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  • Proper application shutdown before windows xp auto shutdown

    - by vashman
    I frequently leave the computer on playing a movie or downloading a file while I go to bed. I do use the 'shutdown computer when finished' feature of KMPlayer or getright or uTorrent or whatever program I am using. This method effectively shuts down the computer, but the problem is that there are some applications that seem to exit forcefully when doing this kind of shutdown, this being clearly reflected in winamp not saving the current playlist and config, messenger not saving the chat logs, etc. My goal here would be to have automatically close properly all applications when the auto/scheduled program triggers it. I am looking for some Windows shutdown mode/setting that does application closing like the user would do. I am not expecting to auto-click on save dialogs prompts, if this is needed I will do it before leaving the computer on for auto shutdown.

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  • Why not open a PDF file in the browser but first save it to the harddisk?

    - by Lernkurve
    Question Is it correct that saving a PDF to the harddisk first, and then opening it from there with some PDF reader (not the browser) is safer than opening it directly with the browser plugin? My current understanding I know that the PDF browser plugin might have a security leak and a manipulated PDF file might exploit it and get access to the user's computer. I recently heard that saving the PDF file frist and opening it then was safer. I don't understand why that should be safer. Can anyone explain? My logic would suggest that a manipulated file started from the harddisk can just as well exploit a security leak, say for instance, of Adobe Acrobat Reader.

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  • Where is the Mac Divx Web Player 7 cache folder?

    - by user30710
    Until recently, I was using Divx web player 1.4.2 because it seemed to be the least buggy. It was saving files in users/xxxxxx/movies/divx movies/temporary added files and was deleting them when the cache limit was reached. Now with 7, it's saving them alright cause I can watch my HD space go down, but I can't find them. And it's not respecting the cache limit size (mine is 4GB). The only way to clear up this space is a restart of the Mac. I'm running 10.6.8and Chrome. I've looked everywhere for the folder manually. Where is it?

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  • How to prevent hard drive from spinning down Windows 7?

    - by JL.
    I had a Western Digital External 1TB drive, which I was accessing via USB. I decided one day, that I would prefer to mount the HDD in my case, and access it via SATA interface. So I took it apart, and the actual mounting was a breeze. The only thing is, I think the device has some default power saving features, which means the device tends to stop spinning when idle for (x) amount of time. This creates delays when I am accessing the HDD. Is there anyway I can turn off these power saving features for this HDD?

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  • Linux bcm43224 wifi adapter slows down a couple minutes after boot

    - by Blubber
    I just installed Ubuntu on my mid 2012 MacBook Air. Everything worked out of the box, but the wifi is showing some weird behavior. When I first login it's really fast, loading google.com is near instant, and browsing in general feels at least as smooth as it did on Mac OS. However, after a couple minutes the connection slows down dramatically, sometimes it takes over 5s to load google.com, a simple reboot fixes the problem for another couple minutes. Specs: Wifi: 02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM43224 802.11a/b/g/n (rev 01) Driver: open-source brcmsmac driver Kernel: Linux wega 3.8.0-21-generic #32-Ubuntu SMP Tue May 14 22:16:46 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux Distro: Ubuntu 13.04 (uptodate) I tried a number of things, none of which actually helped Use proprietary sta driver from broadcom Installed firmware into /lib/firmware/brcms (which, as far as I can tell from logs, does not get loaded at all) Switch router to only use 2.4 OR 5 GHz Set router to only use a OR g OR n Set router to use AES encryption only Turned off power management on the adapter Set regulatory region to the correct value (NL) on both router and laptop Disable ipv6 Nothing seems to help, the slowdown always occurs. I did notice that the latency (ping google.com) stays roughly the same (around 9ms). Below is some more information that might be of use. $ lspci -nnk | grep -iA2 net 02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM43224 802.11a/b/g/n [14e4:4353] (rev 01) Subsystem: Apple Inc. Device [106b:00e9] Kernel driver in use: bcma-pci-bridge $ rfkill list 0: hci0: Bluetooth Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 1: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no $ lsmod Module Size Used by dm_crypt 22820 1 arc4 12615 2 brcmsmac 550698 0 coretemp 13355 0 kvm_intel 132891 0 parport_pc 28152 0 kvm 443165 1 kvm_intel ppdev 17073 0 cordic 12574 1 brcmsmac brcmutil 14755 1 brcmsmac mac80211 606457 1 brcmsmac cfg80211 510937 2 brcmsmac,mac80211 bnep 18036 2 rfcomm 42641 12 joydev 17377 0 applesmc 19353 0 input_polldev 13896 1 applesmc snd_hda_codec_hdmi 36913 1 microcode 22881 0 snd_hda_codec_cirrus 23829 1 nls_iso8859_1 12713 1 uvcvideo 80847 0 btusb 22474 0 snd_hda_intel 39619 3 videobuf2_vmalloc 13056 1 uvcvideo snd_hda_codec 136453 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec_cirrus bcm5974 17347 0 bluetooth 228619 22 bnep,btusb,rfcomm snd_hwdep 13602 1 snd_hda_codec lpc_ich 17061 0 videobuf2_memops 13202 1 videobuf2_vmalloc videobuf2_core 40513 1 uvcvideo videodev 129260 2 uvcvideo,videobuf2_core bcma 41051 1 brcmsmac snd_pcm 97451 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel snd_page_alloc 18710 2 snd_pcm,snd_hda_intel snd_seq_midi 13324 0 snd_seq_midi_event 14899 1 snd_seq_midi snd_rawmidi 30180 1 snd_seq_midi snd_seq 61554 2 snd_seq_midi_event,snd_seq_midi snd_seq_device 14497 3 snd_seq,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_midi snd_timer 29425 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq snd 68876 16 snd_hwdep,snd_timer,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_pcm,snd_seq,snd_rawmidi,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel,snd_seq_device,snd_hda_codec_cirrus mei 41158 0 soundcore 12680 1 snd apple_bl 13673 0 mac_hid 13205 0 lp 17759 0 parport 46345 3 lp,ppdev,parport_pc usb_storage 57204 0 hid_apple 13237 0 hid_generic 12540 0 ghash_clmulni_intel 13259 0 aesni_intel 55399 399 aes_x86_64 17255 1 aesni_intel xts 12885 1 aesni_intel lrw 13257 1 aesni_intel gf128mul 14951 2 lrw,xts ablk_helper 13597 1 aesni_intel cryptd 20373 4 ghash_clmulni_intel,aesni_intel,ablk_helper i915 600351 3 ahci 25731 3 libahci 31364 1 ahci video 19390 1 i915 i2c_algo_bit 13413 1 i915 drm_kms_helper 49394 1 i915 usbhid 47074 0 drm 286313 4 i915,drm_kms_helper hid 101002 3 hid_generic,usbhid,hid_apple $ dmesg | egrep 'b43|bcma|brcm|[F]irm' [ 0.055025] [Firmware Bug]: ioapic 2 has no mapping iommu, interrupt remapping will be disabled [ 0.152336] [Firmware Bug]: ACPI: BIOS _OSI(Linux) query ignored [ 2.187681] pci_root PNP0A08:00: [Firmware Info]: MMCONFIG for domain 0000 [bus 00-99] only partially covers this bridge [ 12.553600] bcma-pci-bridge 0000:02:00.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0002) [ 12.553657] bcma: bus0: Found chip with id 0xA8D8, rev 0x01 and package 0x08 [ 12.553688] bcma: bus0: Core 0 found: ChipCommon (manuf 0x4BF, id 0x800, rev 0x22, class 0x0) [ 12.553715] bcma: bus0: Core 1 found: IEEE 802.11 (manuf 0x4BF, id 0x812, rev 0x17, class 0x0) [ 12.553764] bcma: bus0: Core 2 found: PCIe (manuf 0x4BF, id 0x820, rev 0x0F, class 0x0) [ 12.605777] bcma: bus0: Bus registered [ 12.852925] brcmsmac bcma0:0: mfg 4bf core 812 rev 23 class 0 irq 17 [ 13.085176] brcmsmac bcma0:0: brcms_ops_bss_info_changed: qos enabled: false (implement) [ 13.085186] brcmsmac bcma0:0: brcms_ops_config: change power-save mode: false (implement) [ 20.862617] brcmsmac bcma0:0: brcmsmac: brcms_ops_bss_info_changed: associated [ 20.862622] brcmsmac bcma0:0: brcms_ops_bss_info_changed: arp filtering: enabled true, count 0 (implement) [ 20.862625] brcmsmac bcma0:0: brcms_ops_bss_info_changed: qos enabled: true (implement) [ 20.897957] brcmsmac bcma0:0: brcms_ops_bss_info_changed: arp filtering: enabled true, count 1 (implement) $ iwconfig lo no wireless extensions. wlan0 IEEE 802.11abgn ESSID:"wlan" Mode:Managed Frequency:5.22 GHz Access Point: E0:46:9A:4E:63:9A Bit Rate=65 Mb/s Tx-Power=17 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off Link Quality=63/70 Signal level=-47 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:13 Invalid misc:56 Missed beacon:0

