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  • Is there a local yubnub.org replacement?

    - by Justin Keogh
    I use yubnub very often... every google search I do by just (in firefox) "ctrl-t" - (now in the url bar) "y g searchterms" [Enter] "y" in this case is a search keyword I added by right clicking in the yubnub.org command box it's really fast, and I just do it automatically now... but the problem is now I am stuck with whatever the yubnub command that I am so used to using does. I cant change it... for example, what if I dont want to use google... but I still want to use the "g" command to search? or say I want to use google's https search... ect... I suppose this would be kinda trivial to implement locally... but I would hate to re-invent the code if it's allready done and in use... ideas? Also a local yubnub.org replacement would save me the DNS lookup and traffic to yubnub.org. I dont expect to be able to import all commands from yubnub.org but that would be cool if possible.

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  • Drive letter not appearing after heat-related crash

    - by NickAldwin
    I recently had my old PC (has 3 physical hard drives partitioned into 6 partitions) off while on vacation. When I came back, I turned it on. I hadn't realized the room was warmer than it usually is due to hot weather while I was away. The computer was extremely slow to start up, then it crashed. When i rebooted, it got halfway through chkdsk on one of the non-system partitions, then crashed again. I opened it up and felt the hard drives and immediately shut down the computer and moved it to my basement to cool down because it was so hot. I left it there for a length of time while I reinstalled the A/C. I have now turned it on again. It is working fine, and every drive except for the one with the partition that was being checked has appeared in Windows. I scheduled chkdsk for all of the other partitions anyway, just in case, but I'm worried about that drive. I'm pretty sure the drive itself hasn't broken but that crashing in the middle of a chkdsk repair may have corrupted the data. What would you do in this situation? Most of the data on that drive was backed up, so it's not a huge deal if I lost it, but I'd like to get it back if I could. I also would love to regain usability of the drive, even if I have to wipe it -- but that's a last-resort sort of thing. What do you suggest I do?

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  • Running WAMP (XAMPP) and LAMP from One SSD, On 64-bit Windows and Linux Machines

    - by nicorellius
    I have an solid state drive that I develop websites on. The reason I do this is because I work on a few different computers. Historically, I created separate developing environments to use for each machine. This was OK, but if the system changed for some reason, eg, new OS install, it was a pain. So I bought a USB 3.0 enclosure and put a solid state drive in there and it's pretty darn fast, which is good. I was working with three Windows machines and I could simply hook up the drive, launch my XAMPP server and away I went, developing websites: using Dreamweaver, Komodo, Notepad++, Eclipse, etc. Recently, however, one of my Windows machines' hard drive went down and instead of going back to Windows in this case, I went with Ububntu 12.04. I have several Ubuntu workstations and servers and I like Linux, so I thought his was a great opportunity to transition. I went to work installing and trying to set up a LAMP server and, besides from XAMPP 64-bit compatibility out of the box, I'm seeing other issues with getting this Linux server running. I will keep trying to resolve this, but in the meantime... my question is, has anyone ever successfully run both WAMP and LAMP from the same SSD (formatted to NTFS)? I'm sure there are lots of barriers to this happening, like local file system, OS libraries, dependencies, etc. But I was thinking it would be cool if it could be done. I'm no expert, so if this is just plain old stupid, please don't hesitate to let me know.

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  • Todo/task manager for android and desktop linux

    - by RiaD
    I'm looking forward to Task/ToDo Manager. It should work under Android, Linux(or Web). If it's very cool, one of them is OK too, Android is preferable in this situation. Necessary features: Russian or English language Possibility to mark task as finished Interesting features: (I want as more, as possible, while it's OK, if some of them isn't avaliable) Nice and easy-to-use interface Possibility to choose finish time for task. After that it's showed as overdue. Possibility to choose start time for task. Before it task is inactive and maybe shown or hide Possibility to add nested tasks. Task marks completed when all sub-tasks are completed. Possibility to make dependencies. If A depends on B, and B isn't finished yet, A is inactive as in third feature. Possibility to create task in a moment without fill-all-this-forms Syncronization between version(Android to linux or Android to web) Notification (on Android only) Features, that I'm not interested in: Creating more than one todo list sharing ToDo's I've seen couple of managers. Best I've seen now is Task Coach for Linux, but I don't very like its interface, and there is no version for Android.

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  • How does Safari's Reader work and when does it show up?

    - by TestSubject528491
    Safari's Reader feature is a cool little app that displays a web page as a newspaper article --- without all the distracting sidebars, comments, and ads. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, and I'm wondering how "it knows when to show up." On my personal website, one of the pages has this option. You can click the Reader button in the URL bar and it is displayed beautifully like a page in an iBook. However, none of my other web pages (on the same site) do this. I thought it had something to do with the <article> tag, but I removed that and it still works. Anyone know how this app works? Also, does anyone know of any Chrome extensions that are just like this? Google Reader is not the same thing. PS: From the cited Apple website: Safari Reader As you browse the web, Safari detects if you are on a web page with an article. Click the Reader button that appears in the Smart Address Field and an elegant view of the article appears — without any distracting content. Not much help, is it?

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  • Can Windows Media Player create playlists based on folder structure?

    - by Chaulky
    Over the years I've carefully molded my digital media collection into a series of folders that make it easy for me to find what I'm looking for. I recently discovered the awesomeness that is streaming video from Windows 7 Media Player to the PS3 so I can watch it on the big screen without all the hassle of hooking the computer up to the TV. The problem is, I totally lose my carefully crafted folder structure and all my videos become one giant mess again... not cool! As a temporary solution, I've created a few playlists for my favorites (Dexter Season 4, Dexter Season 5, Breaking Bad Season 1, etc.). This is a HUGE pain in the a$$. So, is there a way to get Windows Media Player (on Windows 7) to maintain some sort of folder structure based on the location of the actual video files? So if I have my videos sorted into folders by show and season, Media Player will pick that up and let me browse it in the same way. As an alternative answer, I'll accept suggestions for a program that can also stream to PS3 and has this "folder organization" feature.

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  • What are my options in replacing the noisy fan in my Linksys Cisco SRW2008P managed GigE switch?

    - by Fred Sobotka
    My first managed GigE switch, the Linksys SRW2008, was a dream, until it started randomly chattering on various ports. That started while I was on the road all the time, which made it take forever to diagnose, but that's a different problem. When I finally determined that the switch was bad, it was still covered by warranty by Linksys/Cisco, so I opened an RMA ticket and returned it. Unfortunately, Linksys/Cisco "upgraded" my replacement switch to a SRW2008P, which has Power over Ethernet features I never planned on using. That by itself wasn't so bad, but it's my guess that the inclusion of PoE functions in this model required a tiny, super-loud internal fan to keep everything cool. This wasn't something I wanted or asked for, but, now that I am stuck with it, I am investigating options for replacing that little internal fan with something far quieter. For example, if I attach a larger fan to the outsite of the chassis, I think it could push enough air to replace the stock fan that is currently there. Any advice on carrying this out? I have no interest in melting my switch due to insufficient ventilation.

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  • mysqldump --where with = operator doesn't get all rows = - Help!

    - by JonathanLIVE
    I have a situation with a particular table that now thinks it contains 4 Petabytes of data. I know that sounds cool, but I assure you, it is only on a 60GB partition. This table has 9 fields in it. One of them is a domain_id field. It is the best field to identify the rows by, as there are only approximately 6300 of them. The only other field option to match has over 2million records, and thats just more difficult. I cannot do a straight mysqldump because it will attempt to output all 4PB of data and fill the drive long before it gets close to that, so I need to surgically remove the good stuff, destroy the db, and recreate it. I believe if I can do a dump for each domain_id record, then I will get most of the usable data out of it. This is what I am trying to use: mysqldump -u root --skip-opt -q --no-create-info --skip-add-drop-table --max_allowed_packet=1000000000 database table --where="domain_id=10" domains10.sql Using this I expect every row with the domain_id 10 to be exported. However, when I check the export, I am only getting 1 row, when however I look at the db, there are many many rows. It is as though the operator just finds one, then gives up. I have tried various operators. Using the < or I am able to get more of the data, but the export stops short at certain rows where the data has been compromised. With over 6000 to go through, I can't narrow down which rows are being affected in the export easily enough. So, what I need is an operator that will basically do what I thought = would do, simply give me an export of all records that match the specific field. Also note, the only way I got this DB even accessible is through an innodb force recovery 3. So I need to get this right, because after this is done, I have to drop the db in order to make mysql functional again. Looking forward to any helpful answers.

