5     order by SalesPersonID; end But still I don’t like it, because it’s now a stored procedure with a single query. And I don’t like stored procedures that should be functions. That’s right – I think this should be a function, and SSRS should call the function. And I apologise to those of you who are now planning a bonfire for me. Guy Fawkes’ night has already passed this year, so I think you miss out. (And I’m not going to remind you about when the PASS Summit is in 2012.) create function dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson(@eomdate datetime) returns table as return (     select SalesPersonID, count(*) as NumSales, sum(TotalDue) as TotalSales, '' as ErrorMessage     from Sales.SalesOrderHeader     where     /* Make sure that @eomdate is valid */         isdate(@eomdate) = 1     /* And that it's sufficiently past */     and datediff(day,@eomdate,sysdatetime()) >= 5     /* And now use it in the filter as appropriate */     and OrderDate >= dateadd(month,-1,@eomdate)     and OrderDate < @eomdate     group by SalesPersonID     union all     select 0, 0, 0, 'Please enter a valid date' as ErrorMessage     where isdate(@eomdate) != 1     union all     select 0, 0, 0, 'Sorry - EOM is not complete yet' as ErrorMessage     where datediff(day,@eomdate,sysdatetime()) < 5 ); We’ve had to lose the ORDER BY – but that’s fine, as that’s a client thing anyway. We can have our reports leverage this stored query still, but we’re recognising that it’s a query, not a procedure. A procedure is designed to DO stuff, not just return data. We even get entries in sys.columns that confirm what the shape of the result set actually is, which makes sense, because a table-valued function is the right mechanism to return data. And we get so much more flexibility with this. If you haven’t seen the simplification stuff that I’ve preached on before, jump over to http://bit.ly/SimpleRob and watch the video of when I broke a microphone and nearly fell off the stage in Wales. You’ll see the impact of being able to have a simplifiable query. You can also read the procedural functions post I wrote recently, if you didn’t follow the link from a few paragraphs ago. So if we want the list of SalesPeople that made any kind of sales in a given month, we can do something like: select SalesPersonID from dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson(@eomonth) order by SalesPersonID; This doesn’t need to look up the TotalDue field, which makes a simpler plan. select * from dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson(@eomonth) where SalesPersonID is not null order by SalesPersonID; This one can avoid having to do the work on the rows that don’t have a SalesPersonID value, pushing the predicate into the Index Seek rather than filtering the results that come back to the report. If we had joins involved, we might see some of those being simplified out. We also get the ability to include query hints in individual reports. We shift from having a single-use stored procedure to having a reusable stored query – and isn’t that one of the main points of modularisation? Stored procedures in Reporting Services are just a bit limited for my liking. They’re useful in plenty of ways, but if you insist on using stored procedures all the time rather that queries that use functions – that’s rubbish. @rob_farley

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• From Bluehost to WP Engine, My WordPress Story

  - by thatjeffsmith

  This is probably the longest blog post I’ve written in a LONG time. And if you’re used to coming here for the Oracle stuff, this post is not about that. It’s about my blog, and the stuff under the hood that makes it run, AKA WordPress. If you want to skip to the juicy stuff, then use these shortcuts: My Site Slowed Down How I Moved to WP Engine How WP Engine ‘Hooked’ Me Why WP Engine? I started thatJeffSmith.com on May 28th, 2010. I had been already been blogging for several years, but a couple of really smart people I respected (Andy, Brent – thanks again!) suggested that I take ownership of my content and begin building my personal brand. I thought that was a good idea, and so I signed up for service with bluehost. Bluehost makes setting up a WordPress site very, very easy. And, they continued to be easy to work with for the past 2 years. I would even recommend them to anyone looking to host their own WordPress install/site. For $83.40, I purchased a year’s worth of service and my domain name registration – a very good value. And then last year I paid $107.40 for another year’s services. And when that year expired I paid another $190.80 for an additional two year’s service in advance. I had been up to that point, getting my money’s worth. And then, just a few weeks ago… My Site Slowed to a Crawl That spike was from an April Fool's Day Post, I think Why? Well, when I first started blogging, I had the same problem that most beginner bloggers have – not many readers. In my first year of blogging, I think the highest number of readers on a single day was about 125. I remember that day as I was very excited to break 100! Bluehost was very reliable, serving up my content with maybe a total of 3-4 outages in the past 2 years. Support was usually very prompt with answers and solutions, and I love their ‘Chat now’ technology – much nicer than message boards only or pay-to-talk phone support. In the past 6 months however, I noticed a couple of things: daily traffic was increasing – woohoo! my service was experiencing severe CPU throttling – doh! To be honest, I wasn’t aware the throttling was occuring, but I did know that the response time of my blog was starting to lag. Average load times were approaching 20-30 seconds. Not good when good sites are loading in 5 seconds or less. And just this past week, in getting ready to launch a new website for work that sucked in an RSS feed from my blog, the new page was left waiting for more than a minute. Not good! In fact my boss asked, why aren’t you blogging on Blogger? Ugh. I tried a few things to fix the problem: I paid for a premium WordPress theme – Themify’s Grido (thanks to @SQLRockstar for the heads-up) I installed a couple of WP caching plugins I read every WP optimization blog post I could get my greedy little eyes on However, at the same time I was also getting addicted to WordPress bloggers talking about all the cool things you could do with your blog. As a result I had at one point about 30 different plugins installed. WordPress runs on MySQL, and certain queries running via these plugins were starving for CPU. Plugins that would be called every page load meant that as more people clicked on my site, the more CPU I needed. I’m not stupid, so I eventually figured out that maybe less plugins was better, and was able to go down to just 20. But still, the site was running like a dog. CPU Throttling, makes MySQL wait to run a query Bluehost runs shared servers. Your site runs on the same box that several hundred (or thousand?) other services are running on. If you take more CPU than they think you should have, they will limit your service by making you stand in line for CPU, AKA ‘throttling.’ This is not bad. This business model allows them to serve many, many users for a very fair price. It works great until, well, until it doesn’t. I noticed in the last week that for every minute of service, I was being throttled between 60 and 300 seconds. If there were 5 MySQL processes running, then every single one of them were being held in check. The blog visitor notice this as their page requests would take a minute or more to be answered. Bluehost unfortunately doesn’t offer dedicated server hosting, so there was no real upgrade path for me follow and remain one of their customers. So what was I to do? Uninstall every plugin and hope the site sped up? Ask for people to take turns on my blog? I decided to spend my way out of the problem. I signed up for service with WP Engine and moved ThatJeffSmith.com The first 2 months are free, and after that it’s about $29/month to run my site on their system. My math tells me that’s a good bit more expensive than what Bluehost was charging me – to the tune of about 300% more a month. Oh, and I should just say that my blog is a personal blog even though I talk about work stuff here. I don’t get paid for blogging, I don’t sell ads, and I don’t expense the service fees – this is my personal passion. So is it worth it? In the first 4 days, it seems to be totally worth it. Load times have gone from 20-30 seconds to less than 5 seconds. A few folks have told me via Twitter that they notice faster page loads. I anticipate this will indirectly lead to more traffic as Google penalizes you in search results if your site is too slow, and of course some folks won’t even bother waiting more than 5-10 seconds. I noticed right away that writing posts, uploading pictures, and just using the WordPress dashboard in general was much more responsive. So writing is less of a chore now, which means I won’t have a good reason not to write How I Moved to WP Engine I signed up for the service and registered my domain. I then took a full export of my ‘old’ site by doing a FTP GET of all my files, then did a MySQL database backup, exported my WordPress Theme settings to a .zip file, and then finally used the WordPress ‘Export’ feature. I then used the WordPress ‘Import’ on the new site to load up my posts. Then I uploaded the theme .zip package from Themify. Then I FTP’d the ‘wp-content’ directory up to my new server using SFTP (WP Engine only supports secure FTP – good on them!) Using a temporary URL to see my new site, I was able to confirm that everything looked mostly OK – I’ll detail the challenges and issues of fixing the content next – but then it was time to ‘flip the switch.’ I updated the IP address that the DNS lookup tables use to route traffic to my new server. In a matter of minutes the DNS servers around the world were updated and it was time to see the new site! But It Was ‘Broken’ I had never moved a website before, and in my rush to update the DNS, I had changed the records without really finding out what I was supposed to do first. After re-reading the directions provided by WP Engine and following the guidance of their support engineer, I realized I had needed to set the CNAME (Alias) ‘www’ record to point to a different URL than the ‘www.thatjeffsmith.com’ entry I had set. Once corrected the site was up and running in less than a minute. Then It Was Only Mostly Broken Many of my plugins weren’t working. Apparently just ftp’ing the wp-content directory up wasn’t the proper way to re-install the plugin. I suspect file permissions or file ownership wasn’t proper. Some plug-ins were working, many had their settings wiped to the defaults, and a few just didn’t work again. I had to delete the directory of the plug-in manually via SFTP, and then use the WP Dashboard to install it from scratch. And here was my first ‘lesson’ – don’t switch the DNS records until you’ve completely tested your new site. I wasn’t able to navigate the old WP console to review my plug-in settings. Thankfully I was able to use the Wayback Machine to reverse engineer some things, and of course most plug-ins aren’t that complicated to setup to begin with. An example of one that I had to redo from scratch is the ‘Twitter @Anywhere Plus’ plugin that I use to create the form that allows folks to tweet a post they enjoyed at the end of each story. How WP Engine ‘Hooked’ Me I actually signed up with another provider first. They ranked highly in Google searches and a few Tweeps recommended them to me. But hours after signing up and I still didn’t have sever reyady, I was ready to give up on them. They offered no chat or phone support – only mail and message boards. And the message boards were rife with posts about how the service had gone downhill in the past 6 months. To their credit, they did make it easy to cancel, although I did have to do so via email as their website ‘cancel’ button was non-existent. Within minutes of activating my WP Engine account I had received my welcome message and directions on how to get started. I was able to see my staged website right away. They also did something very cool before I even got started – they looked at my existing site and told me by how much they could improve its performance. The proof is in the web pudding. I like this for a few reasons, but primarily I liked their business model. It told me they knew what they were doing, and that they were willing to put their money where their mouth was. This was further evident by their 60-day money back guarantee. And if I understand it correctly, they don’t even take your money until after that 60 day period is over. After a day, I was welcomed by the WP Engine social media team, and was given the opportunity to subscribe to their newsletter and follow their account on Twitter. I noticed their Twitter team is sure to post regular WordPress tips several times a day. It’s not just an account that’s setup for the sake of having a Twitter presence. These little things add up and give me confidence in my decision to choose them as my hosting partner. ‘Partner’ – that’s a lot nicer word than just ‘service provider,’ isn’t it? Oh, and they offered me a t-shirt. Don’t ever doubt the power of a ‘free’ t-shirt! How awesome is this e-mail, from a customer perspective? I wasn’t really expecting any of this. Exceeding expectations before I have even handed over a single dollar seems like a pretty good business plan. This is how you treat customers. Love them to death, and they reward you with loyalty. But Jeff, You Skipped a Piece Here, Why WP Engine? I found them on one of those ‘Top 10′ list posts, and pulled up their webpage. I noticed they offered a specialized service – they host WordPress installs, and that’s it. Their servers are tuned specifically for running WordPress. They had in bolded text, things like ‘INSANELY FAST. INFINITELY SCALABLE.’ and ‘LIGHTNING SPEED.’ And then they offered insurance against hackers and they took care of automatic backups and restores. The only drawbacks I have noticed so far relate to plugins I used that have been ‘blacklisted.’ In order to guarantee that ‘lightning’ speed, they have banned the use of the CPU-suckiest plugins. One of those is the ‘Related Posts’ plugin. So if you are a subscriber and are reading this in your email, you’ll notice there’s no links back to my blog to continue reading other related stories. Since that referral traffic is very small single-digit for my site, I decided that I’m OK with that. I’d rather have the warp-speed page loads. Again, I think that will lead to higher traffic down the road. In 50+ days I will need to decide if WP Engine is a permanent solution. I’ll be sure to update this post when that time comes and let y’all know how it turns out.

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• C#/.NET Little Wonders: ConcurrentBag and BlockingCollection

  - by James Michael Hare

  In the first week of concurrent collections, began with a general introduction and discussed the ConcurrentStack<T> and ConcurrentQueue<T>.  The last post discussed the ConcurrentDictionary<T> .  Finally this week, we shall close with a discussion of the ConcurrentBag<T> and BlockingCollection<T>. For more of the "Little Wonders" posts, see C#/.NET Little Wonders: A Redux. Recap As you'll recall from the previous posts, the original collections were object-based containers that accomplished synchronization through a Synchronized member.  With the advent of .NET 2.0, the original collections were succeeded by the generic collections which are fully type-safe, but eschew automatic synchronization.  With .NET 4.0, a new breed of collections was born in the System.Collections.Concurrent namespace.  Of these, the final concurrent collection we will examine is the ConcurrentBag and a very useful wrapper class called the BlockingCollection. For some excellent information on the performance of the concurrent collections and how they perform compared to a traditional brute-force locking strategy, see this informative whitepaper by the Microsoft Parallel Computing Platform team here. ConcurrentBag<T> – Thread-safe unordered collection. Unlike the other concurrent collections, the ConcurrentBag<T> has no non-concurrent counterpart in the .NET collections libraries.  Items can be added and removed from a bag just like any other collection, but unlike the other collections, the items are not maintained in any order.  This makes the bag handy for those cases when all you care about is that the data be consumed eventually, without regard for order of consumption or even fairness – that is, it’s possible new items could be consumed before older items given the right circumstances for a period of time. So why would you ever want a container that can be unfair?  Well, to look at it another way, you can use a ConcurrentQueue and get the fairness, but it comes at a cost in that the ordering rules and synchronization required to maintain that ordering can affect scalability a bit.  Thus sometimes the bag is great when you want the fastest way to get the next item to process, and don’t care what item it is or how long its been waiting. The way that the ConcurrentBag works is to take advantage of the new ThreadLocal<T> type (new in System.Threading for .NET 4.0) so that each thread using the bag has a list local to just that thread.  This means that adding or removing to a thread-local list requires very low synchronization.  The problem comes in where a thread goes to consume an item but it’s local list is empty.  In this case the bag performs “work-stealing” where it will rob an item from another thread that has items in its list.  This requires a higher level of synchronization which adds a bit of overhead to the take operation. So, as you can imagine, this makes the ConcurrentBag good for situations where each thread both produces and consumes items from the bag, but it would be less-than-idea in situations where some threads are dedicated producers and the other threads are dedicated consumers because the work-stealing synchronization would outweigh the thread-local optimization for a thread taking its own items. Like the other concurrent collections, there are some curiosities to keep in mind: IsEmpty(), Count, ToArray(), and GetEnumerator() lock collection Each of these needs to take a snapshot of whole bag to determine if empty, thus they tend to be more expensive and cause Add() and Take() operations to block. ToArray() and GetEnumerator() are static snapshots Because it is based on a snapshot, will not show subsequent updates after snapshot. Add() is lightweight Since adding to the thread-local list, there is very little overhead on Add. TryTake() is lightweight if items in thread-local list As long as items are in the thread-local list, TryTake() is very lightweight, much more so than ConcurrentStack() and ConcurrentQueue(), however if the local thread list is empty, it must steal work from another thread, which is more expensive. Remember, a bag is not ideal for all situations, it is mainly ideal for situations where a process consumes an item and either decomposes it into more items to be processed, or handles the item partially and places it back to be processed again until some point when it will complete.  The main point is that the bag works best when each thread both takes and adds items. For example, we could create a totally contrived example where perhaps we want to see the largest power of a number before it crosses a certain threshold.  Yes, obviously we could easily do this with a log function, but bare with me while I use this contrived example for simplicity. So let’s say we have a work function that will take a Tuple out of a bag, this Tuple will contain two ints.  The first int is the original number, and the second int is the last multiple of that number.  So we could load our bag with the initial values (let’s say we want to know the last multiple of each of 2, 3, 5, and 7 under 100. 1: var bag = new ConcurrentBag<Tuple<int, int>> 2: { 3: Tuple.Create(2, 1), 4: Tuple.Create(3, 1), 5: Tuple.Create(5, 1), 6: Tuple.Create(7, 1) 7: }; Then we can create a method that given the bag, will take out an item, apply the multiplier again, 1: public static void FindHighestPowerUnder(ConcurrentBag<Tuple<int,int>> bag, int threshold) 2: { 3: Tuple<int,int> pair; 4:  5: // while there are items to take, this will prefer local first, then steal if no local 6: while (bag.TryTake(out pair)) 7: { 8: // look at next power 9: var result = Math.Pow(pair.Item1, pair.Item2 + 1); 10:  11: if (result < threshold) 12: { 13: // if smaller than threshold bump power by 1 14: bag.Add(Tuple.Create(pair.Item1, pair.Item2 + 1)); 15: } 16: else 17: { 18: // otherwise, we're done 19: Console.WriteLine("Highest power of {0} under {3} is {0}^{1} = {2}.", 20: pair.Item1, pair.Item2, Math.Pow(pair.Item1, pair.Item2), threshold); 21: } 22: } 23: } Now that we have this, we can load up this method as an Action into our Tasks and run it: 1: // create array of tasks, start all, wait for all 2: var tasks = new[] 3: { 4: new Task(() => FindHighestPowerUnder(bag, 100)), 5: new Task(() => FindHighestPowerUnder(bag, 100)), 6: }; 7:  8: Array.ForEach(tasks, t => t.Start()); 9:  10: Task.WaitAll(tasks); Totally contrived, I know, but keep in mind the main point!  When you have a thread or task that operates on an item, and then puts it back for further consumption – or decomposes an item into further sub-items to be processed – you should consider a ConcurrentBag as the thread-local lists will allow for quick processing.  However, if you need ordering or if your processes are dedicated producers or consumers, this collection is not ideal.  As with anything, you should performance test as your mileage will vary depending on your situation! BlockingCollection<T> – A producers & consumers pattern collection The BlockingCollection<T> can be treated like a collection in its own right, but in reality it adds a producers and consumers paradigm to any collection that implements the interface IProducerConsumerCollection<T>.  If you don’t specify one at the time of construction, it will use a ConcurrentQueue<T> as its underlying store. If you don’t want to use the ConcurrentQueue, the ConcurrentStack and ConcurrentBag also implement the interface (though ConcurrentDictionary does not).  In addition, you are of course free to create your own implementation of the interface. So, for those who don’t remember the producers and consumers classical computer-science problem, the gist of it is that you have one (or more) processes that are creating items (producers) and one (or more) processes that are consuming these items (consumers).  Now, the crux of the problem is that there is a bin (queue) where the produced items are placed, and typically that bin has a limited size.  Thus if a producer creates an item, but there is no space to store it, it must wait until an item is consumed.  Also if a consumer goes to consume an item and none exists, it must wait until an item is produced. The BlockingCollection makes it trivial to implement any standard producers/consumers process set by providing that “bin” where the items can be produced into and consumed from with the appropriate blocking operations.  In addition, you can specify whether the bin should have a limited size or can be (theoretically) unbounded, and you can specify timeouts on the blocking operations. As far as your choice of “bin”, for the most part the ConcurrentQueue is the right choice because it is fairly light and maximizes fairness by ordering items so that they are consumed in the same order they are produced.  You can use the concurrent bag or stack, of course, but your ordering would be random-ish in the case of the former and LIFO in the case of the latter. So let’s look at some of the methods of note in BlockingCollection: BoundedCapacity returns capacity of the “bin” If the bin is unbounded, the capacity is int.MaxValue. Count returns an internally-kept count of items This makes it O(1), but if you modify underlying collection directly (not recommended) it is unreliable. CompleteAdding() is used to cut off further adds. This sets IsAddingCompleted and begins to wind down consumers once empty. IsAddingCompleted is true when producers are “done”. Once you are done producing, should complete the add process to alert consumers. IsCompleted is true when producers are “done” and “bin” is empty. Once you mark the producers done, and all items removed, this will be true. Add() is a blocking add to collection. If bin is full, will wait till space frees up Take() is a blocking remove from collection. If bin is empty, will wait until item is produced or adding is completed. GetConsumingEnumerable() is used to iterate and consume items. Unlike the standard enumerator, this one consumes the items instead of iteration. TryAdd() attempts add but does not block completely If adding would block, returns false instead, can specify TimeSpan to wait before stopping. TryTake() attempts to take but does not block completely Like TryAdd(), if taking would block, returns false instead, can specify TimeSpan to wait. Note the use of CompleteAdding() to signal the BlockingCollection that nothing else should be added.  This means that any attempts to TryAdd() or Add() after marked completed will throw an InvalidOperationException.  In addition, once adding is complete you can still continue to TryTake() and Take() until the bin is empty, and then Take() will throw the InvalidOperationException and TryTake() will return false. So let’s create a simple program to try this out.  Let’s say that you have one process that will be producing items, but a slower consumer process that handles them.  This gives us a chance to peek inside what happens when the bin is bounded (by default, the bin is NOT bounded). 1: var bin = new BlockingCollection<int>(5); Now, we create a method to produce items: 1: public static void ProduceItems(BlockingCollection<int> bin, int numToProduce) 2: { 3: for (int i = 0; i < numToProduce; i++) 4: { 5: // try for 10 ms to add an item 6: while (!bin.TryAdd(i, TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(10))) 7: { 8: Console.WriteLine("Bin is full, retrying..."); 9: } 10: } 11:  12: // once done producing, call CompleteAdding() 13: Console.WriteLine("Adding is completed."); 14: bin.CompleteAdding(); 15: } And one to consume them: 1: public static void ConsumeItems(BlockingCollection<int> bin) 2: { 3: // This will only be true if CompleteAdding() was called AND the bin is empty. 4: while (!bin.IsCompleted) 5: { 6: int item; 7:  8: if (!bin.TryTake(out item, TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(10))) 9: { 10: Console.WriteLine("Bin is empty, retrying..."); 11: } 12: else 13: { 14: Console.WriteLine("Consuming item {0}.", item); 15: Thread.Sleep(TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(20)); 16: } 17: } 18: } Then we can fire them off: 1: // create one producer and two consumers 2: var tasks = new[] 3: { 4: new Task(() => ProduceItems(bin, 20)), 5: new Task(() => ConsumeItems(bin)), 6: new Task(() => ConsumeItems(bin)), 7: }; 8:  9: Array.ForEach(tasks, t => t.Start()); 10:  11: Task.WaitAll(tasks); Notice that the producer is faster than the consumer, thus it should be hitting a full bin often and displaying the message after it times out on TryAdd(). 1: Consuming item 0. 2: Consuming item 1. 3: Bin is full, retrying... 4: Bin is full, retrying... 5: Consuming item 3. 6: Consuming item 2. 7: Bin is full, retrying... 8: Consuming item 4. 9: Consuming item 5. 10: Bin is full, retrying... 11: Consuming item 6. 12: Consuming item 7. 13: Bin is full, retrying... 14: Consuming item 8. 15: Consuming item 9. 16: Bin is full, retrying... 17: Consuming item 10. 18: Consuming item 11. 19: Bin is full, retrying... 20: Consuming item 12. 21: Consuming item 13. 22: Bin is full, retrying... 23: Bin is full, retrying... 24: Consuming item 14. 25: Adding is completed. 26: Consuming item 15. 27: Consuming item 16. 28: Consuming item 17. 29: Consuming item 19. 30: Consuming item 18. Also notice that once CompleteAdding() is called and the bin is empty, the IsCompleted property returns true, and the consumers will exit. Summary The ConcurrentBag is an interesting collection that can be used to optimize concurrency scenarios where tasks or threads both produce and consume items.  In this way, it will choose to consume its own work if available, and then steal if not.  However, in situations where you want fair consumption or ordering, or in situations where the producers and consumers are distinct processes, the bag is not optimal. The BlockingCollection is a great wrapper around all of the concurrent queue, stack, and bag that allows you to add producer and consumer semantics easily including waiting when the bin is full or empty. That’s the end of my dive into the concurrent collections.  I’d also strongly recommend, once again, you read this excellent Microsoft white paper that goes into much greater detail on the efficiencies you can gain using these collections judiciously (here). Tweet Technorati Tags: C#,.NET,Concurrent Collections,Little Wonders

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• What's up with OCFS2?

