xception

Testing a SQL database connection

2009-09-01T17:21:00.002-04:00

This should ideally be performed on a web server that you feel is not seeing the database server.

1) Open notepad and save a blank file with the name "connection.udl" to your desktop.
2) Right-click on connection.udl to open and run it with the credentials used to access the database.
3) On the Provider tab, choose "Microsoft OLE DB provider for Sql Server" and click Next.
4) On the Connection tab, enter the server name and connection method.
5) Choose a database from the populated list in "Select a database on this server" drop-down list.
6) Click the "Test the connection" button.

Reload missing .NET performance counters

2009-08-25T17:07:00.001-04:00

C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727>lodctr aspnet_perf.ini
C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727>lodctr aspnet_perf2.ini
C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727>lodctr corperfmonsymbols

Add private PDB's files to Windows Debugger

2009-08-05T13:20:00.003-04:00

Copy the PDB files to a directory on your hard drive. Open WinDBG and ensure that the symbol path includes the directory that contains the PDB files:

.sympath+ c:\pdbs
.reload

Query to find TCP/IP port of SQL Server

2009-07-16T11:52:00.000-04:00

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/scripts/Miscellaneous/67422/

Use logparser to grab a specific event from a remote event log (and stuff it into a CSV file)

2009-07-16T11:36:00.001-04:00

logparser -i:evt "select distinct Message INTO filename.csv from \\yourservername\Application where Message Like '%http://yoursite.domain.com/Person.aspx?guid%' " -o:CSV

Result of enabling AWE on 8GB SQL Server

2009-07-08T14:19:00.003-04:00

AWE enables SQL Server to use ram beyond 4GB in a 32-bit architecture. Here is the "before" and "after" states on a SQL Server with 8GB of RAM (where SQL Server was allocated 7GB). Note the 272MB available before AWE and the 6.79GB available AWE was enabled.

Turn off default tracing in SQL Server

2009-06-29T14:02:00.004-04:00

SQL Server 2005 runs a default trace. Run this query to determine if tracing is enabled:

SELECT *
FROM fn_trace_getinfo(default);
GO

This yields the result set below, where property 5 ("Current Trace status") is set to a value of 1 (where "1" means on and "0" means off).

To turn off default tracing, run this query:

sp_configure 'default trace enabled', 0

To reenable it, run this query:
sp_configure 'default trace enabled', 1

Enable Fusion log to troubleshoot assembly binding.

2009-06-29T11:17:00.000-04:00

HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Fusion/EnableLog DWORD 1

Determine fragmentation level of SQL Server databases

2009-06-18T07:56:00.001-04:00

select * from sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats (null,null,null,null,null)

Delete the SharePoint SSP

2009-06-13T10:02:00.002-04:00

Delete any web applications related to the SSP first, then issue this command line:
stsadm -o deletessp -title SharedServices1 -deletedatabases

Find SQL database ID (dbid)

2009-06-03T16:44:00.000-04:00

sp_helpdb

Shutdown a Windows server remotely.

2009-06-02T13:28:00.000-04:00

shutdown -r -t 0 -f -m

List all processes and their command line

2009-04-27T13:24:00.001-04:00

http://windowsxp.mvps.org/listproc.htm

SharePoint is mostly unmanaged code!

2009-04-22T06:54:00.001-04:00

From Hristo Pavlov's Blog

"Almost all read/write content/metadata operations that you do using the .NET SharePoint object model use unmanaged class to do the job. This unmanaged class is called SP.SPRequest and is used from .NET via the SPRequest internal class. The class is implemented and exposed by the OWSSRV.DLL library and has almost 400 methods. Because the SPSite and SPWeb objects have a reference to unmanaged objects you must keep the number of SPSite/SPWeb objects that are active at the same time to a minimum and should dispose them as soon as you have finished using them. You can monitor the creation and disposal of SPRequest objects via the ULS log/"

Open a physical copy of the GAC

2009-04-22T06:48:00.001-04:00

Start/Run/ and then C:\WINDOWS\ASSEMBLY\GAC_MSIL

Location of the SharePoint Index File

2009-04-13T13:03:00.002-04:00

Drive Letter:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\12.0\Data\Office Server\Applications\Guid\Projects\Portal_Content\Indexer

E:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\12.0\Data\Applications\6fdca65d-06ea-4642-ad5c-727c4438de0d\Projects\Search

This folder contains .bsd, .bsi, .ci, .cix, .csd, .csi, .dia, .dir, .lex, .wid, and .wsb file types.

