fishyweb

Xampp 2.5.8 on windows7

2012-02-09T19:42:00.001+05:30

XAMPP refused to start up on win7.

Figured out SQLServer’s reporting service was stealthily using the port 80, disguised as a system process! Yuck! So, stopping this service fixes the port issue but whoa – no luck yet – XAMPP won’t want to come up!

Thanks to apache error logs, this time, the culprit turned out to be the path! XAMPP was installed under “\program files” while all the 32 bit apps are installed under “Program files (x86)” in Win7 64!

And all the httpd.conf and php.ini files were pointing to “\program files”.

So, just moved the XAMPP installation from “program files (x86)” to “program files” and voila – all’s well!

XAMPP now runs like a song!

It’s always nnnnnniiiiiiiiiiiiicccccccccccceeeeeeeeee to find solutions!

Full Kick-UUU!

Whew! Google is google!

2011-10-08T10:55:00.001+05:30

i was zapped for a minute to look at the above message, while sending a mail.

Not that this is rocket science, but what is to be noted is the validations thought and executed based on the content of the mail.

Well thought google!

Nifty vs2010 feature #1 – winforms - type and drop UI controls

2011-08-06T16:31:00.001+05:30

del.icio.us Tags: Tips VS2010

Incremental Search for a component / control in the VS toolbox is now made easy in VS2010.

1. Select the Toolbox windows (Ctrl+W+X)

Deleting a post using windows live writer

2011-07-30T08:05:00.001+05:30

As an exception i much prefer the simplicity of windows live writer for blogging from my desktop.

it is in fact so simple, that a few fundamental functions are hidden to the naked eye. Ex: try modifying or deleting an existing post and you’ll see the fun.

What should have ideally gone to the ribbon bar menu is hidden in the file menu, under the “Open Recent Post” menu item.

To Manage your past posts…

1. Select “File –> Open recent post” (Click on the item – just hovering on this item shows another submenu that we are not interested in!)

2. Follow steps 1,2 – select the blog, post & click “ok” for modification. For Deletion, you follow steps 1,2,3 & you’ll get a confirmation dialog before deletion.

Have Fun!

Shortcut to GAC

2011-07-30T07:31:00.001+05:30

1.Windows + R = The Run Dialog

2. Type in “Assembly”

3. This opens the GAC for viewing.

4. GAC is normally the “\Windows\assembly” folder. But, Explorer displays this folder slightly different from a normal folder. So, How does it work behind the scenes?

a. See here – the intro from geekswithblog

b, Explorer uses shfusion.dll behind hoods. This is explained here.

Wanna get insulted? try this - Wierd, but true!

2011-07-03T13:20:00.001+05:30

Insulted while hopping from a link.

Wondering what could this mean?

PS: But the main page works! Try any other link and you are insulted!

del.icio.us Tags: china,insult,touch

rational Rose & the cur_dir issue

2011-06-15T10:17:00.001+05:30

Problem :

The .mdl files (with multiple .cat files) are not opened properly. Warnings like below are thrown:

09:55:06| Warning: The directory $CUR_DIR does not exist.

Solution:

1. Start Rose – without loading any mdl file.

2. Add the new symbol – “CUR_DIR” with the actual path value as “&” – PS: Note – some versions of Rose expects “CURDIR” instead of “CUR_DIR”

3. Close and re-start Rose

One line No-brainer usage of yUML from .net

2010-07-14T11:27:00.001+05:30

If you’ve not seen the beauty of yUML – do check it out here - yUML.

yUML as a service, provides a simple way to express your Classes, Activities & Usecases and translates your expressions into pretty pictures (aka., uml diagrams)

On the similar lines of Sequence Diagram Editor – by, Marcus Strauch

Ok, to the juicy part :)

pictureBox1.Load(“1-*[me]">http://yuml.me/diagram/scruffy/class/[test]<>1-*[me]”);

where - http://yuml.me/diagram/scruffy/class/<…> – the <…> part is your expression

All in one Information Store

2010-02-14T19:26:00.001+05:30

M$ Office OneNote is an amazing tool, an all in one information store - extensible to be integrated with a variety of apps. This post itself is a test from posting directly for OneNote.

Interview with MIT Professor Walter Lewin

2010-02-11T10:36:00.002+05:30

What days have come!!!

