vinko vrsalovic - Developer IT

How to prioritize tasks when you have multiple programming projects running in parallel?

- by Vinko Vrsalovic

Say you have 5 customers, you develop 2 or 3 different projects for each. Each project has Xi tasks. Each project takes from 2 to 10 man weeks. Given that there are few resources, it is desired to minimize the management overhead. Two questions in this scenario: What tools would you use to prioritize the tasks and track their completion, while tending to minimize the overhead? What criteria would you take into consideration to determine which task to assign to the next available resource given that the primary objective is to increase throughput (more projects finished per time unit, this objective conflicts with starting one project and finishing it and then moving on to the next)? Ideas, management techniques, algorithms are welcome

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Best undelete tool for NTFS/FAT?

- by Vinko Vrsalovic

What is the best tool for file undeletion in your experience? Google shows a gazillion of them, but I'd like to hear about good (or bad) experiences with any of those. Objective: Restoring 500.000 audio (WAV PCM) files. Doesn't matter if it's commercial, free or open source, it matters how quick and reliable it is.

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Joining Windows 7 Professional to a Windows Server 2003 R2 x64 domain fails.

- by Vinko Vrsalovic

I have a windows 7 professional (spanish) laptop trying to join a Windows Server 2003 (english) domain. It detect correctly the SRV record, finding the proper domain controller, but then the join fails with the error message (snippet, because the error is in spanish) An Active Directory Domain Controller for This Domain Could Not be Contacted The DNS is correctly set, and client can ping by name and IP the server, the server can ping the client by IP. I've tested with the FW down to no avail. A host of other XP Pro clients are connected to the domain. I've restarted Net Logon and checked that Windows Time is up. Also the times are in sync between the server and the client. I'll put below diagnostics output. I'm wondering if there's anything special to be done on either the server or the client to have a Win 7 Pro join a 2k3 R2 domain. The following diagnostic information follows: netdiag /q for the DC dcdiag on the DC ipconfig /all on the Win 7 client netdiag /q on the DC: .................................. Computer Name: HI-X2 DNS Host Name: hi-x2.hi.local System info : Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 (Build 3790) Processor : EM64T Family 6 Model 23 Stepping 10, GenuineIntel List of installed hotfixes : KB923561 KB924667-v2 KB925398_WMP64 KB925902 KB926122 KB927891 KB929123 KB930178 KB932168 KB936357 KB938127 KB941569 KB942830 KB942831 KB943055 KB943460 KB944338-v2 KB944653 KB945553 KB946026 KB948496 KB950760 KB950762 KB950974 KB951066 KB951748 KB952004 KB952069 KB952954 KB954155 KB954550-v7 KB955069 KB955759 KB956572 KB956802 KB956803 KB956844 KB958469 KB958644 KB958869 KB959426 KB960225 KB960803 KB960859 KB961063 KB961118 KB961501 KB967715 KB967723 KB968389 KB968816 KB969059 KB969947 KB970238 KB970430 KB970483 KB971032 KB971468 KB971657 KB971737 KB971961 KB971961-IE8 KB972270 KB973037 KB973354 KB973507 KB973540 KB973687 KB973815 KB973825 KB973869 KB973904 KB973917-v2 KB974112 KB974318 KB974392 KB974571 KB975025 KB975467 KB975560 KB975713 KB976662-IE8 KB977290 KB977816 KB977914 KB978037 KB978262 KB978338 KB978542 KB978601 KB978706 KB979306 KB979309 KB979683 KB980182 KB980182-IE8 KB980232 KB980302-IE8 KB981332-IE8 KB981350 Q147222 Per interface results: Adapter : Local Area Connection Host Name. . . . . . . . . : hi-x2.hi.local IP Address . . . . . . . . : 10.0.1.199 Subnet Mask. . . . . . . . : 255.0.0.0 Default Gateway. . . . . . : 10.0.1.1 Dns Servers. . . . . . . . : 10.0.1.199 WINS service test. . . . . : Skipped Global results: [WARNING] You don't have a single interface with the 'WorkStation Service', 'Messenger Service', 'WINS' names defined. DNS test . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Passed PASS - All the DNS entries for DC are registered on DNS server '10.0.1.199'. IP Security test . . . . . . . . . : Skipped The command completed successfully dcdiag on the DC: Domain Controller Diagnosis Performing initial setup: Done gathering initial info. Doing initial required tests Testing server: Default-First-Site-Name\HI-X2 Starting test: Connectivity ......................... HI-X2 passed test Connectivity Doing primary tests Testing server: Default-First-Site-Name\HI-X2 Starting test: Replications ......................... HI-X2 passed test Replications Starting test: NCSecDesc ......................... HI-X2 passed test NCSecDesc Starting test: NetLogons ......................... HI-X2 passed test NetLogons Starting test: Advertising ......................... HI-X2 passed test Advertising Starting test: KnowsOfRoleHolders ......................... HI-X2 passed test KnowsOfRoleHolders Starting test: RidManager ......................... HI-X2 passed test RidManager Starting test: MachineAccount ......................... HI-X2 passed test MachineAccount Starting test: Services ......................... HI-X2 passed test Services Starting test: ObjectsReplicated ......................... HI-X2 passed test ObjectsReplicated Starting test: frssysvol ......................... HI-X2 passed test frssysvol Starting test: frsevent ......................... HI-X2 passed test frsevent Starting test: kccevent ......................... HI-X2 passed test kccevent Starting test: systemlog ......................... HI-X2 passed test systemlog Starting test: VerifyReferences ......................... HI-X2 passed test VerifyReferences Running partition tests on : ForestDnsZones Starting test: CrossRefValidation ......................... ForestDnsZones passed test CrossRefValidation Starting test: CheckSDRefDom ......................... ForestDnsZones passed test CheckSDRefDom Running partition tests on : DomainDnsZones Starting test: CrossRefValidation ......................... DomainDnsZones passed test CrossRefValidation Starting test: CheckSDRefDom ......................... DomainDnsZones passed test CheckSDRefDom Running partition tests on : Schema Starting test: CrossRefValidation ......................... Schema passed test CrossRefValidation Starting test: CheckSDRefDom ......................... Schema passed test CheckSDRefDom Running partition tests on : Configuration Starting test: CrossRefValidation ......................... Configuration passed test CrossRefValidation Starting test: CheckSDRefDom ......................... Configuration passed test CheckSDRefDom Running partition tests on : hi Starting test: CrossRefValidation ......................... hi passed test CrossRefValidation Starting test: CheckSDRefDom ......................... hi passed test CheckSDRefDom Running enterprise tests on : hi.local Starting test: Intersite ......................... hi.local passed test Intersite Starting test: FsmoCheck ......................... hi.local passed test FsmoCheck ipconfig /all on the Windows 7 client: Configuraci¢n IP de Windows Nombre de host. . . . . . . . . : hi-p6 Sufijo DNS principal . . . . . : Tipo de nodo. . . . . . . . . . : h¡brido Enrutamiento IP habilitado. . . : no Proxy WINS habilitado . . . . . : no Adaptador de LAN inal mbrica Conexi¢n de red inal mbrica: Sufijo DNS espec¡fico para la conexi¢n. . : Descripci¢n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) WiFi Link 5100 AGN Direcci¢n f¡sica. . . . . . . . . . . . . : 00-22-FB-63-47-A0 DHCP habilitado . . . . . . . . . . . . . : no Configuraci¢n autom tica habilitada . . . : s¡ Direcci¢n IPv4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . : 10.0.1.42(Preferido) M scara de subred . . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0 Puerta de enlace predeterminada . . . . . : 10.0.1.1 Servidores DNS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . : 10.0.1.199 NetBIOS sobre TCP/IP. . . . . . . . . . . : habilitado Adaptador de Ethernet Conexi¢n de rea local: Estado de los medios. . . . . . . . . . . : medios desconectados Sufijo DNS espec¡fico para la conexi¢n. . : Descripci¢n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller Direcci¢n f¡sica. . . . . . . . . . . . . : 00-1E-33-1F-35-B1 DHCP habilitado . . . . . . . . . . . . . : s¡ Configuraci¢n autom tica habilitada . . . : s¡ Adaptador de t£nel isatap.{8926581E-09AC-4123-906B-DA6386AD2D60}: Estado de los medios. . . . . . . . . . . : medios desconectados Sufijo DNS espec¡fico para la conexi¢n. . : Descripci¢n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Adaptador ISATAP de Microsoft Direcci¢n f¡sica. . . . . . . . . . . . . : 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0 DHCP habilitado . . . . . . . . . . . . . : no Configuraci¢n autom tica habilitada . . . : s¡ Adaptador de t£nel Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface: Sufijo DNS espec¡fico para la conexi¢n. . : Descripci¢n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface Direcci¢n f¡sica. . . . . . . . . . . . . : 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0 DHCP habilitado . . . . . . . . . . . . . : no Configuraci¢n autom tica habilitada . . . : s¡ Direcci¢n IPv6 . . . . . . . . . . : 2001:0:5ef5:73ba:1cec:3883:f5ff:fed5(Preferido) V¡nculo: direcci¢n IPv6 local. . . : fe80::1cec:3883:f5ff:fed5%13(Preferido) Puerta de enlace predeterminada . . . . . : :: NetBIOS sobre TCP/IP. . . . . . . . . . . : deshabilitado