Use it to obtain the 'size' of your index.

Read an SSL cert using OpenSSL command line

2009-03-24T16:27:00.001-04:00

# openssl x509 -text -in cert.pem

The only difference between web.config files on multiple WFE servers.

2009-03-10T16:00:00.003-04:00

...is the name of the policyFile located in the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\config directory.

The individual wss_custom_wss_minimaltrust_GUID.config files will have different ending GUIDs, like this:

wss_custom_wss_minimaltrust_1fed96fb-db74-4076-9a48-d8a73f8a9b9f.config
wss_custom_wss_minimaltrust_520cb066-1535-4126-8551-3324419c025c.config
wss_custom_wss_minimaltrust_16cea51a-9c26-4dd2-bda5-0a0695605390.config

Getting more detail on SharePoint errors

2009-01-14T15:08:00.000-05:00

http://grumpywookie.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/an-unexpected-error-has-occurred/

FIX: Outlook 2007 won't save user password

2009-01-09T09:01:00.001-05:00

Closed Outlook 2007.
Turn on "View Hidden Files and Folders"
Browse to C:\users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Protect
Delete the "Protect" folder
Restart Windows
Restart Outlook 2007.
Re-input password

Recycle the SharePoint search service

2009-01-02T12:09:00.001-05:00

net stop "Office SharePoint Server Search"
net start "Office SharePoint Server Search"
net stop "Windows SharePoint Services Search"
net start "Windows SharePoint Services Search"
net stop "Windows SharePoint Services Administration"
net start "Windows SharePoint Services Administration"
net stop "Windows SharePoint Services Timer"
net start "Windows SharePoint Services Timer"
iisreset /noforce

Log in at the console via RDP

2008-11-11T12:08:00.001-05:00

Start/Run
mstsc /console

Change location of search index

2008-11-09T22:27:00.000-05:00

stsadm -o editssp -title TestSP1 -indexlocation f:\SharePoint_Search_Index

Obtain search status

2008-11-09T17:26:00.000-05:00

stsadm -o osearch -action list

Farm contact e-mail: admin@lendlease.com
Farm service account: domain\_serviceaccount
Farm performance level: PartlyReduced

*USATL01MT241:
Status: Online
Role: Index

USATL01MT243:
Status: Online
Role: Query

Enable the SharePoint search service

2008-11-09T15:54:00.000-05:00

stsadm -o osearch -action start -role Index -farmserviceaccount -farmservicepassword -defaultindexlocation F:\SharePoint_Searc
h_Index

Move the MOSS search index to a new drive

2008-11-07T19:11:00.001-05:00

H:\>stsadm -o editssp -title MOSS_SP1_SSP -indexlocation F:\SharePoint_Search_In
dex

SharePoint search perpetually in "stopping" mode

2008-11-07T18:14:00.000-05:00

Run these commands:

stsadm -o osearch -action stop
stsadm -o osearch -action start -role Index

Forcibly kill the Sharepoint Search service

2008-11-07T17:11:00.000-05:00

taskkill /F /IM mssearch.exe /T

Find the database name that content db GUID is referring to

2008-10-15T11:07:00.000-04:00

Execute the following query when you are connected to the SharePoint config database:

Select ID, Name from objects where properties like '%Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPContentDatabase%m_nWarningSiteCount%'

This will yeild a table with the GUID matched to the database name.

Real-world networking speeds

2008-09-09T08:17:00.000-04:00

A 100 Mbit connection has the theoretical maximum bandwidth of 12.5MB/sec. Actual speeds are lower because of overhead and other factors. Expect to see a maximum of 7 MB/sec.

Gigabit (1000 Mbit) has a theoretical maximum bandwidth of 125 MB/sec. Expect to see actual speeds up to about 90 MB/sec in real life.

Take a minidump without breaking a process

2008-09-03T14:29:00.000-04:00

Lets say you want to take a dump of an IIS application pools. Login to your server, open a command prompt, and run the following command (where the -p parameter is the PID of the application pool)

ntsd -pvr -p 1640 -c ".dump /ma /u w3wp.dmp; q"

This will popup another DOS box with a variety of ntsd debugger information flashing by. It will look like this:

The window will eventually close, and you will be left with a dump file in the root of your C: drive, like this:

You now have access to a minidump to open with WinDBG.