2010-02-02T21:04:00.001+05:30

I did a tweet with #todo and in a couple of mins. i get this dm reply from nowhere…

am Zapped!

Took me a moment to realize, some automated service is watching for the #todo tag and records them!

Whooosh! What an idea Sirji! All your todo’s will be stored somewhere for ages to come! Even when you didn’t intend that feature! :)

Usability! “Check spelling” dialog handicap in livewriter!

2009-07-20T12:28:00.001+05:30

Hello livewriter, I Just want to ignore this one word and continue checking the others!

How Can i do that with you?

Where’s the ‘ignore once’ button as in word?

NYTimes Reader & proxy

2009-06-30T10:45:00.001+05:30

My NYTimes reader wouldn’t connect – in spite of providing the proxy settings manually!

Bummer!

What to do????

Well, let it figure it out automatically… and YAY! it Works. ;)

System Info.

2009-04-28T11:15:00.001+05:30

Handy tool to get your system related software/hardware info.

msinfo32.exe (of course from microsoft)

Features

Allows searching for tags & text (item name, value)
Save info. as .NFO files
Export to Text

A Nice 404! :) Sweet!

2009-03-26T15:43:00.001+05:30

Good one!

Expressing yourself in sequences ;)

2009-03-24T14:57:00.001+05:30

Stumbled on a treasure trove…

2009-03-06T21:31:00.001+05:30

MSDN Magazine HTML Help Files

I’d liked the MSDN WPF Reader application (based on Subscription Center) but unfortunately that’s kinda dead meat now! :( no updates ….

So, as usual while searching around for something else, i bumped on this part of the MSDN Magazine website and pleasantly surprised!

I liked what is saw… so, here you are – reaping the benefits! Enjoy!

Stop living in the Past!

2009-02-25T10:31:00.001+05:30

This is a movement i’d just LOVE to spread!

Please “Stop Living in the Past” – Phase out the demons of stupidity from the vicinity of your xTops. :)

Feed search (selector)…

2009-02-13T13:37:00.001+05:30

Quick way to locate/search your feeds in the google reader.

I’ve some 100+ feeds and can’t remember the names all the time. While searching for a solution to this issue – i accidentally bumped upon this feature (which I Should say i really like a lot…)

:) Think usability… Think Google!

Infact, i wish i had a shortcut key for doing this!

Simple solutions!

Follow-ups work!

2009-02-10T17:03:00.001+05:30

I like the outlook follow-up / reminder option, while sending a mail. :) It reminds both the sender and receiver to follow-up & sync.

Cool Stuff!

Filling PDF Forms

2009-02-04T11:45:00.001+05:30

A friend of mine asked me how could she fill a pdf form. In the process of helping her i bumped across this online service, which seems to get the job done for free.

PDFFiller

(Warning: I haven’t used it myself personally yet!)

Other offline tools are CutePDF writer, PDFCreator etc.

del.icio.us Tags: PDF,filling,online tools

EverNote!

2009-01-24T16:41:00.001+05:30

Discovered Evernote. I think this should be good way to capture my day-to-day activities (as i used to do earlier with Q10) and with its online sync, i don’t have to worry about local storage and organizing blues.

Learnings Today #2009.01.25 – Adding a file to the “Content files from…” list in a VS2005 Installer project

2009-01-24T15:57:00.001+05:30

Adding files to the "Content Files" an Installer project under VS2005

is a tricky business!

The control for adding the files aren't in the installation project, but in the actual VS2005 project where the file is present.

Under the file properties (F4 on the file name), make sure to set the "Build Action" property value to "content".

This action automatically adds the file to the "Content files from..." list in the Installer project.

Think Microsoft for addressing Usability! Whew!

Treasure trove of free windows software from Microsoft! Yes… :)

2009-01-23T21:15:00.001+05:30

http://bhandler.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!70F64BC910C9F7F3!1231.entry?wa=wsignin1.0

Bumped upon this ultimate free list of (lesser known) free windows downloads dug up from the annals of M$ download server.

Worth a list. Share with all.

Discovered a new Hot Key function in VS 2005 ... accidentally! Ctrl+Alt+Down Arrow

2008-11-29T11:53:00.001+05:30

Ctrl + Alt + Down arrow
Provides a popup-list of open editor window tabs (like eclipse).
Unlike the Ctrl+Tab the above shortcut is pretty handy and sticky and doesn't vanish on releasing the keys.