  - by wcoekaer

  On Linux there are many filesystem choices and even from Oracle we provide a number of filesystems, all with their own advantages and use cases. Customers often confuse ACFS with OCFS or OCFS2 which then causes assumptions to be made such as one replacing the other etc... I thought it would be good to write up a summary of how OCFS2 got to where it is, what we're up to still, how it is different from other options and how this really is a cool native Linux cluster filesystem that we worked on for many years and is still widely used. Work on a cluster filesystem at Oracle started many years ago, in the early 2000's when the Oracle Database Cluster development team wrote a cluster filesystem for Windows that was primarily focused on providing an alternative to raw disk devices and help customers with the deployment of Oracle Real Application Cluster (RAC). Oracle RAC is a cluster technology that lets us make a cluster of Oracle Database servers look like one big database. The RDBMS runs on many nodes and they all work on the same data. It's a Shared Disk database design. There are many advantages doing this but I will not go into detail as that is not the purpose of my write up. Suffice it to say that Oracle RAC expects all the database data to be visible in a consistent, coherent way, across all the nodes in the cluster. To do that, there were/are a few options : 1) use raw disk devices that are shared, through SCSI, FC, or iSCSI 2) use a network filesystem (NFS) 3) use a cluster filesystem(CFS) which basically gives you a filesystem that's coherent across all nodes using shared disks. It is sort of (but not quite) combining option 1 and 2 except that you don't do network access to the files, the files are effectively locally visible as if it was a local filesystem. So OCFS (Oracle Cluster FileSystem) on Windows was born. Since Linux was becoming a very important and popular platform, we decided that we would also make this available on Linux and thus the porting of OCFS/Windows started. The first version of OCFS was really primarily focused on replacing the use of Raw devices with a simple filesystem that lets you create files and provide direct IO to these files to get basically native raw disk performance. The filesystem was not designed to be fully POSIX compliant and it did not have any where near good/decent performance for regular file create/delete/access operations. Cache coherency was easy since it was basically always direct IO down to the disk device and this ensured that any time one issues a write() command it would go directly down to the disk, and not return until the write() was completed. Same for read() any sort of read from a datafile would be a read() operation that went all the way to disk and return. We did not cache any data when it came down to Oracle data files. So while OCFS worked well for that, since it did not have much of a normal filesystem feel, it was not something that could be submitted to the kernel mail list for inclusion into Linux as another native linux filesystem (setting aside the Windows porting code ...) it did its job well, it was very easy to configure, node membership was simple, locking was disk based (so very slow but it existed), you could create regular files and do regular filesystem operations to a certain extend but anything that was not database data file related was just not very useful in general. Logfiles ok, standard filesystem use, not so much. Up to this point, all the work was done, at Oracle, by Oracle developers. Once OCFS (1) was out for a while and there was a lot of use in the database RAC world, many customers wanted to do more and were asking for features that you'd expect in a normal native filesystem, a real "general purposes cluster filesystem". So the team sat down and basically started from scratch to implement what's now known as OCFS2 (Oracle Cluster FileSystem release 2). Some basic criteria were : Design it with a real Distributed Lock Manager and use the network for lock negotiation instead of the disk Make it a Linux native filesystem instead of a native shim layer and a portable core Support standard Posix compliancy and be fully cache coherent with all operations Support all the filesystem features Linux offers (ACL, extended Attributes, quotas, sparse files,...) Be modern, support large files, 32/64bit, journaling, data ordered journaling, endian neutral, we can mount on both endian /cross architecture,.. Needless to say, this was a huge development effort that took many years to complete. A few big milestones happened along the way... OCFS2 was development in the open, we did not have a private tree that we worked on without external code review from the Linux Filesystem maintainers, great folks like Christopher Hellwig reviewed the code regularly to make sure we were not doing anything out of line, we submitted the code for review on lkml a number of times to see if we were getting close for it to be included into the mainline kernel. Using this development model is standard practice for anyone that wants to write code that goes into the kernel and having any chance of doing so without a complete rewrite or.. shall I say flamefest when submitted. It saved us a tremendous amount of time by not having to re-fit code for it to be in a Linus acceptable state. Some other filesystems that were trying to get into the kernel that didn't follow an open development model had a lot harder time and a lot harsher criticism. March 2006, when Linus released 2.6.16, OCFS2 officially became part of the mainline kernel, it was accepted a little earlier in the release candidates but in 2.6.16. OCFS2 became officially part of the mainline Linux kernel tree as one of the many filesystems. It was the first cluster filesystem to make it into the kernel tree. Our hope was that it would then end up getting picked up by the distribution vendors to make it easy for everyone to have access to a CFS. Today the source code for OCFS2 is approximately 85000 lines of code. We made OCFS2 production with full support for customers that ran Oracle database on Linux, no extra or separate support contract needed. OCFS2 1.0.0 started being built for RHEL4 for x86, x86-64, ppc, s390x and ia64. For RHEL5 starting with OCFS2 1.2. SuSE was very interested in high availability and clustering and decided to build and include OCFS2 with SLES9 for their customers and was, next to Oracle, the main contributor to the filesystem for both new features and bug fixes. Source code was always available even prior to inclusion into mainline and as of 2.6.16, source code was just part of a Linux kernel download from kernel.org, which it still is, today. So the latest OCFS2 code is always the upstream mainline Linux kernel. OCFS2 is the cluster filesystem used in Oracle VM 2 and Oracle VM 3 as the virtual disk repository filesystem. Since the filesystem is in the Linux kernel it's released under the GPL v2 The release model has always been that new feature development happened in the mainline kernel and we then built consistent, well tested, snapshots that had versions, 1.2, 1.4, 1.6, 1.8. But these releases were effectively just snapshots in time that were tested for stability and release quality. OCFS2 is very easy to use, there's a simple text file that contains the node information (hostname, node number, cluster name) and a file that contains the cluster heartbeat timeouts. It is very small, and very efficient. As Sunil Mushran wrote in the manual : OCFS2 is an efficient, easily configured, quickly installed, fully integrated and compatible, feature-rich, architecture and endian neutral, cache coherent, ordered data journaling, POSIX-compliant, shared disk cluster file system. Here is a list of some of the important features that are included : Variable Block and Cluster sizes Supports block sizes ranging from 512 bytes to 4 KB and cluster sizes ranging from 4 KB to 1 MB (increments in power of 2). Extent-based Allocations Tracks the allocated space in ranges of clusters making it especially efficient for storing very large files. Optimized Allocations Supports sparse files, inline-data, unwritten extents, hole punching and allocation reservation for higher performance and efficient storage. File Cloning/snapshots REFLINK is a feature which introduces copy-on-write clones of files in a cluster coherent way. Indexed Directories Allows efficient access to millions of objects in a directory. Metadata Checksums Detects silent corruption in inodes and directories. Extended Attributes Supports attaching an unlimited number of name:value pairs to the file system objects like regular files, directories, symbolic links, etc. Advanced Security Supports POSIX ACLs and SELinux in addition to the traditional file access permission model. Quotas Supports user and group quotas. Journaling Supports both ordered and writeback data journaling modes to provide file system consistency in the event of power failure or system crash. Endian and Architecture neutral Supports a cluster of nodes with mixed architectures. Allows concurrent mounts on nodes running 32-bit and 64-bit, little-endian (x86, x86_64, ia64) and big-endian (ppc64) architectures. In-built Cluster-stack with DLM Includes an easy to configure, in-kernel cluster-stack with a distributed lock manager. Buffered, Direct, Asynchronous, Splice and Memory Mapped I/Os Supports all modes of I/Os for maximum flexibility and performance. Comprehensive Tools Support Provides a familiar EXT3-style tool-set that uses similar parameters for ease-of-use. The filesystem was distributed for Linux distributions in separate RPM form and this had to be built for every single kernel errata release or every updated kernel provided by the vendor. We provided builds from Oracle for Oracle Linux and all kernels released by Oracle and for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. SuSE provided the modules directly for every kernel they shipped. With the introduction of the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel for Oracle Linux and our interest in reducing the overhead of building filesystem modules for every minor release, we decide to make OCFS2 available as part of UEK. There was no more need for separate kernel modules, everything was built-in and a kernel upgrade automatically updated the filesystem, as it should. UEK allowed us to not having to backport new upstream filesystem code into an older kernel version, backporting features into older versions introduces risk and requires extra testing because the code is basically partially rewritten. The UEK model works really well for continuing to provide OCFS2 without that extra overhead. Because the RHEL kernel did not contain OCFS2 as a kernel module (it is in the source tree but it is not built by the vendor in kernel module form) we stopped adding the extra packages to Oracle Linux and its RHEL compatible kernel and for RHEL. Oracle Linux customers/users obviously get OCFS2 included as part of the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel, SuSE customers get it by SuSE distributed with SLES and Red Hat can decide to distribute OCFS2 to their customers if they chose to as it's just a matter of compiling the module and making it available. OCFS2 today, in the mainline kernel is pretty much feature complete in terms of integration with every filesystem feature Linux offers and it is still actively maintained with Joel Becker being the primary maintainer. Since we use OCFS2 as part of Oracle VM, we continue to look at interesting new functionality to add, REFLINK was a good example, and as such we continue to enhance the filesystem where it makes sense. Bugfixes and any sort of code that goes into the mainline Linux kernel that affects filesystems, automatically also modifies OCFS2 so it's in kernel, actively maintained but not a lot of new development happening at this time. We continue to fully support OCFS2 as part of Oracle Linux and the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel and other vendors make their own decisions on support as it's really a Linux cluster filesystem now more than something that we provide to customers. It really just is part of Linux like EXT3 or BTRFS etc, the OS distribution vendors decide. Do not confuse OCFS2 with ACFS (ASM cluster Filesystem) also known as Oracle Cloud Filesystem. ACFS is a filesystem that's provided by Oracle on various OS platforms and really integrates into Oracle ASM (Automatic Storage Management). It's a very powerful Cluster Filesystem but it's not distributed as part of the Operating System, it's distributed with the Oracle Database product and installs with and lives inside Oracle ASM. ACFS obviously is fully supported on Linux (Oracle Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux) but OCFS2 independently as a native Linux filesystem is also, and continues to also be supported. ACFS is very much tied into the Oracle RDBMS, OCFS2 is just a standard native Linux filesystem with no ties into Oracle products. Customers running the Oracle database and ASM really should consider using ACFS as it also provides storage/clustered volume management. Customers wanting to use a simple, easy to use generic Linux cluster filesystem should consider using OCFS2. To learn more about OCFS2 in detail, you can find good documentation on http://oss.oracle.com/projects/ocfs2 in the Documentation area, or get the latest mainline kernel from http://kernel.org and read the source. One final, unrelated note - since I am not always able to publicly answer or respond to comments, I do not want to selectively publish comments from readers. Sometimes I forget to publish comments, sometime I publish them and sometimes I would publish them but if for some reason I cannot publicly comment on them, it becomes a very one-sided stream. So for now I am going to not publish comments from anyone, to be fair to all sides. You are always welcome to email me and I will do my best to respond to technical questions, questions about strategy or direction are sometimes not possible to answer for obvious reasons.

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• Pain Comes Instantly

  - by user701213

  When I look back at recent blog entries – many of which are not all that current (more on where my available writing time is going later) – I am struck by how many of them focus on public policy or legislative issues instead of, say, the latest nefarious cyberattack or exploit (or everyone’s favorite new pastime: coining terms for the Coming Cyberpocalypse: “digital Pearl Harbor” is so 1941). Speaking of which, I personally hope evil hackers from Malefactoria will someday hack into my bathroom scale – which in a future time will be connected to the Internet because, gosh, wouldn’t it be great to have absolutely everything in your life Internet-enabled? – and recalibrate it so I’m 10 pounds thinner. The horror. In part, my focus on public policy is due to an admitted limitation of my skill set. I enjoy reading technical articles about exploits and cybersecurity trends, but writing a blog entry on those topics would take more research than I have time for and, quite honestly, doesn’t play to my strengths. The first rule of writing is “write what you know.” The bigger contributing factor to my recent paucity of blog entries is that more and more of my waking hours are spent engaging in “thrust and parry” activity involving emerging regulations of some sort or other. I’ve opined in earlier blogs about what constitutes good and reasonable public policy so nobody can accuse me of being reflexively anti-regulation. That said, you have so many cycles in the day, and most of us would rather spend it slaying actual dragons than participating in focus groups on whether dragons are really a problem, whether lassoing them (with organic, sustainable and recyclable lassos) is preferable to slaying them – after all, dragons are people, too - and whether we need lasso compliance auditors to make sure lassos are being used correctly and humanely. (A point that seems to evade many rule makers: slaying dragons actually accomplishes something, whereas talking about “approved dragon slaying procedures and requirements” wastes the time of those who are competent to dispatch actual dragons and who were doing so very well without the input of “dragon-slaying theorists.”) Unfortunately for so many of us who would just get on with doing our day jobs, cybersecurity is rapidly devolving into the “focus groups on dragon dispatching” realm, which actual dragons slayers have little choice but to participate in. The general trend in cybersecurity is that powers-that-be – which encompasses groups other than just legislators – are often increasingly concerned and therefore feel they need to Do Something About Cybersecurity. Many seem to believe that if only we had the right amount of regulation and oversight, there would be no data breaches: a breach simply must mean Someone Is At Fault and Needs Supervision. (Leaving aside the fact that we have lots of home invasions despite a) guard dogs b) liberal carry permits c) alarm systems d) etc.) Also note that many well-managed and security-aware organizations, like the US Department of Defense, still get hacked. More specifically, many powers-that-be feel they must direct industry in a multiplicity of ways, up to and including how we actually build and deploy information technology systems. The more prescriptive the requirement, the more regulators or overseers a) can be seen to be doing something b) feel as if they are doing something regardless of whether they are actually doing something useful or cost effective. Note: an unfortunate concomitant of Doing Something is that often the cure is worse than the ailment. That is, doing what overseers want creates unfortunate byproducts that they either didn’t foresee or worse, don’t care about. After all, the logic goes, we Did Something. Prescriptive practice in the IT industry is problematic for a number of reasons. For a start, prescriptive guidance is really only appropriate if: • It is cost effective• It is “current” (meaning, the guidance doesn’t require the use of the technical equivalent of buggy whips long after horse-drawn transportation has become passé)*• It is practical (that is, pragmatic, proven and effective in the real world, not theoretical and unproven)• It solves the right problem With the above in mind, heading up the list of “you must be joking” regulations are recent disturbing developments in the Payment Card Industry (PCI) world. I’d like to give PCI kahunas the benefit of the doubt about their intentions, except that efforts by Oracle among others to make them aware of “unfortunate side effects of your requirements” – which is as tactful I can be for reasons that I believe will become obvious below - have gone, to-date, unanswered and more importantly, unchanged. A little background on PCI before I get too wound up. In 2008, the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Security Standards Council (SSC) introduced the Payment Application Data Security Standard (PA-DSS). That standard requires vendors of payment applications to ensure that their products implement specific requirements and undergo security assessment procedures. In order to have an application listed as a Validated Payment Application (VPA) and available for use by merchants, software vendors are required to execute the PCI Payment Application Vendor Release Agreement (VRA). (Are you still with me through all the acronyms?) Beginning in August 2010, the VRA imposed new obligations on vendors that are extraordinary and extraordinarily bad, short-sighted and unworkable. Specifically, PCI requires vendors to disclose (dare we say “tell all?”) to PCI any known security vulnerabilities and associated security breaches involving VPAs. ASAP. Think about the impact of that. PCI is asking a vendor to disclose to them: • Specific details of security vulnerabilities • Including exploit information or technical details of the vulnerability • Whether or not there is any mitigation available (as in a patch) PCI, in turn, has the right to blab about any and all of the above – specifically, to distribute all the gory details of what is disclosed - to the PCI SSC, qualified security assessors (QSAs), and any affiliate or agent or adviser of those entities, who are in turn permitted to share it with their respective affiliates, agents, employees, contractors, merchants, processors, service providers and other business partners. This assorted crew can’t be more than, oh, hundreds of thousands of entities. Does anybody believe that several hundred thousand people can keep a secret? Or that several hundred thousand people are all equally trustworthy? Or that not one of the people getting all that information would blab vulnerability details to a bad guy, even by accident? Or be a bad guy who uses the information to break into systems? (Wait, was that the Easter Bunny that just hopped by? Bringing world peace, no doubt.) Sarcasm aside, common sense tells us that telling lots of people a secret is guaranteed to “unsecret” the secret. Notably, being provided details of a vulnerability (without a patch) is of little or no use to companies running the affected application. Few users have the technological sophistication to create a workaround, and even if they do, most workarounds break some other functionality in the application or surrounding environment. Also, given the differences among corporate implementations of any application, it is highly unlikely that a single workaround is going to work for all corporate users. So until a patch is developed by the vendor, users remain at risk of exploit: even more so if the details of vulnerability have been widely shared. Sharing that information widely before a patch is available therefore does not help users, and instead helps only those wanting to exploit known security bugs. There’s a shocker for you. Furthermore, we already know that insider information about security vulnerabilities inevitably leaks, which is why most vendors closely hold such information and limit dissemination until a patch is available (and frequently limit dissemination of technical details even with the release of a patch). That’s the industry norm, not that PCI seems to realize or acknowledge that. Why would anybody release a bunch of highly technical exploit information to a cast of thousands, whose only “vetting” is that they are members of a PCI consortium? Oracle has had personal experience with this problem, which is one reason why information on security vulnerabilities at Oracle is “need to know” (we use our own row level access control to limit access to security bugs in our bug database, and thus less than 1% of development has access to this information), and we don’t provide some customers with more information than others or with vulnerability information and/or patches earlier than others. Failure to remember “insider information always leaks” creates problems in the general case, and has created problems for us specifically. A number of years ago, one of the UK intelligence agencies had information about a non-public security vulnerability in an Oracle product that they circulated among other UK and Commonwealth defense and intelligence entities. Nobody, it should be pointed out, bothered to report the problem to Oracle, even though only Oracle could produce a patch. The vulnerability was finally reported to Oracle by (drum roll) a US-based commercial company, to whom the information had leaked. (Note: every time I tell this story, the MI-whatever agency that created the problem gets a bit shirty with us. I know they meant well and have improved their vulnerability handling/sharing processes but, dudes, next time you find an Oracle vulnerability, try reporting it to us first before blabbing to lots of people who can’t actually fix the problem. Thank you!) Getting back to PCI: clearly, these new disclosure obligations increase the risk of exploitation of a vulnerability in a VPA and thus, of misappropriation of payment card data and customer information that a VPA processes, stores or transmits. It stands to reason that VRA’s current requirement for the widespread distribution of security vulnerability exploit details -- at any time, but particularly before a vendor can issue a patch or a workaround -- is very poor public policy. It effectively publicizes information of great value to potential attackers while not providing compensating benefits - actually, any benefits - to payment card merchants or consumers. In fact, it magnifies the risk to payment card merchants and consumers. The risk is most prominent in the time before a patch has been released, since customers often have little option but to continue using an application or system despite the risks. However, the risk is not limited to the time before a patch is issued: customers often need days, or weeks, to apply patches to systems, based upon the complexity of the issue and dependence on surrounding programs. Rather than decreasing the available window of exploit, this requirement increases the available window of exploit, both as to time available to exploit a vulnerability and the ease with which it can be exploited. Also, why would hackers focus on finding new vulnerabilities to exploit if they can get “EZHack” handed to them in such a manner: a) a vulnerability b) in a payment application c) with exploit code: the “Hacking Trifecta!“ It’s fair to say that this is probably the exact opposite of what PCI – or any of us – would want. Established industry practice concerning vulnerability handling avoids the risks created by the VRA’s vulnerability disclosure requirements. Specifically, the norm is not to release information about a security bug until the associated patch (or a pretty darn good workaround) has been issued. Once a patch is available, the notice to the user community is a high-level communication discussing the product at issue, the level of risk associated with the vulnerability, and how to apply the patch. The notices do not include either the specific customers affected by the vulnerability or forensic reports with maps of the exploit (both of which are required by the current VRA). In this way, customers have the tools they need to prioritize patching and to help prevent an attack, and the information released does not increase the risk of exploit. Furthermore, many vendors already use industry standards for vulnerability description: Common Vulnerability Enumeration (CVE) and Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS). CVE helps ensure that customers know which particular issues a patch addresses and CVSS helps customers determine how severe a vulnerability is on a relative scale. Industry already provides the tools customers need to know what the patch contains and how bad the problem is that the patch remediates. So, what’s a poor vendor to do? Oracle is reaching out to other vendors subject to PCI and attempting to enlist then in a broad effort to engage PCI in rethinking (that is, eradicating) these requirements. I would therefore urge all who care about this issue, but especially those in the vendor community whose applications are subject to PCI and who may not have know they were being asked to tell-all to PCI and put their customers at risk, to do one of the following: • Contact PCI with your concerns• Contact Oracle (we are looking for vendors to sign our statement of concern)• And make sure you tell your customers that you have to rat them out to PCI if there is a breach involving the payment application I like to be charitable and say “PCI meant well” but in as important a public policy issue as what you disclose about vulnerabilities, to whom and when, meaning well isn’t enough. We need to do well. PCI, as regards this particular issue, has not done well, and has compounded the error by thus far being nonresponsive to those of us who have labored mightily to try to explain why they might want to rethink telling the entire planet about security problems with no solutions. By Way of Explanation… Non-related to PCI whatsoever, and the explanation for why I have not been blogging a lot recently, I have been working on Other Writing Venues with my sister Diane (who has also worked in the tech sector, inflicting upgrades on unsuspecting and largely ungrateful end users). I am pleased to note that we have recently (self-)published the first in the Miss Information Technology Murder Mystery series, Outsourcing Murder. The genre might best be described as “chick lit meets geek scene.” Our sisterly nom de plume is Maddi Davidson and (shameless plug follows): you can order the paper version of the book on Amazon, or the Kindle or Nook versions on www.amazon.com or www.bn.com, respectively. From our book jacket: Emma Jones, a 20-something IT consultant, is working on an outsourcing project at Tahiti Tacos, a restaurant chain offering Polynexican cuisine: refried poi, anyone? Emma despises her boss Padmanabh, a brilliant but arrogant partner in GD Consulting. When Emma discovers His-Royal-Padness’s body (verdict: death by cricket bat), she becomes a suspect.With her overprotective family and her best friend Stacey providing endless support and advice, Emma stumbles her way through an investigation of Padmanabh’s murder, bolstered by fusion food feeding frenzies, endless cups of frou-frou coffee and serious surfing sessions. While Stacey knows a PI who owes her a favor, landlady Magda urges Emma to tart up her underwear drawer before the next cute cop with a search warrant arrives. Emma’s mother offers to fix her up with a PhD student at Berkeley and showers her with self-defense gizmos while her old lover Keoni beckons from Hawai’i. And everyone, even Shaun the barista, knows a good lawyer. Book 2, Denial of Service, is coming out this summer. * Given the rate of change in technology, today’s “thou shalts” are easily next year’s “buggy whip guidance.”