Don't debug an unmanaged application

2008-08-28T10:02:00.000-04:00

Since most of the world is .NET these days, its my tendency to think I can find everything using SOS. Recently, I was attempting to debug a Windows service (Office SharePoint Server Search), and mentally thought "Well, its SharePoint, which is nothing more than a large .NET application, do its .NET as well." After opening Windbg, and trying to load SOS, I got the following error:

"Failed to find runtime DLL (mscorwks.dll), 0x80004005
Extension commands need mscorwks.dll in order to have something to do."

This perplexed me until I realized I was trying to debug an application that is not managed. To prove this, I ran the "lmvm mscorwks" command to see if mscorwks.dll was loaded. It wasn't.

Deploying a webpart by command line

2008-08-25T11:12:00.001-04:00

stsadm -o addsolution -filename c:\temp\LogViewer.wsp
stsadm -o deploysolution -name LogViewer.wsp -immediate -allcontenturls
stsadm -o execadmsvcjobs

Sharepoint Crawler: "Access is denied"

2008-08-21T13:23:00.001-04:00

Ensure the crawl account has Read access to the web application you wish to crawl. Open Central Admin -> Application Management --> Application Security section --> Policy for Web Application. Add the default crawl user here for All Zones for each web application you want to crawl. Be sure to specify the correct web application.

(Note: Find the default content access account in your SSP under Search --> Search Settings.)

Tracking .NET Out-Of-Memory errors

2008-08-20T11:53:00.000-04:00

Add the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework

Value name: GCFailFastOnOOM
Value type: REG_DWORD
Value data: 4

The value of "4" writes an event message that includes the size of the allocation that failed and the number of bytes in use. A value of "1" simply logs an event in the Application event log. A value of "2" allows a debugger to be attached.

Use the "4" option to grab a dump, then examine the dump for severe fragmentation of the heap, or an attempt to allocate a huge object.

Debugging a different version of .NET runtime

2008-08-12T15:48:00.001-04:00

Copy the mscorwks.dll from the machine that has a different .NET version (than the version running on your debugging desktop) to the C:\temp directory. Rename the file with the name "mscordacwks" and the version of .NET framework it came from, like this: mscordacwks_2.0.50727.1433.63.dll

In WinDBG, issue the following command: cdb -z c:\temp\mscordacwks_2.0.50727.1433.63.dll

Use Ctrl+Alt+Delete in an RDP session

2008-08-07T10:13:00.000-04:00

Ctrl + Alt + End inside the RDP session.

Get uptime of windows server

2008-08-07T10:03:00.000-04:00

net statistics workstation

Unicode HTML space character

2008-08-06T15:21:00.000-04:00

Use one of the following for a space: %u1160 or %u0020, for example:

http://emeaportal.lendlease.com/contractual%u1160documents/forms/rssview.aspx
http://emeaportal.lendlease.com/contractual%u0020documents/forms/rssview.aspx

How many crawls have been done?

2008-08-04T17:52:00.001-04:00

Select count(distinct crawlid) from msscrawlurllog

Force timer jobs to execute

2008-07-24T13:54:00.000-04:00

stsadm.exe -o execadmsvcjobs

SharePoint timer job database

2008-04-03T17:07:00.001-04:00

Several content databases have a scheduledworkitems table where timer job GUID's are kept.

Where is AD user data stored in SharePoint databases?

2008-04-03T13:45:00.000-04:00

For WSS, you will find the data in the "userinfo" table of the content database. For MOSS, you will also find user data in the SSP database in the "UserProfile_Full" table.

A solution to the generic "An unexpected error has occurred" in WSS v3

2008-03-26T15:40:00.002-04:00

How to get rid of the generic SharePoint error messages:

http://blog.thekid.me.uk/archive/2007/02/15/a-solution-to-quot-an-unexpected-error-has-occurred-quot-in-wss-v3.aspx

Get contentdbid value

2008-03-26T14:21:00.001-04:00

Here's a shortcut to getting the db_id of the SharePoint content database:

"Go to Central Administration > Application Management > Content Databases. Select the Web Application that is of your interest, and then click on the database name. Once you are on "Manage Content Database Settings" page, you can see the ContentDBID in the URL."

Or open SQL Management Studio and select a database in Object Explorer. Then click "New Query" and execute the following script: "select DB_ID() as [Database ID];"

This will return the Database ID.