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  • Can Windows Media Player create playlists based on folder structure?

    - by Chaulky
    Over the years I've carefully molded my digital media collection into a series of folders that make it easy for me to find what I'm looking for. I recently discovered the awesomeness that is streaming video from Windows 7 Media Player to the PS3 so I can watch it on the big screen without all the hassle of hooking the computer up to the TV. The problem is, I totally lose my carefully crafted folder structure and all my videos become one giant mess again... not cool! As a temporary solution, I've created a few playlists for my favorites (Dexter Season 4, Dexter Season 5, Breaking Bad Season 1, etc.). This is a HUGE pain in the a$$. So, is there a way to get Windows Media Player (on Windows 7) to maintain some sort of folder structure based on the location of the actual video files? So if I have my videos sorted into folders by show and season, Media Player will pick that up and let me browse it in the same way. As an alternative answer, I'll accept suggestions for a program that can also stream to PS3 and has this "folder organization" feature.

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  • Does anyone know where I could find a 2 input USB voltage meter?

    - by John O
    What we really need is a tiny UPS, of sorts. We'll be hooking up a solar cell and a battery to a single board computer. Currently, that SBC is a custom Pic32 device, and it does it's own UPS and voltage monitoring duties. I've been tasked with trying to replicate all of its features with off the shelf products... and for the most part I've succeeded. But I don't currently have any way to switch between two sources of juice, or monitor when they're getting low. These guys have something: http://www.mini-box.com/picoUPS-100-12V-DC-micro-UPS-system-battery-backup-system I really like it, the price is well within the budget. We might even work it in though it does 12V and I'll probably be using 5V... there are enough engineers on hand to figure out something. But I'd still have no idea what the voltage was for the PV or battery. I was hoping that there was some simple little USB multimeter thing that I could use to monitor this with, but I can't seem to come up with anything. I've found all sorts of cool hardware, but nothing that will help us. Does anyone know of anything?

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  • RSS "Newspaper" / Google Reader replacement

    - by Sean D
    With the impending demise of Google Reader I've been looking at ways to replace it. I've decided that what might be cool is to get an email every morning, with all the updates from the last twenty-four hours, maybe in the style of a newspaper. That's not a very original idea, since sites like http://fivefilters.org/pdf-newspaper/ and http://feedjournal.com/ already do this, but they both have various drawbacks. In particular both require a single feed, will just take the last n items, and clicking around on their website. The Pro option for feedjournal seems almost like it would do the job, but the project seems to be dead, and there's no way to buy it. Before I hack together something crazy I'd like to know if there's a better solution to my problem. In short: I want to replace Google Reader with a daily pdf email, how should I do this? edit: I didn't award the bounty because nobody solved the problem (not that I'm assuming it has a solution). Answers like "well for the way I do things this wouldn't work" aren't actually helpful, even if they are well-meaning.

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  • Nginx Config - I can't access WordPress admin area

    - by WebDevDude
    I am a complete noob when it comes to Nginx, but I'm trying to make the switch over for my WordPress site. Everything works, even the permalink, but I can't access my WordPress admin directory (I get a 403 error). I have my WordPress install in a subfolder, so that complicates things a bit for me. Here is my Nginx config file: server { server_name mydomain.com; access_log /srv/www/mydomain.com/logs/access.log; error_log /srv/www/mydomain.com/logs/error.log; root /srv/www/mydomain.com/public_html; location / { index index.php; # This is cool because no php is touched for static content. # include the "?$args" part so non-default permalinks doesn't break when using query string try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args; } location /myWordpressDir { try_files $uri $uri/ /myWordpressDir/index.php?$args; } location ~ \.php$ { include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params; fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; fastcgi_index index.php; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /srv/www/mydomain.com/public_html$fastcgi_script_name; fastcgi_split_path_info ^(/myWordpressDir)(/.*)$; } location ~* ^.+\.(ogg|ogv|svg|svgz|eot|otf|woff|mp4|ttf|rss|atom|jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|zip|tgz|gz|rar|bz2|doc|xls|exe|ppt|tar|mid|midi|wav|bmp|rtf)$ { access_log off; log_not_found off; expires max; } }

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  • Can I select which folders the Photos live tile chooses from?

    - by nhinkle
    The built-in Photos app in Windows 8 has a live tile on the start screen that shows photos from your pictures library. It's a cool little visual, even if it's not particularly useful. The problem is that a lot of image files on my computer are not really photos per se -- I have a lot of screenshots, PNGs of technical drawings, graph images, etc. Those all look pretty awkward on the start screen. I look pretty awkward on the start screen too... sometimes photos like resume profile shots show up that I don't want to delete, but they're not really what I want to be staring at when I start my computer up. I'm looking for some way to configure which folders the Photos app should look in for images to display on the live tile. That way, I could point it to some directories of pretty scenic pictures I've taken, and not have to see graphs and my own mug. For the time being, I've just disabled the live tile (right click - disable live tile), but I would ultimately like to have this functionality, just with more control over it.

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  • Shortcuts that make using Windows easier? [closed]

    - by ekaj
    Over the years I have found out a good bit of shortcuts, all of which make using Windows that much faster and easier. I was wondering if I had missed any important ones, or ones that just saved any time. I tried to keep these relative to Windows only, as programs such as Mozilla, Photoshop, etc. bring in hundreds of other shortcuts, which do not apply to all users. These are the current ones I know: For the mouse: Scroll wheel - opens a link in IE into a new tab - closes a specific tab in IE when closed on Right click-n-drag - nifty menu to make a copy of a file or create a shortcut For the keyboard: Cntrl + Alt + Del - need this be explained? WinKey + R - opens 'Run..' WinKey + D - shows the desktop WinKey + E - opens 'My Computer' WinKey + F - opens 'Find..' WinKey + Tab - cool way to switch inbetween windows WinKey + L - locks the computer Alt + Tab - switches windows with a simple interface Alt + F4 - closes windows Alt + F - opens 'File' (Handy for things like IE if you have the menubar disabled) Cntrl + F - find text on current document Cntrl + W - closes a window, or current active tab in IE (or IE itself if only one tab) Cntrl + C - copies selected text / image Cntrl + V - pastes selected text / image So does anyone know of any more shortcuts that just make life easier? I would be much appreciative of any, and I am sure that some other users would like to know some too =]

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  • Install Peppermint OS three on Asus EeePC

    - by Kithoth
    I just had a new Asus EeePC R051CX. Out of the box, the installed OS is Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, but I am trying to install Peppermint OS three (as single boot). Problem. Once on live CD (well, live USB stick...), I'm in trouble in both following situations: Try Peppermint OS Live In this case, the first thing I get is a message reading The system is running in low-graphics mode Your screen, graphics card, and input device settings could not be detected correctly. You will need to configure these yourself. I can solely press "return" to accept, then I have a list of 4 options to answer the question "What would you like to do?". But I simply can't do anything at this moment, except switching to console mode or rebooting (keyboard / mouse controls don't allow me to do anything else). Install Peppermint OS Something I really don't understand... it launches the Ubuntu Recovery Media (which was already installed when I received the device)! Also, it says in the bottom ERROR: This recovery media only functions on Ubuntu systems. All I can do is quit (that is, reboot). One last important thing that comes to my mind: this stick worked just fine on the other computers I've tried it on. I really hope someone could bring me the light, a friend of mine told me how cool this OS is for EeePCs. Don't want to give up! Thanks. Edit I finally could install Peppermint, but not by understanding why I couldn't do it the logical way. Instead, I reinstalled Ubuntu myself (erasing the factory one). Then, I could simply boot on my live USB and perform a fresh install of Peppermint. So, I still don't know how and why the mentioned problem occurred.

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  • Is there an simple but good To Do Manager app for the Mac?

    - by Another Registered User
    Every morning I think about what I am going to do today. So I take a paper and start to write things like: [ ] Call Mr. XYZ [ ] Answer Support E-Mails [ ] Reduce website header height by 20 px [ ] Create new navigation bar icons And every time I'm done with something, I paint a checkmark in this square. On paper. It would be fun to have something like this as an application. But I don't want a heavy project management tool or integration with email. It should be like download, install, use without fat configuration and steep learning curve. usually I don't schedule my to do's, I just write down every day what I want to accomplish today. For my experience it doesn't make sense to plan what to do next week, because next week everything looks totally different. Would be cool if such a simple utility exists. At the moment I try just using textEdit and deleting rows which are done. With a nice interface, this would be much more fun.

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  • Zero downtime deployment (Tomcat), Nginx or HAProxy, behind hardware LB - how to "starve" old server?