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WIFI connection interfering with Windows Server 2003 Active Directory domain. (How to debug?)

- by Vinko Vrsalovic

RELATED: This question has led me to ask this one. I had to change our unnamed crappy ADSL router to a crappy Comtrend CT-5361 WiFi router, now every WiFi connection to the domain doesn't work correctly: Joining the domain is impossible (see related question) Logging into the domain takes ages Authentication usually fails Question: How to debug this and pinpoint the exact problem? I have no enough knowledge on either WiFi networks or on Active Directory to know which connections are made at which stages nor how to check what's happening at the wireless level to compare what should happen to what is happening. I'm looking for resources to learn what should be happening and tools to detect what is actually happening (I expect a sniffer should be enough, but if there are better, more specialized tools, that'd be great).

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Know any unobstrusive, simple GUI guidelines or design recommendations for notifications?

- by Vinko Vrsalovic

Hello again. I'm in the process of designing and testing various ideas for an application whose main functionality will be to notify users of occurring events and offer them with a choice of actions for each. The standard choice would be to create a queue of events showing a popup in the taskbar with the events and actions, but I want this tool to be the less intrusive and disrupting as possible. What I'm after is a good book or papers on studies of how to maximize user productivity in these intrinsically disruptive scenarios (in other words, how to achieve the perfect degree of annoying-ness, not too much, not too little). The user is supposedly interested in these events, they subscribe to them and can choose the actions to perform on each. I prefer books and papers, but the usual StackOverflow wisdom is appreciated as well. I'm after things like: Don't use popups, use instead X Show popups at most 3 seconds Show them in the left corner Use color X because it improves readability and disrupts less That is, cognitive aspects of GUI design that would help users in such a scenario.

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SQL Server: How to tell if a database is a system database?

- by Vinko Vrsalovic

I know that so far (until MSSQL 2005 at least), system databases are master, model, msdb and tempdb. Thing is, as far as I can tell, this is not guaranteed to be preserved in the future. And neither the sys.databases view nor the sys.sysdatabases view tell me if a database is considered as a system database. Is there someplace where this information (whether a database is considered a system database or not) can be obtained?

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Regex to remove conditional comments

- by cnu

I want a regex which can match conditional comments in a HTML source page so I can remove only those. I want to preserve the regular comments. I would also like to avoid using the .*? notation if possible. The text is foo  bar and I want to remove everything in  EDIT: It is because of BeautifulSoup I want to remove these tags. BeautifulSoup fails to parse and gives an incomplete source EDIT2: [if IE] isn't the only condition. There are lots more and I don't have any list of all possible combinations. EDIT3: Vinko Vrsalovic's solution works, but the actual problem why beautifulsoup failed was because of a rogue comment within the conditional comment. Like  <![endif]--> Notice the  comment? Though my problem was solve, I would love to get a regex solution for this.

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What Language Feature Can You Just Not Live Without?