Get a list of database_id values

2008-03-25T17:03:00.001-04:00

select * from sys.databases;

Sharepoint Timer job definitions as XML files

2008-03-24T15:46:00.000-04:00

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\SharePoint\Config\

"Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.PostSetupConfigurationTaskException" error

2008-03-20T17:25:00.000-04:00

From the 12 Hive's BIN directory, run this command:

psconfig -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -wait -force

Open Terminal Service Configuration

2008-03-17T14:59:00.000-04:00

Start/Run/tscc.msc

More Logparser goodies

2008-03-05T11:22:00.001-05:00

logparser -i:evt "select * from \\usatl01mw280\Application order by TimeWritten desc"

logparser -i:evt "select TimeGenerated,EventID,EventTypeName,EventCategoryName,SourceName,Strings,Message from \\usatl01mw280\Application" -o:datagrid

logparser -i:evt "select EventID,EventTypeName,EventCategoryName,SourceName,Strings,Message from \\usatl01mw280\System" -o:datagrid

logparser -i:evt "select * from \\usatl01mw280\System order by TimeWritten desc"

logparser "select distinct EventID,EventTypeName,Message from System" -o: datagrid

logparser "select distinct EventID, EventTypeName, Message, Count(*) as Entries from System group by EventID, Message, EventTypeName order by EventTypeName,

Entries DESC" -i:EVT -o:DATAGRID

Where to search for SharePoint GUID's

2008-03-04T10:28:00.000-05:00

Seeing errors in your SharePoint trace log? Search the registry fruitlesslessly? Do a search of the XML files in this directory next:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES

Parse SharePoint trace logs with LogParser

2008-02-28T14:26:00.000-05:00

C:\WINDOWS\system32\LogFiles\HTTPERR>logparser "select * from 'httperr12.log'" -
i:httperr -o:datagrid

Remove the SharpDevelop splash screen

2008-02-18T20:41:00.000-05:00

Add the /nologo flag to the Shortcut target, like this:

"C:\Program Files\SharpDevelop\2.2\bin\SharpDevelop.exe" /nologo

Average executing time for ASP.NET pages

2008-02-14T19:22:00.000-05:00

Courtesy of "A Developer Strayings" blog:

logparser "SELECT AVG(time-taken) As AverageTimeTaken, MAX(time-taken) As MaxTimeTaken, COUNT(*) As Hits, TO_LOWERCASE(cs-uri-stem) INTO %1 FROM *.log WHERE EXTRACT_EXTENSION(TO_LOWERCASE(cs-uri-stem)) = '%2' GROUP BY cs-uri-stem ORDER BY AverageTimeTaken DESC" -i:IISW3C -RTP:-1

The output will look like this:

Statistics:
-----------
Elements processed: 309751
Elements output: 0
Execution time: 1.45 seconds

LogParser syntax to see long-running pages

2008-02-14T08:50:00.000-05:00

After enabling the time-taken logfile attribute, you can view the longest-running pages (in milliseconds) by using a SQL query and LogParser:

logparser -o:DATAGRID "select cs-uri-stem,time-taken,cs-username fro
m ex080214.log where time-taken > 10000 order by time-taken"

This will return a datagrid where you can review the pages that took the longest, and troubleshoot them.

Multiple CLR performance counters appear that have names that resemble "W3wp#1"

2008-01-15T06:17:00.000-05:00

When multiple ASP.NET worker processes are running, Common Language Runtime (CLR) performance counters will have names that resemble "W3wp#1" or "W3sp#2"and so on. This was remedied in .NET Framework 2.0 to include a counter named Process ID in the .NET CLR Memory performance object. This counter displays the process ID for an instance. You can use this counter to determine the CLR performance counter that is associated with a process.

If you cannot see a counter named Process ID under the .NET CLR Memory object, the performance counter symbols may not be installed correctly. To resolve this issue, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then click OK.
2. At the command prompt, type unlodctr .NetFramework, and then press ENTER.
3. Use the cd command to change to the \Microsoft.Net\Framework\v2.0.50727 folder.
4. At the command prompt, type lodctr corperfmonsymbols.ini, and then press ENTER.

You then need to run the iisapp.vbs command to get the PID of each App Pool. Once you have the PID, run perfmon and add the .Net CLR Memory/Process ID for each instance of w3wp, w3wp#1, w3wp#2, etc…

The corresponding PID will be the only value that perfmon displays for the counter.

As you can see below, I added application pools w3wp#1 and w3wp#2 to perfmon. I have selected w3wp#2, and it shows a constant value of 6892-which corresponds exactly to the PID of the App Pool.

Site Design

2008-01-15T05:58:00.000-05:00

“Anything that represents customer hand-holding represents a failure of site design,”
-Jim Buckmaster, Craigslist’s chief executive.