    - by alexeypro
    Currently we have the following setup. Hardware Load Balancer (LB) Box A running Tomcat on 8080 (TA) Box B running Tomcat on 8080 (TB) TA and TB are running behind LB. For now it's pretty complicated and manual job to take Box A or Box B out of LB to do the zero downtime deployment. I am thinking to do something like this: Hardware Load Balancer (LB) Box A running Nginx on 8080 (NA) Box A running Tomcat on 8081 (TA1) Box A running Tomcat on 8082 (TA2) Box B running Nginx on 8080 (NB) Box B running Tomcat on 8081 (TB1) Box B running Tomcat on 8082 (TB2) Basically LB will be directing traffic between NA and NB now. On each of Nginx's we'll have TA1, TA2 and TB1, TB2 configured as upstream servers. Once one of the upstreams's healthcheck page is unresponsive (shutdown) the traffic goes to another one (HttpHealthcheckModule module on Nginx). So the deploy process is simple. Say, TA1 is active with version 0.1 of the app. Healthcheck on TA1 is OK. We start TA2 with Healthcheck on it as ERROR. So Nginx is not talking to it. We deploy app version 0.2 to TA2. Make sure it works. Now, we switch the Healthcheck on TA2 to OK, switch Healthcheck to TA1 to ERROR. Nginx will start serving TA2, and will remove TA1 out of rotation. Done! And now same with the other box. While it sounds all cool and nice, how do we "starve" the Nginx? Say we have pending connections, some users on TA1. If we just turn it off, sessions will break (we have cookie-based sessions). Not good. Any way to starve traffic to one of the upstream servers with Nginx? Thanks!

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  • Urgent: how to deny read access to a ExecCGI directory

    - by Malvolio
    First, I can't believe that that isn't the default behavior. Second, yikes! I don't know how long my code's been hanging out there, with all sort of cool secret stuff, just waiting for some hacker who knows Apache better than I do. EDIT (and apology) Well, this is sort of embarrassing. Here's what happened: We had some Python scripts available to the web, at /aux/file.py, which were not surprisingly at /var/www/http/aux . Separately, we were running an app server and Apache proxies through at /servlets/. A contractor had constructed the WAR file by bundling up all the generated files including the Python files (which are in a directory also called aux, not surprisingly), so if you typed in /servlets/aux/file.py, the web-server would ask the app-server for it and the app-server would just supply the file. It was the latter URL that this morning I happened to type in by accident and lo, the source appeared. Until I realized the shear unlikelihood of what I had done, the situation was rating about 8.3 on the sphincter scale. After a tense half-hour or so I realized that it had nothing to do with the CGI (and that serving files that were also executable would be not only foolish but also impossible), and was able to address the real problems. So -- sorry, everybody. Let the scorn-fest commence.

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  • My PC suddenly reboots

    - by ChocoDeveloper
    Yesterday I opened my PC hub (after like, 5 years) to add more RAM and a new HDD. It was full of dust and balls of fluff, so I cleaned it a bit by blowing. I also removed the fan that was attached to the motherboard (I think it's there to cool the processor) and I cleaned it also by blowing and with a paintbrush, then put it back where it was (it had 4 weird plastic screws, it wasn't easy). Then I added 2 x 2Gib of RAM (Kingston 1333MHz), and the new HDD (Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB SATA 3). I couldn't find another wire like the one my first disk had, which was thicker, but there was one that was more flat, so I plugged it and it worked fine (I also plugged the wire that I think is for the data, which looks like many little wires glued together). I'm running Ubuntu 12.04, and in the new disk I've just installed Windows 7. Between yesterday and today, two reboots ocurred while working on Ubuntu. I haven't used Windows 7 that much so I don't know if it will happen there too. So where can I begin to debug this?

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  • What apps can you only get on Mac and not Windows?

    - by ytk
    What apps do you absolutely have to use a Mac to run, and there are no decent Windows PC equivalent? This is not a religious war. Please be specific and practical It doesn't have to be a direct 1-2-1 comparison, but overall usefulness to the task I'll start off with a few: KeyNote -- the animations are quite cool and not available in PowerPoint iTune's photo sync -- on Windows it makes copy of all the photos you want to sync, effectively double the space taken up by your photos. On a Mac it's easier as long as you use iPhoto Keychain -- a centralized password manager tied to the OS. The benefit of this is you don't have to set a Master Password (like Firefox) which you need to enter when starting the browser. And it doesn't reveal your password (like Chrome, which makes no effort in hiding the password you have stored in Options) Time Machine -- 0-configuration backup in the background. Easy interface for restoring a file, or even just a contact in the address book. Text-to-speech -- works in any program, and sounds better than Windows computer voice Quick View -- press space bar to preview a file. Windows95 had quick view, but was removed.

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  • Why is my HP TouchSmart tx2 1025dx shutting down?

    - by Kristy
    I'm having an issue with my HP tx2 1025dx laptop. Sometimes it will spontaneously shut itself off. First, the screen will go out. Next, the computer itself will shut down. This usually occurs when I am doing something that requires a lot of resources, but lately can happen when I am doing something as simple as using an Office app. I think it may be heat related, if I try to boot the laptop after it shuts itself down, it will shut itself down again before startup is complete. If I let it cool down for a while and then come back to it, the computer will boot properly. These shutdowns are always accompanied by high temperatures on the bottom right side, as well as the right side of the keyboard. I am using a laptop cooler with two fans, and it is not making a bit of difference. This is the second TouchSmart we have owned, the first one had the same issues, we sent it in to HP after it finally refused to reboot. They “fixed” it, and it worked fine for about a month before doing the exact same thing. Unfortunately we had bought the second one before the issues began with the original, if I had known this would be a problem, I would not have purchased another TouchSmart. This particular laptop we have had for more than a year and it didn’t start these issues until a couple of months ago. Any suggestions as to how to fix this problem?

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  • why does my dl380 G3 crank the fan up so high (and how do i stop it?)

    - by smoofra
    I've got a HP DL380 and after I leave it on for a while it decides it needs to run the fans at a much higher speed than it did before. It's really loud and annoying. Is there any way to manually control the fan speed? Or otherwise get it to stop doing that? Thanks. edit: I guess i should have made it clear that this is a bit of a jury-rigged situation. I know the ideal solution is to put the thing in a server room with nice cool air. Unfortunately, that isn't happening. This is the sort of problem that calls for a jury rigged solution like manually setting the fan speed and accepting the fact that it's going to run hot shutting down a CPU (can i do that?) spinning down the disks when they're not in use (is that possible?) solution: Install HP's system health monitoring daemon, hpasmd. I installed it to try to figure out what was going on, and just running it fixed the problem.

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  • Backbone.js Adding Model to Collection Issue