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  • unable to sniff traffic despite network interface being in monitor or promiscuous mode

    - by user65126
    I'm trying to sniff out my network's wireless traffic but am having issues. I'm able to put the card in monitor mode, but am unable to see any traffic except broadcasts, multicasts and probe/beacon frames. I have two network interfaces on this laptop. One is connected normally to 'linksys' and the other is in monitor mode. The interface in monitor mode is on the right channel. I'm not associated with the access point because, as I understand, I don't need to if using monitor mode (vs promiscuous). When I try to ping the router ip, I'm not seeing that traffic show up in wireshark. Here's my ifconfig settings: daniel@seasonBlack:~$ ifconfig eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1f:29:9e:b2:89 UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B) Interrupt:16 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:112 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:112 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:8518 (8.5 KB) TX bytes:8518 (8.5 KB) wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:21:00:34:f7:f4 inet addr:192.168.1.116 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::221:ff:fe34:f7f4/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:9758 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:4869 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:3291516 (3.2 MB) TX bytes:677386 (677.3 KB) wlan1 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-02-72-7B-92-53-33-34-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00 UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS PROMISC ALLMULTI MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:112754 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:101 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:18569124 (18.5 MB) TX bytes:12874 (12.8 KB) wmaster0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-21-00-34-F7-F4-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00 UP RUNNING MTU:0 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B) wmaster1 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-02-72-7B-92-53-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00 UP RUNNING MTU:0 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B) Here's my iwconfig settings: daniel@seasonBlack:~$ iwconfig lo no wireless extensions. eth0 no wireless extensions. wmaster0 no wireless extensions. wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:"linksys" Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: 00:18:F8:D6:17:34 Bit Rate=54 Mb/s Tx-Power=27 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off Link Quality=68/70 Signal level=-42 dBm Noise level=-69 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0 wmaster1 no wireless extensions. wlan1 IEEE 802.11bg Mode:Monitor Frequency:2.437 GHz Tx-Power=27 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0 Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0 Here's how I know I'm on the right channel: daniel@seasonBlack:~$ iwlist channel lo no frequency information. eth0 no frequency information. wmaster0 no frequency information. wlan0 11 channels in total; available frequencies : Channel 01 : 2.412 GHz Channel 02 : 2.417 GHz Channel 03 : 2.422 GHz Channel 04 : 2.427 GHz Channel 05 : 2.432 GHz Channel 06 : 2.437 GHz Channel 07 : 2.442 GHz Channel 08 : 2.447 GHz Channel 09 : 2.452 GHz Channel 10 : 2.457 GHz Channel 11 : 2.462 GHz Current Frequency=2.437 GHz (Channel 6) wmaster1 no frequency information. wlan1 11 channels in total; available frequencies : Channel 01 : 2.412 GHz Channel 02 : 2.417 GHz Channel 03 : 2.422 GHz Channel 04 : 2.427 GHz Channel 05 : 2.432 GHz Channel 06 : 2.437 GHz Channel 07 : 2.442 GHz Channel 08 : 2.447 GHz Channel 09 : 2.452 GHz Channel 10 : 2.457 GHz Channel 11 : 2.462 GHz Current Frequency=2.437 GHz (Channel 6)

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  • How to save Word documents as HTML to be viewed in Firefox

    - by private_meta
    I'm in need for saving a Word document as HTML. It has some background images, other images, texts, ... It opens correctly in Internet Explorer, but how can I save a word doc as HTML so that Firefox and other current browsers render it correctly? All images are missing in the document. I looked through the generated html document, but the paths for the images appear to be correct. Any idea? Things like "Don't save docs as html" won't be helpful here. Edit: To make myself clear, the normal "Save as HTML" doesn't cut it, the result is broken in any browser other than Internet Explorer. Edit 2: What I'm using is Word 2010 and Firefox 4. I also tried rendering it in the latest Chrome version, which failed as well. I used different compatibility settings for saving as html, it did not help

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  • Can't import contacts into Outlook from Excel

    - by Michael
    I run MS Office 2010. I have all contacts from a previous Outlook 2010 saved in an Excel sheet. I have tried dozens of time to import, but when Outlooks is supposed to do the mapping of the columns I only have one column in my CSV-file: firstname;middlename;surname, etc. It means I cannot map the data correctly. I have tried saving in MS-DOS and Tab and it does not get better. I have tried saving on another computer and it does help either. ALso tried importing to Gmail with same result. Can anyone help?

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  • Is any EXIF data stored within 3rd party Camera apps on the iPhone?

    - by 3rdparty
    I'm confused as to if any EXIF data is available when taking photos within 3rd party camera apps on the iPhone. My understanding is that Apple is currently not allowing any apps to save EXIF data to photos, and this is a limitation of saving to the camera roll on the phone. The last FAQ on this page indicates this, but appears to be out of date: http://www.codegoo.com/page/support I love some of the camera apps I've downloaded (Camera Genius, Best Camera, CameraBag) but don't want to continue using them if they aren't saving any/all EXIF data for the image. Anyone aware what the status of this 'limitation' is?

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  • My computer freezes irregurarly

    - by Manhim
    My computer started to freeze at irregular times for 3 weeks now. What happens My computer freezes, the video stops. (No graphic glitches, it just stops) Sound keeps playing up to some time (Usually 10-30 seconds) then stops playing. Sometimes, randomly, the screen on my G-15 keyboard flickers and I see caracters not at the right places. Usually happens for about 1-2 seconds and a bit before my computer freezes. I have to keep the power button pressed for 4 seconds to shut my computer down. I still hear my hard drives and fans working. Sometimes it works with no problems for a full day, some other times it just keeps freezing each time I restart my computer and I have to leave it for the rest of the day. Sometimes my mouse freezes for a fraction of a second (Like 0.01 to 0.2 seconds) quite randomly, usually before it freezes. No errors spotted by the "Action center" unlike when I had problems with my last video card on this system (Driver errors). My G-15 LCD screen also freezes. What I did so far I have had similar problems in the past and I had changed my hard drive (It was faulty), so I tested my software RAID-0 array and it was faulty so I changed it. (I reinstalled Windows 7 with this part). I also tested with unplugging my secondary hard drive. My CPU was running at about 100 degree Celsius, I removed the dust between the fans and the heatsink and it's now between 50-60. I ran a CPU stress-test and it didn't freeze during the tests (using Prime95 on all cores) Ran a memory test (using memtest86+) for a single pass and there were no errors. Ran a GPU stress test with ati-tools and furmark and it didn't freeze during the tests. (No artefacts either) I had troubles with my graphic card when I got it, but I think that it got fixed with a driver update. I checked the voltages in my BIOS setup and they all seemed ok (±0.2 I think). I have ran on the computer without problems with Fedora 15 on an external hard drive (Appart that it couldn't load Gnome 3 and was reverting to Gnome 2, didn't want to install drivers since I use it on multiple computers) I used it to backup my files from the raid array to my 1TB hard drive for the reinstallation of Windows. (So the crashes only happenned on Windows) [The external hard drive is plugged directly on a SATA port] I contacted EVGA (My graphic card vendor) and pointed them on this question, I'm looking for an answer. Ran sensors on Fedora 15 and got this output: http://pastebin.com/0BHJnAvu When it happens When I play video games (Mostly) When I play flash games (Second most) When I'm looking at my desktop background (It rarely happens when I have a window open, but it does, sometimes) Specs Windows Seven x64 Home Premium Motherboard: M2N-SLI Deluxe CPU: AMD Phenom 9950 x2 @ 2.6GHz Memory: Kingston 4x2GB Dual Channel (Pretty basic memory sticks) Hard drives: Was 2x250GB (Western digital caviar) in raid-0 + 1TB (WD caviar black), I replaced the raid array with a 750GB (WD caviar black) [Yes I removed the array from the raid configurations] 750W Power supply No overcloking. Ever. There have been some power-downs like 4-5 weeks ago, but the problem didn't start immediately after. (I wasn't home, so my computer got shut-down) My current to-try list Change the thermal paste on my CPU. Change my graphic card with a temporary one and stress the computer. Change my power supply. In this situation, how can I successfully pin-point the current hardware problem? (If it's a hardware problem) Because I don't really have the budget to just forget and replace everything. I also don't really have hardware to test-replace current hardware.