Empathy defined

2007-12-31T14:16:00.000-05:00

"Step outside yourself and tune in to what other people experience; experience what someone else's world is like for them. Without abandoning your own perspective, you experience the other's emotions, conflicts or aspirations. That kind of connection builds healthy relationships -- an essential part of mental health."

Useful netstat commands

2007-12-17T12:12:00.000-05:00

View what IP's are generating the most connections to your web server, from least to most connections:

netstat -anp |grep 'tcp\|udp' | awk '{print $5}' | cut -d: -f1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -n

The result will look like this:

117 0.0.0.0
158 172.27.10.75
354 172.27.10.140

If you want to see how many connections are in a certain state of the TCP/IP handshake, use this command:
$ netstat -tan | grep ':80 ' | awk '{print $6}' | sort | uniq -c

The result will look like this:

282 CLOSE_WAIT
230 ESTABLISHED
2 FIN_WAIT2
1 LAST_ACK
1 LISTEN
330 TIME_WAIT

The real measure of status

2007-12-05T23:07:00.000-05:00

"You didn't measure where you were in teh organization by how many people you're managing. Prestige was measured by how few people there were above you who could prevent you from doing what you wanted to do."

-David Sacks

About database indexes

2007-10-08T11:18:00.001-04:00

"Indexes are most beneficial when they are declared on columns that have many distinct values." The more unique values that are in the column the faster the query will run. Even though you indexed the column it does not guarantee that SQL server will use the index. If the column does not contain enough unique values, then the sql server query optimizer will resort to a table scan and not use the index.

Translate an AD name into the corresponding long name

2007-10-01T14:02:00.000-04:00

Enter the AD username in the "To" field of a new Outlook message, then use the "Ctrl-K" keyboard combination to instantly translate the AD username into the user's full name.

"No Knobs"

2007-09-27T22:27:00.000-04:00

Here is a great excerpt from the MIT paper entitled "The End of an Architectural Era (It's Time for a Complete Rewrite)":
"Current systems were built in an era where resources were incredibly expensive, and every computing system was watched over by a collection of wizards in white lab coats, responsible for the care, feeding, tuning, and optimization of the system. In that era, computers were expensive and people were cheap. Today we have the reverse. Personnel costs are the dominant expense in an IT shop."

Smart alarm clock?

2007-09-21T07:24:00.000-04:00

Seth Godin made a brilliant post about alarm clocks recently:

"For twenty cents or so, alarm clock manufacturers can add a chip that not only knows the time (via a radio signal) but knows what day it is too. Which means that they can add a switch that says "weekends." Which means that the 98% of the population that doesn't want to wake up on the same time on weekends as they do on weekdays will be happier (and better rested.)

So why doesn't every alarm clock have this feature? Because most people in that business are busy doing their jobs (distribution, promotion, pricing, etc.), not busy making products that people actually want to buy--and talk about."

So why are alarm clocks stuck in a 10-20 year-old technology gap? Why don't they connect to your PC with a USB cable, and allow you to program them? If my GPS can receive MSN Direct (an FM radio-based digital service that includes weather, horoscopes, stocks, news, sports results and calendar notifications), why can't my alarm clock?

This is definitely a rift.

Here is someone who did something similar as a hack.

Generate PFX file at the command line

2007-09-06T14:18:00.000-04:00

A PFX (Personal Information Exchange) file is packed in a standard file format called PKCS#12, and used by both Microsoft ISA and IIS products.

PKCS#12 format contains the certificate, private key, and all the CA's in a certificate chain. Here is how you generate it from the openssl command line:

1) Generate private key
openssl genrsa -out emeaextranet.lendlease.com.key 1024

2) Generate CSR
openssl req -new -key emeaextranet.lendlease.com.key -out emeaextranet.lendlease.com.csr

3) Get the certificate signed by CSA

4) Save the resulting signed certificate into a file.

4) Concatenate the private key and certificate into a new file.
cat emeaextranet.lendlease.com.key emeaextranet.lendlease.com.crt > emeaextranet.lendlease.com.jeff

5) Export the concatenated file in PFX format.
openssl pkcs12 -export -in emeaextranet.lendlease.com.jeff -out emeaextranet.lendlease.com.pfx

Sharepoint uploads timing out?

2007-09-04T14:15:00.000-04:00

Add an execution timeout value for the upload.aspx page in the main web.config file.