    - by jtmgdevelopment
    I am building a test application in Backbone.js (my first app using Backbone). The app goes like this: Load Data from server "Plans" Build list of plans and show to screen There is a button to add a new plan Once new plan is added, add to collection ( do not save to server as of now ) redirect to index page and show the new collection ( includes the plan you just added) My issue is with item 5. When I save a plan, I add the model to the collection then redirect to the initial view. At this point, I fetch data from the server. When I fetch data from the server, this overwrites my collection and my added model is gone. How can I prevent this from happening? I have found a way to do this but it is definitely not the correct way at all. Below you will find my code examples for this. Thanks for the help. PlansListView View: var PlansListView = Backbone.View.extend({ tagName : 'ul', initialize : function() { _.bindAll( this, 'render', 'close' ); //reset the view if the collection is reset this.collection.bind( 'reset', this.render , this ); }, render : function() { _.each( this.collection.models, function( plan ){ $( this.el ).append( new PlansListItemView({ model: plan }).render().el ); }, this ); return this; }, close : function() { $( this.el ).unbind(); $( this.el ).remove(); } });//end NewPlanView Save Method var NewPlanView = Backbone.View.extend({ tagName : 'section', template : _.template( $( '#plan-form-template' ).html() ), events : { 'click button.save' : 'savePlan', 'click button.cancel' : 'cancel' }, intialize: function() { _.bindAll( this, 'render', 'save', 'cancel' ); }, render : function() { $( '#container' ).append( $( this.el ).html(this.template( this.model.toJSON() )) ); return this; }, savePlan : function( event ) { this.model.set({ name : 'bad plan', date : 'friday', desc : 'blah', id : Math.floor(Math.random()*11), total_stops : '2' }); this.collection.add( this.model ); app.navigate('', true ); event.preventDefault(); }, cancel : function(){} }); Router (default method): index : function() { this.container.empty(); var self = this; //This is a hack to get this to work //on default page load fetch all plans from the server //if the page has loaded ( this.plans is defined) set the updated plans collection to the view //There has to be a better way!! if( ! this.plans ) { this.plans = new Plans(); this.plans.fetch({ success: function() { self.plansListView = new PlansListView({ collection : self.plans }); $( '#container' ).append( self.plansListView.render().el ); if( self.requestedID ) self.planDetails( self.requestedID ); } }); } else { this.plansListView = new PlansListView({ collection : this.plans }); $( '#container' ).append( self.plansListView.render().el ); if( this.requestedID ) self.planDetails( this.requestedID ); } }, New Plan Route: newPlan : function() { var plan = new Plan({name: 'Cool Plan', date: 'Monday', desc: 'This is a great app'}); this.newPlan = new NewPlanView({ model : plan, collection: this.plans }); this.newPlan.render(); } FULL CODE ( function( $ ){ var Plan = Backbone.Model.extend({ defaults: { name : '', date : '', desc : '' } }); var Plans = Backbone.Collection.extend({ model : Plan, url : '/data/' }); $( document ).ready(function( e ){ var PlansListView = Backbone.View.extend({ tagName : 'ul', initialize : function() { _.bindAll( this, 'render', 'close' ); //reset the view if the collection is reset this.collection.bind( 'reset', this.render , this ); }, render : function() { _.each( this.collection.models, function( plan ){ $( this.el ).append( new PlansListItemView({ model: plan }).render().el ); }, this ); return this; }, close : function() { $( this.el ).unbind(); $( this.el ).remove(); } });//end var PlansListItemView = Backbone.View.extend({ tagName : 'li', template : _.template( $( '#list-item-template' ).html() ), events :{ 'click a' : 'listInfo' }, render : function() { $( this.el ).html( this.template( this.model.toJSON() ) ); return this; }, listInfo : function( event ) { } });//end var PlanView = Backbone.View.extend({ tagName : 'section', events : { 'click button.add-plan' : 'newPlan' }, template: _.template( $( '#plan-template' ).html() ), initialize: function() { _.bindAll( this, 'render', 'close', 'newPlan' ); }, render : function() { $( '#container' ).append( $( this.el ).html( this.template( this.model.toJSON() ) ) ); return this; }, newPlan : function( event ) { app.navigate( 'newplan', true ); }, close : function() { $( this.el ).unbind(); $( this.el ).remove(); } });//end var NewPlanView = Backbone.View.extend({ tagName : 'section', template : _.template( $( '#plan-form-template' ).html() ), events : { 'click button.save' : 'savePlan', 'click button.cancel' : 'cancel' }, intialize: function() { _.bindAll( this, 'render', 'save', 'cancel' ); }, render : function() { $( '#container' ).append( $( this.el ).html(this.template( this.model.toJSON() )) ); return this; }, savePlan : function( event ) { this.model.set({ name : 'bad plan', date : 'friday', desc : 'blah', id : Math.floor(Math.random()*11), total_stops : '2' }); this.collection.add( this.model ); app.navigate('', true ); event.preventDefault(); }, cancel : function(){} }); var AppRouter = Backbone.Router.extend({ container : $( '#container' ), routes : { '' : 'index', 'viewplan/:id' : 'planDetails', 'newplan' : 'newPlan' }, initialize: function(){ }, index : function() { this.container.empty(); var self = this; //This is a hack to get this to work //on default page load fetch all plans from the server //if the page has loaded ( this.plans is defined) set the updated plans collection to the view //There has to be a better way!! if( ! this.plans ) { this.plans = new Plans(); this.plans.fetch({ success: function() { self.plansListView = new PlansListView({ collection : self.plans }); $( '#container' ).append( self.plansListView.render().el ); if( self.requestedID ) self.planDetails( self.requestedID ); } }); } else { this.plansListView = new PlansListView({ collection : this.plans }); $( '#container' ).append( self.plansListView.render().el ); if( this.requestedID ) self.planDetails( this.requestedID ); } }, planDetails : function( id ) { if( this.plans ) { this.plansListView.close(); this.plan = this.plans.get( id ); if( this.planView ) this.planView.close(); this.planView = new PlanView({ model : this.plan }); this.planView.render(); } else{ this.requestedID = id; this.index(); } if( ! this.plans ) this.index(); }, newPlan : function() { var plan = new Plan({name: 'Cool Plan', date: 'Monday', desc: 'This is a great app'}); this.newPlan = new NewPlanView({ model : plan, collection: this.plans }); this.newPlan.render(); } }); var app = new AppRouter(); Backbone.history.start(); }); })( jQuery );

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  • Capturing and Transforming ASP.NET Output with Response.Filter