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  • Email from my new vps is marked as spam

    - by Chriswede
    I got a new vps from x10vps (x10hosting) and set up the domain via cloudflare. This is what the email looks like: Delivered-To: [email protected] Received: by 10.64.19.240 with SMTP id i16csp357708iee; Tue, 9 Oct 2012 01:29:48 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.50.57.130 with SMTP id i2mr908846igq.56.1349771387599; Tue, 09 Oct 2012 01:29:47 -0700 (PDT) Return-Path: <[email protected]> Received: from power.SOURCEAPE.COM ([198.91.90.116]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id v8si25630942ica.46.2012.10.09.01.29.46 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=OTHER); Tue, 09 Oct 2012 01:29:47 -0700 (PDT) Received-SPF: temperror (google.com: error in processing during lookup of [email protected]: DNS timeout) client-ip=198.91.90.116; Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=temperror (google.com: error in processing during lookup of [email protected]: DNS timeout) [email protected] Received: from nk11p03mm-asmtp010.mac.com ([17.158.232.169]:54276) by power.SOURCEAPE.COM with esmtp (Exim 4.80) (envelope-from <[email protected]>) id 1TLVBD-0004Ig-1Y for [email protected]; Tue, 09 Oct 2012 12:28:43 +0400 I then tried to enable SPF and DKIM and got following massage In order to ensure that SPF or DKIM takes effect, you must confirm that this server is an authoritative nameserver for chvw.de. If you need help, contact your hosting provider. Status: Enabled Warning: cPanel is unable to verify that this server is an authoritative nameserver for chvw.de. [?] and the email header now looks like this: Delivered-To: [email protected] Received: by 10.50.183.227 with SMTP id ep3csp14506igc; Tue, 9 Oct 2012 01:55:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.50.40.133 with SMTP id x5mr992934igk.32.1349772923717; Tue, 09 Oct 2012 01:55:23 -0700 (PDT) Return-Path: <[email protected]> Received: from power.SOURCEAPE.COM ([198.91.90.116]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id ng8si25688859icb.42.2012.10.09.01.55.23 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=OTHER); Tue, 09 Oct 2012 01:55:23 -0700 (PDT) Received-SPF: temperror (google.com: error in processing during lookup of [email protected]: DNS timeout) client-ip=198.91.90.116; Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=temperror (google.com: error in processing during lookup of [email protected]: DNS timeout) [email protected]; dkim=neutral (bad format) [email protected] DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; q=dns/txt; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=chvw.de; s=default; h=Message-ID:Subject:To:From:Date:Content-Transfer-Encoding:Content-Type:MIME-Version; bh=iugsx3Lx0KnqjR7dj3wyQHnJ9pe/z3ntYEVk80k8rx4=; b=IrYsCtHdoPubXVOvLqxd7sLE/TyQTS5P3OrEg5SSUSKnQQcQ/fWWyBrmsrgkFSsw6jCmmRWMDR09vH5bQRpFPMA57B7pf8QRKhwXOWFBV+GnVUqICsfRjnNPvhx/lNp5; Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:46539 helo=direct.chvw.de) by power.SOURCEAPE.COM with esmtpa (Exim 4.80) (envelope-from <[email protected]>) id 1TLVb0-0004dZ-Kd for [email protected]; Tue, 09 Oct 2012 12:55:22 +0400

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  • Why does Windows Media Center try to open zip files?

    - by gpryatel
    Notes: OS is windows 7, browser is latest firefox. After saving a zip file to the desktop, Windows Media Center opens up. I looked around its config settings but could not find anything related to zip files. How do I turn that off? Also, don't know if this should be a separate question or not: Unless I right click save link as... for zip files, I don't get a firefox dialogue asking what to do with the file (Open/Save). The files get saved to some place like c:\users\namegoeshere\appdata This only happens on the win7 computer. I looked around in firefox's settings for saving files, and I do have 'ask me where to download...' enabled. I can get more exact path names when I get home.

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  • Reducing the size of the EDB file.

    - by Toby
    I have hit an issue on a MS SBS machine where every morning the datastore for the exchange mailboxes dismounts itself. We believe the issue is that it has grown too large over time and needs cut down a bit. As part of this we have removed (purged) some mail files that were no longer needed, which should have given us a saving of roughly 3GB (more than enough saving for what we need). So I deleted the mailboxes, then purged them and noticed that the .edb file was still reporting the same size, I dismounted and remounted it to see if that would have any effect but it did not. Am I missing a step? I have read online that you can run offline defrag on the file but that seems to only save you a small amount of whitespace. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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  • Entity with Guid ID is not inserted by NHibernate

    - by DanK
    I am experimenting with NHibernate (version 2.1.0.4000) with Fluent NHibernate Automapping. My test set of entities persists fine with default integer IDs I am now trying to use Guid IDs with the entities. Unfortunately changing the Id property to a Guid seems to stop NHibernate inserting objects. Here is the entity class: public class User { public virtual int Id { get; private set; } public virtual string FirstName { get; set; } public virtual string LastName { get; set; } public virtual string Email { get; set; } public virtual string Password { get; set; } public virtual List<UserGroup> Groups { get; set; } } And here is the Fluent NHibernate configuration I am using: SessionFactory = Fluently.Configure() //.Database(SQLiteConfiguration.Standard.InMemory) .Database(MsSqlConfiguration.MsSql2008.ConnectionString(@"Data Source=.\SQLEXPRESS;Initial Catalog=NHibernateTest;Uid=NHibernateTest;Password=password").ShowSql()) .Mappings(m => m.AutoMappings.Add( AutoMap.AssemblyOf<TestEntities.User>() .UseOverridesFromAssemblyOf<UserGroupMappingOverride>())) .ExposeConfiguration(x => { x.SetProperty("current_session_context_class","web"); }) .ExposeConfiguration(Cfg => _configuration = Cfg) .BuildSessionFactory(); Here is the log output when using an integer ID: 16:23:14.287 [4] DEBUG NHibernate.Event.Default.DefaultSaveOrUpdateEventListener - saving transient instance 16:23:14.291 [4] DEBUG NHibernate.Event.Default.AbstractSaveEventListener - saving [TestEntities.User#<null>] 16:23:14.299 [4] DEBUG NHibernate.Event.Default.AbstractSaveEventListener - executing insertions 16:23:14.309 [4] DEBUG NHibernate.Event.Default.AbstractSaveEventListener - executing identity-insert immediately 16:23:14.313 [4] DEBUG NHibernate.Persister.Entity.AbstractEntityPersister - Inserting entity: TestEntities.User (native id) 16:23:14.321 [4] DEBUG NHibernate.AdoNet.AbstractBatcher - Opened new IDbCommand, open IDbCommands: 1 16:23:14.321 [4] DEBUG NHibernate.AdoNet.AbstractBatcher - Building an IDbCommand object for the SqlString: INSERT INTO [User] (FirstName, LastName, Email, Password) VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?); select SCOPE_IDENTITY() 16:23:14.322 [4] DEBUG NHibernate.Persister.Entity.AbstractEntityPersister - Dehydrating entity: [TestEntities.User#<null>] 16:23:14.323 [4] DEBUG NHibernate.Type.StringType - binding null to parameter: 0 16:23:14.323 [4] DEBUG NHibernate.Type.StringType - binding null to parameter: 1 16:23:14.323 [4] DEBUG NHibernate.Type.StringType - binding 'ertr' to parameter: 2 16:23:14.324 [4] DEBUG NHibernate.Type.StringType - binding 'tretret' to parameter: 3 16:23:14.329 [4] DEBUG NHibernate.SQL - INSERT INTO [User] (FirstName, LastName, Email, Password) VALUES (@p0, @p1, @p2, @p3); select SCOPE_IDENTITY();@p0 = NULL, @p1 = NULL, @p2 = 'ertr', @p3 = 'tretret' and here is the output when using a Guid: 16:50:14.008 [4] DEBUG NHibernate.Event.Default.DefaultSaveOrUpdateEventListener - saving transient instance 16:50:14.012 [4] DEBUG NHibernate.Event.Default.AbstractSaveEventListener - generated identifier: d74e1bd3-1c01-46c8-996c-9d370115780d, using strategy: NHibernate.Id.GuidCombGenerator 16:50:14.013 [4] DEBUG NHibernate.Event.Default.AbstractSaveEventListener - saving [TestEntities.User#d74e1bd3-1c01-46c8-996c-9d370115780d] This is where it silently fails, with no exception thrown or further log entries. It looks like it is generating the Guid ID correctly for the new object, but is just not getting any further than that. Is there something I need to do differently in order to use Guid IDs? Thanks, Dan.