Location of SharePoint's main web.config file

2007-08-22T18:00:00.001-04:00

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS

Determine when Windows was installed

2007-08-07T14:01:00.001-04:00

systeminfo | find /i "install date"

MS Network Monitor: Address listing

2007-08-06T18:00:00.000-04:00

Its much easier to sniff using Microsoft Network Monitor when you import the addresses you care about in .adr format. Just create a text file, and add each address on a single line, like this:

1,172.27.9.40=USATL01MT235,
1,172.27.66.58=Jeff's Desktop,

Then start NetMon and import the addresses.

Sniffing a browser authentication

2007-08-06T15:19:00.000-04:00

A 401 response message is used by an web server to challenge the authorization of a user agent connecting anonymously. After receiving a 401 response, a browser will include an Authorization header field with the next request. The Authorization field contains credentials with the authentication information of the user agent for the resource being requested.

I used Wireshark to sniff this request-response stream on an Apache web server (asking for a virtual host called "/manual" protected by Basic authentication), and it looks like this:

Client	Server
SYN
	SYN,ACK
ACK
HTTP Request(GET /manual)
	ACK
	HTTP 401 Authorization Required response to browser including WWW-Authenticate: Basic header
	FIN,ACK
ACK
FIN,ACK
	ACK

(Repeat TCP sequence again, but browser sends proper credentials this time, and gets a 304 Not Modified response)

Four criteria in job candidates:

2007-08-01T14:43:00.000-04:00

1) Cultural fit with your company
2) A desire to learn
3) The ability to learn
4) Technical skills

Good quotes from Oracle "Unlimited Application Scalability" whitepaper

2007-07-18T13:18:00.000-04:00

The cost of each tier in a web application increases as you move from URL to SQL. From the white paper:

"In the first tier—the Web tier—the cost of serving static content by use of commodity boxes running Apache is very low and, due to its stateless nature, very predictable.

• In the second tier—the J2EE tier—the cost of hardware may be the same, but both the infrastructure software and the custom application logic are significantly more expensive.

The result is predictable: Applications that tend to allow each request to get past the first or second tier will be much more expensive to scale, and applications that rely on data access from the database for each request will encounter severe limits on their scalable performance.

The lesson learned is this: handle the incoming load in the earliest-possible tier, and do it with resources that have predictable scale-out behavior and costs. For most applications, those are the resources represented by commodity hardware—servers with fast CPUs and plenty of memory.

Also, you should deliberately build an architecture that will bottleneck in the earliest-possible tier on either the CPU or in memory. Why? You’re going to have a bottleneck, whether you choose to or not. And if you don’t pick the bottleneck deliberately, it’s going to end up in the most expensive and difficult-to-scale part of your environment."

What is a "serializable" object?

2007-07-18T08:09:00.001-04:00

To serialize an object means to convert its state to a byte stream so way that the byte stream can be reverted back into a copy of the object.

Paul Saffo on IT today

2007-07-16T22:25:00.000-04:00

"...the information revolution is over. Information was a word that made sense in an age when we didn't have much information. But when it goes deep and becomes ubiquitous, it ceases to be information and it becomes media...this is a personal media revolution. Google is a personal media company, not an information company."

.Net request flow

2007-07-11T12:34:00.000-04:00

The browser sends an http request to the server for a file with an .aspx extension. This request gets handled by the httpd.sys kernel process, which maps the .aspx extension into IIS via the aspnet_isapi.dll ISAPI filter. This filter subsequently calls the .Net runtime worker process aspnet_wp.exe, which compiles the page into a DLL and stores it in the filesystem cache at C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Temporary ASP.NET Files\.

Good illustration of the OSI model

2007-07-02T10:59:00.000-04:00

IBM has a really good illustration of the OSI model. I've always had trouble associating the different layers, and this makes it really transparent:

Finding Rifts

2007-06-25T07:46:00.000-04:00

Seth Godin's blog has an interesting article about Steve Jobs. In his estimation, Jobs is "addicted to Rifting--he process of fixing problems, of leaping from one broken market to another. " Godin refers back to an article he wrote in 2000 about people who "find a rift in the continuum of life." And what is a rift? According to Godin, "it's a big tear in the fabric of the rules that we live by. Most people who build important businesses build them on a rift, usually one that they find by accident."

So what are some possible rifts?

Why can't I know what other people are investing in?
How do I create multiple virtual machines to act as an application server farm?
Where did my friend get their last, best travel deal?
What cellphone plan are my friends using?
Why do I have to have my own contact list in my phone?
Why can't I get my shared contacts from my friends?
Email isn't a good task manager. Make a clean break between email and tasks.When you get a "to-do" via email, you add the task to your to-do list

Something to keep in mind.