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• Testing Entity Framework applications, pt. 3: NDbUnit

  - by Thomas Weller

  This is the third of a three part series that deals with the issue of faking test data in the context of a legacy app that was built with Microsoft's Entity Framework (EF) on top of an MS SQL Server database – a scenario that can be found very often. Please read the first part for a description of the sample application, a discussion of some general aspects of unit testing in a database context, and of some more specific aspects of the here discussed EF/MSSQL combination. Lately, I wondered how you would ‘mock’ the data layer of a legacy application, when this data layer is made up of an MS Entity Framework (EF) model in combination with a MS SQL Server database. Originally, this question came up in the context of how you could enable higher-level integration tests (automated UI tests, to be exact) for a legacy application that uses this EF/MSSQL combo as its data store mechanism – a not so uncommon scenario. The question sparked my interest, and I decided to dive into it somewhat deeper. What I've found out is, in short, that it's not very easy and straightforward to do it – but it can be done. The two strategies that are best suited to fit the bill involve using either the (commercial) Typemock Isolator tool or the (free) NDbUnit framework. The use of Typemock was discussed in the previous post, this post now will present the NDbUnit approach... NDbUnit is an Apache 2.0-licensed open-source project, and like so many other Nxxx tools and frameworks, it is basically a C#/.NET port of the corresponding Java version (DbUnit namely). In short, it helps you in flexibly managing the state of a database in that it lets you easily perform basic operations (like e.g. Insert, Delete, Refresh, DeleteAll)  against your database and, most notably, lets you feed it with data from external xml files. Let's have a look at how things can be done with the help of this framework. Preparing the test data Compared to Typemock, using NDbUnit implies a totally different approach to meet our testing needs.  So the here described testing scenario requires an instance of an SQL Server database in operation, and it also means that the Entity Framework model that sits on top of this database is completely unaffected. First things first: For its interactions with the database, NDbUnit relies on a .NET Dataset xsd file. See Step 1 of their Quick Start Guide for a description of how to create one. With this prerequisite in place then, the test fixture's setup code could look something like this: [TestFixture, TestsOn(typeof(PersonRepository))] [Metadata("NDbUnit Quickstart URL",           "http://code.google.com/p/ndbunit/wiki/QuickStartGuide")] [Description("Uses the NDbUnit library to provide test data to a local database.")] public class PersonRepositoryFixture {     #region Constants     private const string XmlSchema = @"..\..\TestData\School.xsd";     #endregion // Constants     #region Fields     private SchoolEntities _schoolContext;     private PersonRepository _personRepository;     private INDbUnitTest _database;     #endregion // Fields     #region Setup/TearDown     [FixtureSetUp]     public void FixtureSetUp()     {         var connectionString = ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["School_Test"].ConnectionString;         _database = new SqlDbUnitTest(connectionString);         _database.ReadXmlSchema(XmlSchema);         var entityConnectionStringBuilder = new EntityConnectionStringBuilder         {             Metadata = "res://*/School.csdl|res://*/School.ssdl|res://*/School.msl",             Provider = "System.Data.SqlClient",             ProviderConnectionString = connectionString         };         _schoolContext = new SchoolEntities(entityConnectionStringBuilder.ConnectionString);         _personRepository = new PersonRepository(this._schoolContext);     }     [FixtureTearDown]     public void FixtureTearDown()     {         _database.PerformDbOperation(DbOperationFlag.DeleteAll);         _schoolContext.Dispose();     }     ...  As you can see, there is slightly more fixture setup code involved if your tests are using NDbUnit to provide the test data: Because we're dealing with a physical database instance here, we first need to pick up the test-specific connection string from the test assemblies' App.config, then initialize an NDbUnit helper object with this connection along with the provided xsd file, and also set up the SchoolEntities and the PersonRepository instances accordingly. The _database field (an instance of the INdUnitTest interface) will be our single access point to the underlying database: We use it to perform all the required operations against the data store. To have a flexible mechanism to easily insert data into the database, we can write a helper method like this: private void InsertTestData(params string[] dataFileNames) {     _database.PerformDbOperation(DbOperationFlag.DeleteAll);     if (dataFileNames == null)     {         return;     }     try     {         foreach (string fileName in dataFileNames)         {             if (!File.Exists(fileName))             {                 throw new FileNotFoundException(Path.GetFullPath(fileName));             }             _database.ReadXml(fileName);             _database.PerformDbOperation(DbOperationFlag.InsertIdentity);         }     }     catch     {         _database.PerformDbOperation(DbOperationFlag.DeleteAll);         throw;     } } This lets us easily insert test data from xml files, in any number and in a  controlled order (which is important because we eventually must fulfill referential constraints, or we must account for some other stuff that imposes a specific ordering on data insertion). Again, as with Typemock, I won't go into API details here. - Unfortunately, there isn't too much documentation for NDbUnit anyway, other than the already mentioned Quick Start Guide (and the source code itself, of course) - a not so uncommon problem with smaller Open Source Projects. Last not least, we need to provide the required test data in xml form. A snippet for data from the People table might look like this, for example: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <School xmlns="http://tempuri.org/School.xsd">   <Person>     <PersonID>1</PersonID>     <LastName>Abercrombie</LastName>     <FirstName>Kim</FirstName>     <HireDate>1995-03-11T00:00:00</HireDate>   </Person>   <Person>     <PersonID>2</PersonID>     <LastName>Barzdukas</LastName>     <FirstName>Gytis</FirstName>     <EnrollmentDate>2005-09-01T00:00:00</EnrollmentDate>   </Person>   <Person>     ... You can also have data from various tables in one single xml file, if that's appropriate for you (but beware of the already mentioned ordering issues). It's true that your test assembly may end up with dozens of such xml files, each containing quite a big amount of text data. But because the files are of very low complexity, and with the help of a little bit of Copy/Paste and Excel magic, this appears to be well manageable. Executing some basic tests Here are some of the possible tests that can be written with the above preparations in place: private const string People = @"..\..\TestData\School.People.xml"; ... [Test, MultipleAsserts, TestsOn("PersonRepository.GetNameList")] public void GetNameList_ListOrdering_ReturnsTheExpectedFullNames() {     InsertTestData(People);     List<string> names =         _personRepository.GetNameList(NameOrdering.List);     Assert.Count(34, names);     Assert.AreEqual("Abercrombie, Kim", names.First());     Assert.AreEqual("Zheng, Roger", names.Last()); } [Test, MultipleAsserts, TestsOn("PersonRepository.GetNameList")] [DependsOn("RemovePerson_CalledOnce_DecreasesCountByOne")] public void GetNameList_NormalOrdering_ReturnsTheExpectedFullNames() {     InsertTestData(People);     List<string> names =         _personRepository.GetNameList(NameOrdering.Normal);     Assert.Count(34, names);     Assert.AreEqual("Alexandra Walker", names.First());     Assert.AreEqual("Yan Li", names.Last()); } [Test, TestsOn("PersonRepository.AddPerson")] public void AddPerson_CalledOnce_IncreasesCountByOne() {     InsertTestData(People);     int count = _personRepository.Count;     _personRepository.AddPerson(new Person { FirstName = "Thomas", LastName = "Weller" });     Assert.AreEqual(count + 1, _personRepository.Count); } [Test, TestsOn("PersonRepository.RemovePerson")] public void RemovePerson_CalledOnce_DecreasesCountByOne() {     InsertTestData(People);     int count = _personRepository.Count;     _personRepository.RemovePerson(new Person { PersonID = 33 });     Assert.AreEqual(count - 1, _personRepository.Count); } Not much difference here compared to the corresponding Typemock versions, except that we had to do a bit more preparational work (and also it was harder to get the required knowledge). But this picture changes quite dramatically if we look at some more demanding test cases: Ok, and what if things are becoming somewhat more complex? Tests like the above ones represent the 'easy' scenarios. They may account for the biggest portion of real-world use cases of the application, and they are important to make sure that it is generally sound. But usually, all these nasty little bugs originate from the more complex parts of our code, or they occur when something goes wrong. So, for a testing strategy to be of real practical use, it is especially important to see how easy or difficult it is to mimick a scenario which represents a more complex or exceptional case. The following test, for example, deals with the case that there is some sort of invalid input from the caller: [Test, MultipleAsserts, TestsOn("PersonRepository.GetCourseMembers")] [Row(null, typeof(ArgumentNullException))] [Row("", typeof(ArgumentException))] [Row("NotExistingCourse", typeof(ArgumentException))] public void GetCourseMembers_WithGivenVariousInvalidValues_Throws(string courseTitle, Type expectedInnerExceptionType) {     var exception = Assert.Throws<RepositoryException>(() =>                                 _personRepository.GetCourseMembers(courseTitle));     Assert.IsInstanceOfType(expectedInnerExceptionType, exception.InnerException); } Apparently, this test doesn't need an 'Arrange' part at all (see here for the same test with the Typemock tool). It acts just like any other client code, and all the required business logic comes from the database itself. This doesn't always necessarily mean that there is less complexity, but only that the complexity happens in a different part of your test resources (in the xml files namely, where you sometimes have to spend a lot of effort for carefully preparing the required test data). Another example, which relies on an underlying 1-n relationship, might be this: [Test, MultipleAsserts, TestsOn("PersonRepository.GetCourseMembers")] public void GetCourseMembers_WhenGivenAnExistingCourse_ReturnsListOfStudents() {     InsertTestData(People, Course, Department, StudentGrade);     List<Person> persons = _personRepository.GetCourseMembers("Macroeconomics");     Assert.Count(4, persons);     Assert.ForAll(         persons,         @p => new[] { 10, 11, 12, 14 }.Contains(@p.PersonID),         "Person has none of the expected IDs."); } If you compare this test to its corresponding Typemock version, you immediately see that the test itself is much simpler, easier to read, and thus much more intention-revealing. The complexity here lies hidden behind the call to the InsertTestData() helper method and the content of the used xml files with the test data. And also note that you might have to provide additional data which are not even directly relevant to your test, but are required only to fulfill some integrity needs of the underlying database. Conclusion The first thing to notice when comparing the NDbUnit approach to its Typemock counterpart obviously deals with performance: Of course, NDbUnit is much slower than Typemock. Technically,  it doesn't even make sense to compare the two tools. But practically, it may well play a role and could or could not be an issue, depending on how much tests you have of this kind, how often you run them, and what role they play in your development cycle. Also, because the dataset from the required xsd file must fully match the database schema (even in parts that otherwise wouldn't be relevant to you), it can be quite cumbersome to be in a team where different people are working with the database in parallel. My personal experience is – as already said in the first part – that Typemock gives you a better development experience in a 'dynamic' scenario (when you're working in some kind of TDD-style, you're oftentimes executing the tests from your dev box, and your database schema changes frequently), whereas the NDbUnit approach is a good and solid solution in more 'static' development scenarios (when you need to execute the tests less frequently or only on a separate build server, and/or the underlying database schema can be kept relatively stable), for example some variations of higher-level integration or User-Acceptance tests. But in any case, opening Entity Framework based applications for testing requires a fair amount of resources, planning, and preparational work – it's definitely not the kind of stuff that you would call 'easy to test'. Hopefully, future versions of EF will take testing concerns into account. Otherwise, I don't see too much of a future for the framework in the long run, even though it's quite popular at the moment... The sample solution A sample solution (VS 2010) with the code from this article series is available via my Bitbucket account from here (Bitbucket is a hosting site for Mercurial repositories. The repositories may also be accessed with the Git and Subversion SCMs - consult the documentation for details. In addition, it is possible to download the solution simply as a zipped archive – via the 'get source' button on the very right.). The solution contains some more tests against the PersonRepository class, which are not shown here. Also, it contains database scripts to create and fill the School sample database. To compile and run, the solution expects the Gallio/MbUnit framework to be installed (which is free and can be downloaded from here), the NDbUnit framework (which is also free and can be downloaded from here), and the Typemock Isolator tool (a fully functional 30day-trial is available here). Moreover, you will need an instance of the Microsoft SQL Server DBMS, and you will have to adapt the connection strings in the test projects App.config files accordingly.

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• AIX Checklist for stable obiee deployment

  - by user554629

  Common AIX configuration issues     ( last updated 27 Aug 2012 ) OBIEE is a complicated system with many moving parts and connection points.The purpose of this article is to provide a checklist to discuss OBIEE deployment with your systems administrators. The information in this article is time sensitive, and updated as I discover new  issues or details. What makes OBIEE different? When Tech Support suggests AIX component upgrades to a stable, locked-down production AIX environment, it is common to get "push back".  "Why is this necessary?  We aren't we seeing issues with other software?"It's a fair question that I have often struggled to answer; here are the talking points: OBIEE is memory intensive.  It is the entire purpose of the software to trade memory for repetitive, more expensive database requests across a network. OBIEE is implemented in C++ and is very dependent on the C++ runtime to behave correctly. OBIEE is aggressively thread efficient;  if atomic operations on a particular architecture do not work correctly, the software crashes. OBIEE dynamically loads third-party database client libraries directly into the nqsserver process.  If the library is not thread-safe, or corrupts process memory the OBIEE crash happens in an unrelated part of the code.  These are extremely difficult bugs to find. OBIEE software uses 99% common source across multiple platforms:  Windows, Linux, AIX, Solaris and HPUX.  If a crash happens on only one platform, we begin to suspect other factors.  load intensity, system differences, configuration choices, hardware failures.  It is rare to have a single product require so many diverse technical skills.   My role in support is to understand system configurations, performance issues, and crashes.   An analyst trained in Business Analytics can't be expected to know AIX internals in the depth required to make configuration choices.  Here are some guidelines. AIX C++ Runtime must be at  version 11.1.0.4$ lslpp -L | grep xlC.aixobiee software will crash if xlC.aix.rte is downlevel;  this is not a "try it" suggestion.Nov 2011 11.1.0.4 version  is appropriate for all AIX versions ( 5, 6, 7 )Download from here:https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg24031426 No reboot is necessary to install, it can even be installed while applications are using the current version.Restart the apps, and they will pick up the latest version. AIX 5.3 Technology Level 12 is required when running on Power5,6,7 processorsAIX 6.1 was introduced with the newer Power chips, and we have seen no issues with 6.1 or 7.1 versions.Customers with an unstable deployment, dozens of unexplained crashes, became stable after the upgrade.If your AIX system is 5.3, the minimum TL level should be at or higher than this:$ oslevel -s  5300-12-03-1107IBM typically supports only the two latest versions of AIX ( 6.1 and 7.1, for example).  AIX 5.3 is still supported and popular running in an LPAR. obiee userid limits$ ulimit -Ha  ( hard limits )$ ulimit -a   ( default limits )core file size (blocks)     unlimiteddata seg size (kbytes)      unlimitedfile size (blocks)          unlimitedmax memory size (kbytes)    unlimitedopen files                  10240 cpu time (seconds)          unlimitedvirtual memory (kbytes)     unlimitedIt is best to establish the values in /etc/security/limitsroot user is needed to observe and modify this file.If you modify a limit, you will need to relog in to change it again.  For example,$ ulimit -c 0$ ulimit -c 2097151cannot modify limit: Operation not permitted$ ulimit -c unlimited$ ulimit -c0There are only two meaningful values for ulimit -c ; zero or unlimited.Anything else is likely to produce a truncated core file that cannot be analyzed. Deploy 32-bit or 64-bit ?Early versions of OBIEE offered 32-bit or 64-bit choice to AIX customers.The 32-bit choice was needed if a database vendor did not supply a 64-bit client library.That's no longer an issue and beginning with OBIEE 11, 32-bit code is no longer shipped.A common error that leads to "out of memory" conditions to to accept the 32-bit memory configuration choices on 64-bit deployments.  The significant configuration choices are: Maximum process data (heap) size is in an AIX environment variableLDR_CNTRL=IGNOREUNLOAD@LOADPUBLIC@PREREAD_SHLIB@MAXDATA=0x... Two thread stack sizes are made in obiee NQSConfig.INI[ SERVER ]SERVER_THREAD_STACK_SIZE = 0;DB_GATEWAY_THREAD_STACK_SIZE = 0; Sort memory in NQSConfig.INI[ GENERAL ]SORT_MEMORY_SIZE = 4 MB ;SORT_BUFFER_INCREMENT_SIZE = 256 KB ; Choosing a value for MAXDATA:0x080000000  2GB Default maximum 32-bit heap size ( 8 with 7 zeros )0x100000000  4GB 64-bit breaking even with 32-bit ( 1 with 8 zeros )0x200000000  8GB 64-bit double 32-bit max0x400000000 16GB 64-bit safetyUsing 2GB heap size for a 64-bit process will almost certainly lead to an out-of-memory situation.Registers are twice as big ... consume twice as much memory in the heap.Upgrading to a 4GB heap for a 64-bit process is just "breaking even" with 32-bit.A 32-bit process is constrained by the 32-bit virtual addressing limits.  Heap memory is used for dynamic requirements of obiee software, thread stacks for each of the configured threads, and sometimes for shared libraries. 64-bit processes are not constrained in this way;  extra heap space can be configured for safety against a query that might create a sudden requirement for excessive storage.  If the storage is not available, this query might crash the whole server and disrupt existing users.There is no performance penalty on AIX for configuring more memory than required;  extra memory can be configured for safety.  If there are no other considerations, start with 8GB.Choosing a value for Thread Stack size:zero is the value documented to select an appropriate default for thread stack size.  My preference is to change this to an absolute value, even if you intend to use the documented default;  it provides better documentation and removes the "surprise" factor.There are two thread types that can be configured. GATEWAY is used by a thread pool to call a database client library to establish a DB connection.The default size is 256KB;  many customers raise this to 512KB ( no performance penalty for over-configuring ). This value must be set to 1 MB if Teradata connections are used. SERVER threads are used to run queries.  OBIEE uses recursive algorithms during the analysis of query structures which can consume significant thread stack storage.  It's difficult to provide guidance on a value that depends on data and complexity.  The general notion is to provide more space than you think you need,  "double down" and increase the value if you run out, otherwise inspect the query to understand why it is too complex for the thread stack.  There are protections built into the software to abort a single user query that is too complex, but the algorithms don't cover all situations.256 KB  The default 32-bit stack size.  Many customers increased this to 512KB on 32-bit.  A 64-bit server is very likely to crash with this value;  the stack contains mostly register values, which are twice as big.512 KB  The documented 64-bit default.  Some early releases of obiee didn't set this correctly, resulting in 256KB stacks.1 MB  The recommended 64-bit setting.  If your system only ever uses 512KB of stack space, there is no performance penalty for using 1MB stack size.2 MB  Many large customers use this value for safety.  No performance penalty.nqscheduler does not use the NQSConfig.INI file to set thread stack size.If this process crashes because the thread stack is too small, use this to set 2MB:export OBI_BACKGROUND_STACK_SIZE=2048 Shared libraries are not (shared) When application libraries are loaded at run-time, AIX makes a decision on whether to load the libraries in a "public" memory segment.  If the filesystem library permissions do not have the "Read-Other" permission bit, AIX loads the library into private process memory with two significant side-effects:* The libraries reduce the heap storage available.      Might be significant in 32-bit processes;  irrelevant in 64-bit processes.* Library code is loaded into multiple real pages for execution;  one copy for each process.Multiple execution images is a significant issue for both 32- and 64-bit processes.The "real memory pages" saved by using public memory segments is a minor concern.  Today's machines typically have plenty of real memory.The real problem with private copies of libraries is that they consume processor cache blocks, which are limited.   The same library instructions executing in different real pages will cause memory delays as the i-cache ( instruction cache 128KB blocks) are refreshed from real memory.   Performance loss because instructions are delayed is something that is difficult to measure without access to low-level cache fault data.   The machine just appears to be running slowly for no observable reason.This is an easy problem to detect, and an easy problem to correct.Detection:  "genld -l" AIX command produces a list of the libraries used by each process and the AIX memory address where they are loaded.32-bit public segment is 13 ( "dxxxxxxx" ).   private segments are 2-a.64-bit public segment is 9 ( "9xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx") ; private segment is 8.genld -l | grep -v ' d| 9' | sort +2provides a list of privately loaded libraries. Repair: chmod o+r <libname>AIX shared libraries will have a suffix of ".so" or ".a".Another technique is to change all libraries in a selected directory to repair those that might not be currently loaded.   The usual directories that need repair are obiee code, httpd code and plugins, database client libraries and java.chmod o+r /shr/dir/*.a /shr/dir/*.so Configure your system for diagnosticsProduction systems shouldn't crash, and yet bad things happen to good software.If obiee software crashes and produces a core, you should configure your system for reliable transfer of the failing conditions to Oracle Tech Support.  Here's what we need to be able to diagnose a core file from your system.* fullcore enabled. chdev -lsys0 -a fullcore=true* core naming enabled. chcore -n on -d* ulimit must not truncate core. see item 3.* pstack.sh is used to capture core documentation.* obidoc is used to capture current AIX configuration.* snapcore  AIX utility captures core and libraries. Use the proper syntax. $ snapcore -r corename executable-fullpath   /tmp/snapcore will contain the .pax.Z output file.  It is compressed.* If cores are directed to a common directory, ensure obiee userid can write to the directory.  ( chcore -p /cores -d ; chmod 777 /cores )The filesystem must have sufficient space to hold a crashing obiee application.Use:  df -k  Check the "Free" column ( not "% Used" )  8388608 is 8GB. Disable Oracle Client Library signal handlingThe Oracle DB Client Library is frequently distributed with the sqlplus development kit.By default, the library enables a signal handler, which will document a call stack if the application crashes.   The signal handler is not needed, and definitely disruptive to obiee diagnostics.   It needs to be disabled.   sqlnet.ora is typically located at:   $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin/sqlnet.oraAdd this line at the top of the file:   DIAG_SIGHANDLER_ENABLED=FALSE Disable async query in the RPD connection pool.This might be an obiee 10.1.3.4 issue only ( still checking  )."async query" must be disabled in the connection pools.It was designed to enable query cancellation to a database, and turned out to have too many edge conditions in normal communication that produced random corruption of data and crashes.  Please ensure it is turned off in the RPD. Check AIX error report (errpt).Errors external to obiee applications can trigger crashes.  $ /bin/errpt -aHardware errors ( firmware, adapters, disks ) should be reported to IBM support.All application core files are recorded by AIX;  the most recent ones are listed first. Reserved for something important to say.

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• PASS: Bylaw Change 2013

  - by Bill Graziano

  PASS launched a Global Growth Initiative in the Summer of 2011 with the appointment of three international Board advisors.  Since then we’ve thought and talked extensively about how we make PASS more relevant to our members outside the US and Canada.  We’ve collected much of that discussion in our Global Growth site.  You can find vision documents, plans, governance proposals, feedback sites, and transcripts of Twitter chats and town hall meetings.  We also address these plans at the Board Q&A during the 2012 Summit. One of the biggest changes coming out of this process is around how we elect Board members.  And that requires a change to the bylaws.  We published the proposed bylaw changes as a red-lined document so you can clearly see the changes.  Our goal in these bylaw changes was to address the changes required by the global growth initiatives, conduct a legal review of the document and address other minor issues in the document.  There are numerous small wording changes throughout the document.  For example, we replaced every reference of “The Corporation” with the word “PASS” so it now reads “PASS is organized…”. Board Composition The biggest change in these bylaw changes is how the Board is composed and elected.  This discussion starts in section VI.2.  This section now says that some elected directors will come from geographic regions.  I think this is the best way to make sure we give all of our members a voice in the leadership of the organization.  The key parts of this section are: The remaining Directors (i.e. the non-Officer Directors and non-Vendor Appointed Directors) shall be elected by the voting membership (“Elected Directors”). Elected Directors shall include representatives of defined PASS regions (“Regions”) as set forth below (“Regional Directors”) and at minimum one (1) additional Director-at-Large whose selection is not limited by region. Regional Directors shall include, but are not limited to, two (2) seats for the Region covering Canada and the United States of America. Additional Regions for the purpose of electing additional Regional Directors and additional Director-at-Large seats for the purpose of expanding the Board shall be defined by a majority vote of the current Board of Directors and must be established prior to the public call for nominations in the general election. Previously defined Regions and seats approved by the Board of Directors shall remain in effect and can only be modified by a 2/3 majority vote by the then current Board of Directors. Currently PASS has six At-Large Directors elected by the members.  These changes allow for a Regional Director position that is elected by the members but must come from a particular region.  It also stipulates that there must always be at least one Director-at-Large who can come from any region. We also understand that PASS is currently a very US-centric organization.  Our Summit is held in America, roughly half our chapters are in the US and Canada and most of the Board members over the last ten years have come from America.  We wanted to reflect that by making sure that our US and Canadian volunteers would continue to play a significant role by ensuring that two Regional seats are reserved specifically for Canada and the US. Other than that, the bylaws don’t create any specific regional seats.  These rules allow us to create Regional Director seats but don’t require it.  We haven’t fully discussed what the criteria will be in order for a region to have a seat designated for it or how many regions there will be.  In our discussions we’ve broadly discussed regions for United States and Canada Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) Australia, New Zealand and Asia (also known as Asia Pacific or APAC) Mexico, South America, and Central America (LATAM) As you can see, our thinking is that there will be a few large regions.  I’ve also considered a non-North America region that we can gradually split into the regions above as our membership grows in those areas.  The regions will be defined by a policy document that will be published prior to the elections. I’m hoping that over the next year we can begin to publish more of what we do as Board-approved policy documents. While the bylaws only require a single non-region specific At-large Director, I would expect we would always have two.  That way we can have one in each election.  I think it’s important that we always have one seat open that anyone who is eligible to run for the Board can contest.  The Board is required to have any regions defined prior to the start of the election process. Board Elections – Regional Seats We spent a lot of time discussing how the elections would work for these Regional Director seats.  Ultimately we decided that the simplest solution is that every PASS member should vote for every open seat.  Section VIII.3 reads: Candidates who are eligible (i.e. eligible to serve in such capacity subject to the criteria set forth herein or adopted by the Board of Directors) shall be designated to fill open Board seats in the following order of priority on the basis of total votes received: (i) full term Regional Director seats, (ii) full term Director-at-Large seats, (iii) not full term (vacated) Regional Director seats, (iv) not full term (vacated) Director-at-Large seats. For the purposes of clarity, because of eligibility requirements, it is contemplated that the candidates designated to the open Board seats may not receive more votes than certain other candidates who are not selected to the Board. We debated whether to have multiple ballots or one single ballot.  Multiple ballot elections get complicated quickly.  Let’s say we have a ballot for US/Canada and one for Region 2.  After that we’d need a mechanism to merge those two together and come up with the winner of the at-large seat or have another election for the at-large position.  We think the best way to do this is a single ballot and putting the highest vote getters into the most restrictive seats.  Let’s look at an example: There are seats open for Region 1, Region 2 and at-large.  The election results are as follows: Candidate A (eligible for Region 1) – 550 votes Candidate B (eligible for Region 1) – 525 votes Candidate C (eligible for Region 1) – 475 votes Candidate D (eligible for Region 2) – 125 votes Candidate E (eligible for Region 2) – 75 votes In this case, Candidate A is the winner for Region 1 and is assigned that seat.  Candidate D is the winner for Region 2 and is assigned that seat.  The at-large seat is filled by the high remaining vote getter which is Candidate B. The key point to understand is that we may have a situation where a person with a lower vote total is elected to a regional seat and a person with a higher vote total is excluded.  This will be true whether we had multiple ballots or a single ballot.  Board Elections – Vacant Seats The other change to the election process is for vacant Board seats.  The actual changes are sprinkled throughout the document. Previously we didn’t have a mechanism that allowed for an election of a Board seat that we knew would be vacant in the future.  The most common case is when a Board members moves to an Officer role in the middle of their term.  One of the key changes is to allow the number of votes members have to match the number of open seats.  This allows each voter to express their preference on all open seats.  This only applies when we know about the opening prior to the call for nominations.  This all means that if there’s a seat will be open at the start of the next Board term, and we know about it prior to the call for nominations, we can include that seat in the elections.  Ultimately, the aim is to have PASS members decide who sits on the Board in as many situations as possible. We discussed the option of changing the bylaws to just take next highest vote-getter in all other cases.  I think that’s wrong for the following reasons: All voters aren’t able to express an opinion on all candidates.  If there are five people running for three seats, you can only vote for three.  You have no way to express your preference between #4 and #5. Different candidates may have different information about the number of seats available.  A person may learn that a Board member plans to resign at the end of the year prior to that information being made public. They may understand that the top four vote getters will end up on the Board while the rest of the members believe there are only three openings.  This may affect someone’s decision to run.  I don’t think this creates a transparent, fair election. Board members may use their knowledge of the election results to decide whether to remain on the Board or not.  Admittedly this one is unlikely but I don’t want to create a situation where this accusation can be leveled. I think the majority of vacancies in the future will be handled through elections.  The bylaw section quoted above also indicates that partial term vacancies will be filled after the full term seats are filled. Removing Directors Section VI.7 on removing directors has always had a clause that allowed members to remove an elected director.  We also had a clause that allowed appointed directors to be removed.  We added a clause that allows the Board to remove for cause any director with a 2/3 majority vote.  The updated text reads: Any Director may be removed for cause by a 2/3 majority vote of the Board of Directors whenever in its judgment the best interests of PASS would be served thereby. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the authority of any Director to act as in an official capacity as a Director or Officer of PASS may be suspended by the Board of Directors for cause. Cause for suspension or removal of a Director shall include but not be limited to failure to meet any Board-approved performance expectations or the presence of a reason for suspension or dismissal as listed in Addendum B of these Bylaws. The first paragraph is updated and the second and third are unchanged (except cleaning up language).  If you scroll down and look at Addendum B of these bylaws you find the following: Cause for suspension or dismissal of a member of the Board of Directors may include: Inability to attend Board meetings on a regular basis. Inability or unwillingness to act in a capacity designated by the Board of Directors. Failure to fulfill the responsibilities of the office. Inability to represent the Region elected to represent Failure to act in a manner consistent with PASS's Bylaws and/or policies. Misrepresentation of responsibility and/or authority. Misrepresentation of PASS. Unresolved conflict of interests with Board responsibilities. Breach of confidentiality. The bold line about your inability to represent your region is what we added to the bylaws in this revision.  We also added a clause to section VII.3 allowing the Board to remove an officer.  That clause is much less restrictive.  It doesn’t require cause and only requires a simple majority. The Board of Directors may remove any Officer whenever in their judgment the best interests of PASS shall be served by such removal. Other There are numerous other small changes throughout the document. Proxy voting.  The laws around how members and Board members proxy votes are specific in Illinois law.  PASS is an Illinois corporation and is subject to Illinois laws.  We changed section IV.5 to come into compliance with those laws.  Specifically this says you can only vote through a proxy if you have a written proxy through your authorized attorney.  English language proficiency.  As we increase our global footprint we come across more members that aren’t native English speakers.  The business of PASS is conducted in English and it’s important that our Board members speak English.  If we get big enough to afford translators, we may be able to relax this but right now we need English language skills for effective Board members. Committees.  The language around committees in section IX is old and dated.  Our lawyers advised us to clean it up.  This section specifically applies to any committees that the Board may form outside of portfolios.  We removed the term limits, quorum and vacancies clause.  We don’t currently have any committees that this would apply to.  The Nominating Committee is covered elsewhere in the bylaws. Electronic Votes.  The change allows the Board to vote via email but the results must be unanimous.  This is to conform with Illinois state law. Immediate Past President.  There was no mechanism to fill the IPP role if an outgoing President chose not to participate.  We changed section VII.8 to allow the Board to invite any previous President to fill the role by majority vote. Nominations Committee.  We’ve opened the language to allow for the transparent election of the Nominations Committee as outlined by the 2011 Election Review Committee. Revocation of Charters. The language surrounding the revocation of charters for local groups was flagged by the lawyers. We have allowed for the local user group to make all necessary payment before considering returning of items to PASS if required. Bylaw notification. We’ve spent countless meetings working on these bylaws with the intent to not open them again any time in the near future. Should the bylaws be opened again, we have included a clause ensuring that the PASS membership is involved. I’m proud that the Board has remained committed to transparency and accountability to members. This clause will require that same level of commitment in the future even when all the current Board members have rolled off. I think that covers everything.  I’d encourage you to look through the red-line document and see the changes.  It’s helpful to look at the language that’s being removed and the language that’s being added.  I’m happy to answer any questions here or you can email them to [email protected].