Stupid...Stupid...McAFee!

2008-09-02T20:06:00.001+05:30

I've been copying a set of data from my desktop to the laptop on a gigabit lan!
And Man! it was taking ages.... Wondering about the pathetic network, as i explored my system processes, i hit on this mcafee application which performs on-access scanning - at both the boxes!

Yikes! no wonder why the damn operation was taking ages!
Now i manually disabled these options in the virus console and to my irritation, after a few mins, the disabled options become enabled magically!

Another brain wave and i remembered the mcafee services! went ahead and stopped the services at both the boxes and whew! finally, thank goodness - the gigabit network started working as expected.

Even as i type this blog entry, the copy has completed!

And i've been stupid, sitting duck for the past one hour!
Stupid Stupid Virus scanners!
Stupid Stupid ME, for not pinning the problem any earlier!

2008-07-30T19:37:00.001+05:30

a must read for all architects : http://ping.fm/EiWT1 ;)

2008-07-30T19:25:00.001+05:30

interesting read : ... they found that presenting the concrete architecture gives visibility of unexpected architectural interactions, and that the logical view (UML package diagram and class diagram) was the most useful in understanding the system

2008-07-30T09:04:00.001+05:30

too tired today. Overslept and now stuck in traffic.

2008-07-29T18:56:00.001+05:30

70% of uds completed. Feels good with the progress.

2008-07-28T17:48:00.001+05:30

left ofc early. Got to select leather for sofa.

2008-07-28T09:35:00.001+05:30

a sudden flash of thought - approach life with a reckless abandon! As in cooking!

2008-07-28T08:44:00.001+05:30

It dawned upon me that the first application i launch every day is FF! subconsciously, addicted to the web!

2008-07-27T18:33:00.001+05:30

feeling restless. Dunno why!

2008-07-26T23:57:00.001+05:30

watching 'descent' the movie ...

2008-07-26T23:36:00.001+05:30

feeling better mentally! the home interiors are shaping up good... hopefully expect things to get completed by another week / 10 days!

2008-07-25T23:32:00.001+05:30

Making art in dark with my e51 and a battery.

________________________________________________
Take GoogleTalk mobile with fring www.fring.com/googletalk

2008-07-25T22:08:00.001+05:30

Reading .a whack on the side of the head.

2008-07-23T18:13:00.001+05:30

eod @ office... heading home! should say it was a decently productive day.

2008-07-23T15:43:00.001+05:30

getting addicted to use the 'quick sequence diagram editor' from http://sdedit.sf.net! pretty expressive! i like it.

2008-07-23T14:39:00.001+05:30

pondering: its high time, i published the set of tools i use day to day!

2008-07-23T14:22:00.001+05:30

best resources to learn the OS internals from the dvl themselves : http://ping.fm/Bajqt

2008-07-23T11:59:00.001+05:30

a best reference on SOA - http://ping.fm/lCzU7

2008-07-23T11:44:00.001+05:30

did a review of a testing approach. Reviews are demanding. Takes 2-3 hrs easily.

2008-07-22T22:27:00.001+05:30

finally done with moving the heavy weights up the apt. Now to get them within the wardrobes. It'll be a close call.

2008-07-22T20:39:00.001+05:30

shifting heavy godrej bearaus to the new apt. Bummer the power is gone! Waiting for the elixir of modern life to be back.

2008-07-22T17:44:00.001+05:30

solved a tricky problem for a colleague which had been persisting for a long time. stupid IE proxy issue!

2008-07-22T16:14:00.001+05:30

checking up ping.fm... finally, got a beta code! yippie!

NTFS Partition in Fedora Core

2008-07-18T15:34:00.003+05:30

Fedora Core (FC) distribution of Linux doesn't support NTFS drives by default. Last week i was in a desperate condition to mount NTFS drives in to FC.

To solve this problem i installed ntfs-3g tool with yum. Then mounted the drive by adding the command in to /etc/fstab.

If you don't want to add anything into /etc/fstab then it can be done manually by executing

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 path_to_folder_where_to_mount -o force

this command should be executed as root.

ntfs-3g is available in rpm format also.