2007-06-18T21:55:00.000-04:00

"Keep focusing on your strengths. What you focus on grows."
--Adrian Savage

Poor man's VMWare VM cloning

2007-06-13T01:09:00.000-04:00

1) Copy the entire directory.
2) vmware-vdiskmanager -n Windows\ Server\ 2003\ Standard\ Edition.vmdk W2K3_R2_Clone1.vmdk
3) Open the Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition.vmx file and change the disk image parameter to point to the new disk:
scsi0:0.fileName = " W2K3_R2_Clone1.vmdk"
#scsi0:0.fileName = "Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition.vmdk"

4) Give the cloned VM a new name in the Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition.vmx file:
displayName = "W2K3 R2 Enterprise Edition - Clone1"
#displayName = "W2K3 R2 Enterprise Edition"

5) Change the name of the VMX file:
mv Windows\ Server\ 2003\ Standard\ Edition.vmx W2K3_R2_Clone1.vmx

Start it up.

Run the sysprep utility.

ext2online missing in RHEL5

2007-06-06T15:46:00.000-04:00

Ext2online's functions have been included in resize2fs in Red Hat 5. Ext3 filesystems can still be extended online, but reducing a filesystems is only available offline.

Remount root filesystem in read-only mode

2007-06-06T08:57:00.001-04:00

The following command remounts the root in read-only mode:

mount -o remount ro /

Quote

2007-06-05T12:11:00.000-04:00

"There is more data sitting in file systems than in relational databases."
--Steve Mills, SVP IBM Software

Good quote about VLAN's

2007-05-31T14:40:00.001-04:00

"VLANs, a method of creating independent logical networks within a physical network, are critical to hosting providers, because "clients in the dedicated market are very, very concerned about security," Huber said. "They want their environment to be as close as possible to a physical dedicated server." Virtualization takes care of operating system isolation, while a VLAN insulates a system from traffic on the remainder of the network."

Update a kickstart installation in the %post section

2007-05-29T12:29:00.000-04:00

Add this to the %post section of your kickstart file:

# Update server from RHN
rpm --import /usr/share/rhn/RPM-GPG-KEY
rhnreg_ks --force --profilename ${HOSTNAME:-"tmp-host-name.mydomain.com"} --username myrhnuser
--password myrhnpasswd
up2date --nox --force --update -v

View an RPM changelog

2007-05-29T12:28:00.000-04:00

rpm -q --changelog net-snmp-utils

Does my CPU support Xen?

2007-05-23T13:33:00.000-04:00

For a para-virtualized guest, your CPU only needs to support the PAE flag:

$ grep pae /proc/cpuinfo

For a fully-virtualized guest, your CPU must support either the "vmx" flag for an Intel processor, or the "svm" flag if your processor is from AMD. Run this command to find out:

grep '^flags.*(vmx|svm)' /proc/cpuinfo

Great quote about caching...

2007-05-23T13:32:00.001-04:00

"When building a big web application you layer caches on caches. Ideally the top cache (browser local cache) can service the entire request such as it happens on google.com. if that fails the next best thing is blazingly fast memcached. Failing that we have to aquire and compute some data which is hopefully cached. If that fails the database gets the data from its cache or from disk. If that fails than the database files are probably cached by the operating system. And finally we move the physical read head of the disk to fetch the database off permanent storage."

Cloning Oracle Application Server

2007-05-22T15:31:00.000-04:00

Need to add another instance of OAS? Or maybe clone an existing instance of OAS to test something out? Here's how you do it:
1) Stop all oracle processes in the existing environment.

2) Prepare the clone in the existing environment.
su - oracle
bash
perl $ORACLE_HOME/clone/bin/prepare_clone.pl

3) Compress the clone (outside the existing environment)
cd /d01/app/oracle/product/
tar -czvf oracleas.tar.gz 10.1.2.0.2

4) Create the home for the clone on the target machine.
mkdir -p /d01/app/oracle/product
chown -R oracle:dba /d01/app/oracle/product

5) Transfer the clone to the target machine:
scp oracleas.tar.gz oracle@usatl01la223:/d01/app/oracle/product

6) Switch to the oracle home directory, and uncompress the tarball.
cd /d01/app/oracle/product
tar -zxvf oracleas.tar.gz

7) Run the clone command on the target machine (MUST be done in GUI mode using VNC).
$ perl 10.1.2.0.2/clone/bin/clone.pl ORACLE_HOME=/d01/app/oracle/product/10.1.2.0.2 ORACLE_HOME_NAME=OraHome_2 -instance forms_issac_uat_2 -ias_admin_old_pwd barfly -ias_admin_new_pwd barflea