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• Building Awesome WM

  - by Dragan Chupacabrovic

  Hello, I am following these steps in order to build Awesome window manager on 10.04 I am building 3.4 while the tutorial is for 3.1 I installed all of the specified dependencies including cairo. EDIT I ran: sudo apt-get install libxcb-xtest0-dev libxcb-property1-dev libxdg-basedir-dev libstartup-notification0-dev and now it looks like I'm missing a library Please advise: awesome-3.4$ make Running cmake… -- cat - /bin/cat -- ln - /bin/ln -- grep - /bin/grep -- git - /usr/bin/git -- hostname - /bin/hostname -- gperf - /usr/bin/gperf -- asciidoc - /usr/bin/asciidoc -- xmlto - /usr/bin/xmlto -- gzip - /bin/gzip -- lua - /usr/bin/lua -- luadoc - /usr/bin/luadoc -- convert - /usr/bin/convert -- Configuring lib/naughty.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/tooltip.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/init.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/titlebar.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/key.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/mouse/init.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/mouse/finder.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/autofocus.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/screen.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/rules.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/widget/init.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/widget/taglist.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/widget/graph.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/widget/tasklist.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/widget/common.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/widget/prompt.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/widget/launcher.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/widget/button.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/widget/layoutbox.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/widget/layout/init.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/widget/layout/vertical.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/widget/layout/horizontal.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/widget/layout/default.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/widget/progressbar.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/widget/textclock.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/dbus.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/remote.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/client.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/prompt.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/completion.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/tag.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/util.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/button.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/menu.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/hooks.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/wibox.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/layout/init.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/layout/suit/init.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/layout/suit/floating.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/layout/suit/fair.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/layout/suit/spiral.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/layout/suit/magnifier.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/layout/suit/tile.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/layout/suit/max.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/placement.lua -- Configuring lib/awful/startup_notification.lua -- Configuring lib/beautiful.lua -- Configuring themes/zenburn//theme.lua -- Configuring themes/default//theme.lua -- Configuring themes/sky//theme.lua -- Configuring config.h -- Configuring awesomerc.lua -- Configuring awesome-version-internal.h -- Configuring awesome.doxygen -- Configuring done -- Generating done -- Build files have been written to: /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/.build-vedroid-i486-linux-gnu-4.4.3 Running make Makefile… Building… [ 4%] Built target generated_sources [ 5%] Building C object CMakeFiles/awesome.dir/awesome.c.o In file included from /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/spawn.h:25, from /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:33: /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/globalconf.h:57: error: expected specifier-qualifier-list before ‘xcb_event_handlers_t’ In file included from /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:34: /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/client.h: In function ‘client_stack’: /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/client.h:212: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘client_need_stack_refresh’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/client.h: In function ‘client_raise’: /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/client.h:227: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘stack’ In file included from /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:42: /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/titlebar.h: In function ‘titlebar_update_geometry’: /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/titlebar.h:150: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘L’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/titlebar.h:151: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘L’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/titlebar.h:152: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘L’ In file included from /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:47: /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/common/xutil.h: In function ‘xutil_get_text_property_from_reply’: /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/common/xutil.h:39: warning: ‘STRING’ is deprecated (declared at /usr/local/include/xcb/xcb_atom.h:83) /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/common/xutil.h: At top level: /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/common/xutil.h:60: error: expected ‘)’ before ‘*’ token /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c: In function ‘awesome_atexit’: /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:65: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘hooks’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:66: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘L’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:66: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘hooks’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:68: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘L’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:73: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘embedded’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:76: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘embedded’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:77: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘embedded’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:89: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘clients’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:89: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘clients’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:89: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘clients’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:89: warning: type defaults to ‘int’ in declaration of ‘c’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:89: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘clients’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:89: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘clients’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:89: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘clients’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:91: error: invalid type argument of ‘unary *’ (have ‘int’) /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:92: error: invalid type argument of ‘unary *’ (have ‘int’) /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:96: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘L’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c: In function ‘a_xcb_check_cb’: /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:223: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘xcb_event_handle’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:223: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘evenths’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:230: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘evenths’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c: In function ‘awesome_restart’: /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:277: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘argv’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c: In function ‘xerror’: /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:305: error: ‘XCB_EVENT_ERROR_BAD_WINDOW’ undeclared (first use in this function) /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:305: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:305: error: for each function it appears in.) /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:306: error: ‘XCB_EVENT_ERROR_BAD_MATCH’ undeclared (first use in this function) /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:308: error: ‘XCB_EVENT_ERROR_BAD_VALUE’ undeclared (first use in this function) /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c: In function ‘main’: /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:369: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘keygrabber’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:370: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘mousegrabber’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:376: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘argv’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:377: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘argv’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:381: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘argv’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:382: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘argv’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:424: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:425: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘timer’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:425: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘timer’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:425: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘timer’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:425: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘timer’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:425: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘timer’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:425: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘timer’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:431: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:432: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:433: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:434: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:435: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:436: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:443: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘default_screen’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:450: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘have_xtest’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:462: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:464: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:465: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:467: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:468: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:471: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘xcb_event_handlers_init’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:471: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘evenths’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:472: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘xutil_error_handler_catch_all_set’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:472: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘evenths’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:490: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘xcb_event_poll_for_event_loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:490: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘evenths’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:493: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘evenths’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:496: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘keysyms’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:507: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘colors’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:510: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘colors’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:513: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘font’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:519: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘keysyms’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:519: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘numlockmask’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:520: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘shiftlockmask’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:520: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘capslockmask’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:521: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘modeswitchmask’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:563: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘evenths’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:572: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:575: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:576: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:577: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:578: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:579: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ /home/druden/util/awesome-3.4/awesome.c:580: error: ‘awesome_t’ has no member named ‘loop’ make[3]: * [CMakeFiles/awesome.dir/awesome.c.o] Error 1 make[2]: [CMakeFiles/awesome.dir/all] Error 2 make[1]: [all] Error 2 make: * [cmake-build] Error 2

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• Converting Lighttpd config to NginX with php-fpm

  - by Le Dude

  Having so much issue with NginX configuration since I'm new with NginX. Been using Lighttpd for quite sometime. Here are the base info. New Machine - CentOS 6.3 64 Bit - NginX 1.2.4-1.e16.ngx - Php-FPM 5.3.18-1.e16.remi Old Machine - CentOS 6.2 64Bit - Lighttpd 1.4.25-3.e16 Original Lighttpd config file: ####################################################################### ## ## /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf ## ## check /etc/lighttpd/conf.d/*.conf for the configuration of modules. ## ####################################################################### ####################################################################### ## ## Some Variable definition which will make chrooting easier. ## ## if you add a variable here. Add the corresponding variable in the ## chroot example aswell. ## var.log_root = "/var/log/lighttpd" var.server_root = "/var/www" var.state_dir = "/var/run" var.home_dir = "/var/lib/lighttpd" var.conf_dir = "/etc/lighttpd" ## ## run the server chrooted. ## ## This requires root permissions during startup. ## ## If you run Chrooted set the the variables to directories relative to ## the chroot dir. ## ## example chroot configuration: ## #var.log_root = "/logs" #var.server_root = "/" #var.state_dir = "/run" #var.home_dir = "/lib/lighttpd" #var.vhosts_dir = "/vhosts" #var.conf_dir = "/etc" # #server.chroot = "/srv/www" ## ## Some additional variables to make the configuration easier ## ## ## Base directory for all virtual hosts ## ## used in: ## conf.d/evhost.conf ## conf.d/simple_vhost.conf ## vhosts.d/vhosts.template ## var.vhosts_dir = server_root + "/vhosts" ## ## Cache for mod_compress ## ## used in: ## conf.d/compress.conf ## var.cache_dir = "/var/cache/lighttpd" ## ## Base directory for sockets. ## ## used in: ## conf.d/fastcgi.conf ## conf.d/scgi.conf ## var.socket_dir = home_dir + "/sockets" ## ####################################################################### ####################################################################### ## ## Load the modules. include "modules.conf" ## ####################################################################### ####################################################################### ## ## Basic Configuration ## --------------------- ## server.port = 80 ## ## Use IPv6? ## #server.use-ipv6 = "enable" ## ## bind to a specific IP ## #server.bind = "localhost" ## ## Run as a different username/groupname. ## This requires root permissions during startup. ## server.username = "lighttpd" server.groupname = "lighttpd" ## ## enable core files. ## #server.core-files = "disable" ## ## Document root ## server.document-root = server_root + "/lighttpd" ## ## The value for the "Server:" response field. ## ## It would be nice to keep it at "lighttpd". ## #server.tag = "lighttpd" ## ## store a pid file ## server.pid-file = state_dir + "/lighttpd.pid" ## ####################################################################### ####################################################################### ## ## Logging Options ## ------------------ ## ## all logging options can be overwritten per vhost. ## ## Path to the error log file ## server.errorlog = log_root + "/error.log" ## ## If you want to log to syslog you have to unset the ## server.errorlog setting and uncomment the next line. ## #server.errorlog-use-syslog = "enable" ## ## Access log config ## include "conf.d/access_log.conf" ## ## The debug options are moved into their own file. ## see conf.d/debug.conf for various options for request debugging. ## include "conf.d/debug.conf" ## ####################################################################### ####################################################################### ## ## Tuning/Performance ## -------------------- ## ## corresponding documentation: ## http://www.lighttpd.net/documentation/performance.html ## ## set the event-handler (read the performance section in the manual) ## ## possible options on linux are: ## ## select ## poll ## linux-sysepoll ## ## linux-sysepoll is recommended on kernel 2.6. ## server.event-handler = "linux-sysepoll" ## ## The basic network interface for all platforms at the syscalls read() ## and write(). Every modern OS provides its own syscall to help network ## servers transfer files as fast as possible ## ## linux-sendfile - is recommended for small files. ## writev - is recommended for sending many large files ## server.network-backend = "linux-sendfile" ## ## As lighttpd is a single-threaded server, its main resource limit is ## the number of file descriptors, which is set to 1024 by default (on ## most systems). ## ## If you are running a high-traffic site you might want to increase this ## limit by setting server.max-fds. ## ## Changing this setting requires root permissions on startup. see ## server.username/server.groupname. ## ## By default lighttpd would not change the operation system default. ## But setting it to 2048 is a better default for busy servers. ## ## With SELinux enabled, this is denied by default and needs to be allowed ## by running the following once : setsebool -P httpd_setrlimit on server.max-fds = 2048 ## ## Stat() call caching. ## ## lighttpd can utilize FAM/Gamin to cache stat call. ## ## possible values are: ## disable, simple or fam. ## server.stat-cache-engine = "simple" ## ## Fine tuning for the request handling ## ## max-connections == max-fds/2 (maybe /3) ## means the other file handles are used for fastcgi/files ## server.max-connections = 1024 ## ## How many seconds to keep a keep-alive connection open, ## until we consider it idle. ## ## Default: 5 ## #server.max-keep-alive-idle = 5 ## ## How many keep-alive requests until closing the connection. ## ## Default: 16 ## #server.max-keep-alive-requests = 18 ## ## Maximum size of a request in kilobytes. ## By default it is unlimited (0). ## ## Uploads to your server cant be larger than this value. ## #server.max-request-size = 0 ## ## Time to read from a socket before we consider it idle. ## ## Default: 60 ## #server.max-read-idle = 60 ## ## Time to write to a socket before we consider it idle. ## ## Default: 360 ## #server.max-write-idle = 360 ## ## Traffic Shaping ## ----------------- ## ## see /usr/share/doc/lighttpd/traffic-shaping.txt ## ## Values are in kilobyte per second. ## ## Keep in mind that a limit below 32kB/s might actually limit the ## traffic to 32kB/s. This is caused by the size of the TCP send ## buffer. ## ## per server: ## #server.kbytes-per-second = 128 ## ## per connection: ## #connection.kbytes-per-second = 32 ## ####################################################################### ####################################################################### ## ## Filename/File handling ## ------------------------ ## ## files to check for if .../ is requested ## index-file.names = ( "index.php", "index.rb", "index.html", ## "index.htm", "default.htm" ) ## index-file.names += ( "index.xhtml", "index.html", "index.htm", "default.htm", "index.php" ) ## ## deny access the file-extensions ## ## ~ is for backupfiles from vi, emacs, joe, ... ## .inc is often used for code includes which should in general not be part ## of the document-root url.access-deny = ( "~", ".inc" ) ## ## disable range requests for pdf files ## workaround for a bug in the Acrobat Reader plugin. ## $HTTP["url"] =~ "\.pdf$" { server.range-requests = "disable" } ## ## url handling modules (rewrite, redirect) ## #url.rewrite = ( "^/$" => "/server-status" ) #url.redirect = ( "^/wishlist/(.+)" => "http://www.example.com/$1" ) ## ## both rewrite/redirect support back reference to regex conditional using %n ## #$HTTP["host"] =~ "^www\.(.*)" { # url.redirect = ( "^/(.*)" => "http://%1/$1" ) #} ## ## which extensions should not be handle via static-file transfer ## ## .php, .pl, .fcgi are most often handled by mod_fastcgi or mod_cgi ## static-file.exclude-extensions = ( ".php", ".pl", ".fcgi", ".scgi" ) ## ## error-handler for status 404 ## #server.error-handler-404 = "/error-handler.html" #server.error-handler-404 = "/error-handler.php" ## ## Format: <errorfile-prefix><status-code>.html ## -> ..../status-404.html for 'File not found' ## #server.errorfile-prefix = "/srv/www/htdocs/errors/status-" ## ## mimetype mapping ## include "conf.d/mime.conf" ## ## directory listing configuration ## include "conf.d/dirlisting.conf" ## ## Should lighttpd follow symlinks? ## server.follow-symlink = "enable" ## ## force all filenames to be lowercase? ## #server.force-lowercase-filenames = "disable" ## ## defaults to /var/tmp as we assume it is a local harddisk ## server.upload-dirs = ( "/var/tmp" ) ## ####################################################################### ####################################################################### ## ## SSL Support ## ------------- ## ## To enable SSL for the whole server you have to provide a valid ## certificate and have to enable the SSL engine.:: ## ## ssl.engine = "enable" ## ssl.pemfile = "/path/to/server.pem" ## ## The HTTPS protocol does not allow you to use name-based virtual ## hosting with SSL. If you want to run multiple SSL servers with ## one lighttpd instance you must use IP-based virtual hosting: :: ## ## $SERVER["socket"] == "10.0.0.1:443" { ## ssl.engine = "enable" ## ssl.pemfile = "/etc/ssl/private/www.example.com.pem" ## server.name = "www.example.com" ## ## server.document-root = "/srv/www/vhosts/example.com/www/" ## } ## ## If you have a .crt and a .key file, cat them together into a ## single PEM file: ## $ cat /etc/ssl/private/lighttpd.key /etc/ssl/certs/lighttpd.crt \ ## > /etc/ssl/private/lighttpd.pem ## #ssl.pemfile = "/etc/ssl/private/lighttpd.pem" ## ## optionally pass the CA certificate here. ## ## #ssl.ca-file = "" ## ####################################################################### ####################################################################### ## ## custom includes like vhosts. ## #include "conf.d/config.conf" #include_shell "cat /etc/lighttpd/vhosts.d/*.conf" ## ####################################################################### ####################################################################### ### Custom Added by me #url.rewrite-once = (".*\.(js|ico|gif|jpg|png|css|jar|class)$" => "$0", "" => "/index.php") url.rewrite-once = ( ".*\?(.*)$" => "/index.php?$1", "^/js/.*$" => "$0", "^.*\.(js|ico|gif|jpg|png|css|swf |jar|class)$" => "$0", "" => "/index.php" ) # expire.url = ( "" => "access 1 days" ) include "myvhost-vhosts.conf" ####################################################################### Here is my Vhost file for lighttpd $HTTP["host"] =~ "192.168.8.35$" { server.document-root = "/var/www/lighttpd/qc41022012/public" server.errorlog = "/var/log/lighttpd/error.log" accesslog.filename = "/var/log/lighttpd/access.log" server.error-handler-404 = "/e404.php" } and here is my nginx.conf file user nginx; worker_processes 5; error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log warn; pid /var/run/nginx.pid; events { worker_connections 1024; } http { include /etc/nginx/mime.types; default_type application/octet-stream; log_format main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" ' '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" ' '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"'; access_log /var/log/nginx/testsite/logs/access.log main; sendfile on; #tcp_nopush on; keepalive_timeout 65; #gzip on; # include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf; ## I added this ## include /etc/nginx/sites-available/*; } Here is my NginX Vhost file server { server_name 192.168.8.91; access_log /var/log/nginx/myapps/logs/access.log; error_log /var/log/nginx/myapps/logs/error.log; root /var/www/html/myapps/public; location / { index index.html index.htm index.php; } location = /favicon.ico { return 204; access_log off; log_not_found off; } # location ~ \.php$ { # try_files $uri /index.php; # include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params; # fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; # fastcgi_index index.php; # fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; # fastcgi_param SCRIPT_NAME $fastcgi_script_name; location ~ \.php.*$ { rewrite ^(.*.php)/ $1 last; fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; fastcgi_index index.php; include fastcgi_params; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; # fastcgi_intercept_errors on; # fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root/index.php; # fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $uri; # fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; # include fastcgi_params; } } We have a custom apps that we created that works great with lighttpd. I went through some headache also when we were trying to figure out how to make it work with lighttpd. this is the line that helps make it work in lighttpd. url.rewrite-once = ( ".*\?(.*)$" => "/index.php?$1", "^/js/.*$" => "$0", "^.*\.(js|ico|gif|jpg|png|css|swf |jar|class)$" => "$0", "" => "/index.php" ) but I couldn't figure out how to make it works in NginX. The webserver run just fine when we use the phpinfo.php test file. However as soon as I point it to my apps, nothing comes up. Check the error.log file and there's no error. Very mind boggling. I spent over 1 week trying to figure it out with no luck.. Please help?

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• Need help in setting lighttpd on Ubuntu 9.10