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  • Jack Audio ubuntu 12.10

    - by Shaneo1
    I used to have Jack Server working with 10.10, 11.04, 11.10 but not 12.04 and now 12.10. I have installed jackd jackd2 qjackctl surfed many forums and even given advice of how to get jack working, but now I am stuck. Tue Nov 27 22:30:46 2012: Saving settings to "/home/shane/.config/jack/conf.xml" ... 22:31:19.960 D-BUS: JACK server could not be started. Sorry Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory Cannot connect to server request channel jack server is not running or cannot be started Tue Nov 27 22:31:19 2012: Starting jack server... Tue Nov 27 22:31:19 2012: JACK server starting in realtime mode with priority 10 Tue Nov 27 22:31:19 2012: [1m[31mERROR: cannot register object path "/org/freedesktop/ReserveDevice1/Audio0": A handler is already registered for /org/freedesktop/ReserveDevice1/Audio0[0m Tue Nov 27 22:31:19 2012: [1m[31mERROR: Failed to acquire device name : Audio0 error : A handler is already registered for /org/freedesktop/ReserveDevice1/Audio0[0m Tue Nov 27 22:31:19 2012: [1m[31mERROR: Audio device hw:0,0 cannot be acquired...[0m Tue Nov 27 22:31:19 2012: [1m[31mERROR: Cannot initialize driver[0m Tue Nov 27 22:31:19 2012: [1m[31mERROR: JackServer::Open failed with -1[0m Tue Nov 27 22:31:19 2012: [1m[31mERROR: Failed to open server[0m Tue Nov 27 22:31:21 2012: Saving settings to "/home/shane/.config/jack/conf.xml" ... 22:31:22.047 Could not connect to JACK server as client. - Overall operation failed. - Unable to connect to server. Please check the messages window for more info. Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory Cannot connect to server request channel jack server is not running or cannot be started Can anyone assist?

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  • 256 Windows Azure Worker Roles, Windows Kinect and a 90's Text-Based Ray-Tracer