PS: Installation of ntfs-3g would connect to internet. at console proxy settings won't work. to handle this problem you have to export proxy settings with proper value and port.
ex. export http_proxy 'xxx.xx.xx.xx:xxxx'

Msdn Reader Up & Running finally!

2008-07-16T09:19:00.001+05:30

Side effects!

Call it blind luck - I had changed the IE proxy settings from VS to enable the PInvoke.net plugin to work properly from within VS.

And as a welcome, side effect - the MSDN Reader started working as well. All the while, i've been breaking my heads to get the MSDN reader work thru the proxy settings!

So, MSDN Reader *does* take its proxy settings from the IE settings. good!
Voila!
:)

Proxy for windows cli / command line

2008-07-11T16:26:00.001+05:30

This is a topic for which i have been breaking my heads for long, without a proper solution.
Never thought its such a simple thing! :)

To enable the proxy for commandline cli tools, all we need to do is to set the HTTP_PROXY
variable with the proxy server ip & port!

Oh yeah! and don't forget to export it!

http://codesnippets.joyent.com/posts/show/569#related

Learnings by the hard way!

2008-07-10T15:33:00.001+05:30

Working with Unreal commander, just got the latest update downloaded and installed. Thanks for not RTFM, all my settings/themes/preferences are gone!

AAAAAAAaaaaaarrgh!

On thunderbird addressbook & importing...

2008-06-11T09:10:00.001+05:30

default address book is stored under the C:\Documents and Settings\xxxx\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\xxxxxx.xxxxx (profile folder) as abook.mab
abook.mab can be moved around profiles - hence it was a clean copy for me to get my old address book back
address book can be run as a separate app. as follows using the thunberbird exec. : "thunderbird.exe -addressbook"

Know your network... before you ask someone

2008-05-28T14:57:00.001+05:30

Start with your routers/firewalls
Understand your subnet(s).
Understand your VPNs.
Take a stock of your IP addresses - for each server/other boxes
Install cfg2html (www.cfg2html.com)
run cfg2html - this'll extract all that info. about your servers
Spend time and read through the same - in detail. Now you'll have more relevant questions to ask.
Know the resource limitations of each of your servers
Know what services & applications are running on which servers
Find the init-startup/configuration files relevant to the running services / applications
Draw the dependency tree between servers / lans / vpns
Decipher & Visualize the gateways and routing tables on each of the servers
Get all the possible access credentials to the routers/switches/servers/boxes
Understand the physical network (if you have direct access) & take a firsthand physical inventory in-spite of whatever documentation you may be given
Study the connectivity between servers to switches and other devices
Study the Power Supply / UPS & any data connectivity to other devices
Study the physical connectivity of cables between boxes to switches (data ports)
Have a set of basic troubleshooting tools handy - system & network tools
Make sure syslog is enabled and all system related info. is logged appropriately
Know the log locations of all your services/apps running in the servers - this is the first place you'd look to find any anomalies
Use log analyzers - and make it a practice/daily routine to check your logs daily
Perform weekly health checkups across all the boxes
Most importantly, study the backup/restore policies and know by hand what is being backed-up and what is not
Make it a part of your daily routine to check the storage spaces across boxes
Know your crons - whats running where
Make sure your servers use uniform versions of packages/softwares
Keep your servers clean - perform a sweep at-least once a fortnight to remove unwanted files from the servers
Know your filesystem - what is where for quick access - keep the structure simple and less cluttered
Maintain daily activity logs
Configure your servers to save the history to a file - will be of mighty help in times of disasters
Secure your boxes - with proper user management
Practice to use Sudo
Know all the alternate remote access methods to get on to a server in case if ssh fails or with network issues (ex. IPKvm, iLo2 etc.)
Golden rule : Never Panic when put in a high pressure situation. It will only get things worse.
Learn to use common sense. :) this is the most difficult part! Unfortunately, it isn't taught in any schools but only at the university of life.
Research and put in place monitoring tools of your choice and comfort. You should have a dashboard / master console, that provides you a periodical feeler about what is happening within your tech. ecosystem.
Employ watchdog monitors/tools like monit, to automate fail-over recoveries in case of critical services

A Continuous Integration tool for php

2008-05-14T17:59:00.001+05:30

An accidental discovery (as usual) while trying to find a decent tool to do php lint, thus avoiding runtime surprises.