- by akdom

I always miss python's built-in doc strings when working in other languages. I know this may seem odd, but it allows me to cut down significantly on excess comments while still providing a clean description of my code and any interfaces therein. What Language Feature Can You Just Not Live Without? If someone were building a new language and they asked you what one feature they absolutely must include, what would it be? This is getting kind of long, so I figured I'd do my best to summarize: Paraphrased to be language agnostic. If you know of a language which uses something mentioned, please at it in the parenthesis to the right of the feature. And if you have a better format for this list, by all means try it out (if it doesn't seem to work, I'll just roll back). Regular Expressions ~ torial (Perl) Garbage Collection ~ SaaS Developer (Python, Perl, Ruby, Java, .NET) Anonymous Functions ~ Vinko Vrsalovic (Lisp, Python) Arithmetic Operators ~ Jeremy Ross (Python, Perl, Ruby, Java, C#, Visual Basic, C, C++, Pascal, Smalltalk, etc.) Exception Handling ~ torial (Python, Java, .NET) Pass By Reference ~ Chris (Python) Unified String Format WalloWizard (C#) Generics ~ torial (Python, Java, C#) Integrated Query Equivalent to LINQ ~ Vyrotek (C#) Namespacing ~ Garry Shutler () Short Circuit Logic ~ Adam Bellaire ()

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"Possible SYN flooding" in log despite low number of SYN_RECV connections

- by al4

Recently we had an apache server which was responding very slowly due to SYN flooding. The workaround for this was to enable tcp_syncookies (net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies=1 in /etc/sysctl.conf). I posted a question about this here if you want more background. After enabling syncookies we started seeing the following message in /var/log/messages approximately every 60 seconds: [84440.731929] possible SYN flooding on port 80. Sending cookies. Vinko Vrsalovic informed me that this means the syn backlog is getting full, so I raised tcp_max_syn_backlog to 4096. At some point I also lowered tcp_synack_retries to 3 (down from the default of 5) by issuing sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_synack_retries=3. After doing this, the frequency seemed to drop, with the interval of the messages varying between roughly 60 and 180 seconds. Next I issued sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_max_syn_backlog=65536, but am still getting the message in the log. Throughout all this I've been watching the number of connections in SYN_RECV state (by running watch --interval=5 'netstat -tuna |grep "SYN_RECV"|wc -l'), and it never goes higher than about 240, much much lower than the size of the backlog. Yet I have a Red Hat server which hovers around 512 (limit on this server is the default of 1024). Are there any other tcp settings which would limit the size of the backlog or am I barking up the wrong tree? Should the number of SYN_RECV connections in netstat -tuna correlate to the size of the backlog? Update As best I can tell I'm dealing with legitimate connections here, netstat -tuna|wc -l hovers around 5000. I've been researching this today and found this post from a last.fm employee, which has been rather useful. I've also discovered that the tcp_max_syn_backlog has no effect when syncookies are enabled (as per this link) So as a next step I set the following in sysctl.conf: net.ipv4.tcp_syn_retries = 3 # default=5 net.ipv4.tcp_synack_retries = 3 # default=5 net.ipv4.tcp_max_syn_backlog = 65536 # default=1024 net.core.wmem_max = 8388608 # default=124928 net.core.rmem_max = 8388608 # default=131071 net.core.somaxconn = 512 # default = 128 net.core.optmem_max = 81920 # default = 20480 I then setup my response time test, ran sysctl -p and disabled syncookies by sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies=0. After doing this the number of connections in the SYN_RECV state still remained around 220-250, but connections were starting to delay again. Once I noticed these delays I re-enabled syncookies and the delays stopped. I believe what I was seeing was still an improvement from the initial state, however some requests were still delayed which is much worse than having syncookies enabled. So it looks like I'm stuck with them enabled until we can get some more servers online to cope with the load. Even then, I'm not sure I see a valid reason to disable them again as they're only sent (apparently) when the server's buffers get full. But the syn backlog doesn't appear to be full with only ~250 connections in the SYN_RECV state! Is it possible that the SYN flooding message is a red herring and it's something other than the syn_backlog that's filling up? If anyone has any other tuning options I haven't tried yet I'd be more than happy to try them out, but I'm starting to wonder if the syn_backlog setting isn't being applied properly for some reason.

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