    - by Alan Smith
    For a couple of years I have been demoing a simple render farm hosted in Windows Azure using worker roles and the Azure Storage service. At the start of the presentation I deploy an Azure application that uses 16 worker roles to render a 1,500 frame 3D ray-traced animation. At the end of the presentation, when the animation was complete, I would play the animation delete the Azure deployment. The standing joke with the audience was that it was that it was a “$2 demo”, as the compute charges for running the 16 instances for an hour was $1.92, factor in the bandwidth charges and it’s a couple of dollars. The point of the demo is that it highlights one of the great benefits of cloud computing, you pay for what you use, and if you need massive compute power for a short period of time using Windows Azure can work out very cost effective. The “$2 demo” was great for presenting at user groups and conferences in that it could be deployed to Azure, used to render an animation, and then removed in a one hour session. I have always had the idea of doing something a bit more impressive with the demo, and scaling it from a “$2 demo” to a “$30 demo”. The challenge was to create a visually appealing animation in high definition format and keep the demo time down to one hour.  This article will take a run through how I achieved this. Ray Tracing Ray tracing, a technique for generating high quality photorealistic images, gained popularity in the 90’s with companies like Pixar creating feature length computer animations, and also the emergence of shareware text-based ray tracers that could run on a home PC. In order to render a ray traced image, the ray of light that would pass from the view point must be tracked until it intersects with an object. At the intersection, the color, reflectiveness, transparency, and refractive index of the object are used to calculate if the ray will be reflected or refracted. Each pixel may require thousands of calculations to determine what color it will be in the rendered image. Pin-Board Toys Having very little artistic talent and a basic understanding of maths I decided to focus on an animation that could be modeled fairly easily and would look visually impressive. I’ve always liked the pin-board desktop toys that become popular in the 80’s and when I was working as a 3D animator back in the 90’s I always had the idea of creating a 3D ray-traced animation of a pin-board, but never found the energy to do it. Even if I had a go at it, the render time to produce an animation that would look respectable on a 486 would have been measured in months. PolyRay Back in 1995 I landed my first real job, after spending three years being a beach-ski-climbing-paragliding-bum, and was employed to create 3D ray-traced animations for a CD-ROM that school kids would use to learn physics. I had got into the strange and wonderful world of text-based ray tracing, and was using a shareware ray-tracer called PolyRay. PolyRay takes a text file describing a scene as input and, after a few hours processing on a 486, produced a high quality ray-traced image. The following is an example of a basic PolyRay scene file. background Midnight_Blue   static define matte surface { ambient 0.1 diffuse 0.7 } define matte_white texture { matte { color white } } define matte_black texture { matte { color dark_slate_gray } } define position_cylindrical 3 define lookup_sawtooth 1 define light_wood <0.6, 0.24, 0.1> define median_wood <0.3, 0.12, 0.03> define dark_wood <0.05, 0.01, 0.005>     define wooden texture { noise surface { ambient 0.2  diffuse 0.7  specular white, 0.5 microfacet Reitz 10 position_fn position_cylindrical position_scale 1  lookup_fn lookup_sawtooth octaves 1 turbulence 1 color_map( [0.0, 0.2, light_wood, light_wood] [0.2, 0.3, light_wood, median_wood] [0.3, 0.4, median_wood, light_wood] [0.4, 0.7, light_wood, light_wood] [0.7, 0.8, light_wood, median_wood] [0.8, 0.9, median_wood, light_wood] [0.9, 1.0, light_wood, dark_wood]) } } define glass texture { surface { ambient 0 diffuse 0 specular 0.2 reflection white, 0.1 transmission white, 1, 1.5 }} define shiny surface { ambient 0.1 diffuse 0.6 specular white, 0.6 microfacet Phong 7  } define steely_blue texture { shiny { color black } } define chrome texture { surface { color white ambient 0.0 diffuse 0.2 specular 0.4 microfacet Phong 10 reflection 0.8 } }   viewpoint {     from <4.000, -1.000, 1.000> at <0.000, 0.000, 0.000> up <0, 1, 0> angle 60     resolution 640, 480 aspect 1.6 image_format 0 }       light <-10, 30, 20> light <-10, 30, -20>   object { disc <0, -2, 0>, <0, 1, 0>, 30 wooden }   object { sphere <0.000, 0.000, 0.000>, 1.00 chrome } object { cylinder <0.000, 0.000, 0.000>, <0.000, 0.000, -4.000>, 0.50 chrome }   After setting up the background and defining colors and textures, the viewpoint is specified. The “camera” is located at a point in 3D space, and it looks towards another point. The angle, image resolution, and aspect ratio are specified. Two lights are present in the image at defined coordinates. The three objects in the image are a wooden disc to represent a table top, and a sphere and cylinder that intersect to form a pin that will be used for the pin board toy in the final animation. When the image is rendered, the following image is produced. The pins are modeled with a chrome surface, so they reflect the environment around them. Note that the scale of the pin shaft is not correct, this will be fixed later. Modeling the Pin Board The frame of the pin-board is made up of three boxes, and six cylinders, the front box is modeled using a clear, slightly reflective solid, with the same refractive index of glass. The other shapes are modeled as metal. object { box <-5.5, -1.5, 1>, <5.5, 5.5, 1.2> glass } object { box <-5.5, -1.5, -0.04>, <5.5, 5.5, -0.09> steely_blue } object { box <-5.5, -1.5, -0.52>, <5.5, 5.5, -0.59> steely_blue } object { cylinder <-5.2, -1.2, 1.4>, <-5.2, -1.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <5.2, -1.2, 1.4>, <5.2, -1.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <-5.2, 5.2, 1.4>, <-5.2, 5.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <5.2, 5.2, 1.4>, <5.2, 5.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <0, -1.2, 1.4>, <0, -1.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <0, 5.2, 1.4>, <0, 5.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue }   In order to create the matrix of pins that make up the pin board I used a basic console application with a few nested loops to create two intersecting matrixes of pins, which models the layout used in the pin boards. The resulting image is shown below. The pin board contains 11,481 pins, with the scene file containing 23,709 lines of code. For the complete animation 2,000 scene files will be created, which is over 47 million lines of code. Each pin in the pin-board will slide out a specific distance when an object is pressed into the back of the board. This is easily modeled by setting the Z coordinate of the pin to a specific value. In order to set all of the pins in the pin-board to the correct position, a bitmap image can be used. The position of the pin can be set based on the color of the pixel at the appropriate position in the image. When the Windows Azure logo is used to set the Z coordinate of the pins, the following image is generated. The challenge now was to make a cool animation. The Azure Logo is fine, but it is static. Using a normal video to animate the pins would not work; the colors in the video would not be the same as the depth of the objects from the camera. In order to simulate the pin board accurately a series of frames from a depth camera could be used. Windows Kinect The Kenect controllers for the X-Box 360 and Windows feature a depth camera. The Kinect SDK for Windows provides a programming interface for Kenect, providing easy access for .NET developers to the Kinect sensors. The Kinect Explorer provided with the Kinect SDK is a great starting point for exploring Kinect from a developers perspective. Both the X-Box 360 Kinect and the Windows Kinect will work with the Kinect SDK, the Windows Kinect is required for commercial applications, but the X-Box Kinect can be used for hobby projects. The Windows Kinect has the advantage of providing a mode to allow depth capture with objects closer to the camera, which makes for a more accurate depth image for setting the pin positions. Creating a Depth Field Animation The depth field animation used to set the positions of the pin in the pin board was created using a modified version of the Kinect Explorer sample application. In order to simulate the pin board accurately, a small section of the depth range from the depth sensor will be used. Any part of the object in front of the depth range will result in a white pixel; anything behind the depth range will be black. Within the depth range the pixels in the image will be set to RGB values from 0,0,0 to 255,255,255. A screen shot of the modified Kinect Explorer application is shown below. The Kinect Explorer sample application was modified to include slider controls that are used to set the depth range that forms the image from the depth stream. This allows the fine tuning of the depth image that is required for simulating the position of the pins in the pin board. The Kinect Explorer was also modified to record a series of images from the depth camera and save them as a sequence JPEG files that will be used to animate the pins in the animation the Start and Stop buttons are used to start and stop the image recording. En example of one of the depth images is shown below. Once a series of 2,000 depth images has been captured, the task of creating the animation can begin. Rendering a Test Frame In order to test the creation of frames and get an approximation of the time required to render each frame a test frame was rendered on-premise using PolyRay. The output of the rendering process is shown below. The test frame contained 23,629 primitive shapes, most of which are the spheres and cylinders that are used for the 11,800 or so pins in the pin board. The 1280x720 image contains 921,600 pixels, but as anti-aliasing was used the number of rays that were calculated was 4,235,777, with 3,478,754,073 object boundaries checked. The test frame of the pin board with the depth field image applied is shown below. The tracing time for the test frame was 4 minutes 27 seconds, which means rendering the2,000 frames in the animation would take over 148 hours, or a little over 6 days. Although this is much faster that an old 486, waiting almost a week to see the results of an animation would make it challenging for animators to create, view, and refine their animations. It would be much better if the animation could be rendered in less than one hour. Windows Azure Worker Roles The cost of creating an on-premise render farm to render animations increases in proportion to the number of servers. The table below shows the cost of servers for creating a render farm, assuming a cost of $500 per server. Number of Servers Cost 1 $500 16 $8,000 256 $128,000   As well as the cost of the servers, there would be additional costs for networking, racks etc. Hosting an environment of 256 servers on-premise would require a server room with cooling, and some pretty hefty power cabling. The Windows Azure compute services provide worker roles, which are ideal for performing processor intensive compute tasks. With the scalability available in Windows Azure a job that takes 256 hours to complete could be perfumed using different numbers of worker roles. The time and cost of using 1, 16 or 256 worker roles is shown below. Number of Worker Roles Render Time Cost 1 256 hours $30.72 16 16 hours $30.72 256 1 hour $30.72   Using worker roles in Windows Azure provides the same cost for the 256 hour job, irrespective of the number of worker roles used. Provided the compute task can be broken down into many small units, and the worker role compute power can be used effectively, it makes sense to scale the application so that the task is completed quickly, making the results available in a timely fashion. The task of rendering 2,000 frames in an animation is one that can easily be broken down into 2,000 individual pieces, which can be performed by a number of worker roles. Creating a Render Farm in Windows Azure The architecture of the render farm is shown in the following diagram. The render farm is a hybrid application with the following components: ·         On-Premise o   Windows Kinect – Used combined with the Kinect Explorer to create a stream of depth images. o   Animation Creator – This application uses the depth images from the Kinect sensor to create scene description files for PolyRay. These files are then uploaded to the jobs blob container, and job messages added to the jobs queue. o   Process Monitor – This application queries the role instance lifecycle table and displays statistics about the render farm environment and render process. o   Image Downloader – This application polls the image queue and downloads the rendered animation files once they are complete. ·         Windows Azure o   Azure Storage – Queues and blobs are used for the scene description files and completed frames. A table is used to store the statistics about the rendering environment.   The architecture of each worker role is shown below.   The worker role is configured to use local storage, which provides file storage on the worker role instance that can be use by the applications to render the image and transform the format of the image. The service definition for the worker role with the local storage configuration highlighted is shown below. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceDefinition name="CloudRay" >   <WorkerRole name="CloudRayWorkerRole" vmsize="Small">     <Imports>     </Imports>     <ConfigurationSettings>       <Setting name="DataConnectionString" />     </ConfigurationSettings>     <LocalResources>       <LocalStorage name="RayFolder" cleanOnRoleRecycle="true" />     </LocalResources>   </WorkerRole> </ServiceDefinition>     The two executable programs, PolyRay.exe and DTA.exe are included in the Azure project, with Copy Always set as the property. PolyRay will take the scene description file and render it to a Truevision TGA file. As the TGA format has not seen much use since the mid 90’s it is converted to a JPG image using Dave's Targa Animator, another shareware application from the 90’s. Each worker roll will use the following process to render the animation frames. 