Rephlux - A continuous integration tool for PHP

Found few other related tools as well
http://www.phpundercontrol.org/about.html (addon for CruiseControl continuous integration tool)
http://pear.php.net/package/PHP_CodeSniffer (a very useful tool for detecting coding standard violations)

PHP to JS

2008-05-06T16:16:00.001+05:30

Bumped upon an interesting project ... PHP to Javascript Port
Interesting initiative. It is pretty useful library for php programmers working with javascript.

file permissions, rm & the sticky bit of permission...

2008-04-01T17:01:00.001+05:30

Learning :

puzzling over the failure of rm command over a file with rw-rw-rw perms in the /tmp directory.
file was created by user-x group-x
file was being deleted by user-y group-y
the removal should have worked fine with the file perms. alas! rm -rf ended up throwing a permission denied error.
after breaking heads for awhile found the root cause and the solution :)

the issue was caused by the sticky bit set on the /tmp directory - which prevented any deletions of the file other than the owner.
thanks to -
http://docsrv.sco.com:507/en/OSAdminG/ssC.stickydirs.html
http://linuxnorthwest.com/info/linux-file-permission-confusion/

removed the sticky bit from /tmp folder permissions and voila - things worked as expected!

Reality Bites!

2008-03-03T18:59:00.001+05:30

If you want an important and critical task to be done, *better not delegate!*.
Under dire circumstances having to delegate such a critical task, make sure to stand by the executioner and ensure the task is done to your satisfaction!

Micro Manage if the task is mission critical and if much is in stake.
*Up* the rules of mgmt!
Sometimes, playing by the book never works better than the rules of reality.

Management :: Thoughts
Sivaramasundar

CentOS blues!

2008-02-26T13:46:00.001+05:30

Goodness Gracious!
Didn't imagine a 1 min work of installing the latest version of "ImageMagick-6.3.9" would end up in a good two hours of work.

#1. yum install ImageMagick - just simply won't do anything. exits saying nothing to do!
#2. digging deeper i find there are *no* CentOS rpms for the latest ImageMagick-6.3.9 build. The Latest in the repositories is 6.2.2
#3. But the Feature i want is only available from 6.3.8 onwards!!!! AAAAAAARRRRGHHH
#4. Go searching repositories to find the 6.3.9 rpm, with NO luck, but for adding up couple of new repositories.
#5. And thanks to the CentOS website/forums, i get to get this realization! :D
"If one needs a version that is newer than what CentOS/upstream offers, choices are limited. Compiling from source is one of them, but
you are on your own because this is not officially supported by CentOS. Or, one can go for more cutting edge distros like Fedora."
#6. Oh yeah - more realizations : http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2008-January/092862.html

Whew! What am i to do now? I need the feature in that latest version of imagemagick even if it is not tested and made available under the CentOS Repositories!
May be i should try compiling the sources and install it by self.
Cool, okie ... let's do that!
(pulled out the ImageMagick Latest Source from www.imagemagick.org)

#7. untar, run ./configure and make...
#8. Bham! deps. on X11 fails - Make Aborted!
#9. dig dig dig and dig for more info : and whew, thankfully found this : http://www.imagemagick.org/script/advanced-unix-installation.php
#10. Out in the doc, down below there's a sweet option to configure without X11 - --without-x. Lets check if this works! ;) Fingers Crossed!
(Thinking aloud: I'd always wanted to get to know how things work, internally - but well, i'd have preferred to know that not by rolling down cascading, nested dependent technologies and exploring them out when i've to get the task in hand completed!)
#11. Yippie! make succeeded
#12. Running make install ... let's see what this fellow has to throw up! (otoh - prays: let it not break anything else!) - Looks like the install is happening up smooth. OMG - that's tons of work gone into ImageMagick ... awesome folks!
#13. Hurrah!!!! Finally and Finally! ImageMagick 6.3.9 installed!

(Now, for the cleanup - the system has 6.2.2, 6.2.9, and now 6.3.9 - god knows where and what more to clean up!!!! sigh!)
But anyways, thankfully i'll learn the nitty gritties of un-installing stuff from the boxes!

Org. Success

2007-12-25T17:43:00.001+05:30

An Org's success is defined by various factors where some are common across enterprises and the rest are determined by the very specific nature of each individual business.