    - by Rick Strahl
    During one of my Handlers and Modules session at DevConnections this week one of the attendees asked a question that I didn’t have an immediate answer for. Basically he wanted to capture response output completely and then apply some filtering to the output – effectively injecting some additional content into the page AFTER the page had completely rendered. Specifically the output should be captured from anywhere – not just a page and have this code injected into the page. Some time ago I posted some code that allows you to capture ASP.NET Page output by overriding the Render() method, capturing the HtmlTextWriter() and reading its content, modifying the rendered data as text then writing it back out. I’ve actually used this approach on a few occasions and it works fine for ASP.NET pages. But this obviously won’t work outside of the Page class environment and it’s not really generic – you have to create a custom page class in order to handle the output capture. [updated 11/16/2009 – updated ResponseFilterStream implementation and a few additional notes based on comments] Enter Response.Filter However, ASP.NET includes a Response.Filter which can be used – well to filter output. Basically Response.Filter is a stream through which the OutputStream is piped back to the Web Server (indirectly). As content is written into the Response object, the filter stream receives the appropriate Stream commands like Write, Flush and Close as well as read operations although for a Response.Filter that’s uncommon to be hit. The Response.Filter can be programmatically replaced at runtime which allows you to effectively intercept all output generation that runs through ASP.NET. A common Example: Dynamic GZip Encoding A rather common use of Response.Filter hooking up code based, dynamic  GZip compression for requests which is dead simple by applying a GZipStream (or DeflateStream) to Response.Filter. The following generic routines can be used very easily to detect GZip capability of the client and compress response output with a single line of code and a couple of library helper routines: WebUtils.GZipEncodePage(); which is handled with a few lines of reusable code and a couple of static helper methods: /// <summary> ///Sets up the current page or handler to use GZip through a Response.Filter ///IMPORTANT:  ///You have to call this method before any output is generated! /// </summary> public static void GZipEncodePage() {     HttpResponse Response = HttpContext.Current.Response;     if(IsGZipSupported())     {         stringAcceptEncoding = HttpContext.Current.Request.Headers["Accept-Encoding"];         if(AcceptEncoding.Contains("deflate"))         {             Response.Filter = newSystem.IO.Compression.DeflateStream(Response.Filter,                                        System.IO.Compression.CompressionMode.Compress);             Response.AppendHeader("Content-Encoding", "deflate");         }         else        {             Response.Filter = newSystem.IO.Compression.GZipStream(Response.Filter,                                       System.IO.Compression.CompressionMode.Compress);             Response.AppendHeader("Content-Encoding", "gzip");                            }     }     // Allow proxy servers to cache encoded and unencoded versions separately    Response.AppendHeader("Vary", "Content-Encoding"); } /// <summary> /// Determines if GZip is supported /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public static bool IsGZipSupported() { string AcceptEncoding = HttpContext.Current.Request.Headers["Accept-Encoding"]; if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(AcceptEncoding) && (AcceptEncoding.Contains("gzip") || AcceptEncoding.Contains("deflate"))) return true; return false; } GZipStream and DeflateStream are streams that are assigned to Response.Filter and by doing so apply the appropriate compression on the active Response. Response.Filter content is chunked So to implement a Response.Filter effectively requires only that you implement a custom stream and handle the Write() method to capture Response output as it’s written. At first blush this seems very simple – you capture the output in Write, transform it and write out the transformed content in one pass. And that indeed works for small amounts of content. But you see, the problem is that output is written in small buffer chunks (a little less than 16k it appears) rather than just a single Write() statement into the stream, which makes perfect sense for ASP.NET to stream data back to IIS in smaller chunks to minimize memory usage en route. Unfortunately this also makes it a more difficult to implement any filtering routines since you don’t directly get access to all of the response content which is problematic especially if those filtering routines require you to look at the ENTIRE response in order to transform or capture the output as is needed for the solution the gentleman in my session asked for. So in order to address this a slightly different approach is required that basically captures all the Write() buffers passed into a cached stream and then making the stream available only when it’s complete and ready to be flushed. As I was thinking about the implementation I also started thinking about the few instances when I’ve used Response.Filter implementations. Each time I had to create a new Stream subclass and create my custom functionality but in the end each implementation did the same thing – capturing output and transforming it. I thought there should be an easier way to do this by creating a re-usable Stream class that can handle stream transformations that are common to Response.Filter implementations. Creating a semi-generic Response Filter Stream Class What I ended up with is a ResponseFilterStream class that provides a handful of Events that allow you to capture and/or transform Response content. The class implements a subclass of Stream and then overrides Write() and Flush() to handle capturing and transformation operations. By exposing events it’s easy to hook up capture or transformation operations via single focused methods. ResponseFilterStream exposes the following events: CaptureStream, CaptureString Captures the output only and provides either a MemoryStream or String with the final page output. Capture is hooked to the Flush() operation of the stream. TransformStream, TransformString Allows you to transform the complete response output with events that receive a MemoryStream or String respectively and can you modify the output then return it back as a return value. The transformed output is then written back out in a single chunk to the response output stream. These events capture all output internally first then write the entire buffer into the response. TransformWrite, TransformWriteString Allows you to transform the Response data as it is written in its original chunk size in the Stream’s Write() method. Unlike TransformStream/TransformString which operate on the complete output, these events only see the current chunk of data written. This is more efficient as there’s no caching involved, but can cause problems due to searched content splitting over multiple chunks. Using this implementation, creating a custom Response.Filter transformation becomes as simple as the following code. To hook up the Response.Filter using the MemoryStream version event: ResponseFilterStream filter = new ResponseFilterStream(Response.Filter); filter.TransformStream += filter_TransformStream; Response.Filter = filter; and the event handler to do the transformation: MemoryStream filter_TransformStream(MemoryStream ms) { Encoding encoding = HttpContext.Current.Response.ContentEncoding; string output = encoding.GetString(ms.ToArray()); output = FixPaths(output); ms = new MemoryStream(output.Length); byte[] buffer = encoding.GetBytes(output); ms.Write(buffer,0,buffer.Length); return ms; } private string FixPaths(string output) { string path = HttpContext.Current.Request.ApplicationPath; // override root path wonkiness if (path == "/") path = ""; output = output.Replace("\"~/", "\"" + path + "/").Replace("'~/", "'" + path + "/"); return output; } The idea of the event handler is that you can do whatever you want to the stream and return back a stream – either the same one that’s been modified or a brand new one – which is then sent back to as the final response. The above code can be simplified even more by using the string version events which handle the stream to string conversions for you: ResponseFilterStream filter = new ResponseFilterStream(Response.Filter); filter.TransformString += filter_TransformString; Response.Filter = filter; and the event handler to do the transformation calling the same FixPaths method shown above: string filter_TransformString(string output) { return FixPaths(output); } The events for capturing output and capturing and transforming chunks work in a very similar way. By using events to handle the transformations ResponseFilterStream becomes a reusable component and we don’t have to create a new stream class or subclass an existing Stream based classed. By the way, the example used here is kind of a cool trick which transforms “~/” expressions inside of the final generated HTML output – even in plain HTML controls not HTML controls – and transforms them into the appropriate application relative path in the same way that ResolveUrl would do. So you can write plain old HTML like this: <a href=”~/default.aspx”>Home</a>  and have it turned into: <a href=”/myVirtual/default.aspx”>Home</a>  without having to use an ASP.NET control like Hyperlink or Image or having to constantly use: <img src=”<%= ResolveUrl(“~/images/home.gif”) %>” /> in MVC applications (which frankly is one of the most annoying things about MVC especially given the path hell that extension-less and endpoint-less URLs impose). I can’t take credit for this idea. While discussing the Response.Filter issues on Twitter a hint from Dylan Beattie who pointed me at one of his examples which does something similar. I thought the idea was cool enough to use an example for future demos of Response.Filter functionality in ASP.NET next I time I do the Modules and Handlers talk (which was great fun BTW). How practical this is is debatable however since there’s definitely some overhead to using a Response.Filter in general and especially on one that caches the output and the re-writes it later. Make sure to test for performance anytime you use Response.Filter hookup and make sure it' doesn’t end up killing perf on you. You’ve been warned :-}. How does ResponseFilterStream work? The big win of this implementation IMHO is that it’s a reusable  component – so for implementation there’s no new class, no subclassing – you simply attach to an event to implement an event handler method with a straight forward signature to retrieve the stream or string you’re interested in. The implementation is based on a subclass of Stream as is required in order to handle the Response.Filter requirements. What’s different than other implementations I’ve seen in various places is that it supports capturing output as a whole to allow retrieving the full response output for capture or modification. The exception are the TransformWrite and TransformWrite events which operate only active chunk of data written by the Response. For captured output, the Write() method captures output into an internal MemoryStream that is cached until writing is complete. So Write() is called when ASP.NET