  - by hap497

  Hi, I am trying to run lighttpd on Ubuntu 9.10. I get the conf file from the doc directory of lighttpd source. $ sudo ./lighttpd -f lighttpd.conf $ ps -ef | grep lighttpd root 2094 1 0 19:40 ? 00:00:00 ./lighttpd -f lighttpd.conf This is my lighttpd.conf: $ more lighttpd.conf # lighttpd configuration file # # use it as a base for lighttpd 1.0.0 and above # # $Id: lighttpd.conf,v 1.7 2004/11/03 22:26:05 weigon Exp $ ############ Options you really have to take care of #################### ## modules to load # at least mod_access and mod_accesslog should be loaded # all other module should only be loaded if really neccesary # - saves some time # - saves memory server.modules = ( # "mod_rewrite", # "mod_redirect", # "mod_alias", "mod_access", # "mod_trigger_b4_dl", # "mod_auth", # "mod_status", # "mod_setenv", # "mod_fastcgi", # "mod_proxy", # "mod_simple_vhost", # "mod_evhost", # "mod_userdir", # "mod_cgi", # "mod_compress", # "mod_ssi", # "mod_usertrack", # "mod_expire", # "mod_secdownload", # "mod_rrdtool", "mod_accesslog" ) ## A static document-root. For virtual hosting take a look at the ## mod_simple_vhost module. server.document-root = "/srv/www/htdocs/" ## where to send error-messages to server.errorlog = "/var/log/lighttpd/error.log" # files to check for if .../ is requested index-file.names = ( "index.php", "index.html", "index.htm", "default.htm" ) ## set the event-handler (read the performance section in the manual) # server.event-handler = "freebsd-kqueue" # needed on OS X # mimetype mapping mimetype.assign = ( ".pdf" => "application/pdf", ".sig" => "application/pgp-signature", ".spl" => "application/futuresplash", ".class" => "application/octet-stream", ".ps" => "application/postscript", ".torrent" => "application/x-bittorrent", ".dvi" => "application/x-dvi", ".gz" => "application/x-gzip", ".pac" => "application/x-ns-proxy-autoconfig", ".swf" => "application/x-shockwave-flash", ".tar.gz" => "application/x-tgz", ".tgz" => "application/x-tgz", ".tar" => "application/x-tar", ".zip" => "application/zip", ".mp3" => "audio/mpeg", ".m3u" => "audio/x-mpegurl", ".wma" => "audio/x-ms-wma", ".wax" => "audio/x-ms-wax", ".ogg" => "application/ogg", ".wav" => "audio/x-wav", ".gif" => "image/gif", ".jar" => "application/x-java-archive", ".jpg" => "image/jpeg", ".jpeg" => "image/jpeg", ".png" => "image/png", ".xbm" => "image/x-xbitmap", ".xpm" => "image/x-xpixmap", ".xwd" => "image/x-xwindowdump", ".css" => "text/css", ".html" => "text/html", ".htm" => "text/html", ".js" => "text/javascript", ".asc" => "text/plain", ".c" => "text/plain", ".cpp" => "text/plain", ".log" => "text/plain", ".conf" => "text/plain", ".text" => "text/plain", ".txt" => "text/plain", ".dtd" => "text/xml", ".xml" => "text/xml", ".mpeg" => "video/mpeg", ".mpg" => "video/mpeg", ".mov" => "video/quicktime", ".qt" => "video/quicktime", ".avi" => "video/x-msvideo", ".asf" => "video/x-ms-asf", ".asx" => "video/x-ms-asf", ".wmv" => "video/x-ms-wmv", ".bz2" => "application/x-bzip", ".tbz" => "application/x-bzip-compressed-tar", ".tar.bz2" => "application/x-bzip-compressed-tar", # default mime type "" => "application/octet-stream", ) # Use the "Content-Type" extended attribute to obtain mime type if possible #mimetype.use-xattr = "enable" ## send a different Server: header ## be nice and keep it at lighttpd # server.tag = "lighttpd" #### accesslog module accesslog.filename = "/var/log/lighttpd/access.log" ## deny access the file-extensions # # ~ is for backupfiles from vi, emacs, joe, ... # .inc is often used for code includes which should in general not be part # of the document-root url.access-deny = ( "~", ".inc" ) $HTTP["url"] =~ "\.pdf$" { server.range-requests = "disable" } ## # which extensions should not be handle via static-file transfer # # .php, .pl, .fcgi are most often handled by mod_fastcgi or mod_cgi static-file.exclude-extensions = ( ".php", ".pl", ".fcgi" ) ######### Options that are good to be but not neccesary to be changed ####### ## bind to port (default: 80) #server.port = 81 ## bind to localhost (default: all interfaces) #server.bind = "127.0.0.1" ## error-handler for status 404 #server.error-handler-404 = "/error-handler.html" #server.error-handler-404 = "/error-handler.php" ## to help the rc.scripts #server.pid-file = "/var/run/lighttpd.pid" ###### virtual hosts ## ## If you want name-based virtual hosting add the next three settings and load ## mod_simple_vhost ## ## document-root = ## virtual-server-root + virtual-server-default-host + virtual-server-docroot ## or ## virtual-server-root + http-host + virtual-server-docroot ## #simple-vhost.server-root = "/srv/www/vhosts/" #simple-vhost.default-host = "www.example.org" #simple-vhost.document-root = "/htdocs/" ## ## Format: <errorfile-prefix><status-code>.html ## -> ..../status-404.html for 'File not found' #server.errorfile-prefix = "/usr/share/lighttpd/errors/status-" #server.errorfile-prefix = "/srv/www/errors/status-" ## virtual directory listings #dir-listing.activate = "enable" ## select encoding for directory listings #dir-listing.encoding = "utf-8" ## enable debugging #debug.log-request-header = "enable" #debug.log-response-header = "enable" #debug.log-request-handling = "enable" #debug.log-file-not-found = "enable" ### only root can use these options # # chroot() to directory (default: no chroot() ) #server.chroot = "/" ## change uid to <uid> (default: don't care) #server.username = "wwwrun" ## change uid to <uid> (default: don't care) #server.groupname = "wwwrun" #### compress module #compress.cache-dir = "/var/cache/lighttpd/compress/" #compress.filetype = ("text/plain", "text/html") #### proxy module ## read proxy.txt for more info #proxy.server = ( ".php" => # ( "localhost" => # ( # "host" => "192.168.0.101", # "port" => 80 # ) # ) # ) #### fastcgi module ## read fastcgi.txt for more info ## for PHP don't forget to set cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1 in the php.ini #fastcgi.server = ( ".php" => # ( "localhost" => # ( # "socket" => "/var/run/lighttpd/php-fastcgi.s ocket", # "bin-path" => "/usr/local/bin/php-cgi" # ) # ) # ) #### CGI module #cgi.assign = ( ".pl" => "/usr/bin/perl", # ".cgi" => "/usr/bin/perl" ) # #### SSL engine #ssl.engine = "enable" #ssl.pemfile = "/etc/ssl/private/lighttpd.pem" #### status module #status.status-url = "/server-status" #status.config-url = "/server-config" #### auth module ## read authentication.txt for more info #auth.backend = "plain" #auth.backend.plain.userfile = "lighttpd.user" #auth.backend.plain.groupfile = "lighttpd.group" #auth.backend.ldap.hostname = "localhost" #auth.backend.ldap.base-dn = "dc=my-domain,dc=com" #auth.backend.ldap.filter = "(uid=$)" #auth.require = ( "/server-status" => # ( # "method" => "digest", # "realm" => "download archiv", # "require" => "user=jan" # ), # "/server-config" => # ( # "method" => "digest", # "realm" => "download archiv", # "require" => "valid-user" # ) # ) #### url handling modules (rewrite, redirect, access) #url.rewrite = ( "^/$" => "/server-status" ) #url.redirect = ( "^/wishlist/(.+)" => "http://www.123.org/$1" ) #### both rewrite/redirect support back reference to regex conditional using %n #$HTTP["host"] =~ "^www\.(.*)" { # url.redirect = ( "^/(.*)" => "http://%1/$1" ) #} # # define a pattern for the host url finding # %% => % sign # %0 => domain name + tld # %1 => tld # %2 => domain name without tld # %3 => subdomain 1 name # %4 => subdomain 2 name # #evhost.path-pattern = "/srv/www/vhosts/%3/htdocs/" #### expire module #expire.url = ( "/buggy/" => "access 2 hours", "/asdhas/" => "ac cess plus 1 seconds 2 minutes") #### ssi #ssi.extension = ( ".shtml" ) #### rrdtool #rrdtool.binary = "/usr/bin/rrdtool" #rrdtool.db-name = "/var/lib/lighttpd/lighttpd.rrd" #### setenv #setenv.add-request-header = ( "TRAV_ENV" => "mysql://user@host/db" ) #setenv.add-response-header = ( "X-Secret-Message" => "42" ) ## for mod_trigger_b4_dl # trigger-before-download.gdbm-filename = "/var/lib/lighttpd/trigger.db" # trigger-before-download.memcache-hosts = ( "127.0.0.1:11211" ) # trigger-before-download.trigger-url = "^/trigger/" # trigger-before-download.download-url = "^/download/" # trigger-before-download.deny-url = "http://127.0.0.1/index.html" # trigger-before-download.trigger-timeout = 10 #### variable usage: ## variable name without "." is auto prefixed by "var." and becomes "var.bar" #bar = 1 #var.mystring = "foo" ## integer add #bar += 1 ## string concat, with integer cast as string, result: "www.foo1.com" #server.name = "www." + mystring + var.bar + ".com" ## array merge #index-file.names = (foo + ".php") + index-file.names #index-file.names += (foo + ".php") #### include #include /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd-inc.conf ## same as above if you run: "lighttpd -f /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf" #include "lighttpd-inc.conf" #### include_shell #include_shell "echo var.a=1" ## the above is same as: #var.a=1 When I go to browser and hit 'http://127.0.0.1', I get link not found. Any idea?

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• Ubuntu server has slow performance

  - by Rich

  I have a custom built Ubuntu 11.04 server with a 6 disk software RAID 10 primary drive. On it I'm primarily running a PostgreSQL and a few other utilities that stream data from the web. I often find after a few hours of uptime the server starts to lag with all kinds of processes. For example, it may take 10-15 seconds after log-in to get a shell prompt. It might take 5-10 seconds for top to come up. An ls might take a second or two. When I look at top there is almost no CPU usage. There's a fair amount of memory used by the PostgreSQL server but not enough to bleed into swap. I have no idea where to go from here, other than to suspect the RAID10 (I've only ever had software RAID 1's before). Edit: Output from top: top - 11:56:03 up 1:46, 3 users, load average: 0.89, 0.73, 0.72 Tasks: 119 total, 1 running, 118 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 0.2%us, 0.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 93.5%id, 6.2%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Mem: 16325596k total, 3478248k used, 12847348k free, 20880k buffers Swap: 19534176k total, 0k used, 19534176k free, 3041992k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 1747 woodsp 20 0 109m 10m 4888 S 1 0.1 0:42.70 python 357 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.40 jbd2/sda3-8 1 root 20 0 24324 2284 1344 S 0 0.0 0:00.84 init 2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd 3 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.24 ksoftirqd/0 6 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0 7 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.01 watchdog/0 8 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/1 10 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.02 ksoftirqd/1 12 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.01 watchdog/1 13 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/2 14 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kworker/2:0 15 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/2 16 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.01 watchdog/2 17 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/3 18 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kworker/3:0 19 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.02 ksoftirqd/3 20 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.01 watchdog/3 21 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 cpuset 22 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper 23 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kdevtmpfs 24 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 netns 26 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 sync_supers df -h rpsharp@ncp-skookum:~$ df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda3 1.8T 549G 1.2T 32% / udev 7.8G 4.0K 7.8G 1% /dev tmpfs 3.2G 492K 3.2G 1% /run none 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock none 7.8G 0 7.8G 0% /run/shm /dev/sda2 952M 128K 952M 1% /boot/efi /dev/md0 5.5T 562G 4.7T 11% /usr/local free -m psharp@ncp-skookum:~$ free -m total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 15942 3409 12533 0 20 2983 -/+ buffers/cache: 405 15537 Swap: 19076 0 19076 tail -50 /var/log/syslog Jul 3 06:31:32 ncp-skookum rsyslogd: [origin software="rsyslogd" swVersion="5.8.6" x-pid="1070" x-info="http://www.rsyslog.com"] rsyslogd was HUPed Jul 3 06:39:01 ncp-skookum CRON[14211]: (root) CMD ( [ -x /usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime ] && [ -d /var/lib/php5 ] && find /var/lib/php5/ -depth -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type f -cmin +$(/usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime) ! -execdir fuser -s {} 2>/dev/null \; -delete) Jul 3 06:40:01 ncp-skookum CRON[14223]: (smmsp) CMD (test -x /etc/init.d/sendmail && /usr/share/sendmail/sendmail cron-msp) Jul 3 07:00:01 ncp-skookum CRON[14328]: (woodsp) CMD (/home/woodsp/bin/mail_tweetupdate # email an update) Jul 3 07:00:01 ncp-skookum CRON[14327]: (smmsp) CMD (test -x /etc/init.d/sendmail && /usr/share/sendmail/sendmail cron-msp) Jul 3 07:00:28 ncp-skookum sendmail[14356]: q63E0SoZ014356: from=woodsp, size=2328, class=0, nrcpts=2, msgid=<[email protected]>, relay=woodsp@localhost Jul 3 07:00:29 ncp-skookum sm-mta[14357]: q63E0Si6014357: from=<[email protected]>, size=2569, class=0, nrcpts=2, msgid=<[email protected]>, proto=ESMTP, daemon=MTA-v4, relay=localhost [127.0.0.1] Jul 3 07:00:29 ncp-skookum sendmail[14356]: q63E0SoZ014356: to=Spencer Wood <[email protected]>,Martin Lacayo <[email protected]>, ctladdr=woodsp (1004/1005), delay=00:00:01, xdelay=00:00:01, mailer=relay, pri=62328, relay=[127.0.0.1] [127.0.0.1], dsn=2.0.0, stat=Sent (q63E0Si6014357 Message accepted for delivery) Jul 3 07:00:29 ncp-skookum sm-mta[14359]: STARTTLS=client, relay=mx3.stanford.edu., version=TLSv1/SSLv3, verify=FAIL, cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA, bits=256/256 Jul 3 07:00:29 ncp-skookum sm-mta[14359]: q63E0Si6014357: to=<[email protected]>,<[email protected]>, ctladdr=<[email protected]> (1004/1005), delay=00:00:01, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=esmtp, pri=152569, relay=mx3.stanford.edu. [171.67.219.73], dsn=2.0.0, stat=Sent (Ok: queued as 8F3505802AC) Jul 3 07:09:08 ncp-skookum CRON[14396]: (root) CMD ( [ -x /usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime ] && [ -d /var/lib/php5 ] && find /var/lib/php5/ -depth -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type f -cmin +$(/usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime) ! -execdir fuser -s {} 2>/dev/null \; -delete) Jul 3 07:17:01 ncp-skookum CRON[14438]: (root) CMD ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly) Jul 3 07:20:01 ncp-skookum CRON[14453]: (smmsp) CMD (test -x /etc/init.d/sendmail && /usr/share/sendmail/sendmail cron-msp) Jul 3 07:39:01 ncp-skookum CRON[14551]: (root) CMD ( [ -x /usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime ] && [ -d /var/lib/php5 ] && find /var/lib/php5/ -depth -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type f -cmin +$(/usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime) ! -execdir fuser -s {} 2>/dev/null \; -delete) Jul 3 07:40:01 ncp-skookum CRON[14562]: (smmsp) CMD (test -x /etc/init.d/sendmail && /usr/share/sendmail/sendmail cron-msp) Jul 3 08:00:01 ncp-skookum CRON[14668]: (smmsp) CMD (test -x /etc/init.d/sendmail && /usr/share/sendmail/sendmail cron-msp) Jul 3 08:09:01 ncp-skookum CRON[14724]: (root) CMD ( [ -x /usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime ] && [ -d /var/lib/php5 ] && find /var/lib/php5/ -depth -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type f -cmin +$(/usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime) ! -execdir fuser -s {} 2>/dev/null \; -delete) Jul 3 08:17:01 ncp-skookum CRON[14766]: (root) CMD ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly) Jul 3 08:20:01 ncp-skookum CRON[14781]: (smmsp) CMD (test -x /etc/init.d/sendmail && /usr/share/sendmail/sendmail cron-msp) Jul 3 08:39:01 ncp-skookum CRON[14881]: (root) CMD ( [ -x /usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime ] && [ -d /var/lib/php5 ] && find /var/lib/php5/ -depth -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type f -cmin +$(/usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime) ! -execdir fuser -s {} 2>/dev/null \; -delete) Jul 3 08:40:01 ncp-skookum CRON[14892]: (smmsp) CMD (test -x /etc/init.d/sendmail && /usr/share/sendmail/sendmail cron-msp) Output of hdparm -t /dev/sd{a,b,c,d,e,f} This looks suspicious? /dev/sda: Timing buffered disk reads: 2 MB in 4.84 seconds = 423.39 kB/sec /dev/sdb: Timing buffered disk reads: 420 MB in 3.01 seconds = 139.74 MB/sec /dev/sdc: Timing buffered disk reads: 390 MB in 3.00 seconds = 129.87 MB/sec /dev/sdd: Timing buffered disk reads: 416 MB in 3.00 seconds = 138.51 MB/sec /dev/sde: Timing buffered disk reads: 422 MB in 3.00 seconds = 140.50 MB/sec /dev/sdf: Timing buffered disk reads: 416 MB in 3.01 seconds = 138.26 MB/sec

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• How to configure fastcgi to work with ligttpd in ubuntu

  - by michael

  I am able to run lighttpd on ubuntu 9.10. But when i tried to setup fastcgi with lighttpd by putting this in the ligttpd.conf file: #### fastcgi module fastcgi.server = ( "/fastcgi_scripts/" => (( "host" => "127.0.0.1", "port" => "9098", "check-local" => "disable", "bin-path" => "/usr/local/bin/cgi-fcgi", "docroot" => "/" # remote server may use # it's own docroot )) ) This is what I get in the error.log in ligttpd: 2010-03-07 21:00:11: (log.c.166) server started 2010-03-07 21:00:11: (mod_fastcgi.c.1104) the fastcgi-backend /usr/local/bin/cgi-fcgi failed to start: 2010-03-07 21:00:11: (mod_fastcgi.c.1108) child exited with status 1 /usr/local/bin/cgi-fcgi 2010-03-07 21:00:11: (mod_fastcgi.c.1111) If you're trying to run your app as a FastCGI backend, make sure you're using the FastCGI-enabled version. If this is PHP on Gentoo, add 'fastcgi' to the USE flags. 2010-03-07 21:00:11: (mod_fastcgi.c.1399) [ERROR]: spawning fcgi failed. 2010-03-07 21:00:11: (server.c.931) Configuration of plugins failed. Going down. I do have cgi-fcgi in /usr/local/bin: $ which cgi-fcgi /usr/local/bin/cgi-fcgi '/usr/local/bin/cgi-fcgi' is the executable after I download and compile fast-cgi. Here is my lighttpd conf file: $ more lighttpd.conf # lighttpd configuration file # # use it as a base for lighttpd 1.0.0 and above # # $Id: lighttpd.conf,v 1.7 2004/11/03 22:26:05 weigon Exp $ ############ Options you really have to take care of #################### ## modules to load # at least mod_access and mod_accesslog should be loaded # all other module should only be loaded if really neccesary # - saves some time # - saves memory server.modules = ( # "mod_rewrite", # "mod_redirect", # "mod_alias", "mod_access", # "mod_trigger_b4_dl", # "mod_auth", # "mod_status", # "mod_setenv", "mod_fastcgi", # "mod_proxy", # "mod_simple_vhost", # "mod_evhost", # "mod_userdir", # "mod_cgi", # "mod_compress", # "mod_ssi", # "mod_usertrack", # "mod_expire", # "mod_secdownload", # "mod_rrdtool", "mod_accesslog" ) ## A static document-root. For virtual hosting take a look at the ## mod_simple_vhost module. server.document-root = "/srv/www/htdocs/" ## where to send error-messages to server.errorlog = "/var/log/lighttpd/error.log" # files to check for if .../ is requested index-file.names = ( "index.php", "index.html", "index.htm", "default.htm" ) ## set the event-handler (read the performance section in the manual) # server.event-handler = "freebsd-kqueue" # needed on OS X # mimetype mapping mimetype.assign = ( ".pdf" => "application/pdf", ".sig" => "application/pgp-signature", ".spl" => "application/futuresplash", ".class" => "application/octet-stream", ".ps" => "application/postscript", ".torrent" => "application/x-bittorrent", ".dvi" => "application/x-dvi", ".gz" => "application/x-gzip", ".pac" => "application/x-ns-proxy-autoconfig", ".swf" => "application/x-shockwave-flash", ".tar.gz" => "application/x-tgz", ".tgz" => "application/x-tgz", ".tar" => "application/x-tar", ".zip" => "application/zip", ".mp3" => "audio/mpeg", ".m3u" => "audio/x-mpegurl", ".wma" => "audio/x-ms-wma", ".wax" => "audio/x-ms-wax", ".ogg" => "application/ogg", ".wav" => "audio/x-wav", ".gif" => "image/gif", ".jar" => "application/x-java-archive", ".jpg" => "image/jpeg", ".jpeg" => "image/jpeg", ".png" => "image/png", ".xbm" => "image/x-xbitmap", ".xpm" => "image/x-xpixmap", ".xwd" => "image/x-xwindowdump", ".css" => "text/css", ".html" => "text/html", ".htm" => "text/html", ".js" => "text/javascript", ".asc" => "text/plain", ".c" => "text/plain", ".cpp" => "text/plain", ".log" => "text/plain", ".conf" => "text/plain", ".text" => "text/plain", ".txt" => "text/plain", ".dtd" => "text/xml", ".xml" => "text/xml", ".mpeg" => "video/mpeg", ".mpg" => "video/mpeg", ".mov" => "video/quicktime", ".qt" => "video/quicktime", ".avi" => "video/x-msvideo", ".asf" => "video/x-ms-asf", ".asx" => "video/x-ms-asf", ".wmv" => "video/x-ms-wmv", ".bz2" => "application/x-bzip", ".tbz" => "application/x-bzip-compressed-tar", ".tar.bz2" => "application/x-bzip-compressed-tar", # default mime type "" => "application/octet-stream", ) # Use the "Content-Type" extended attribute to obtain mime type if possible #mimetype.use-xattr = "enable" ## send a different Server: header ## be nice and keep it at lighttpd # server.tag = "lighttpd" #### accesslog module accesslog.filename = "/var/log/lighttpd/access.log" ## deny access the file-extensions # # ~ is for backupfiles from vi, emacs, joe, ... # .inc is often used for code includes which should in general not be part # of the document-root url.access-deny = ( "~", ".inc" ) $HTTP["url"] =~ "\.pdf$" { server.range-requests = "disable" } ## # which extensions should not be handle via static-file transfer # # .php, .pl, .fcgi are most often handled by mod_fastcgi or mod_cgi static-file.exclude-extensions = ( ".php", ".pl", ".fcgi" ) ######### Options that are good to be but not neccesary to be changed ####### ## bind to port (default: 80) server.port = 9090 ## bind to localhost (default: all interfaces) server.bind = "127.0.0.1" ## error-handler for status 404 #server.error-handler-404 = "/error-handler.html" #server.error-handler-404 = "/error-handler.php" ## to help the rc.scripts #server.pid-file = "/var/run/lighttpd.pid" ###### virtual hosts ## ## If you want name-based virtual hosting add the next three settings and load ## mod_simple_vhost ## ## document-root = ## virtual-server-root + virtual-server-default-host + virtual-server-docroot ## or ## virtual-server-root + http-host + virtual-server-docroot ## #simple-vhost.server-root = "/srv/www/vhosts/" #simple-vhost.default-host = "www.example.org" #simple-vhost.document-root = "/htdocs/" ## ## Format: <errorfile-prefix><status-code>.html ## -> ..../status-404.html for 'File not found' #server.errorfile-prefix = "/usr/share/lighttpd/errors/status-" #server.errorfile-prefix = "/srv/www/errors/status-" ## virtual directory listings #dir-listing.activate = "enable" ## select encoding for directory listings #dir-listing.encoding = "utf-8" ## enable debugging #debug.log-request-header = "enable" #debug.log-response-header = "enable" #debug.log-request-handling = "enable" #debug.log-file-not-found = "enable" ### only root can use these options # # chroot() to directory (default: no chroot() ) #server.chroot = "/" ## change uid to <uid> (default: don't care) #server.username = "wwwrun" ## change uid to <uid> (default: don't care) #server.groupname = "wwwrun" #### compress module #compress.cache-dir = "/var/cache/lighttpd/compress/" #compress.filetype = ("text/plain", "text/html") #### proxy module ## read proxy.txt for more info #proxy.server = ( ".php" => # ( "localhost" => # ( # "host" => "192.168.0.101", # "port" => 80 # ) # ) # ) #### fastcgi module fastcgi.server = ( "/fastcgi_scripts/" => (( "host" => "127.0.0.1", "port" => 1026, "check-local" => "disable", "bin-path" => "/usr/local/bin/cgi-fcgi", #"docroot" => "/" # remote server may use # it's own docroot )) ) ## read fastcgi.txt for more info ## for PHP don't forget to set cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1 in the php.ini #fastcgi.server = ( ".php" => # ( "localhost" => # ( # "socket" => "/var/run/lighttpd/php-fastcgi.s ocket", # "bin-path" => "/usr/local/bin/php-cgi" # ) # ) # ) #### CGI module #cgi.assign = ( ".pl" => "/usr/bin/perl", # ".cgi" => "/usr/bin/perl" ) # #### SSL engine #ssl.engine = "enable" #ssl.pemfile = "/etc/ssl/private/lighttpd.pem" #### status module #status.status-url = "/server-status" #status.config-url = "/server-config" #### auth module ## read authentication.txt for more info #auth.backend = "plain" #auth.backend.plain.userfile = "lighttpd.user" #auth.backend.plain.groupfile = "lighttpd.group" #auth.backend.ldap.hostname = "localhost" #auth.backend.ldap.base-dn = "dc=my-domain,dc=com" #auth.backend.ldap.filter = "(uid=$)" #auth.require = ( "/server-status" => # ( # "method" => "digest", # "realm" => "download archiv", # "require" => "user=jan" # ), # "/server-config" => # ( # "method" => "digest", # "realm" => "download archiv", # "require" => "valid-user" # ) # ) #### url handling modules (rewrite, redirect, access) #url.rewrite = ( "^/$" => "/server-status" ) #url.redirect = ( "^/wishlist/(.+)" => "http://www.123.org/$1" ) #### both rewrite/redirect support back reference to regex conditional using %n #$HTTP["host"] =~ "^www\.(.*)" { # url.redirect = ( "^/(.*)" => "http://%1/$1" ) #} # # define a pattern for the host url finding # %% => % sign # %0 => domain name + tld # %1 => tld # %2 => domain name without tld # %3 => subdomain 1 name # %4 => subdomain 2 name # #evhost.path-pattern = "/srv/www/vhosts/%3/htdocs/" #### expire module #expire.url = ( "/buggy/" => "access 2 hours", "/asdhas/" => "ac cess plus 1 seconds 2 minutes") #### ssi #ssi.extension = ( ".shtml" ) #### rrdtool #rrdtool.binary = "/usr/bin/rrdtool" #rrdtool.db-name = "/var/lib/lighttpd/lighttpd.rrd" #### setenv #setenv.add-request-header = ( "TRAV_ENV" => "mysql://user@host/db" ) #setenv.add-response-header = ( "X-Secret-Message" => "42" ) ## for mod_trigger_b4_dl # trigger-before-download.gdbm-filename = "/var/lib/lighttpd/trigger.db" # trigger-before-download.memcache-hosts = ( "127.0.0.1:11211" ) # trigger-before-download.trigger-url = "^/trigger/" # trigger-before-download.download-url = "^/download/" # trigger-before-download.deny-url = "http://127.0.0.1/index.html" # trigger-before-download.trigger-timeout = 10 #### variable usage: ## variable name without "." is auto prefixed by "var." and becomes "var.bar" #bar = 1 #var.mystring = "foo" ## integer add #bar += 1 ## string concat, with integer cast as string, result: "www.foo1.com" #server.name = "www." + mystring + var.bar + ".com" ## array merge #index-file.names = (foo + ".php") + index-file.names #index-file.names += (foo + ".php") #### include #include /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd-inc.conf ## same as above if you run: "lighttpd -f /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf" #include "lighttpd-inc.conf" #### include_shell #include_shell "echo var.a=1" ## the above is same as: #var.a=1 Thank you for your help.