1.       The worker process polls the job queue, if a job is available the scene description file is downloaded from blob storage to local storage. 2.       PolyRay.exe is started in a process with the appropriate command line arguments to render the image as a TGA file. 3.       DTA.exe is started in a process with the appropriate command line arguments convert the TGA file to a JPG file. 4.       The JPG file is uploaded from local storage to the images blob container. 5.       A message is placed on the images queue to indicate a new image is available for download. 6.       The job message is deleted from the job queue. 7.       The role instance lifecycle table is updated with statistics on the number of frames rendered by the worker role instance, and the CPU time used. The code for this is shown below. public override void Run() {     // Set environment variables     string polyRayPath = Path.Combine(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("RoleRoot"), PolyRayLocation);     string dtaPath = Path.Combine(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("RoleRoot"), DTALocation);       LocalResource rayStorage = RoleEnvironment.GetLocalResource("RayFolder");     string localStorageRootPath = rayStorage.RootPath;       JobQueue jobQueue = new JobQueue("renderjobs");     JobQueue downloadQueue = new JobQueue("renderimagedownloadjobs");     CloudRayBlob sceneBlob = new CloudRayBlob("scenes");     CloudRayBlob imageBlob = new CloudRayBlob("images");     RoleLifecycleDataSource roleLifecycleDataSource = new RoleLifecycleDataSource();       Frames = 0;       while (true)     {         // Get the render job from the queue         CloudQueueMessage jobMsg = jobQueue.Get();           if (jobMsg != null)         {             // Get the file details             string sceneFile = jobMsg.AsString;             string tgaFile = sceneFile.Replace(".pi", ".tga");             string jpgFile = sceneFile.Replace(".pi", ".jpg");               string sceneFilePath = Path.Combine(localStorageRootPath, sceneFile);             string tgaFilePath = Path.Combine(localStorageRootPath, tgaFile);             string jpgFilePath = Path.Combine(localStorageRootPath, jpgFile);               // Copy the scene file to local storage             sceneBlob.DownloadFile(sceneFilePath);               // Run the ray tracer.             string polyrayArguments =                 string.Format("\"{0}\" -o \"{1}\" -a 2", sceneFilePath, tgaFilePath);             Process polyRayProcess = new Process();             polyRayProcess.StartInfo.FileName =                 Path.Combine(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("RoleRoot"), polyRayPath);             polyRayProcess.StartInfo.Arguments = polyrayArguments;             polyRayProcess.Start();             polyRayProcess.WaitForExit();               // Convert the image             string dtaArguments =                 string.Format(" {0} /FJ /P{1}", tgaFilePath, Path.GetDirectoryName (jpgFilePath));             Process dtaProcess = new Process();             dtaProcess.StartInfo.FileName =                 Path.Combine(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("RoleRoot"), dtaPath);             dtaProcess.StartInfo.Arguments = dtaArguments;             dtaProcess.Start();             dtaProcess.WaitForExit();               // Upload the image to blob storage             imageBlob.UploadFile(jpgFilePath);               // Add a download job.             downloadQueue.Add(jpgFile);               // Delete the render job message             jobQueue.Delete(jobMsg);               Frames++;         }         else         {             Thread.Sleep(1000);         }           // Log the worker role activity.         roleLifecycleDataSource.Alive             ("CloudRayWorker", RoleLifecycleDataSource.RoleLifecycleId, Frames);     } }     Monitoring Worker Role Instance Lifecycle In order to get more accurate statistics about the lifecycle of the worker role instances used to render the animation data was tracked in an Azure storage table. The following class was used to track the worker role lifecycles in Azure storage.   public class RoleLifecycle : TableServiceEntity {     public string ServerName { get; set; }     public string Status { get; set; }     public DateTime StartTime { get; set; }     public DateTime EndTime { get; set; }     public long SecondsRunning { get; set; }     public DateTime LastActiveTime { get; set; }     public int Frames { get; set; }     public string Comment { get; set; }       public RoleLifecycle()     {     }       public RoleLifecycle(string roleName)     {         PartitionKey = roleName;         RowKey = Utils.GetAscendingRowKey();         Status = "Started";         StartTime = DateTime.UtcNow;         LastActiveTime = StartTime;         EndTime = StartTime;         SecondsRunning = 0;         Frames = 0;     } }     A new instance of this class is created and added to the storage table when the role starts. It is then updated each time the worker renders a frame to record the total number of frames rendered and the total processing time. These statistics are used be the monitoring application to determine the effectiveness of use of resources in the render farm. Rendering the Animation The Azure solution was deployed to Windows Azure with the service configuration set to 16 worker role instances. This allows for the application to be tested in the cloud environment, and the performance of the application determined. When I demo the application at conferences and user groups I often start with 16 instances, and then scale up the application to the full 256 instances. The configuration to run 16 instances is shown below. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="CloudRay" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="1" osVersion="*">   <Role name="CloudRayWorkerRole">     <Instances count="16" />     <ConfigurationSettings>       <Setting name="DataConnectionString"         value="DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=cloudraydata;AccountKey=..." />     </ConfigurationSettings>   </Role> </ServiceConfiguration>     About six minutes after deploying the application the first worker roles become active and start to render the first frames of the animation. The CloudRay Monitor application displays an icon for each worker role instance, with a number indicating the number of frames that the worker role has rendered. The statistics on the left show the number of active worker roles and statistics about the render process. The render time is the time since the first worker role became active; the CPU time is the total amount of processing time used by all worker role instances to render the frames.   Five minutes after the first worker role became active the last of the 16 worker roles activated. By this time the first seven worker roles had each rendered one frame of the animation.   With 16 worker roles u and running it can be seen that one hour and 45 minutes CPU time has been used to render 32 frames with a render time of just under 10 minutes.     At this rate it would take over 10 hours to render the 2,000 frames of the full animation. In order to complete the animation in under an hour more processing power will be required. Scaling the render farm from 16 instances to 256 instances is easy using the new management portal. The slider is set to 256 instances, and the configuration saved. We do not need to re-deploy the application, and the 16 instances that are up and running will not be affected. Alternatively, the configuration file for the Azure service could be modified to specify 256 instances.   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="CloudRay" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="1" osVersion="*">   <Role name="CloudRayWorkerRole">     <Instances count="256" />     <ConfigurationSettings>       <Setting name="DataConnectionString"         value="DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=cloudraydata;AccountKey=..." />     </ConfigurationSettings>   </Role> </ServiceConfiguration>     Six minutes after the new configuration has been applied 75 new worker roles have activated and are processing their first frames.   Five minutes later the full configuration of 256 worker roles is up and running. We can see that the average rate of frame rendering has increased from 3 to 12 frames per minute, and that over 17 hours of CPU time has been utilized in 23 minutes. In this test the time to provision 140 worker roles was about 11 minutes, which works out at about one every five seconds.   We are now half way through the rendering, with 1,000 frames complete. This has utilized just under three days of CPU time in a little over 35 minutes.   The animation is now complete, with 2,000 frames rendered in a little over 52 minutes. The CPU time used by the 256 worker roles is 6 days, 7 hours and 22 minutes with an average frame rate of 38 frames per minute. The rendering of the last 1,000 frames took 16 minutes 27 seconds, which works out at a rendering rate of 60 frames per minute. The frame counts in the server instances indicate that the use of a queue to distribute the workload has been very effective in distributing the load across the 256 worker role instances. The first 16 instances that were deployed first have rendered between 11 and 13 frames each, whilst the 240 instances that were added when the application was scaled have rendered between 6 and 9 frames each.   Completed Animation I’ve uploaded the completed animation to YouTube, a low resolution preview is shown below. Pin Board Animation Created using Windows Kinect and 256 Windows Azure Worker Roles   The animation can be viewed in 1280x720 resolution at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5jy6bvSxWc Effective Use of Resources According to the CloudRay monitor statistics the animation took 6 days, 7 hours and 22 minutes CPU to render, this works out at 152 hours of compute time, rounded up to the nearest hour. As the usage for the worker role instances are billed for the full hour, it may have been possible to render the animation using fewer than 256 worker roles. When deciding the optimal usage of resources, the time required to provision and start the worker roles must also be considered. In the demo I started with 16 worker roles, and then scaled the application to 256 worker roles. It would have been more optimal to start the application with maybe 200 worker roles, and utilized the full hour that I was being billed for. This would, however, have prevented showing the ease of scalability of the application. The new management portal displays the CPU usage across the worker roles in the deployment. The average CPU usage across all instances is 93.27%, with over 99% used when all the instances are up and running. This shows that the worker role resources are being used very effectively. Grid Computing Scenarios Although I am using this scenario for a hobby project, there are many scenarios where a large amount of compute power is required for a short period of time. Windows Azure provides a great platform for developing these types of grid computing applications, and can work out very cost effective. ·         Windows Azure can provide massive compute power, on demand, in a matter of minutes. ·         The use of queues to manage the load balancing of jobs between role instances is a simple and effective solution. ·         Using a cloud-computing platform like Windows Azure allows proof-of-concept scenarios to be tested and evaluated on a very low budget. ·         No charges for inbound data transfer makes the uploading of large data sets to Windows Azure Storage services cost effective. (Transaction charges still apply.) Tips for using Windows Azure for Grid Computing Scenarios I found the implementation of a render farm using Windows Azure a fairly simple scenario to implement. I was impressed by ease of scalability that Azure provides, and by the short time that the application took to scale from 16 to 256 worker role instances. In this case it was around 13 minutes, in other tests it took between 10 and 20 minutes. The following tips may be useful when implementing a grid computing project in Windows Azure. ·         Using an Azure Storage queue to load-balance the units of work across multiple worker roles is simple and very effective. The design I have used in this scenario could easily scale to many thousands of worker role instances. ·         Windows Azure accounts are typically limited to 20 cores. If you need to use more than this, a call to support and a credit card check will be required. ·         Be aware of how the billing model works. You will be charged for worker role instances for the full clock our in which the instance is deployed. Schedule the workload to start just after the clock hour has started. ·         Monitor the utilization of the resources you are provisioning, ensure that you are not paying for worker roles that are idle. ·         If you are deploying third party applications to worker roles, you may well run into licensing issues. Purchasing software licenses on a per-processor basis when using hundreds of processors for a short time period would not be cost effective. ·         Third party software may also require installation onto the worker roles, which can be accomplished using start-up tasks. Bear in mind that adding a startup task and possible re-boot will add to the time required for the worker role instance to start and activate. An alternative may be to use a prepared VM and use VM roles. ·         Consider using the Windows Azure Autoscaling Application Block (WASABi) to autoscale the worker roles in your application. When using a large number of worker roles, the utilization must be carefully monitored, if the scaling algorithms are not optimal it could get very expensive!