writes to the Response stream, but the filter doesn’t pass on the Write immediately to the filter’s internal stream. The data is cached and only when the Flush() method is called to finalize the Stream’s output do we actually send the cached stream off for transformation (if the events are hooked up) and THEN finally write out the returned content in one big chunk. Here’s the implementation of ResponseFilterStream: /// <summary> /// A semi-generic Stream implementation for Response.Filter with /// an event interface for handling Content transformations via /// Stream or String. /// <remarks> /// Use with care for large output as this implementation copies /// the output into a memory stream and so increases memory usage. /// </remarks> /// </summary> public class ResponseFilterStream : Stream { /// <summary> /// The original stream /// </summary> Stream _stream; /// <summary> /// Current position in the original stream /// </summary> long _position; /// <summary> /// Stream that original content is read into /// and then passed to TransformStream function /// </summary> MemoryStream _cacheStream = new MemoryStream(5000); /// <summary> /// Internal pointer that that keeps track of the size /// of the cacheStream /// </summary> int _cachePointer = 0; /// <summary> /// /// </summary> /// <param name="responseStream"></param> public ResponseFilterStream(Stream responseStream) { _stream = responseStream; } /// <summary> /// Determines whether the stream is captured /// </summary> private bool IsCaptured { get { if (CaptureStream != null || CaptureString != null || TransformStream != null || TransformString != null) return true; return false; } } /// <summary> /// Determines whether the Write method is outputting data immediately /// or delaying output until Flush() is fired. /// </summary> private bool IsOutputDelayed { get { if (TransformStream != null || TransformString != null) return true; return false; } } /// <summary> /// Event that captures Response output and makes it available /// as a MemoryStream instance. Output is captured but won't /// affect Response output. /// </summary> public event Action<MemoryStream> CaptureStream; /// <summary> /// Event that captures Response output and makes it available /// as a string. Output is captured but won't affect Response output. /// </summary> public event Action<string> CaptureString; /// <summary> /// Event that allows you transform the stream as each chunk of /// the output is written in the Write() operation of the stream. /// This means that that it's possible/likely that the input /// buffer will not contain the full response output but only /// one of potentially many chunks. /// /// This event is called as part of the filter stream's Write() /// operation. /// </summary> public event Func<byte[], byte[]> TransformWrite; /// <summary> /// Event that allows you to transform the response stream as /// each chunk of bytep[] output is written during the stream's write /// operation. This means it's possibly/likely that the string /// passed to the handler only contains a portion of the full /// output. Typical buffer chunks are around 16k a piece. /// /// This event is called as part of the stream's Write operation. /// </summary> public event Func<string, string> TransformWriteString; /// <summary> /// This event allows capturing and transformation of the entire /// output stream by caching all write operations and delaying final /// response output until Flush() is called on the stream. /// </summary> public event Func<MemoryStream, MemoryStream> TransformStream; /// <summary> /// Event that can be hooked up to handle Response.Filter /// Transformation. Passed a string that you can modify and /// return back as a return value. The modified content /// will become the final output. /// </summary> public event Func<string, string> TransformString; protected virtual void OnCaptureStream(MemoryStream ms) { if (CaptureStream != null) CaptureStream(ms); } private void OnCaptureStringInternal(MemoryStream ms) { if (CaptureString != null) { string content = HttpContext.Current.Response.ContentEncoding.GetString(ms.ToArray()); OnCaptureString(content); } } protected virtual void OnCaptureString(string output) { if (CaptureString != null) CaptureString(output); } protected virtual byte[] OnTransformWrite(byte[] buffer) { if (TransformWrite != null) return TransformWrite(buffer); return buffer; } private byte[] OnTransformWriteStringInternal(byte[] buffer) { Encoding encoding = HttpContext.Current.Response.ContentEncoding; string output = OnTransformWriteString(encoding.GetString(buffer)); return encoding.GetBytes(output); } private string OnTransformWriteString(string value) { if (TransformWriteString != null) return TransformWriteString(value); return value; } protected virtual MemoryStream OnTransformCompleteStream(MemoryStream ms) { if (TransformStream != null) return TransformStream(ms); return ms; } /// <summary> /// Allows transforming of strings /// /// Note this handler is internal and not meant to be overridden /// as the TransformString Event has to be hooked up in order /// for this handler to even fire to avoid the overhead of string /// conversion on every pass through. /// </summary> /// <param name="responseText"></param> /// <returns></returns> private string OnTransformCompleteString(string responseText) { if (TransformString != null) TransformString(responseText); return responseText; } /// <summary> /// Wrapper method form OnTransformString that handles /// stream to string and vice versa conversions /// </summary> /// <param name="ms"></param> /// <returns></returns> internal MemoryStream OnTransformCompleteStringInternal(MemoryStream ms) { if (TransformString == null) return ms; //string content = ms.GetAsString(); string content = HttpContext.Current.Response.ContentEncoding.GetString(ms.ToArray()); content = TransformString(content); byte[] buffer = HttpContext.Current.Response.ContentEncoding.GetBytes(content); ms = new MemoryStream(); ms.Write(buffer, 0, buffer.Length); //ms.WriteString(content); return ms; } /// <summary> /// /// </summary> public override bool CanRead { get { return true; } } public override bool CanSeek { get { return true; } } /// <summary> /// /// </summary> public override bool CanWrite { get { return true; } } /// <summary> /// /// </summary> public override long Length { get { return 0; } } /// <summary> /// /// </summary> public override long Position { get { return _position; } set { _position = value; } } /// <summary> /// /// </summary> /// <param name="offset"></param> /// <param name="direction"></param> /// <returns></returns> public override long Seek(long offset, System.IO.SeekOrigin direction) { return _stream.Seek(offset, direction); } /// <summary> /// /// </summary> /// <param name="length"></param> public override void SetLength(long length) { _stream.SetLength(length); } /// <summary> /// /// </summary> public override void Close() { _stream.Close(); } /// <summary> /// Override flush by writing out the cached stream data /// </summary> public override void Flush() { if (IsCaptured && _cacheStream.Length > 0) { // Check for transform implementations _cacheStream = OnTransformCompleteStream(_cacheStream); _cacheStream = OnTransformCompleteStringInternal(_cacheStream); OnCaptureStream(_cacheStream); OnCaptureStringInternal(_cacheStream); // write the stream back out if output was delayed if (IsOutputDelayed) _stream.Write(_cacheStream.ToArray(), 0, (int)_cacheStream.Length); // Clear the cache once we've written it out _cacheStream.SetLength(0); } // default flush behavior _stream.Flush(); } /// <summary> /// /// </summary> /// <param name="buffer"></param> /// <param name="offset"></param> /// <param name="count"></param> /// <returns></returns> public override int Read(byte[] buffer, int offset, int count) { return _stream.Read(buffer, offset, count); } /// <summary> /// Overriden to capture output written by ASP.NET and captured /// into a cached stream that is written out later when Flush() /// is called. /// </summary> /// <param name="buffer"></param> /// <param name="offset"></param> /// <param name="count"></param> public override void Write(byte[] buffer, int offset, int count) { if ( IsCaptured ) { // copy to holding buffer only - we'll write out later _cacheStream.Write(buffer, 0, count); _cachePointer += count; } // just transform this buffer if (TransformWrite != null) buffer = OnTransformWrite(buffer); if (TransformWriteString != null) buffer = OnTransformWriteStringInternal(buffer); if (!IsOutputDelayed) _stream.Write(buffer, offset, buffer.Length); } } The key features are the events and corresponding OnXXX methods that handle the event hookups, and the Write() and Flush() methods of the stream implementation. All the rest of the members tend to be plain jane passthrough stream implementation code without much consequence. I do love the way Action<t> and Func<T> make it so easy to create the event signatures for the various events – sweet. A few Things to consider Performance Response.Filter is not great for performance in general as it adds another layer of indirection to the ASP.NET output pipeline, and this implementation in particular adds a memory hit as it basically duplicates the response output into the cached memory stream which is necessary since you may have to look at the entire response. If you have large pages in particular this can cause potentially serious memory pressure in your server application. So be careful of wholesale adoption of this (or other) Response.Filters. Make sure to do some performance testing to ensure it’s not killing your app’s performance. Response.Filter works everywhere A few questions came up in comments and discussion as to capturing ALL output hitting the site and – yes you can definitely do that by assigning a Response.Filter inside of a module. If you do this however you’ll want to be very careful and decide which content you actually want to capture especially in IIS 7 which passes ALL content – including static images/CSS etc. through the ASP.NET pipeline. So it is important to filter only on what you’re looking for – like the page extension or maybe more effectively the Response.ContentType. Response.Filter Chaining Originally I thought that filter chaining doesn’t work at all due to a bug in the stream implementation code. But it’s quite possible to assign multiple filters to the Response.Filter property. So the following actually works to both compress the output and apply the transformed content: WebUtils.GZipEncodePage(); ResponseFilterStream filter = new ResponseFilterStream(Response.Filter); filter.TransformString += filter_TransformString; Response.Filter = filter; However the following does not work resulting in invalid content encoding errors: ResponseFilterStream filter = new ResponseFilterStream(Response.Filter); filter.TransformString += filter_TransformString; Response.Filter = filter; WebUtils.GZipEncodePage(); In other words multiple Response filters can work together but it depends entirely on the implementation whether they can be chained or in which order they can be chained. In this case running the GZip/Deflate stream filters apparently relies on the original content length of the output and chokes when the content is modified. But if attaching the compression first it works fine as unintuitive as that may seem. Resources Download example code Capture Output from ASP.NET Pages © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  