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• ServerRoot in my lighttpd.conf

  - by michael

  Hi, I have use the following example lighttpd.conf to launch my lighttpd. Can you please tell me where is my 'ServerRoot'? # lighttpd configuration file # # use it as a base for lighttpd 1.0.0 and above # # $Id: lighttpd.conf,v 1.7 2004/11/03 22:26:05 weigon Exp $ ############ Options you really have to take care of #################### ## modules to load # at least mod_access and mod_accesslog should be loaded # all other module should only be loaded if really neccesary # - saves some time # - saves memory server.modules = ( # "mod_rewrite", # "mod_redirect", # "mod_alias", "mod_access", # "mod_trigger_b4_dl", # "mod_auth", # "mod_status", # "mod_setenv", "mod_fastcgi", # "mod_proxy", # "mod_simple_vhost", # "mod_evhost", # "mod_userdir", # "mod_cgi", # "mod_compress", # "mod_ssi", # "mod_usertrack", # "mod_expire", # "mod_secdownload", # "mod_rrdtool", "mod_accesslog" ) ## A static document-root. For virtual hosting take a look at the ## mod_simple_vhost module. server.document-root = "/srv/www/htdocs/" ## where to send error-messages to server.errorlog = "/var/log/lighttpd/error.log" # files to check for if .../ is requested index-file.names = ( "index.php", "index.html", "index.htm", "default.htm" ) ## set the event-handler (read the performance section in the manual) # server.event-handler = "freebsd-kqueue" # needed on OS X # mimetype mapping mimetype.assign = ( ".pdf" => "application/pdf", ".sig" => "application/pgp-signature", ".spl" => "application/futuresplash", ".class" => "application/octet-stream", ".ps" => "application/postscript", ".torrent" => "application/x-bittorrent", ".dvi" => "application/x-dvi", ".gz" => "application/x-gzip", ".pac" => "application/x-ns-proxy-autoconfig", ".swf" => "application/x-shockwave-flash", ".tar.gz" => "application/x-tgz", ".tgz" => "application/x-tgz", ".tar" => "application/x-tar", ".zip" => "application/zip", ".mp3" => "audio/mpeg", ".m3u" => "audio/x-mpegurl", ".wma" => "audio/x-ms-wma", ".wax" => "audio/x-ms-wax", ".ogg" => "application/ogg", ".wav" => "audio/x-wav", ".gif" => "image/gif", ".jar" => "application/x-java-archive", ".jpg" => "image/jpeg", ".jpeg" => "image/jpeg", ".png" => "image/png", ".xbm" => "image/x-xbitmap", ".xpm" => "image/x-xpixmap", ".xwd" => "image/x-xwindowdump", ".css" => "text/css", ".html" => "text/html", ".htm" => "text/html", ".js" => "text/javascript", ".asc" => "text/plain", ".c" => "text/plain", ".cpp" => "text/plain", ".log" => "text/plain", ".conf" => "text/plain", ".text" => "text/plain", ".txt" => "text/plain", ".dtd" => "text/xml", ".xml" => "text/xml", ".mpeg" => "video/mpeg", ".mpg" => "video/mpeg", ".mov" => "video/quicktime", ".qt" => "video/quicktime", ".avi" => "video/x-msvideo", ".asf" => "video/x-ms-asf", ".asx" => "video/x-ms-asf", ".wmv" => "video/x-ms-wmv", ".bz2" => "application/x-bzip", ".tbz" => "application/x-bzip-compressed-tar", ".tar.bz2" => "application/x-bzip-compressed-tar", # default mime type "" => "application/octet-stream", ) # Use the "Content-Type" extended attribute to obtain mime type if possible #mimetype.use-xattr = "enable" ## send a different Server: header ## be nice and keep it at lighttpd # server.tag = "lighttpd" #### accesslog module accesslog.filename = "/var/log/lighttpd/access.log" ## deny access the file-extensions # # ~ is for backupfiles from vi, emacs, joe, ... # .inc is often used for code includes which should in general not be part # of the document-root url.access-deny = ( "~", ".inc" ) $HTTP["url"] =~ "\.pdf$" { server.range-requests = "disable" } ## # which extensions should not be handle via static-file transfer # # .php, .pl, .fcgi are most often handled by mod_fastcgi or mod_cgi static-file.exclude-extensions = ( ".php", ".pl", ".fcgi" ) ######### Options that are good to be but not neccesary to be changed ####### ## bind to port (default: 80) server.port = 9090 ## bind to localhost (default: all interfaces) server.bind = "127.0.0.1" ## error-handler for status 404 #server.error-handler-404 = "/error-handler.html" #server.error-handler-404 = "/error-handler.php" ## to help the rc.scripts #server.pid-file = "/var/run/lighttpd.pid" ###### virtual hosts ## ## If you want name-based virtual hosting add the next three settings and load ## mod_simple_vhost ## ## document-root = ## virtual-server-root + virtual-server-default-host + virtual-server-docroot ## or ## virtual-server-root + http-host + virtual-server-docroot ## #simple-vhost.server-root = "/srv/www/vhosts/" #simple-vhost.default-host = "www.example.org" #simple-vhost.document-root = "/htdocs/" ## ## Format: <errorfile-prefix><status-code>.html ## -> ..../status-404.html for 'File not found' #server.errorfile-prefix = "/usr/share/lighttpd/errors/status-" #server.errorfile-prefix = "/srv/www/errors/status-" ## virtual directory listings #dir-listing.activate = "enable" ## select encoding for directory listings #dir-listing.encoding = "utf-8" ## enable debugging #debug.log-request-header = "enable" #debug.log-response-header = "enable" #debug.log-request-handling = "enable" #debug.log-file-not-found = "enable" ### only root can use these options # # chroot() to directory (default: no chroot() ) #server.chroot = "/" ## change uid to <uid> (default: don't care) #server.username = "wwwrun" ## change uid to <uid> (default: don't care) #server.groupname = "wwwrun" #### compress module #compress.cache-dir = "/var/cache/lighttpd/compress/" #compress.filetype = ("text/plain", "text/html") #### proxy module ## read proxy.txt for more info #proxy.server = ( ".php" => # ( "localhost" => # ( # "host" => "192.168.0.101", # "port" => 80 # ) # ) # ) #### fastcgi module fastcgi.server = ( "/fastcgi_scripts/" => (( "host" => "127.0.0.1", "port" => 1026, "check-local" => "disable", "bin-path" => "/usr/local/bin/cgi-fcgi", #"docroot" => "/" # remote server may use # it's own docroot )) ) ## read fastcgi.txt for more info ## for PHP don't forget to set cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1 in the php.ini #fastcgi.server = ( ".php" => # ( "localhost" => # ( # "socket" => "/var/run/lighttpd/php-fastcgi.socket", # "bin-path" => "/usr/local/bin/php-cgi" # ) # ) # ) #### CGI module #cgi.assign = ( ".pl" => "/usr/bin/perl", # ".cgi" => "/usr/bin/perl" ) # #### SSL engine #ssl.engine = "enable" #ssl.pemfile = "/etc/ssl/private/lighttpd.pem" #### status module #status.status-url = "/server-status" #status.config-url = "/server-config" #### auth module ## read authentication.txt for more info #auth.backend = "plain" #auth.backend.plain.userfile = "lighttpd.user" #auth.backend.plain.groupfile = "lighttpd.group" #auth.backend.ldap.hostname = "localhost" #auth.backend.ldap.base-dn = "dc=my-domain,dc=com" #auth.backend.ldap.filter = "(uid=$)" #auth.require = ( "/server-status" => # ( # "method" => "digest", # "realm" => "download archiv", # "require" => "user=jan" # ), # "/server-config" => # ( # "method" => "digest", # "realm" => "download archiv", # "require" => "valid-user" # ) # ) #### url handling modules (rewrite, redirect, access) #url.rewrite = ( "^/$" => "/server-status" ) #url.redirect = ( "^/wishlist/(.+)" => "http://www.123.org/$1" ) #### both rewrite/redirect support back reference to regex conditional using %n #$HTTP["host"] =~ "^www\.(.*)" { # url.redirect = ( "^/(.*)" => "http://%1/$1" ) #} # # define a pattern for the host url finding # %% => % sign # %0 => domain name + tld # %1 => tld # %2 => domain name without tld # %3 => subdomain 1 name # %4 => subdomain 2 name # #evhost.path-pattern = "/srv/www/vhosts/%3/htdocs/" #### expire module #expire.url = ( "/buggy/" => "access 2 hours", "/asdhas/" => "access plus 1 seconds 2 minutes") #### ssi #ssi.extension = ( ".shtml" ) #### rrdtool #rrdtool.binary = "/usr/bin/rrdtool" #rrdtool.db-name = "/var/lib/lighttpd/lighttpd.rrd" #### setenv #setenv.add-request-header = ( "TRAV_ENV" => "mysql://user@host/db" ) #setenv.add-response-header = ( "X-Secret-Message" => "42" ) ## for mod_trigger_b4_dl # trigger-before-download.gdbm-filename = "/var/lib/lighttpd/trigger.db" # trigger-before-download.memcache-hosts = ( "127.0.0.1:11211" ) # trigger-before-download.trigger-url = "^/trigger/" # trigger-before-download.download-url = "^/download/" # trigger-before-download.deny-url = "http://127.0.0.1/index.html" # trigger-before-download.trigger-timeout = 10 #### variable usage: ## variable name without "." is auto prefixed by "var." and becomes "var.bar" #bar = 1 #var.mystring = "foo" ## integer add #bar += 1 ## string concat, with integer cast as string, result: "www.foo1.com" #server.name = "www." + mystring + var.bar + ".com" ## array merge #index-file.names = (foo + ".php") + index-file.names #index-file.names += (foo + ".php") #### include #include /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd-inc.conf ## same as above if you run: "lighttpd -f /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf" #include "lighttpd-inc.conf" #### include_shell #include_shell "echo var.a=1" ## the above is same as: #var.a=1 Thank you.

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• Unable to PPTP through NAT on Cisco 881

  - by MasterRoot24

  I'm trying to connect to a PPTP server which is sat behind a Cisco 881 NAT router. The server is running Ubuntu Server 12.04 and is running Poptop pptpd as the PPTP daemon listening for connections. As discussed in my other question, I'm trying to setup a Cisco 881 router to replace my old Linksys WAG320N. This same server and WAN connection worked fine with the WAG320N with no special configuration, other than allowing 1723 in through the firewall. On the Cisco 881, I'm using the newer ip nat enable or NAT NVI to setup static routes in through the firewall for the services running behind the router. My reason being that I can't run another copy of my live DNS domains internally with local IP addresses in. For the purposes of this question, though, I have rebuilt the router with ip nat inside/outside style NAT'ing, but this issue is still apparent. HTTP/SMTP/IMAP etc. all work ok from both the WAN and LAN interfaces of the router. I'm only having issues with SIP (see other question) and PPTP. My issue is that the GRE doesn't appear to be passing through NAT correctly and one end of the connection is not receiving GRE traffic when it should be, so the server hangs up the connection. Here's an example of /var/log/syslog with debug enabled in /etc/pptpd.conf: Dec 11 21:06:30 <HOSTNAME> pptpd[22626]: MGR: Launching /usr/sbin/pptpctrl to handle client Dec 11 21:06:30 <HOSTNAME> pptpd[22626]: CTRL: local address = 192.168.1.50 Dec 11 21:06:30 <HOSTNAME> pptpd[22626]: CTRL: remote address = 192.168.1.51 Dec 11 21:06:30 <HOSTNAME> pptpd[22626]: CTRL: pppd options file = /etc/ppp/pptpd-options Dec 11 21:06:30 <HOSTNAME> pptpd[22626]: CTRL: Client 82.132.248.216 control connection started Dec 11 21:06:30 <HOSTNAME> pptpd[22626]: CTRL: Received PPTP Control Message (type: 1) Dec 11 21:06:30 <HOSTNAME> pptpd[22626]: CTRL: Made a START CTRL CONN RPLY packet Dec 11 21:06:30 <HOSTNAME> pptpd[22626]: CTRL: I wrote 156 bytes to the client. Dec 11 21:06:30 <HOSTNAME> pptpd[22626]: CTRL: Sent packet to client Dec 11 21:06:30 <HOSTNAME> pptpd[22626]: CTRL: Received PPTP Control Message (type: 7) Dec 11 21:06:30 <HOSTNAME> pptpd[22626]: CTRL: Set parameters to 100000000 maxbps, 64 window size Dec 11 21:06:30 <HOSTNAME> pptpd[22626]: CTRL: Made a OUT CALL RPLY packet Dec 11 21:06:30 <HOSTNAME> pptpd[22626]: CTRL: Starting call (launching pppd, opening GRE) Dec 11 21:06:30 <HOSTNAME> pptpd[22626]: CTRL: pty_fd = 6 Dec 11 21:06:30 <HOSTNAME> pptpd[22626]: CTRL: tty_fd = 7 Dec 11 21:06:30 <HOSTNAME> pptpd[22626]: CTRL: I wrote 32 bytes to the client. Dec 11 21:06:30 <HOSTNAME> pptpd[22626]: CTRL: Sent packet to client Dec 11 21:06:30 <HOSTNAME> pptpd[22627]: CTRL (PPPD Launcher): program binary = /usr/sbin/pppd Dec 11 21:06:30 <HOSTNAME> pptpd[22627]: CTRL (PPPD Launcher): local address = 192.168.1.50 Dec 11 21:06:30 <HOSTNAME> pptpd[22627]: CTRL (PPPD Launcher): remote address = 192.168.1.51 Dec 11 21:06:30 <HOSTNAME> pppd[22627]: Plugin /usr/lib/pptpd/pptpd-logwtmp.so loaded. Dec 11 21:06:30 <HOSTNAME> pppd[22627]: pppd 2.4.5 started by root, uid 0 Dec 11 21:06:30 <HOSTNAME> pppd[22627]: Using interface ppp0 Dec 11 21:06:30 <HOSTNAME> pppd[22627]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/pts/3 Dec 11 21:06:30 <HOSTNAME> pptpd[22626]: GRE: Bad checksum from pppd. Dec 11 21:06:31 <HOSTNAME> pptpd[22626]: CTRL: Received PPTP Control Message (type: 15) Dec 11 21:06:31 <HOSTNAME> pptpd[22626]: CTRL: Got a SET LINK INFO packet with standard ACCMs Dec 11 21:07:00 <HOSTNAME> pppd[22627]: LCP: timeout sending Config-Requests Dec 11 21:07:00 <HOSTNAME> pppd[22627]: Connection terminated. Dec 11 21:07:00 <HOSTNAME> avahi-daemon[1042]: Withdrawing workstation service for ppp0. Dec 11 21:07:00 <HOSTNAME> pppd[22627]: Modem hangup Dec 11 21:07:00 <HOSTNAME> pppd[22627]: Exit. Dec 11 21:07:00 <HOSTNAME> pptpd[22626]: GRE: read(fd=6,buffer=6075a0,len=8196) from PTY failed: status = -1 error = Input/output error, usually caused by unexpected termination of pppd, check option syntax and pppd logs Dec 11 21:07:00 <HOSTNAME> pptpd[22626]: CTRL: PTY read or GRE write failed (pty,gre)=(6,7) Dec 11 21:07:00 <HOSTNAME> pptpd[22626]: CTRL: Reaping child PPP[22627] Dec 11 21:07:00 <HOSTNAME> pptpd[22626]: CTRL: Client 82.132.248.216 control connection finished Dec 11 21:07:00 <HOSTNAME> pptpd[22626]: CTRL: Exiting now Dec 11 21:07:00 <HOSTNAME> pptpd[5803]: MGR: Reaped child 22626 As far as Cisco are concerned, all I need is ip nat source static tcp <SERVER LAN IP> 1723 interface FastEthernet4 1723 but of course this doesn't seem to the be helping the GRE traffic through as it should. Trying the connection to the LAN IP of the server from the same LAN as the server (behind the router), the PPTP connection works fine, so I'm confident that the server's config is ok. Furthermore, all I needed on my WAG320N was to open 1723 in the firewall. Here's my current router config: ! ! Last configuration change at 20:20:15 UTC Tue Dec 11 2012 by xxx version 15.2 no service pad service timestamps debug datetime msec service timestamps log datetime msec service password-encryption ! hostname xxx ! boot-start-marker boot-end-marker ! ! enable secret 4 xxxx ! aaa new-model ! ! aaa authentication login local_auth local ! ! ! ! ! aaa session-id common ! memory-size iomem 10 ! crypto pki trustpoint TP-self-signed-xxx enrollment selfsigned subject-name cn=IOS-Self-Signed-Certificate-xxx revocation-check none rsakeypair TP-self-signed-xxx ! ! crypto pki certificate chain TP-self-signed-xxx certificate self-signed 01 xxx quit ip gratuitous-arps ip auth-proxy max-login-attempts 5 ip admission max-login-attempts 5 ! ! ! ! ! ip domain list dmz.xxx.local ip domain list xxx.local ip domain name dmz.xxx.local ip name-server 192.168.1.x ip cef login block-for 3 attempts 3 within 3 no ipv6 cef ! ! multilink bundle-name authenticated license udi pid CISCO881-SEC-K9 sn xxx ! ! username admin privilege 15 secret 4 xxx username joe secret 4 xxx ! ! ! ! ! ip ssh time-out 60 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! interface FastEthernet0 no ip address ! interface FastEthernet1 no ip address ! interface FastEthernet2 no ip address ! interface FastEthernet3 switchport access vlan 2 no ip address ! interface FastEthernet4 ip address dhcp ip nat enable duplex auto speed auto ! interface Vlan1 ip address 192.168.1.x 255.255.255.0 no ip redirects no ip unreachables no ip proxy-arp ip nat enable ! interface Vlan2 ip address 192.168.0.x 255.255.255.0 ! ip forward-protocol nd ip http server ip http access-class 1 ip http authentication local ip http secure-server ! ! ip nat source list 1 interface FastEthernet4 overload ip nat source list 2 interface FastEthernet4 overload ip nat source static tcp 192.168.1.x 1723 interface FastEthernet4 1723 ! ! access-list 1 permit 192.168.0.0 0.0.0.255 access-list 2 permit 192.168.1.0 0.0.0.255 ! ! ! ! control-plane ! ! banner motd Authorized Access only ! line con 0 exec-timeout 15 0 login authentication local_auth line aux 0 exec-timeout 15 0 login authentication local_auth line vty 0 4 access-class 2 in login authentication local_auth length 0 transport input all ! ! end UPDATE 16/12/2012: The only progress that I have been able to make on this issue is that I'm confident that the issue is caused by the GRE tunnels (which are required for the PPTP connection to complete) are being blocked. When attempting a connection, I can see in show ip nat nvi translations that both a TCP translation on 1723 is setup and also a GRE translation is setup also. I appear to be able to see GRE related packets on the LAN that the server is on, so I am lead to believe that the server is sending(?) GRE packets, however running Wireshark on a client PC when attempting a connection shows absolutely no GRE packets. Whilst there are no configuration directives in my config posted above (that I can pin point) which would specifically block them, it would appear that the GRE packets are not being allowed in/out of the router's firewall, even though a NAT translation entry is setup to the server's LAN address. Would anyone be able to provide me with some help to ensure that GRE packets are not blocked by the router's firewall, so that this can be ruled out as a possible issue please?

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• Intermittent Internet Explorer Error whilst using Javascript to traverse XML Nodes

  - by Sykth

  Hi there all, Basically I use a javascript SOAP plugin to send and receive XML from a web service. Recently I've been experiencing intermittment (1 in every 20-30 times) errors in IE when trying to access data in the XML file. Bear with me on this, I'm going to try and go into a fair amount of detail to help anyone who is willing to read this: I have a html file, with an external javascript file attached. In the javascript file I include 5 global variables: var soapRes; var questionXML; var xRoot; var assessnode; var edStage = 0; Once the html file is at a readystate I request the XML file from the web service like this: function initNextStage(strA) { // Set pl Parameters here var pl = new SOAPClientParameters(); // soap call var r = SOAPClient.invoke(url, "LoadAssessment", pl, true, initStage_callBack); } function initStage_callBack(r, soapResponse) { soapRes = soapResponse; initvalues(); function initvalues(){ xRoot = soapRes.documentElement; assessnode = xRoot.getElementsByTagName("ed")[0]; questionXML = assessnode.getElementsByTagName("question")[edStage]; } } Once this is completed the XML should be loaded into memory via the global variable soapRes. I then save values to the XML before moving one node down the XML tree, and pulling the next set of values out of it. function submitAns1() { var objAns; var corElem; var corElemTxt; questionXML = assessnode.getElementsByTagName("question")[edStage]; objAns = questionXML.getElementsByTagName("item")[0].getAttribute("answer"); corElem = soapRes.createElement("correct"); corElemTxt = soapRes.createTextNode("value"); questionXML.appendChild(corElem); corElem.appendChild(corElemTxt); if(objAns == "t") { corElemTxt.nodeValue = "true"; } else { corElemTxt.nodeValue = "false"; } edStage++; questionXML = assessnode.getElementsByTagName("question")[edStage]; var inc1 = questionXML.getElementsByTagName("sentence")[0]; var inc2 = questionXML.getElementsByTagName("sentence")[1]; var edopt1 = questionXML.getElementsByTagName("item")[0]; var edopt2 = questionXML.getElementsByTagName("item")[1]; var edopt3 = questionXML.getElementsByTagName("item")[2]; var edopt4 = questionXML.getElementsByTagName("item")[3]; var edopt5 = questionXML.getElementsByTagName("item")[4]; var temp1 = edopt1.childNodes[0].nodeValue; var temp2 = edopt2.childNodes[0].nodeValue; var temp3 = edopt3.childNodes[0].nodeValue; var temp4 = edopt4.childNodes[0].nodeValue; var temp5 = edopt5.childNodes[0].nodeValue; } This is an example of our XML: <ed> <appid>Administrator</appid> <formid>ED009</formid> <question id="1"> <sentence id="1">[email protected]</sentence> <sentence id="2">[email protected]</sentence> <item id="0" answer="f" value="0">0</item> <item id="1" answer="f" value="1">1</item> <item id="2" answer="f" value="2">2</item> <item id="3" answer="t" value="3">3</item> <item id="4" answer="f" value="4">4</item> </question> <question id="2"> <sentence id="1">Beausdene 13</sentence> <sentence id="2">Beauscene 83</sentence> <item id="0" answer="f" value="0">0</item> <item id="1" answer="f" value="1">1</item> <item id="2" answer="t" value="2">2</item> <item id="3" answer="f" value="3">3</item> <item id="4" answer="f" value="4">4</item> </question> </ed> The error I receive intermittently is that "questionXML" is null or not an object. Specifically this line when I call on the submitAns1() method: questionXML = assessnode.getElementsByTagName("question")[edStage]; This solution works on FF, Opera, Chrome & Safari without any issues as far as I am aware. Am I accessing the XML nodes incorrectly? I've been toying with fixes for this bug for weeks now, I'd really appreciate any insight into what I'm doing wrong. On a side note, this is a personal project of mine - it's not university related - I'm much too old for that! Any help greatly appreciated. Regards, Sykth.

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• Implementation question involving implementing an interface

  - by Vivin Paliath

  I'm writing a set of collection classes for different types of Trees. I'm doing this as a learning exercise and I'm also hoping it turns out to be something useful. I really want to do this the right way and so I've been reading Effective Java and I've also been looking at the way Joshua Bloch implemented the collection classes by looking at the source. I seem to have a fair idea of what is being done, but I still have a few things to sort out. I have a Node<T> interface and an AbstractNode<T> class that implements the Node interface. I then created a GenericNode<T> (a node that can have 0 to n children, and that is part of an n-ary tree) class that extends AbstractNode<T> and implements Node<T>. This part was easy. Next, I created a Tree<T> interface and an AbstractTree<T> class that implements the Tree<T> interface. After that, I started writing a GenericTree<T> class that extends AbstractTree<T> and implements Tree<T>. This is where I started having problems. As far as the design is concerned, a GenericTree<T> can only consist of nodes of type GenericTreeNode<T>. This includes the root. In my Tree<T> interface I have: public interface Tree<T> { void setRoot(Node<T> root); Node<T> getRoot(); List<Node<T>> postOrder(); ... rest omitted ... } And, AbstractTree<T> implements this interface: public abstract class AbstractTree<T> implements Tree<T> { protected Node<T> root; protected AbstractTree() { } protected AbstractTree(Node<T> root) { this.root = root; } public void setRoot(Node<T> root) { this.root = root; } public Node<T> getRoot() { return this.root; } ... rest omitted ... } In GenericTree<T>, I can have: public GenericTree(Node<T> root) { super(root); } But what this means is that you can create a generic tree using any subtype of Node<T>. You can also set the root of a tree to any subtype of Node<T>. I want to be able to restrict the type of the node to the type of the tree that it can represent. To fix this, I can do this: public GenericTree(GenericNode<T> root) { super(root); } However, setRoot still accepts a parameter of type Node<T>. Which means a user can still create a tree with the wrong type of root node. How do I enforce this constraint? The only way I can think of doing is either: Do an instanceof which limits the check to runtime. I'm not a huge fan of this. Remove setRoot from the interface and have the base class implement this method. This means that it is not part of the contract and anyone who wants to make a new type of tree needs to remember to implement this method. Is there a better way? The second question I have concerns the return type of postOrder which is List<Node<T>>. This means that if a user is operating on a GenericTree<T> object and calls postOrder, he or she receives a list that consists of Node<T> objects. This means when iterating through (using a foreach construct) they would have perform an explicit cast to GenericNode<T> if they want to use methods that are only defined in that class. I don't like having to place this burden on the user. What are my options in this case? I can only think of removing the method from the interface and have the subclass implement this method making sure that it returns a list of appropriate subtype of Node<T>. However, this once again removes it from the contract and it's anyone who wants to create a new type of tree has to remember to implement this method. Is there a better way?