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  • How to recover data from a failing hard drive?

    - by intuited
    An external 3½" HDD seems to be in danger of failing — it's making ticking sounds when idle. I've acquired a replacement drive, and want to know the best strategy to get the data off of the dubious drive with the best chance of saving as much as possible. There are some directories that are more important than others. However, I'm guessing that picking and choosing directories is going to reduce my chances of saving the whole thing. I would also have to mount it, dump a file listing, and then unmount it in order to be able to effectively prioritize directories. Adding in the fact that it's time-consuming to do this, I'm leaning away from this approach. I've considered just using dd, but I'm not sure how it would handle read errors or other problems that might prevent only certain parts of the data from being rescued, or which could be overcome with some retries, but not so many that they endanger other parts of the drive from being saved. I guess ideally it would do a single pass to get as much as possible and then go back to retry anything that was missed due to errors. Is it possible that copying more slowly — e.g. pausing every x MB/GB — would be better than just running the operation full tilt, for example to avoid any overheating issues? For the "where is your backup" crowd: this actually is my backup drive, but it also contains some non-critical and bulky stuff, like music, that aren't backups, i.e. aren't backed up. The drive has not exhibited any clear signs of failure other than this somewhat ominous sound. I did have to fsck a few errors recently — orphaned inodes, incorrect free blocks/inodes counts, inode bitmap differences, zero dtime on deleted inodes; about 20 errors in all. The filesystem of the partition is ext3.

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  • Bizarre image loading problem from apache2

    - by NateDSaint
    Users have complained a few times about seeing a bizarre set of pink or green stripes on our webpage. At first I thought there were a rash of video card outages, but then someone sent me a screenshot from their browser (IE8). I later saw the same thing, but with slightly different colors on Chrome. Users have experienced this on their iPads and iPhones (iOS Safari). Because I've optimized the site to cache images, the bad image stays around until you clear your cache, so once you do, it resolves itself. My assumption is that the transmission of the image is being cut off mid-stream and then staying that way, but I can't for the life of me figure out why. Here's what I've checked: Header length is being sent, and transmission looks okay (wget sample below): wget http://www.superiorlivestock.com/templates/sla2/images/wallbg2.jpg --2012-04-05 08:46:00-- http://www.superiorlivestock.com/templates/sla2/images/wallbg2.jpg Resolving www.superiorlivestock.com (www.superiorlivestock.com)... [ip redacted] Connecting to www.superiorlivestock.com (www.superiorlivestock.com)|[ip redacted]|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 45926 (45K) [image/jpeg] Saving to: `wallbg2.jpg' Images are not being served gzipped (apache conf below): SetOutputFilter DEFLATE SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:gif|jpe?g|png)$ no-gzip dont-vary The site is www.superiorlivestock.com, and here's a sample of the bad page load: Is there something obvious I'm missing? Am I saving my images in the wrong format somehow?

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  • Auto Save and Auto Load Game onto the Device's Storage Concept Question

    - by David Dimalanta
    I'm trying to make a simple app that will test the save and load state. Is it a good idea to make an app that has an auto save and load game feature only every time the newbies open the first app then continues it on the other day? I tried making a sprite that is moving, starting at the center. When I close and re-open the app, the sprite goes back to the center instead of the last coordinate where the sprite land on this part (i.e. at the top). The thing I want to know how the sequence of saving and loading goes like this: I open the app The starting sprite at the center. It displays a coordinate of the sprite plus number of times does the sprite move. I exit the app that automatically saves the game without notice. Finally, when I re-opened it, it automatically loads the game retaining the number of times the sprite move, coordinates, and the sprite's area landed. These steps above are similar, but not the sprite movement test app, to the sequence of saving and loading the game's level and record in Jewel Stackers for the Android app. And, by default, if there is no SD card in any tab or phone that runs on Android, does it automatically save/load onto the internal drive or the APK file itself? Is it also useful to use auto save and auto load feature for protecting and fetching informations (i.e. fastest time, last time where the sprite is located via coordinates, etc.)?

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  • Common Live Upgrade problems