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  • Upload File to Windows Azure Blob in Chunks through ASP.NET MVC, JavaScript and HTML5

    - by Shaun
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/shaunxu/archive/2013/07/01/upload-file-to-windows-azure-blob-in-chunks-through-asp.net.aspxMany people are using Windows Azure Blob Storage to store their data in the cloud. Blob storage provides 99.9% availability with easy-to-use API through .NET SDK and HTTP REST. For example, we can store JavaScript files, images, documents in blob storage when we are building an ASP.NET web application on a Web Role in Windows Azure. Or we can store our VHD files in blob and mount it as a hard drive in our cloud service. If you are familiar with Windows Azure, you should know that there are two kinds of blob: page blob and block blob. The page blob is optimized for random read and write, which is very useful when you need to store VHD files. The block blob is optimized for sequential/chunk read and write, which has more common usage. Since we can upload block blob in blocks through BlockBlob.PutBlock, and them commit them as a whole blob with invoking the BlockBlob.PutBlockList, it is very powerful to upload large files, as we can upload blocks in parallel, and provide pause-resume feature. There are many documents, articles and blog posts described on how to upload a block blob. Most of them are focus on the server side, which means when you had received a big file, stream or binaries, how to upload them into blob storage in blocks through .NET SDK.  But the problem is, how can we upload these large files from client side, for example, a browser. This questioned to me when I was working with a Chinese customer to help them build a network disk production on top of azure. The end users upload their files from the web portal, and then the files will be stored in blob storage from the Web Role. My goal is to find the best way to transform the file from client (end user’s machine) to the server (Web Role) through browser. In this post I will demonstrate and describe what I had done, to upload large file in chunks with high speed, and save them as blocks into Windows Azure Blob Storage.   Traditional Upload, Works with Limitation The simplest way to implement this requirement is to create a web page with a form that contains a file input element and a submit button. 1: @using (Html.BeginForm("About", "Index", FormMethod.Post, new { enctype = "multipart/form-data" })) 2: { 3: <input type="file" name="file" /> 4: <input type="submit" value="upload" /> 5: } And then in the backend controller, we retrieve the whole content of this file and upload it in to the blob storage through .NET SDK. We can split the file in blocks and upload them in parallel and commit. The code had been well blogged in the community. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public ActionResult About(HttpPostedFileBase file) 3: { 4: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 5: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 6: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(file.FileName); 7: var blockDataList = new Dictionary<string, byte[]>(); 8: using (var stream = file.InputStream) 9: { 10: var blockSizeInKB = 1024; 11: var offset = 0; 12: var index = 0; 13: while (offset < stream.Length) 14: { 15: var readLength = Math.Min(1024 * blockSizeInKB, (int)stream.Length - offset); 16: var blockData = new byte[readLength]; 17: offset += stream.Read(blockData, 0, readLength); 18: blockDataList.Add(Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)), blockData); 19:  20: index++; 21: } 22: } 23:  24: Parallel.ForEach(blockDataList, (bi) => 25: { 26: blob.PutBlock(bi.Key, new MemoryStream(bi.Value), null); 27: }); 28: blob.PutBlockList(blockDataList.Select(b => b.Key).ToArray()); 29:  30: return RedirectToAction("About"); 31: } This works perfect if we selected an image, a music or a small video to upload. But if I selected a large file, let’s say a 6GB HD-movie, after upload for about few minutes the page will be shown as below and the upload will be terminated. In ASP.NET there is a limitation of request length and the maximized request length is defined in the web.config file. It’s a number which less than about 4GB. So if we want to upload a really big file, we cannot simply implement in this way. Also, in Windows Azure, a cloud service network load balancer will terminate the connection if exceed the timeout period. From my test the timeout looks like 2 - 3 minutes. Hence, when we need to upload a large file we cannot just use the basic HTML elements. Besides the limitation mentioned above, the simple HTML file upload cannot provide rich upload experience such as chunk upload, pause and pause-resume. So we need to find a better way to upload large file from the client to the server.   Upload in Chunks through HTML5 and JavaScript In order to break those limitation mentioned above we will try to upload the large file in chunks. This takes some benefit to us such as - No request size limitation: Since we upload in chunks, we can define the request size for each chunks regardless how big the entire file is. - No timeout problem: The size of chunks are controlled by us, which means we should be able to make sure request for each chunk upload will not exceed the timeout period of both ASP.NET and Windows Azure load balancer. It was a big challenge to upload big file in chunks until we have HTML5. There are some new features and improvements introduced in HTML5 and we will use them to implement our solution.   In HTML5, the File interface had been improved with a new method called “slice”. It can be used to read part of the file by specifying the start byte index and the end byte index. For example if the entire file was 1024 bytes, file.slice(512, 768) will read the part of this file from the 512nd byte to 768th byte, and return a new object of interface called "Blob”, which you can treat as an array of bytes. In fact,  a Blob object represents a file-like object of immutable, raw data. The File interface is based on Blob, inheriting blob functionality and expanding it to support files on the user's system. For more information about the Blob please refer here. File and Blob is very useful to implement the chunk upload. We will use File interface to represent the file the user selected from the browser and then use File.slice to read the file in chunks in the size we wanted. For example, if we wanted to upload a 10MB file with 512KB chunks, then we can read it in 512KB blobs by using File.slice in a loop.   Assuming we have a web page as below. User can select a file, an input box to specify the block size in KB and a button to start upload. 1: <div> 2: <input type="file" id="upload_files" name="files[]" /><br /> 3: Block Size: <input type="number" id="block_size" value="512" name="block_size" />KB<br /> 4: <input type="button" id="upload_button_blob" name="upload" value="upload (blob)" /> 5: </div> Then we can have the JavaScript function to upload the file in chunks when user clicked the button. 1: <script type="text/javascript"> 1: 2: $(function () { 3: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 4: }); 5: });</script> Firstly we need to ensure the client browser supports the interfaces we are going to use. Just try to invoke the File, Blob and FormData from the “window” object. If any of them is “undefined” the condition result will be “false” which means your browser doesn’t support these premium feature and it’s time for you to get your browser updated. FormData is another new feature we are going to use in the future. It could generate a temporary form for us. We will use this interface to create a form with chunk and associated metadata when invoked the service through ajax. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: if (window.File && window.Blob && window.FormData) { 4: alert("Your brwoser is awesome, let's rock!"); 5: } 6: else { 7: alert("Oh man plz update to a modern browser before try is cool stuff out."); 8: return; 9: } 10: }); Each browser supports these interfaces by their own implementation and currently the Blob, File and File.slice are supported by Chrome 21, FireFox 13, IE 10, Opera 12 and Safari 5.1 or higher. After that we worked on the files the user selected one by one since in HTML5, user can select multiple files in one file input box. 1: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 2: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 3: var file = files[i]; 4: var fileSize = file.size; 5: var fileName = file.name; 6: } Next, we calculated the start index and end index for each chunks based on the size the user specified from the browser. We put them into an array with the file name and the index, which will be used when we upload chunks into Windows Azure Blob Storage as blocks since we need to specify the target blob name and the block index. At the same time we will store the list of all indexes into another variant which will be used to commit blocks into blob in Azure Storage once all chunks had been uploaded successfully. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10:  11: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 12: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 13: var blockSizeInKB = $("#block_size").val(); 14: var blockSize = blockSizeInKB * 1024; 15: var blocks = []; 16: var offset = 0; 17: var index = 0; 18: var list = ""; 19: while (offset < fileSize) { 20: var start = offset; 21: var end = Math.min(offset + blockSize, fileSize); 22:  23: blocks.push({ 24: name: fileName, 25: index: index, 26: start: start, 27: end: end 28: }); 29: list += index + ","; 30:  31: offset = end; 32: index++; 33: } 34: } 35: }); Now we have all chunks’ information ready. The next step should be upload them one by one to the server side, and at the server side when received a chunk it will upload as a block into Blob Storage, and finally commit them with the index list through BlockBlobClient.PutBlockList. But since all these invokes are ajax calling, which means not synchronized call. So we need to introduce a new JavaScript library to help us coordinate the asynchronize operation, which named “async.js”. You can download this JavaScript library here, and you can find the document here. I will not explain this library too much in this post. We will put all procedures we want to execute as a function array, and pass into the proper function defined in async.js to let it help us to control the execution sequence, in series or in parallel. Hence we will define an array and put the function for chunk upload into this array. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4:  5: // start to upload each files in chunks 6: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 7: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 8: var file = files[i]; 9: var fileSize = file.size; 10: var fileName = file.name; 11: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 12: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 13: ... ... 14:  15: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 16: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 17: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 18: }); 19: }); 20: } 21: }); 22: }); As you can see, I used File.slice method to read each chunks based on the start and end byte index we calculated previously, and constructed a temporary HTML form with the file name, chunk index and chunk data through another new feature in HTML5 named FormData. Then post this form to the backend server through jQuery.ajax. This is the key part of our solution. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 15: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 16: // load blob based on the start and end index for each chunks 17: var blob = file.slice(block.start, block.end); 18: // put the file name, index and blob into a temporary from 19: var fd = new FormData(); 20: fd.append("name", block.name); 21: fd.append("index", block.index); 22: fd.append("file", blob); 23: // post the form to backend service (asp.net mvc controller action) 24: $.ajax({ 25: url: "/Home/UploadInFormData", 26: data: fd, 27: processData: false, 28: contentType: "multipart/form-data", 29: type: "POST", 30: success: function (result) { 31: if (!result.success) { 32: alert(result.error); 33: } 34: callback(null, block.index); 35: } 36: }); 37: }); 38: }); 39: } 40: }); Then we will invoke these functions one by one by using the async.js. And once all functions had been executed successfully I invoked another ajax call to the backend service to commit all these chunks (blocks) as the blob in Windows Azure Storage. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.series(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: }); That’s all in the client side. The outline of our logic would be - Calculate the start and end byte index for each chunks based on the block size. - Defined the functions of reading the chunk form file and upload the content to the backend service through ajax. - Execute the functions defined in previous step with “async.js”. - Commit the chunks by invoking the backend service in Windows Azure Storage finally.   Save Chunks as Blocks into Blob Storage In above we finished the client size JavaScript code. It uploaded the file in chunks to the backend service which we are going to implement in this step. We will use ASP.NET MVC as our backend service, and it will receive the chunks, upload into Windows Azure Bob Storage in blocks, then finally commit as one blob. As in the client side we uploaded chunks by invoking the ajax call to the URL "/Home/UploadInFormData", I created a new action under the Index controller and it only accepts HTTP POST request. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: } 8: catch (Exception e) 9: { 10: error = e.ToString(); 11: } 12:  13: return new JsonResult() 14: { 15: Data = new 16: { 17: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 18: error = error 19: } 20: }; 21: } Then I retrieved the file name, index and the chunk content from the Request.Form object, which was passed from our client side. And then, used the Windows Azure SDK to create a blob container (in this case we will use the container named “test”.) and create a blob reference with the blob name (same as the file name). Then uploaded the chunk as a block of this blob with the index, since in Blob Storage each block must have an index (ID) associated with so that finally we can put all blocks as one blob by specifying their block ID list. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 8: var index = int.Parse(Request.Form["index"]); 9: var file = Request.Files[0]; 10: var id = Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)); 11:  12: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 13: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 14: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 15: blob.PutBlock(id, file.InputStream, null); 16: } 17: catch (Exception e) 18: { 19: error = e.ToString(); 20: } 21:  22: return new JsonResult() 23: { 24: Data = new 25: { 26: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 27: error = error 28: } 29: }; 30: } Next, I created another action to commit the blocks into blob once all chunks had been uploaded. Similarly, I retrieved the blob name from the Request.Form. I also retrieved the chunks ID list, which is the block ID list from the Request.Form in a string format, split them as a list, then invoked the BlockBlob.PutBlockList method. After that our blob will be shown in the container and ready to be download. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult Commit() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 8: var list = Request.Form["list"]; 9: var ids = list 10: .Split(',') 11: .Where(id => !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(id)) 12: .Select(id => Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(int.Parse(id)))) 13: .ToArray(); 14:  15: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 16: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 17: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 18: blob.PutBlockList(ids); 19: } 20: catch (Exception e) 21: { 22: error = e.ToString(); 23: } 24:  25: return new JsonResult() 26: { 27: Data = new 28: { 29: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 30: error = error 31: } 32: }; 33: } Now we finished all code we need. The whole process of uploading would be like this below. Below is the full client side JavaScript code. 1: <script type="text/javascript" src="~/Scripts/async.js"></script> 2: <script type="text/javascript"> 3: $(function () { 4: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 5: // assert the browser support html5 6: if (window.File && window.Blob && window.FormData) { 7: alert("Your brwoser is awesome, let's rock!"); 8: } 9: else { 10: alert("Oh man plz update to a modern browser before try is cool stuff out."); 11: return; 12: } 13:  14: // start to upload each files in chunks 15: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 16: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 17: var file = files[i]; 18: var fileSize = file.size; 19: var fileName = file.name; 20:  21: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 22: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 23: var blockSizeInKB = $("#block_size").val(); 24: var blockSize = blockSizeInKB * 1024; 25: var blocks = []; 26: var offset = 0; 27: var index = 0; 28: var list = ""; 29: while (offset < fileSize) { 30: var start = offset; 31: var end = Math.min(offset + blockSize, fileSize); 32:  33: blocks.push({ 34: name: fileName, 35: index: index, 36: start: start, 37: end: end 38: }); 39: list += index + ","; 40:  41: offset = end; 42: index++; 43: } 44:  45: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 46: var putBlocks = []; 47: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 48: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 49: // load blob based on the start and end index for each chunks 50: var blob = file.slice(block.start, block.end); 51: // put the file name, index and blob into a temporary from 52: var fd = new FormData(); 53: fd.append("name", block.name); 54: fd.append("index", block.index); 55: fd.append("file", blob); 56: // post the form to backend service (asp.net mvc controller action) 57: $.ajax({ 58: url: "/Home/UploadInFormData", 59: data: fd, 60: processData: false, 61: contentType: "multipart/form-data", 62: type: "POST", 63: success: function (result) { 64: if (!result.success) { 65: alert(result.error); 66: } 67: callback(null, block.index); 68: } 69: }); 70: }); 71: }); 72:  73: // invoke the functions one by one 74: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 75: async.series(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 76: var data = { 77: name: fileName, 78: list: list 79: }; 80: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 81: if (!result.success) { 82: alert(result.error); 83: } 84: else { 85: alert("done!"); 86: } 87: }); 88: }); 89: } 90: }); 91: }); 92: </script> And below is the full ASP.NET MVC controller code. 1: public class HomeController : Controller 2: { 3: private CloudStorageAccount _account; 4: private CloudBlobClient _client; 5:  6: public HomeController() 7: : base() 8: { 9: _account = CloudStorageAccount.Parse(CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting("DataConnectionString")); 10: _client = _account.CreateCloudBlobClient(); 11: } 12:  13: public ActionResult Index() 14: { 15: ViewBag.Message = "Modify this template to jump-start your ASP.NET MVC application."; 16:  17: return View(); 18: } 19:  20: [HttpPost] 21: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 22: { 23: var error = string.Empty; 24: try 25: { 26: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 27: var index = int.Parse(Request.Form["index"]); 28: var file = Request.Files[0]; 29: var id = Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)); 30:  31: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 32: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 33: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 34: blob.PutBlock(id, file.InputStream, null); 35: } 36: catch (Exception e) 37: { 38: error = e.ToString(); 39: } 40:  41: return new JsonResult() 42: { 43: Data = new 44: { 45: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 46: error = error 47: } 48: }; 49: } 50:  51: [HttpPost] 52: public JsonResult Commit() 53: { 54: var error = string.Empty; 55: try 56: { 57: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 58: var list = Request.Form["list"]; 59: var ids = list 60: .Split(',') 61: .Where(id => !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(id)) 62: .Select(id => Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(int.Parse(id)))) 63: .ToArray(); 64:  65: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 66: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 67: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 68: blob.PutBlockList(ids); 69: } 70: catch (Exception e) 71: { 72: error = e.ToString(); 73: } 74:  75: return new JsonResult() 76: { 77: Data = new 78: { 79: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 80: error = error 81: } 82: }; 83: } 84: } And if we selected a file from the browser we will see our application will upload chunks in the size we specified to the server through ajax call in background, and then commit all chunks in one blob. Then we can find the blob in our Windows Azure Blob Storage.   Optimized by Parallel Upload In previous example we just uploaded our file in chunks. This solved the problem that ASP.NET MVC request content size limitation as well as the Windows Azure load balancer timeout. But it might introduce the performance problem since we uploaded chunks in sequence. In order to improve the upload performance we could modify our client side code a bit to make the upload operation invoked in parallel. The good news is that, “async.js” library provides the parallel execution function. If you remembered the code we invoke the service to upload chunks, it utilized “async.series” which means all functions will be executed in sequence. Now we will change this code to “async.parallel”. This will invoke all functions in parallel. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.parallel(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: }); In this way all chunks will be uploaded to the server side at the same time to maximize the bandwidth usage. This should work if the file was not very large and the chunk size was not very small. But for large file this might introduce another problem that too many ajax calls are sent to the server at the same time. So the best solution should be, upload the chunks in parallel with maximum concurrency limitation. The code below specified the concurrency limitation to 4, which means at the most only 4 ajax calls could be invoked at the same time. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.parallelLimit(putBlocks, 4, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: });   Summary In this post we discussed how to upload files in chunks to the backend service and then upload them into Windows Azure Blob Storage in blocks. We focused on the frontend side and leverage three new feature introduced in HTML 5 which are - File.slice: Read part of the file by specifying the start and end byte index. - Blob: File-like interface which contains the part of the file content. - FormData: Temporary form element that we can pass the chunk alone with some metadata to the backend service. Then we discussed the performance consideration of chunk uploading. Sequence upload cannot provide maximized upload speed, but the unlimited parallel upload might crash the browser and server if too many chunks. So we finally came up with the solution to upload chunks in parallel with the concurrency limitation. We also demonstrated how to utilize “async.js” JavaScript library to help us control the asynchronize call and the parallel limitation.   Regarding the chunk size and the parallel limitation value there is no “best” value. You need to test vary composition and find out the best one for your particular scenario. It depends on the local bandwidth, client machine cores and the server side (Windows Azure Cloud Service Virtual Machine) cores, memory and bandwidth. Below is one of my performance test result. The client machine was Windows 8 IE 10 with 4 cores. I was using Microsoft Cooperation Network. The web site was hosted on Windows Azure China North data center (in Beijing) with one small web role (1.7GB 1 core CPU, 1.75GB memory with 100Mbps bandwidth). The test cases were - Chunk size: 512KB, 1MB, 2MB, 4MB. - Upload Mode: Sequence, parallel (unlimited), parallel with limit (4 threads, 8 threads). - Chunk Format: base64 string, binaries. - Target file: 100MB. - Each case was tested 3 times. Below is the test result chart. Some thoughts, but not guidance or best practice: - Parallel gets better performance than series. - No significant performance improvement between parallel 4 threads and 8 threads. - Transform with binaries provides better performance than base64. - In all cases, chunk size in 1MB - 2MB gets better performance.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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