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• IIS SSL Certificate Renewal Pain

  - by Rick Strahl

  I’m in the middle of my annual certificate renewal for the West Wind site and I can honestly say that I hate IIS’s certificate system.  When it works it’s fine, but when it doesn’t man can it be a pain. Because I deal with public certificates on my site merely once a year, and you have to perform the certificate dance just the right way, I seem to run into some sort of trouble every year, thinking that Microsoft surely must have addressed the issues I ran into previously – HA! Not so. Don’t ever use the Renew Certificate Feature in IIS! The first rule that I should have never forgotten is that certificate renewals in IIS (7 is what I’m using but I think it’s no different in 7.5 and 8), simply don’t work if you’re submitting to get a public certificate from a certificate authority. I use DNSimple for my DNS domain management and SSL certificates because they provide ridiculously easy domain management and good prices for SSL certs – especially wildcard certificates, which is what I use on west-wind.com. Certificates in IIS can be found pegged to the machine root. If you go into the IIS Manager, go to the machine root the tree and then click on certificates and you then get various certificate options: Both of these options create a new Certificate request (CSR), which is just a text file. But if you’re silly enough like me to click on the Renew button on your old certificate, you’ll find that you end up generating a very long Certificate Request that looks nothing like the original certificate request and the format that’s used for this is not accepted by most certificate authorities. While I’m not sure exactly what the problem is, it simply looks like IIS is respecting none of your original certificate bit size choices and is generating a huge certificate request that is 3 times the size of a ‘normal’ certificate request. The end result is (and I’ve done this at least twice now) is that the certificate processor is likely to fail processing those renewals. Always create a new Certificate While it’s a little more work and you have to remember how to fill out the certificate request properly, this is the safe way to make sure your certificate generates properly. First comes the Distinguished Name Properties dialog: Ah yes you have to love the nomenclature of this stuff. Distinguished name, Common name – WTF is a common name? It doesn’t look common to me! Make sure this form gets filled out correctly. Common NameThis is the domain name of the Web site. In my case I’m creating a wildcard certificate so I’m using the * prefix. If you’re purchasing a certificate for a specific domain use www.west-wind.com or store.west-wind.com for example. Make sure this matches the EXACT domain you’re trying to use secure access on because that’s all the certificate is going to work on unless you get a wildcard certificate. Organization Is the name of your company or organization. Depending on the kind of certificate you purchase this name will show up on your certificate. Most low end SSL certificates (ie. those that cost under $100 for single domains) don’t list the organization, the higher signature certificates that also require extensive validation by the cert authority do. Regardless you should make sure this matches the right company/organization. Organizational Unit This can be anything. Not really sure what this is for, but traditionally I’ve always set this to Web because – well this is a Web thing after all right? I’ve never seen this used anywhere that I can tell other than to internally reference the cert. State and CountryPretty obvious. Should reflect the location of the business/organization/person or site.   Next you have to configure the bit size used for the certificate: The default on this dialog is 1024, but I’ve found that most providers these days request a minimum bit length of 2048, as did my DNSimple provider. Again check with the provider when you submit to make sure. Bit length mismatches can cause problems if you use a size that isn’t supported by the provider. I had that happen last year when I submitted my CSR and it got rejected quite a bit later, when the certs usually are issued within an hour or less. When you’re done here, the certificate is saved to disk as a .txt file and it should look something like this (this is a 2048 bit length CSR):-----BEGIN NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- MIIEVGCCAz0CAQAwdjELMAkGA1UEBhMCVVMxDzANBgNVBAgMBkhhd2FpaTENMAsG A1UEBwwEUGFpYTEfMB0GA1UECgwWV2VzdCBXaW5kIFRlY2hub2xvZ2llczEMMAoG B1UECwwDV2ViMRgwFgYDVQQDDA8qLndlc3Qtd2luZC5jb20wggEiMA0GCSqGSIb3 DQEBAQUAA4IBDwAwggEKAoIBAQDIPWOFMkMVRp2Ftj9w/cCVV4OYYhoZYtl+8lTk oqDwKca0xWHLgioX/9v0rZLS6a82MHqKEBxVXu+cuCmSE4AQtB/1YH9lS4tpc/be OZDvnTotP6l4MCEzzAfROcw4CiIg6X0RMSnl8IATAvv2V5LQM9TDdt9oDdMpX2IY +vVC9RZ7PMHBmR9kwI2i/lrKitzhQKaHgpmKcRlM6iqpALUiX28w5HJaDKK1MDHN 607tyFJLHijuJKx7PdTqZYf50KkC3NupfZ2avVycf18Q13jHWj59tvwEOczoVzRL l4LQivAqbhyiqMpWnrZunIOUZta5aGm+jo7O1knGWJjxuraTAgMBAAGgggGYMBoG CisGAQQBgjcNAgMxDBYKNi4yLjkyMDAuMjA0BgkrBgEEAYI3FRQxJzAlAgEFDAZS QVNYUFMMC1JBU1hQU1xSaWNrDAtJbmV0TWdyLmV4ZTByBgorBgEEAYI3DQICMWQw YgIBAR5aAE0AaQBjAHIAbwBzAG8AZgB0ACAAUgBTAEEAIABTAEMAaABhAG4AbgBl AGwAIABDAHIAeQBwAHQAbwBnAHIAYQBwAGgAaQBjACAAUAByAG8AdgBpAGQAZQBy AwEAMIHPBgkqhkiG9w0BCQ4xgcEwgb4wDgYDVR0PAQH/BAQDAgTwMBMGA1UdJQQM MAoGCCsGAQUFBwMBMHgGCSqGSIb3DQEJDwRrMGkwDgYIKoZIhvcNAwICAgCAMA4G CCqGSIb3DQMEAgIAgDALBglghkgBZQMEASowCwYJYIZIAWUDBAEtMAsGCWCGSAFl AwQBAjALBglghkgBZQMEAQUwBwYFKw4DAgcwCgYIKoZIhvcNAwcwHQYDVR0OBBYE FD/yOsTbXE+GVFCFMmldzQvyloz9MA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBQUAA4IBAQCK6LlsCuIM 1AU0niB6QZ9v0FTsGFxP1dYvVUnJyY6VEKNiGFiQjZac7UCs0p58yScdXWEFOE8V OsjAYD3xYNc05+ckyD67UHRGEUAVB9RBvbKW23KeR/8kBmEzc8PemD52YOgExxAJ 57xWmAwEHAvbgYzQvhO8AOzH3TGvvHbg5UKM1pYgNmuwZq5DkL/IDoeIJwfk/wrI wghNTuxxIFgbH4YrgLgv4PRvrS/LaTCRBdboaCgzATMczaOb1nd/DVNR+3fCtMhM W0psTAjzRbmXF3nJyAQa7jF/52gkY0RfFX2lG5tJnG+XDsVNvKNvh9Qa5Tlmkm06 ILKCm9ciWCKk -----END NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- You can take that certificate request and submit that to your certificate provider. Since this is base64 encoded you can typically just paste it into a text box on the submission page, or some providers will ask you to upload the CSR as a file. What does a Renewal look like? Note the length of the CSR will vary somewhat with key strength, but compare this to a renewal request that IIS generated from my existing site:-----BEGIN NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- MIIPpwYFKoZIhvcNAQcCoIIPmDCCD5QCAQExCzAJBgUrDgMCGgUAMIIIqAYJKoZI hvcNAQcBoIIImQSCCJUwggiRMIIH+gIBADBdMSEwHwYDVQQLDBhEb21haW4gQ29u dHJvbCBWYWxpFGF0ZWQxHjAcBgNVBAsMFUVzc2VudGlhbFNTTCBXaWxkY2FyZDEY MBYGA1UEAwwPKi53ZXN0LXdpbmQuY29tMIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCB iQKBgQCK4OuIOR18Wb8tNMGRZiD1c9X57b332Lj7DhbckFqLs0ys8kVDHrTXSj+T Ye9nmAvfPpZmBtE5p9qRNN79rUYugAdl+qEtE4IJe1bRfxXzcKa1SXa8+TEs3zQa zYSmcR2dDuC8om1eAdeCtt0NnkvANgm1VLwGOor/UHMASaEhCQIDAQABoIIG8jAa BgorBgEEAYI3DQIDMQwWCjYuMi45MjAwLjIwNAYJKwYBBAGCNxUUMScwJQIBBQwG UkFTWFBTDAtSQVNYUFNcUmljawwLSW5ldE1nci5leGUwZgYKKwYBBAGCNw0CAjFY MFYCAQIeTgBNAGkAYwByAG8AcwBvAGYAdAAgAFMAdAByAG8AbgBnACAAQwByAHkA cAB0AG8AZwByAGEAcABoAGkAYwAgAFAAcgBvAHYAaQBkAGUAcgMBADCCAQAGCSqG SIb3DQEJDjGB8jCB7zAOBgNVHQ8BAf8EBAMCBaAwDAYDVR0TAQH/BAIwADA0BgNV 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+XZ8bhM7vsAS+pZionR4MyuQ0mYIt/lDcsZVZ91KxTsIm8rNMkkYGFoSIXjQ0+0t CbxMF0i2qnpmNRpA6PU8l7lxxvPkplsk9KB8QIPFrR5p/i/SUAd9vECWh5+/ktlc rfFP2PK7XcEwWizsvMrNqLyvQVNXSUPTMYIBrzCCAasCAQEwgYcwcjELMAkGA1UE BhMCR0IxGzAZBgNVBAgTEkdyZWF0ZXIgTWFuY2hlc3RlcjEQMA4GA1UEBxMHU2Fs Zm9yZDEaMBgGA1UEChMRQ09NT0RPIENBIExpbWl0ZWQxGDAWBgNVBAMTD0Vzc2Vu dGlhbFNTTCBDQQIRAO7UTVPkm+2Sbks59IdptaUwCQYFKw4DAhoFADANBgkqhkiG 9w0BAQEFAASCAQB8PNQ6bYnQpWfkHyxnDuvNKw3wrqF2p7JMZm+SuN2qp3R2LpCR mW2LrGtQIm9Iob/QOYH+8houYNVdvsATGPXX2T8gzn+anof4tOG0vCTK1Bp9bwf9 MkRP+1c8RW/vkYmUW4X5/C+y3CZpMH5dDTaXBIpXFzjX/fxNpH/rvLzGiaYYL3Cn OLO+aOADr9qq5yoqwpiYCSfYNNYKTUNNGfYIidQwYtbHXEYhSukB2oR89xD2sZZ4 bOqFjUPgTa5SsERLDDeg3omMKiIXVYGxlqBEq51Kge6IQt4qQV9P9VgInW7cWmKe dTqNHI9ri3ttewdEnT++TKGKKfTjX9SR8Waj -----END NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- Clearly there’s something very different between this an my original request! And it didn’t work. IIS creates a custom CSR that is encoded in a format that no certificate authority I’ve ever used uses. If you want the gory details of what’s in there look at this ServerFault question (thanks to Mika in the comments). In the end it doesn’t matter  though – no certificate authority knows what to do with this CSR. So create a new CSR and skip the renewal. Always! Use the same Server Keep in mind that on IIS at least you should always create your certificate on a single server and then when you receive the final certificate from your provider import it on that server. IIS tracks the CSR it created and requires it in order to import the final certificate properly. So if for some reason you try to install the certificate on another server, it won’t work. I’ve also run into trouble trying to install the same certificate twice – this time around I didn’t give my certificate the proper friendly name and IIS failed to allow me to assign the certificate to any of my Web sites. So I removed the certificate and tried to import again, only to find it failed the second time around. There are other ways to fix this, but in my case I had to have the certificate re-issued to work – not what you want to do. Regardless of what you do though, when you import make sure you do it right the first time by crossing all your t’s and dotting your i's– it’ll save you a lot of grief! You don’t actually have to use the server that the certificate gets installed on to generate the CSR and first install it, but it is generally a good idea to do so just so you can get the certificate installed into the right place right away. If you have access to the server where you need to install the certificate you might as well use it. But you can use another machine to generated the and install the certificate, then export the certificate and move it to another machine as needed. So you can use your Dev machine to create a certificate then export it and install it on a live server. More on installation and back up/export later. Installing the Certificate Once you’ve submitted a CSR request your provider will process the request and eventually issue you a new final certificate that contains another text file with the final key to import into your certificate store. IIS does this by combining the content in your certificate request with the original CSR. If all goes well your new certificate shows up in the certificate list and you’re ready to assign the certificate to your sites. Make sure you use a friendly name that matches domain name of your site. So use *.mysite.com or www.mysite.com or store.mysite.com to ensure IIS recognizes the certificate. I made the mistake of not naming my friendly name this way and found that IIS was unable to link my sites to my wildcard certificate. It needed to have the *. as part of the certificate otherwise the Hostname input field was blanked out. Changing the Friendly Name If you by accidentally used an invalid friendly name you can change it later in the Windows certificate store. Bring up a Run Box Type MMC File | Add/Remove Snap In Add Certificates | Computer Account | Local Computer Drill into Certificates | Personal | Certificates Find your Certificate | Right Click | Properties Edit the Friendly Name | Click OK Backing up your Certificate The first thing you should do once your certificate is successfully installed is to back it up! In case your server crashes or you otherwise lose your configuration this will ensure you have an easy way to recover and reinstall your certificate either on the same server or a different one. If you’re running a server farm or using a wildcard certificate you also need to get the certificate onto other machines and a PFX file import is the easiest way to do this. To back up your certificate select your certificate and choose Export from the context or sidebar menu: The Export Certificate option allows you to export a password protected binary file that you can import in a single step. You can copy the resulting binary PFX file to back up or copy to other machines to install on. Importing the certificate on another machine is as easy as pointing at the PFX file and specifying the password. IIS handles the rest. Assigning a new certificate to your Site Once you have the new certificate installed, all that’s left to do is assign it to your site. In IIS select your Web site and bring up the Site Bindings from the right sidebar. Add a new binding for https, bind it to port 443, specify your hostname and pick the certificate from the pick list. If you’re using a root site make sure to set up your certificate for www.yoursite.com and also for yoursite.com so that both work properly with SSL. Note that you need to explicitly configure each hostname for a certificate if you plan to use SSL. Luckily if you update your SSL certificate in the following year, IIS prompts you and asks whether you like to update all other sites that are using the existing cert to the newer cert. And you’re done. So what’s the Pain? So, all of this is old hat and it doesn’t look all that bad right? So what’s the pain here? Well if you follow the instructions and do everything right, then the process is about as straight forward as you would expect it to be. You create a cert request, you import it and assign it to your sites. That’s the basic steps and to be perfectly fair it works well – if nothing goes wrong. However, renewing tends to be the problem. The first unintuitive issue is that you simply shouldn’t renew but create a new CSR and generate your new certificate from that. Over the years I’ve fallen prey to the belief that Microsoft eventually will fix this so that the renewal creates the same type of CSR as the old cert, but apparently that will just never happen. Booo! The other problem I ran into is that I accidentally misnamed my imported certificate which in turn set off a chain of events that caused my originally issued certificate to become uninstallable. When I received my completed certificate I installed it and it installed just fine, but the friendly name was wrong. As a result IIS refused to assign the certificate to any of my host headered sites. That’s strike number one. Why the heck should the friendly name have any effect on the ability to attach the certificate??? Next I uninstalled the certificate because I figured that would be the easiest way to make sure I get it right. But I found that I could not reinstall my certificate. I kept getting these stop errors: "ASN1 bad tag value met" that would prevent the installation from completion. After searching around for this error and reading countless long messages on forums, I found that this error supposedly does not actually mean the install failed, but the list wouldn’t refresh. Commodo has this to say: Note: There is a known issue in IIS 7 giving the following error: "Cannot find the certificate request associated with this certificate file. A certificate request must be completed on the computer where it was created." You may also receive a message stating "ASN1 bad tag value met". If this is the same server that you generated the CSR on then, in most cases, the certificate is actually installed. Simply cancel the dialog and press "F5" to refresh the list of server certificates. If the new certificate is now in the list, you can continue with the next step. If it is not in the list, you will need to reissue your certificate using a new CSR (see our CSR creation instructions for IIS 7). After creating a new CSR, login to your Comodo account and click the 'replace' button for your certificate. Not sure if this issue is fixed in IIS 8 but that’s an insane bug to have crop up. As it turns out, in my case the refresh didn’t work and the certificate didn’t show up in the IIS list after the reinstall. In fact when looking at the certificate store I could see my certificate was installed in the right place, but the private key is missing which is most likely why IIS is not picking it up. It looks like IIS could not match the final cert to the original CSR generated. But again some sort of message to that affect might be helpful instead of ASN1 bad tag value met. Recovering the Private Key So it turns out my original problem was that I received the published key, but when I imported the private key was missing. There’s a relatively easy way to recover from this. If your certificate doesn’t show up in IIS check in the certificate store for the local machine (see steps above on how to bring this up). If you look at the certificate in Certificates/Personal/Certificates make sure you see the key as shown in the image below: if the key is missing it means that the certificate is missing the private key most likely. To fix a certificate you can do the following: Double click the certificate Go to the Details Tab Copy down the Serial number You can copy the serial number from the area blurred out above. The serial number will be in a format like ?00 a7 9b a1 a4 9d 91 63 57 d6 9f 26 b8 ee 79 b5 cb and you’ll need to strip out the spaces in order to use it in the next step. Next open up an Administrative command prompt and issue the following command: certutil -repairstore my 00a79ba1a49d916357d69f26b8ee79b5cb You should get a confirmation message that the repair worked. If you now go back to the certificate store you should now see the key icon show up on the certificate. Your certificate is fixed. Now go back into IIS Manager and refresh the list of certificates and if all goes well you should see all the certificates that showed in the cert store now: Remember – back up the key first then map to your site… Summary I deal with a lot of customers who run their own IIS servers, and I can’t tell you how often I hear about botched SSL installations. When I posted some of my issues on Twitter yesterday I got a hell storm of “me too” responses. I’m clearly not the only one, who’s run into this especially with renewals. I feel pretty comfortable with IIS configuration and I do a lot of it for support purposes, but the SSL configuration is one that never seems to go seamlessly. This blog post is meant as reminder to myself to read next time I do a renewal. So I can dot my i's and dash my t’s before I get caught in the mess I’m dealing with today. Hopefully some of you find this useful as well.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2014Posted in IIS7  Security   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Creating a dynamic proxy generator with c# – Part 3 – Creating the constructors