8) Delete the cloned tarball to save space.
rm -f oracleas.tar.gz

2007-05-21T17:00:00.000-04:00

Do you see something like this, every 15 seconds or so in your /var/log/messages file:

May 21 12:33:57 usatl01lo605 snmpd[10167]: Connection from - 127.0.0.1
May 21 12:33:57 usatl01lo605 snmpd[10167]: transport socket = 16
May 21 12:34:12 usatl01lo605 snmpd[10167]: Connection from - 127.0.0.1
May 21 12:34:12 usatl01lo605 snmpd[10167]: transport socket = 16

This is due to an incorrect setting in the /etc/init.d/snmpd script. Open this script and change this line:

OPTIONS="-Lsd -Lf /dev/null -p /var/run/snmpd.pid -a"

to this:

OPTIONS="-LS 4 d -p /var/run/snmpd.pid -a"

Then restart the snmp service ("service snmpd restart). You will see the incessant logging in the messages file cease.

JDK debug properties recognized by Oracle OC4J

2007-05-17T17:33:00.000-04:00

-Djdbc.connection.debug=true
-Dbuild.debug=true
-Djdbc.debug=true
-Ddatasource.verbose=true
-Ddebug.jdbc.check=true
-Dejb.debug.state=true
-Dejb.debug=true
-Dejb.cache.debug=true
-Dejb.assert=true

Deploy a WAR to the OC4J root

2007-05-15T17:21:00.000-04:00

Use Oracle Enterprise Manager, and click on the name of your OC4J container. From there, select Administration/Advanced Properties and edit the default-web-site.xml file. Find the line that looks like this:

< application="mywebapp" name="mywebapp" root="/mywebapp">

And change it to:

Restart the container as necessary. Next, select the HTTP server container. Once there, choose Administration/Advanced Server Properties, and open the mod_oc4j.conf file. Find the existing "Oc4jMount" directive for your website, and change it to:

Oc4jMount / Oc4J_instance_name
Oc4jMount /* OC4J_instance_name

Great quote about an IT shop

2007-05-09T11:43:00.000-04:00

This one comes from Mike Kavis' blog:
"If you owned your own trucking business and you spent most of your time repairing your fleet of trucks you would probably be out of business. So why do so many IT shops spend countless hours every day in repair mode?"

dmidecode for hardware info

2007-05-02T08:15:00.000-04:00

Dmidecode dumps the System Management BIOS. Use this built-in tool to get information on your motherboard, CPU, RAM chips, and more! Here's a sample:

Handle 0x0007, DMI type 6, 12 bytes.
Memory Module Information
Socket Designation: DIMM 2
Bank Connections: 2 3
Current Speed: Unknown
Type: DIMM SDRAM
Installed Size: 512 MB (Double-bank Connection)
Enabled Size: 512 MB (Double-bank Connection)
Error Status: OK

Stack trace defined

2007-04-30T12:10:00.000-04:00

The code path each thread in a currently existing process traversed to put it in its current state.

Ping sweep with nmap

2007-04-27T15:24:00.000-04:00

Need to find a free IP in your address range? Use NMAP to find out which addresses are currently used:

nmap -sP 172.24.17.1-255

"Sharding"

2007-04-26T12:07:00.000-04:00

Separating users by servers.

The difference between Red Hat ES and AS versions

2007-04-25T14:12:00.000-04:00

Per Red Hat: "ES is licensed for x86 compatible servers with up to 2 CPUs and 8GB of main memory; AS is licensed for servers of any size and any architecture."

ntpdate equivalent command when running NTP service

2007-04-19T11:17:00.000-04:00

If your Linux clock is more than a minute or two off, you might be tempted to use the "ntpdate" program to update the clock one time. However, the ntpdate program cannot run while the ntp daemon is running (not to mention the fact the ntpdate function is set to be retired).

You can mimic the functionality of the ntpdate command by issuing the "ntpd -q -g" command. This updates the clock, telling the ntp daemon to ignore the 'sanity limit' of 1000 seconds, and exit after updating the clock.

Where is LVM metadata stored?

2007-04-19T11:12:00.000-04:00

You can a backup of your current metadata configuration in /etc/lvm/backup.

Determine Oracle Application Server version

2007-04-17T15:23:00.000-04:00

Open the $ORACLE_HOME\config\ias.properties file. Then find the [InstallData] section and the "Version" attribute, which looks like this:

Version=10.1.2.0.0