    - by user12611829
    As I have worked with customers deploying Live Upgrade in their environments, several problems seem to surface over and over. With this blog article, I will try to collect these troubles, as well as suggest some workarounds. If this sounds like the beginnings of a Wiki, you would be right. At present, there is not enough material for one, so we will use this blog for the time being. I do expect new material to be posted on occasion, so if you wish to bookmark it for future reference, a permanent link can be found here. Live Upgrade copies over ZFS root clone This was introduced in Solaris 10 10/09 (u8) and the root of the problem is a duplicate entry in the source boot environments ICF configuration file. Prior to u8, a ZFS root file system was not included in /etc/vfstab, since the mount is implicit at boot time. Starting with u8, the root file system is included in /etc/vfstab, and when the boot environment is scanned to create the ICF file, a duplicate entry is recorded. Here's what the error looks like. # lucreate -n s10u9-baseline Checking GRUB menu... System has findroot enabled GRUB Analyzing system configuration. Comparing source boot environment file systems with the file system(s) you specified for the new boot environment. Determining which file systems should be in the new boot environment. Updating boot environment description database on all BEs. Updating system configuration files. Creating configuration for boot environment . Source boot environment is . Creating boot environment . Creating file systems on boot environment . Creating file system for in zone on . The error indicator ----- /usr/lib/lu/lumkfs: test: unknown operator zfs Populating file systems on boot environment . Checking selection integrity. Integrity check OK. Populating contents of mount point . This should not happen ------ Copying. Ctrl-C and cleanup If you weren't paying close attention, you might not even know this is an error. The symptoms are lucreate times that are way too long due to the extraneous copy, or the one that alerted me to the problem, the root file system is filling up - again thanks to a redundant copy. This problem has already been identified and corrected, and a patch (121431-58 or later for x86, 121430-57 for SPARC) is available. Unfortunately, this patch has not yet made it into the Solaris 10 Recommended Patch Cluster. Applying the prerequisite patches from the latest cluster is a recommendation from the Live Upgrade Survival Guide blog, so an additional step will be required until the patch is included. Let's see how this works. # patchadd -p | grep 121431 Patch: 121429-13 Obsoletes: Requires: 120236-01 121431-16 Incompatibles: Packages: SUNWluzone Patch: 121431-54 Obsoletes: 121436-05 121438-02 Requires: Incompatibles: Packages: SUNWlucfg SUNWluu SUNWlur # unzip 121431-58 # patchadd 121431-58 Validating patches... Loading patches installed on the system... Done! Loading patches requested to install. Done! Checking patches that you specified for installation. Done! Approved patches will be installed in this order: 121431-58 Checking installed patches... Executing prepatch script... Installing patch packages... Patch 121431-58 has been successfully installed. See /var/sadm/patch/121431-58/log for details Executing postpatch script... Patch packages installed: SUNWlucfg SUNWlur SUNWluu # lucreate -n s10u9-baseline Checking GRUB menu... System has findroot enabled GRUB Analyzing system configuration. INFORMATION: Unable to determine size or capacity of slice . Comparing source boot environment file systems with the file system(s) you specified for the new boot environment. Determining which file systems should be in the new boot environment. INFORMATION: Unable to determine size or capacity of slice . Updating boot environment description database on all BEs. Updating system configuration files. Creating configuration for boot environment . Source boot environment is . Creating boot environment . Cloning file systems from boot environment to create boot environment . Creating snapshot for on . Creating clone for on . Setting canmount=noauto for in zone on . Saving existing file in top level dataset for BE as //boot/grub/menu.lst.prev. Saving existing file in top level dataset for BE as //boot/grub/menu.lst.prev. Saving existing file in top level dataset for BE as //boot/grub/menu.lst.prev. File propagation successful Copied GRUB menu from PBE to ABE No entry for BE in GRUB menu Population of boot environment successful. Creation of boot environment successful. This time it took just a few seconds. A cursory examination of the offending ICF file (/etc/lu/ICF.3 in this case) shows that the duplicate root file system entry is now gone. # cat /etc/lu/ICF.3 s10u8-baseline:-:/dev/zvol/dsk/panroot/swap:swap:8388608 s10u8-baseline:/:panroot/ROOT/s10u8-baseline:zfs:0 s10u8-baseline:/vbox:pandora/vbox:zfs:0 s10u8-baseline:/setup:pandora/setup:zfs:0 s10u8-baseline:/export:pandora/export:zfs:0 s10u8-baseline:/pandora:pandora:zfs:0 s10u8-baseline:/panroot:panroot:zfs:0 s10u8-baseline:/workshop:pandora/workshop:zfs:0 s10u8-baseline:/export/iso:pandora/iso:zfs:0 s10u8-baseline:/export/home:pandora/home:zfs:0 s10u8-baseline:/vbox/HardDisks:pandora/vbox/HardDisks:zfs:0 s10u8-baseline:/vbox/HardDisks/WinXP:pandora/vbox/HardDisks/WinXP:zfs:0 Solaris 10 9/10 introduces new autoregistration file This one is actually mentioned in the Oracle Solaris 9/10 release notes. I know, I hate it when that happens too. Here's what the "error" looks like. # luupgrade -u -s /mnt -n s10u9-baseline System has findroot enabled GRUB No entry for BE in GRUB menu Copying failsafe kernel from media. 61364 blocks miniroot filesystem is Mounting miniroot at ERROR: The auto registration file does not exist or incomplete. The auto registration file is mandatory for this upgrade. Use -k argument along with luupgrade command. autoreg_file is path to auto registration information file. See sysidcfg(4) for a list of valid keywords for use in this file. The format of the file is as follows. oracle_user=xxxx oracle_pw=xxxx http_proxy_host=xxxx http_proxy_port=xxxx http_proxy_user=xxxx http_proxy_pw=xxxx For more details refer "Oracle Solaris 10 9/10 Installation Guide: Planning for Installation and Upgrade". As with the previous problem, this is also easy to work around. Assuming that you don't want to use the auto-registration feature at upgrade time, create a file that contains just autoreg=disable and pass the filename on to luupgrade. Here is an example. # echo "autoreg=disable" /var/tmp/no-autoreg # luupgrade -u -s /mnt -k /var/tmp/no-autoreg -n s10u9-baseline System has findroot enabled GRUB No entry for BE in GRUB menu Copying failsafe kernel from media. 61364 blocks miniroot filesystem is Mounting miniroot at ####################################################################### NOTE: To improve products and services, Oracle Solaris communicates configuration data to Oracle after rebooting. You can register your version of Oracle Solaris to capture this data for your use, or the data is sent anonymously. For information about what configuration data is communicated and how to control this facility, see the Release Notes or www.oracle.com/goto/solarisautoreg. INFORMATION: After activated and booted into new BE , Auto Registration happens automatically with the following Information autoreg=disable ####################################################################### Validating the contents of the media . The media is a standard Solaris media. The media contains an operating system upgrade image. The media contains version . Constructing upgrade profile to use. Locating the operating system upgrade program. Checking for existence of previously scheduled Live Upgrade requests. Creating upgrade profile for BE . Checking for GRUB menu on ABE . Saving GRUB menu on ABE . Checking for x86 boot partition on ABE. Determining packages to install or upgrade for BE . Performing the operating system upgrade of the BE . CAUTION: Interrupting this process may leave the boot environment unstable or unbootable. The Live Upgrade operation now proceeds as expected. Once the system upgrade is complete, we can manually register the system. If you want to do a hands off registration during the upgrade, see the Oracle Solaris Auto Registration section of the Oracle Solaris Release Notes for instructions on how to do that. Technocrati Tags: Oracle Solaris Patching Live Upgrade var sc_project=1193495; var sc_invisible=1; var sc_security="a46f6831";

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  • wget has a 4 second delay

    - by guisius
    Hello. I have tried to wget a page with windows/mac, and the response is instant while the linux vesion needs to wait for 4 seconds before it shows the response. I just hope this can be solved. More information added: in Ubuntu : wget xxx://192.168.0.135/test.cgi?cmd= -O test.txt --2011-03-04 14:21:17-- xxx://192.168.0.135/test.cgi?cmd= Connecting to 192.168.0.135:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: unspecified [text/html] Saving to: `test.txt' [ <=> ] 17 --.-K/s in 0s 2011-03-04 14:21:22 (1.88 MB/s) - `test.txt' saved [17] while in Mac OS : wget xxx://192.168.0.135/test.cgi?cmd= -O test.txt --2011-03-04 14:22:33-- xxx://192.168.0.135/test.cgi?cmd= Connecting to 192.168.0.135:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: unspecified [text/html] Saving to: `test.txt' [ <=> ] 17 --.-K/s in 0s 2011-03-04 14:22:33 (755 KB/s) - `test.txt' saved [17] in ubuntu it delays 4 seconds while windows and mac will not i believe it may related to some setting in the network config such as packet size , window frame , but i have no idea to set this PS: because the limit of the post not allow to post the url so i mark this as xxx

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  • Making efficeint voxel engines using "chunks"

    - by Wardy
    Concept I'm currently looking in to how voxel engines work with a view to possibly making one myself. I see a lot of stuff like this ... https://sites.google.com/site/letsmakeavoxelengine/home/chunks ... which talks about how to go about reducing the draw calls. What I can't seem to understand is how it actually saves draw call counts on the basis of the logic being something like this ... Without chunks foreach voxel in myvoxels DrawIfVisible() With Chunks foreach chunk in mychunks DrawIfVisible() which then does ... foreach voxel in myvoxels DrawIfVisible() So surely you saved nothing ?!?! You still make a draw call for each visible voxel do you not? A visible voxel needs a draw call in either scenario. The only real saving I can see is that the logic that evaluates a chunk will be able to determine if a large number of voxels are visible or not effectively saving a bit of "is this chunk visible" cpu time. But it's the draw calls that interest me ... The fewer of those, the faster the application. EDIT: In case it makes any difference I will probably be using XNA (DX not OpenGL) for my engine so don't consider my choice of example in the link above my choice of technology. But this question is such that I doubt it would matter.

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