  - by SeanMcAlinden

  Creating a dynamic proxy generator with c# – Part 1 – Creating the Assembly builder, Module builder and caching mechanism Creating a dynamic proxy generator with c# – Part 2 – Interceptor Design For the latest code go to http://rapidioc.codeplex.com/ When building our proxy type, the first thing we need to do is build the constructors. There needs to be a corresponding constructor for each constructor on the passed in base type. We also want to create a field to store the interceptors and construct this list within each constructor. So assuming the passed in base type is a User<int, IRepository> class, were looking to generate constructor code like the following:   Default Constructor public User`2_RapidDynamicBaseProxy() {     this.interceptors = new List<IInterceptor<User<int, IRepository>>>();     DefaultInterceptor<User<int, IRepository>> item = new DefaultInterceptor<User<int, IRepository>>();     this.interceptors.Add(item); }     Parameterised Constructor public User`2_RapidDynamicBaseProxy(IRepository repository1) : base(repository1) {     this.interceptors = new List<IInterceptor<User<int, IRepository>>>();     DefaultInterceptor<User<int, IRepository>> item = new DefaultInterceptor<User<int, IRepository>>();     this.interceptors.Add(item); }   As you can see, we first populate a field on the class with a new list of the passed in base type. Construct our DefaultInterceptor class. Add the DefaultInterceptor instance to our interceptor collection. Although this seems like a relatively small task, there is a fair amount of work require to get this going. Instead of going through every line of code – please download the latest from http://rapidioc.codeplex.com/ and debug through. In this post I’m going to concentrate on explaining how it works. TypeBuilder The TypeBuilder class is the main class used to create the type. You instantiate a new TypeBuilder using the assembly module we created in part 1. /// <summary> /// Creates a type builder. /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TBase">The type of the base class to be proxied.</typeparam> public static TypeBuilder CreateTypeBuilder<TBase>() where TBase : class {     TypeBuilder typeBuilder = DynamicModuleCache.Get.DefineType         (             CreateTypeName<TBase>(),             TypeAttributes.Class | TypeAttributes.Public,             typeof(TBase),             new Type[] { typeof(IProxy) }         );       if (typeof(TBase).IsGenericType)     {         GenericsHelper.MakeGenericType(typeof(TBase), typeBuilder);     }       return typeBuilder; }   private static string CreateTypeName<TBase>() where TBase : class {     return string.Format("{0}_RapidDynamicBaseProxy", typeof(TBase).Name); } As you can see, I’ve create a new public class derived from TBase which also implements my IProxy interface, this is used later for adding interceptors. If the base type is generic, the following GenericsHelper.MakeGenericType method is called. GenericsHelper using System; using System.Reflection.Emit; namespace Rapid.DynamicProxy.Types.Helpers {     /// <summary>     /// Helper class for generic types and methods.     /// </summary>     internal static class GenericsHelper     {         /// <summary>         /// Makes the typeBuilder a generic.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="concrete">The concrete.</param>         /// <param name="typeBuilder">The type builder.</param>         public static void MakeGenericType(Type baseType, TypeBuilder typeBuilder)         {             Type[] genericArguments = baseType.GetGenericArguments();               string[] genericArgumentNames = GetArgumentNames(genericArguments);               GenericTypeParameterBuilder[] genericTypeParameterBuilder                 = typeBuilder.DefineGenericParameters(genericArgumentNames);               typeBuilder.MakeGenericType(genericTypeParameterBuilder);         }           /// <summary>         /// Gets the argument names from an array of generic argument types.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="genericArguments">The generic arguments.</param>         public static string[] GetArgumentNames(Type[] genericArguments)         {             string[] genericArgumentNames = new string[genericArguments.Length];               for (int i = 0; i < genericArguments.Length; i++)             {                 genericArgumentNames[i] = genericArguments[i].Name;             }               return genericArgumentNames;         }     } }       As you can see, I’m getting all of the generic argument types and names, creating a GenericTypeParameterBuilder and then using the typeBuilder to make the new type generic. InterceptorsField The interceptors field will store a List<IInterceptor<TBase>>. Fields are simple made using the FieldBuilder class. The following code demonstrates how to create the interceptor field. FieldBuilder interceptorsField = typeBuilder.DefineField(     "interceptors",     typeof(System.Collections.Generic.List<>).MakeGenericType(typeof(IInterceptor<TBase>)),       FieldAttributes.Private     ); The field will now exist with the new Type although it currently has no data – we’ll deal with this in the constructor. Add method for interceptorsField To enable us to add to the interceptorsField list, we are going to utilise the Add method that already exists within the System.Collections.Generic.List class. We still however have to create the methodInfo necessary to call the add method. This can be done similar to the following: Add Interceptor Field MethodInfo addInterceptor = typeof(List<>)     .MakeGenericType(new Type[] { typeof(IInterceptor<>).MakeGenericType(typeof(TBase)) })     .GetMethod     (        "Add",        BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.NonPublic,        null,        new Type[] { typeof(IInterceptor<>).MakeGenericType(typeof(TBase)) },        null     ); So we’ve create a List<IInterceptor<TBase>> type, then using the type created a method info called Add which accepts an IInterceptor<TBase>. Now in our constructor we can use this to call this.interceptors.Add(// interceptor); Building the Constructors This will be the first hard-core part of the proxy building process so I’m going to show the class and then try to explain what everything is doing. For a clear view, download the source from http://rapidioc.codeplex.com/, go to the test project and debug through the constructor building section. Anyway, here it is: DynamicConstructorBuilder using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Reflection; using System.Reflection.Emit; using Rapid.DynamicProxy.Interception; using Rapid.DynamicProxy.Types.Helpers; namespace Rapid.DynamicProxy.Types.Constructors {     /// <summary>     /// Class for creating the proxy constructors.     /// </summary>     internal static class DynamicConstructorBuilder     {         /// <summary>         /// Builds the constructors.         /// </summary>         /// <typeparam name="TBase">The base type.</typeparam>         /// <param name="typeBuilder">The type builder.</param>         /// <param name="interceptorsField">The interceptors field.</param>         public static void BuildConstructors<TBase>             (                 TypeBuilder typeBuilder,                 FieldBuilder interceptorsField,                 MethodInfo addInterceptor             )             where TBase : class         {             ConstructorInfo interceptorsFieldConstructor = CreateInterceptorsFieldConstructor<TBase>();               ConstructorInfo defaultInterceptorConstructor = CreateDefaultInterceptorConstructor<TBase>();               ConstructorInfo[] constructors = typeof(TBase).GetConstructors();               foreach (ConstructorInfo constructorInfo in constructors)             {                 CreateConstructor<TBase>                     (                         typeBuilder,                         interceptorsField,                         interceptorsFieldConstructor,                         defaultInterceptorConstructor,                         addInterceptor,                         constructorInfo                     );             }         }           #region Private Methods           private static void CreateConstructor<TBase>             (                 TypeBuilder typeBuilder,                 FieldBuilder interceptorsField,                 ConstructorInfo interceptorsFieldConstructor,                 ConstructorInfo defaultInterceptorConstructor,                 MethodInfo AddDefaultInterceptor,                 ConstructorInfo constructorInfo             ) where TBase : class         {             Type[] parameterTypes = GetParameterTypes(constructorInfo);               ConstructorBuilder constructorBuilder = CreateConstructorBuilder(typeBuilder, parameterTypes);               ILGenerator cIL = constructorBuilder.GetILGenerator();               LocalBuilder defaultInterceptorMethodVariable =                 cIL.DeclareLocal(typeof(DefaultInterceptor<>).MakeGenericType(typeof(TBase)));               ConstructInterceptorsField(interceptorsField, interceptorsFieldConstructor, cIL);               ConstructDefaultInterceptor(defaultInterceptorConstructor, cIL, defaultInterceptorMethodVariable);               AddDefaultInterceptorToInterceptorsList                 (                     interceptorsField,                     AddDefaultInterceptor,                     cIL,                     defaultInterceptorMethodVariable                 );               CreateConstructor(constructorInfo, parameterTypes, cIL);         }           private static void CreateConstructor(ConstructorInfo constructorInfo, Type[] parameterTypes, ILGenerator cIL)         {             cIL.Emit(OpCodes.Ldarg_0);               if (parameterTypes.Length > 0)             {                 LoadParameterTypes(parameterTypes, cIL);             }               cIL.Emit(OpCodes.Call, constructorInfo);             cIL.Emit(OpCodes.Ret);         }           private static void LoadParameterTypes(Type[] parameterTypes, ILGenerator cIL)         {             for (int i = 1; i <= parameterTypes.Length; i++)             {                 cIL.Emit(OpCodes.Ldarg_S, i);             }         }           private static void AddDefaultInterceptorToInterceptorsList             (                 FieldBuilder interceptorsField,                 MethodInfo AddDefaultInterceptor,                 ILGenerator cIL,                 LocalBuilder defaultInterceptorMethodVariable             )         {             cIL.Emit(OpCodes.Ldarg_0);             cIL.Emit(OpCodes.Ldfld, interceptorsField);             cIL.Emit(OpCodes.Ldloc, defaultInterceptorMethodVariable);             cIL.Emit(OpCodes.Callvirt, AddDefaultInterceptor);         }           private static void ConstructDefaultInterceptor             (                 ConstructorInfo defaultInterceptorConstructor,                 ILGenerator cIL,                 LocalBuilder defaultInterceptorMethodVariable             )         {             cIL.Emit(OpCodes.Newobj, defaultInterceptorConstructor);             cIL.Emit(OpCodes.Stloc, defaultInterceptorMethodVariable);         }           private static void ConstructInterceptorsField             (                 FieldBuilder interceptorsField,                 ConstructorInfo interceptorsFieldConstructor,                 ILGenerator cIL             )         {             cIL.Emit(OpCodes.Ldarg_0);             cIL.Emit(OpCodes.Newobj, interceptorsFieldConstructor);             cIL.Emit(OpCodes.Stfld, interceptorsField);         }           private static ConstructorBuilder CreateConstructorBuilder(TypeBuilder typeBuilder, Type[] parameterTypes)         {             return typeBuilder.DefineConstructor                 (                     MethodAttributes.Public | MethodAttributes.SpecialName | MethodAttributes.RTSpecialName                     | MethodAttributes.HideBySig, CallingConventions.Standard, parameterTypes                 );         }           private static Type[] GetParameterTypes(ConstructorInfo constructorInfo)         {             ParameterInfo[] parameterInfoArray = constructorInfo.GetParameters();               Type[] parameterTypes = new Type[parameterInfoArray.Length];               for (int p = 0; p < parameterInfoArray.Length; p++)             {                 parameterTypes[p] = parameterInfoArray[p].ParameterType;             }               return parameterTypes;         }           private static ConstructorInfo CreateInterceptorsFieldConstructor<TBase>() where TBase : class         {             return ConstructorHelper.CreateGenericConstructorInfo                 (                     typeof(List<>),                     new Type[] { typeof(IInterceptor<TBase>) },                     BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.NonPublic                 );         }           private static ConstructorInfo CreateDefaultInterceptorConstructor<TBase>() where TBase : class         {             return ConstructorHelper.CreateGenericConstructorInfo                 (                     typeof(DefaultInterceptor<>),                     new Type[] { typeof(TBase) },                     BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.NonPublic                 );         }           #endregion     } } So, the first two tasks within the class should be fairly clear, we are creating a ConstructorInfo for the interceptorField list and a ConstructorInfo for the DefaultConstructor, this is for instantiating them in each contructor. We then using Reflection get an array of all of the constructors in the base class, we then loop through the array and create a corresponding proxy contructor. Hopefully, the code is fairly easy to follow other than some new types and the dreaded Opcodes. ConstructorBuilder This class defines a new constructor on the type. ILGenerator The ILGenerator allows the use of Reflection.Emit to create the method body. LocalBuilder The local builder allows the storage of data in local variables within a method, in this case it’s the constructed DefaultInterceptor. Constructing the interceptors field The first bit of IL you’ll come across as you follow through the code is the following private method used for constructing the field list of interceptors. private static void ConstructInterceptorsField             (                 FieldBuilder interceptorsField,                 ConstructorInfo interceptorsFieldConstructor,                 ILGenerator cIL             )         {             cIL.Emit(OpCodes.Ldarg_0);             cIL.Emit(OpCodes.Newobj, interceptorsFieldConstructor);             cIL.Emit(OpCodes.Stfld, interceptorsField);         } The first thing to know about generating code using IL is that you are using a stack, if you want to use something, you need to push it up the stack etc. etc. OpCodes.ldArg_0 This opcode is a really interesting one, basically each method has a hidden first argument of the containing class instance (apart from static classes), constructors are no different. This is the reason you can use syntax like this.myField. So back to the method, as we want to instantiate the List in the interceptorsField, first we need to load the class instance onto the stack, we then load the new object (new List<TBase>) and finally we store it in the interceptorsField. Hopefully, that should follow easily enough in the method. In each constructor you would now have this.interceptors = new List<User<int, IRepository>>(); Constructing and storing the DefaultInterceptor The next bit of code we need to create is the constructed DefaultInterceptor. Firstly, we create a local builder to store the constructed type. Create a local builder LocalBuilder defaultInterceptorMethodVariable =     cIL.DeclareLocal(typeof(DefaultInterceptor<>).MakeGenericType(typeof(TBase))); Once our local builder is ready, we then need to construct the DefaultInterceptor<TBase> and store it in the variable. Connstruct DefaultInterceptor private static void ConstructDefaultInterceptor     (         ConstructorInfo defaultInterceptorConstructor,         ILGenerator cIL,         LocalBuilder defaultInterceptorMethodVariable     ) {     cIL.Emit(OpCodes.Newobj, defaultInterceptorConstructor);     cIL.Emit(OpCodes.Stloc, defaultInterceptorMethodVariable); } As you can see, using the ConstructorInfo named defaultInterceptorConstructor, we load the new object onto the stack. Then using the store local opcode (OpCodes.Stloc), we store the new object in the local builder named defaultInterceptorMethodVariable. Add the constructed DefaultInterceptor to the interceptors field collection Using the add method created earlier in this post, we are going to add the new DefaultInterceptor object to the interceptors field collection. Add Default Interceptor private static void AddDefaultInterceptorToInterceptorsList     (         FieldBuilder interceptorsField,         MethodInfo AddDefaultInterceptor,         ILGenerator cIL,         LocalBuilder defaultInterceptorMethodVariable     ) {     cIL.Emit(OpCodes.Ldarg_0);     cIL.Emit(OpCodes.Ldfld, interceptorsField);     cIL.Emit(OpCodes.Ldloc, defaultInterceptorMethodVariable);     cIL.Emit(OpCodes.Callvirt, AddDefaultInterceptor); } So, here’s whats going on. The class instance is first loaded onto the stack using the load argument at index 0 opcode (OpCodes.Ldarg_0) (remember the first arg is the hidden class instance). The interceptorsField is then loaded onto the stack using the load field opcode (OpCodes.Ldfld). We then load the DefaultInterceptor object we stored locally using the load local opcode (OpCodes.Ldloc). Then finally we call the AddDefaultInterceptor method using the call virtual opcode (Opcodes.Callvirt). Completing the constructor The last thing we need to do is complete the constructor. Complete the constructor private static void CreateConstructor(ConstructorInfo constructorInfo, Type[] parameterTypes, ILGenerator cIL)         {             cIL.Emit(OpCodes.Ldarg_0);               if (parameterTypes.Length > 0)             {                 LoadParameterTypes(parameterTypes, cIL);             }               cIL.Emit(OpCodes.Call, constructorInfo);             cIL.Emit(OpCodes.Ret);         }           private static void LoadParameterTypes(Type[] parameterTypes, ILGenerator cIL)         {             for (int i = 1; i <= parameterTypes.Length; i++)             {                 cIL.Emit(OpCodes.Ldarg_S, i);             }         } So, the first thing we do again is load the class instance using the load argument at index 0 opcode (OpCodes.Ldarg_0). We then load each parameter using OpCode.Ldarg_S, this opcode allows us to specify an index position for each argument. We then setup calling the base constructor using OpCodes.Call and the base constructors ConstructorInfo. Finally, all methods are required to return, even when they have a void return. As there are no values on the stack after the OpCodes.Call line, we can safely call the OpCode.Ret to give the constructor a void return. If there was a value, we would have to pop the value of the stack before calling return otherwise, the method would try and return a value. Conclusion This was a slightly hardcore post but hopefully it hasn’t been too hard to follow. The main thing is that a number of the really useful opcodes have been used and now the dynamic proxy is capable of being constructed. If you download the code and debug through the tests at http://rapidioc.codeplex.com/, you’ll be able to create proxies at this point, they cannon do anything in terms of interception but you can happily run the tests, call base methods and properties and also take a look at the created assembly in Reflector. Hope this is useful. The next post should be up soon, it will be covering creating the private methods for calling the base class methods and properties. Kind Regards, Sean.

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• Creating STA COM compatible ASP.NET Applications

  - by Rick Strahl

  When building ASP.NET applications that interface with old school COM objects like those created with VB6 or Visual FoxPro (MTDLL), it's extremely important that the threads that are serving requests use Single Threaded Apartment Threading. STA is a COM built-in technology that allows essentially single threaded components to operate reliably in a multi-threaded environment. STA's guarantee that COM objects instantiated on a specific thread stay on that specific thread and any access to a COM object from another thread automatically marshals that thread to the STA thread. The end effect is that you can have multiple threads, but a COM object instance lives on a fixed never changing thread. ASP.NET by default uses MTA (multi-threaded apartment) threads which are truly free spinning threads that pay no heed to COM object marshaling. This is vastly more efficient than STA threading which has a bit of overhead in determining whether it's OK to run code on a given thread or whether some sort of thread/COM marshaling needs to occur. MTA COM components can be very efficient, but STA COM components in a multi-threaded environment always tend to have a fair amount of overhead. It's amazing how much COM Interop I still see today so while it seems really old school to be talking about this topic, it's actually quite apropos for me as I have many customers using legacy COM systems that need to interface with other .NET applications. In this post I'm consolidating some of the hacks I've used to integrate with various ASP.NET technologies when using STA COM Components. STA in ASP.NET Support for STA threading in the ASP.NET framework is fairly limited. Specifically only the original ASP.NET WebForms technology supports STA threading directly via its STA Page Handler implementation or what you might know as ASPCOMPAT mode. For WebForms running STA components is as easy as specifying the ASPCOMPAT attribute in the @Page tag:<%@ Page Language="C#" AspCompat="true" %> which runs the page in STA mode. Removing it runs in MTA mode. Simple. Unfortunately all other ASP.NET technologies built on top of the core ASP.NET engine do not support STA natively. So if you want to use STA COM components in MVC or with class ASMX Web Services, there's no automatic way like the ASPCOMPAT keyword available. So what happens when you run an STA COM component in an MTA application? In low volume environments - nothing much will happen. The COM objects will appear to work just fine as there are no simultaneous thread interactions and the COM component will happily run on a single thread or multiple single threads one at a time. So for testing running components in MTA environments may appear to work just fine. However as load increases and threads get re-used by ASP.NET COM objects will end up getting created on multiple different threads. This can result in crashes or hangs, or data corruption in the STA components which store their state in thread local storage on the STA thread. If threads overlap this global store can easily get corrupted which in turn causes problems. STA ensures that any COM object instance loaded always stays on the same thread it was instantiated on. What about COM+? COM+ is supposed to address the problem of STA in MTA applications by providing an abstraction with it's own thread pool manager for COM objects. It steps in to the COM instantiation pipeline and hands out COM instances from its own internally maintained STA Thread pool. This guarantees that the COM instantiation threads are STA threads if using STA components. COM+ works, but in my experience the technology is very, very slow for STA components. It adds a ton of overhead and reduces COM performance noticably in load tests in IIS. COM+ can make sense in some situations but for Web apps with STA components it falls short. In addition there's also the need to ensure that COM+ is set up and configured on the target machine and the fact that components have to be registered in COM+. COM+ also keeps components up at all times, so if a component needs to be replaced the COM+ package needs to be unloaded (same is true for IIS hosted components but it's more common to manage that). COM+ is an option for well established components, but native STA support tends to provide better performance and more consistent usability, IMHO. STA for non supporting ASP.NET Technologies As mentioned above only WebForms supports STA natively. However, by utilizing the WebForms ASP.NET Page handler internally it's actually possible to trick various other ASP.NET technologies and let them work with STA components. This is ugly but I've used each of these in various applications and I've had minimal problems making them work with FoxPro STA COM components which is about as dififcult as it gets for COM Interop in .NET. In this post I summarize several STA workarounds that enable you to use STA threading with these ASP.NET Technologies: ASMX Web Services ASP.NET MVC WCF Web Services ASP.NET Web API ASMX Web Services I start with classic ASP.NET ASMX Web Services because it's the easiest mechanism that allows for STA modification. It also clearly demonstrates how the WebForms STA Page Handler is the key technology to enable the various other solutions to create STA components. Essentially the way this works is to override the WebForms Page class and hijack it's init functionality for processing requests. Here's what this looks like for Web Services:namespace FoxProAspNet { public class WebServiceStaHandler : System.Web.UI.Page, IHttpAsyncHandler { protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e) { IHttpHandler handler = new WebServiceHandlerFactory().GetHandler( this.Context, this.Context.Request.HttpMethod, this.Context.Request.FilePath, this.Context.Request.PhysicalPath); handler.ProcessRequest(this.Context); this.Context.ApplicationInstance.CompleteRequest(); } public IAsyncResult BeginProcessRequest( HttpContext context, AsyncCallback cb, object extraData) { return this.AspCompatBeginProcessRequest(context, cb, extraData); } public void EndProcessRequest(IAsyncResult result) { this.AspCompatEndProcessRequest(result); } } public class AspCompatWebServiceStaHandlerWithSessionState : WebServiceStaHandler, IRequiresSessionState { } } This class overrides the ASP.NET WebForms Page class which has a little known AspCompatBeginProcessRequest() and AspCompatEndProcessRequest() method that is responsible for providing the WebForms ASPCOMPAT functionality. These methods handle routing requests to STA threads. Note there are two classes - one that includes session state and one that does not. If you plan on using ASP.NET Session state use the latter class, otherwise stick to the former. This maps to the EnableSessionState page setting in WebForms. This class simply hooks into this functionality by overriding the BeginProcessRequest and EndProcessRequest methods and always forcing it into the AspCompat methods. The way this works is that BeginProcessRequest() fires first to set up the threads and starts intializing the handler. As part of that process the OnInit() method is fired which is now already running on an STA thread. The code then creates an instance of the actual WebService handler factory and calls its ProcessRequest method to start executing which generates the Web Service result. Immediately after ProcessRequest the request is stopped with Application.CompletRequest() which ensures that the rest of the Page handler logic doesn't fire. This means that even though the fairly heavy Page class is overridden here, it doesn't end up executing any of its internal processing which makes this code fairly efficient. In a nutshell, we're highjacking the Page HttpHandler and forcing it to process the WebService process handler in the context of the AspCompat handler behavior. Hooking up the Handler Because the above is an HttpHandler implementation you need to hook up the custom handler and replace the standard ASMX handler. To do this you need to modify the web.config file (here for IIS 7 and IIS Express): <configuration> <system.webServer> <handlers> <remove name="WebServiceHandlerFactory-Integrated-4.0" /> <add name="Asmx STA Web Service Handler" path="*.asmx" verb="*" type="FoxProAspNet.WebServiceStaHandler" precondition="integrated"/> </handlers> </system.webServer> </configuration> (Note: The name for the WebServiceHandlerFactory-Integrated-4.0 might be slightly different depending on your server version. Check the IIS Handler configuration in the IIS Management Console for the exact name or simply remove the handler from the list there which will propagate to your web.config). For IIS 5 & 6 (Windows XP/2003) or the Visual Studio Web Server use:<configuration> <system.web> <httpHandlers> <remove path="*.asmx" verb="*" /> <add path="*.asmx" verb="*" type="FoxProAspNet.WebServiceStaHandler" /> </httpHandlers> </system.web></configuration> To test, create a new ASMX Web Service and create a method like this: [WebService(Namespace = "http://foxaspnet.org/")] [WebServiceBinding(ConformsTo = WsiProfiles.BasicProfile1_1)] public class FoxWebService : System.Web.Services.WebService { [WebMethod] public string HelloWorld() { return "Hello World. Threading mode is: " + System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.GetApartmentState(); } } Run this before you put in the web.config configuration changes and you should get: Hello World. Threading mode is: MTA Then put the handler mapping into Web.config and you should see: Hello World. Threading mode is: STA And you're on your way to using STA COM components. It's a hack but it works well! I've used this with several high volume Web Service installations with various customers and it's been fast and reliable. ASP.NET MVC ASP.NET MVC has quickly become the most popular ASP.NET technology, replacing WebForms for creating HTML output. MVC is more complex to get started with, but once you understand the basic structure of how requests flow through the MVC pipeline it's easy to use and amazingly flexible in manipulating HTML requests. In addition, MVC has great support for non-HTML output sources like JSON and XML, making it an excellent choice for AJAX requests without any additional tools. Unlike WebForms ASP.NET MVC doesn't support STA threads natively and so some trickery is needed to make it work with STA threads as well. MVC gets its handler implementation through custom route handlers using ASP.NET's built in routing semantics. To work in an STA handler requires working in the Page Handler as part of the Route Handler implementation. As with the Web Service handler the first step is to create a custom HttpHandler that can instantiate an MVC request pipeline properly:public class MvcStaThreadHttpAsyncHandler : Page, IHttpAsyncHandler, IRequiresSessionState { private RequestContext _requestContext; public MvcStaThreadHttpAsyncHandler(RequestContext requestContext) { if (requestContext == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("requestContext"); _requestContext = requestContext; } public IAsyncResult BeginProcessRequest(HttpContext context, AsyncCallback cb, object extraData) { return this.AspCompatBeginProcessRequest(context, cb, extraData); } protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e) { var controllerName = _requestContext.RouteData.GetRequiredString("controller"); var controllerFactory = ControllerBuilder.Current.GetControllerFactory(); var controller = controllerFactory.CreateController(_requestContext, controllerName); if (controller == null) throw new InvalidOperationException("Could not find controller: " + controllerName); try { controller.Execute(_requestContext); } finally { controllerFactory.ReleaseController(controller); } this.Context.ApplicationInstance.CompleteRequest(); } public void EndProcessRequest(IAsyncResult result) { this.AspCompatEndProcessRequest(result); } public override void ProcessRequest(HttpContext httpContext) { throw new NotSupportedException("STAThreadRouteHandler does not support ProcessRequest called (only BeginProcessRequest)"); } } This handler code figures out which controller to load and then executes the controller. MVC internally provides the information needed to route to the appropriate method and pass the right parameters. Like the Web Service handler the logic occurs in the OnInit() and performs all the processing in that part of the request. Next, we need a RouteHandler that can actually pick up this handler. Unlike the Web Service handler where we simply registered the handler, MVC requires a RouteHandler to pick up the handler. RouteHandlers look at the URL's path and based on that decide on what handler to invoke. The route handler is pretty simple - all it does is load our custom handler: public class MvcStaThreadRouteHandler : IRouteHandler { public IHttpHandler GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext) { if (requestContext == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("requestContext"); return new MvcStaThreadHttpAsyncHandler(requestContext); } } At this point you can instantiate this route handler and force STA requests to MVC by specifying a route. The following sets up the ASP.NET Default Route:Route mvcRoute = new Route("{controller}/{action}/{id}", new RouteValueDictionary( new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }), new MvcStaThreadRouteHandler()); RouteTable.Routes.Add(mvcRoute);   To make this code a little easier to work with and mimic the behavior of the routes.MapRoute() functionality extension method that MVC provides, here is an extension method for MapMvcStaRoute(): public static class RouteCollectionExtensions { public static void MapMvcStaRoute(this RouteCollection routeTable, string name, string url, object defaults = null) { Route mvcRoute = new Route(url, new RouteValueDictionary(defaults), new MvcStaThreadRouteHandler()); RouteTable.Routes.Add(mvcRoute); } } With this the syntax to add  route becomes a little easier and matches the MapRoute() method:RouteTable.Routes.MapMvcStaRoute( name: "Default", url: "{controller}/{action}/{id}", defaults: new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } ); The nice thing about this route handler, STA Handler and extension method is that it's fully self contained. You can put all three into a single class file and stick it into your Web app, and then simply call MapMvcStaRoute() and it just works. Easy! To see whether this works create an MVC controller like this: public class ThreadTestController : Controller { public string ThreadingMode() { return Thread.CurrentThread.GetApartmentState().ToString(); } } Try this test both with only the MapRoute() hookup in the RouteConfiguration in which case you should get MTA as the value. Then change the MapRoute() call to MapMvcStaRoute() leaving all the parameters the same and re-run the request. You now should see STA as the result. You're on your way using STA COM components reliably in ASP.NET MVC. WCF Web Services running through IIS WCF Web Services provide a more robust and wider range of services for Web Services. You can use WCF over HTTP, TCP, and Pipes, and WCF services support WS* secure services. There are many features in WCF that go way beyond what ASMX can do. But it's also a bit more complex than ASMX. As a basic rule if you need to serve straight SOAP Services over HTTP I 'd recommend sticking with the simpler ASMX services especially if COM is involved. If you need WS* support or want to serve data over non-HTTP protocols then WCF makes more sense. WCF is not my forte but I found a solution from Scott Seely on his blog that describes the progress and that seems to work well. I'm copying his code below so this STA information is all in one place and quickly explain. Scott's code basically works by creating a custom OperationBehavior which can be specified via an [STAOperation] attribute on every method. Using his attribute you end up with a class (or Interface if you separate the contract and class) that looks like this: [ServiceContract] public class WcfService { [OperationContract] public string HelloWorldMta() { return Thread.CurrentThread.GetApartmentState().ToString(); } // Make sure you use this custom STAOperationBehavior // attribute to force STA operation of service methods [STAOperationBehavior] [OperationContract] public string HelloWorldSta() { return Thread.CurrentThread.GetApartmentState().ToString(); } } Pretty straight forward. The latter method returns STA while the former returns MTA. To make STA work every method needs to be marked up. The implementation consists of the attribute and OperationInvoker implementation. Here are the two classes required to make this work from Scott's post:public class STAOperationBehaviorAttribute : Attribute, IOperationBehavior { public void AddBindingParameters(OperationDescription operationDescription, System.ServiceModel.Channels.BindingParameterCollection bindingParameters) { } public void ApplyClientBehavior(OperationDescription operationDescription, System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ClientOperation clientOperation) { // If this is applied on the client, well, it just doesn’t make sense. // Don’t throw in case this attribute was applied on the contract // instead of the implementation. } public void ApplyDispatchBehavior(OperationDescription operationDescription, System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.DispatchOperation dispatchOperation) { // Change the IOperationInvoker for this operation. dispatchOperation.Invoker = new STAOperationInvoker(dispatchOperation.Invoker); } public void Validate(OperationDescription operationDescription) { if (operationDescription.SyncMethod == null) { throw new InvalidOperationException("The STAOperationBehaviorAttribute " + "only works for synchronous method invocations."); } } } public class STAOperationInvoker : IOperationInvoker { IOperationInvoker _innerInvoker; public STAOperationInvoker(IOperationInvoker invoker) { _innerInvoker = invoker; } public object[] AllocateInputs() { return _innerInvoker.AllocateInputs(); } public object Invoke(object instance, object[] inputs, out object[] outputs) { // Create a new, STA thread object[] staOutputs = null; object retval = null; Thread thread = new Thread( delegate() { retval = _innerInvoker.Invoke(instance, inputs, out staOutputs); }); thread.SetApartmentState(ApartmentState.STA); thread.Start(); thread.Join(); outputs = staOutputs; return retval; } public IAsyncResult InvokeBegin(object instance, object[] inputs, AsyncCallback callback, object state) { // We don’t handle async… throw new NotImplementedException(); } public object InvokeEnd(object instance, out object[] outputs, IAsyncResult result) { // We don’t handle async… throw new NotImplementedException(); } public bool IsSynchronous { get { return true; } } } The key in this setup is the Invoker and the Invoke method which creates a new thread and then fires the request on this new thread. Because this approach creates a new thread for every request it's not super efficient. There's a bunch of overhead involved in creating the thread and throwing it away after each thread, but it'll work for low volume requests and insure each thread runs in STA mode. If better performance is required it would be useful to create a custom thread manager that can pool a number of STA threads and hand off threads as needed rather than creating new threads on every request. If your Web Service needs are simple and you need only to serve standard SOAP 1.x requests, I would recommend sticking with ASMX services. It's easier to set up and work with and for STA component use it'll be significantly better performing since ASP.NET manages the STA thread pool for you rather than firing new threads for each request. One nice thing about Scotts code is though that it works in any WCF environment including self hosting. It has no dependency on ASP.NET or WebForms for that matter. STA - If you must STA components are a  pain in the ass and thankfully there isn't too much stuff out there anymore that requires it. But when you need it and you need to access STA functionality from .NET at least there are a few options available to make it happen. Each of these solutions is a bit hacky, but they work - I've used all of them in production with good results with FoxPro components. I hope compiling all of these in one place here makes it STA consumption a little bit easier. I feel your pain :-) Resources Download STA Handler Code Examples Scott Seely's original STA WCF OperationBehavior Article© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in FoxPro   ASP.NET  .NET  COM   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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