The common factors are :
a. Profitability
b. Quality
c. Services / Support
d. Availability / Continuity

Business specific factors could be :

a. Functional Expertise and Excellence
b. Production
c. Delivery

The org's success on paper and in words can be translated to "actual success" in hard reality - ONLY AND ONLY when the factors of success are propagated down the hierarchy, to each of the individual departments and are mapped to the functions of each department.

And again the departments' success can only achieved when it is further propagated against each of its employees, wherein every task done & time spent on is attributed & quantified against the factors of success, aligned to the organization goals.

Thus an organization will achieve its success only when the holistic goals are broken down and spread through *all* the layers of its hierarchy down to the most atomic level where any further dissemination is not possible and individuals mapped against every day to day activities of theirs to the goals.

Just apart from this mapping, continuous success can be guaranteed by constant monitoring of these factors at each level of the hierarchy commencing from the very atomic levels, relentlessly and "measured" on a regular basis and propagated upwards, cumulating the statistics at each level thus leading to a single quantifiable measure of the defined success factors.

This in theory sounds great and best said & defined easily than to have it implemented in reality.

Management :: Thoughts
Sivaramasundar

Thunderbird RSS blues - Again!

2007-09-27T14:45:00.001+05:30

Out of the blues, my thunderbird rss feeds stopped working! the manage subscriptions dialog was showing an empty window! My feeds seemed to have vanished! The error console was showing an exception thrown in mailWidgets.xml on line #2061.

after searching the net for awhile, and not finding anything significant, i removed the feeds.rdf (from the profiles folder - \Profiles\xxxxxxxxxx\Mail\News & Blogs\) and well, no luck now either.

finally edited the mailWidgets.xml, having identified the exception was being caused while opening up a msgdatabase (which was non-existant or whatever) by putting up a try catch block around it, and getting the control to continue with the next msgdatabase.

and finally, had a look into rssfeeditems.xml, just to find it was corrupted at the fag end, and manually removed the junk of ascii chars and restructured the file.

and Voila! i got back all my feeds intact! the beauty of simplicity! amazing to see such a beautiful application like thunderbird written up full and full in javascript!

kudos to guys @ mozilla!

a simple solution for a frequent - first time mysql issue

2007-03-31T14:01:00.000+05:30

whenever a new mysql server is setup on a new machine, when i try to connect to it from my desktop using the mysql querybrowser, i get into a frequent 'host xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is not allowed to connect to this mysql server'!

The normal way my sysadmins would fix this problem is to restart the mysql server with '--skip-grant-tables' option.

Somehow i am not very comfortable this way... and today when none of my sysadmins are around and i faced this problem, i was left to my own to probe for the solution.

:) and here it is, a more appropriate, systematic and logical way of getting rid of this error.

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'user'@'xxx.xxx.%' IDENTIFIED BY 'mypassword';

and voila, there it goes.

Logging from *any* system as the given user with the given password from within the specified range of internal subnet goes through smooth.

Moral : looking out for a solution sincerely and getting to the bottom of the problem, works always!

Thunderbird forgot my profile!

2007-02-06T11:54:00.000+05:30

Today thunderbird forgot my mail profile.
I Launched thunderbird and was taken back to see my profile was gone!
i almost have 2.5 gigs of mail over the two years and the thought of losing them gave me a minor attack!

Rushed immediately to check my profiles folder under application data\thunderbird and with a sigh of relief found my mail data
was still intact.

Checked the profiles.ini to find no profiles listed there. after a bit of searching on the net, i created a new profile and voila,
had the following piece of info. in the profiles.ini

[Profile0]
Name=default
IsRelative=1
Path=
Default=1

updated the path and the profile name to match that of my previous profile and there it was - heaved a sigh of relief -
my profile with mail and data all intact!

Running from a USB drive
Lost Mail Thread
Disappearing Profiles

Windowz :: Development :: Tools
Sivaramasundar

Unix on Windows! :) (without cygwin)

2006-12-20T15:17:00.000+05:30

my system is now a throughbred of win/linux mix and a powerhouse driven by mostly CLI.

Thanks to Gnu utilities for win32
and then thanks to SysInternals Free Tools Suite
and WinXP service pack 2's support tools!

with the powerpacked SlickRun, and with the Stylish Console shell, using OpenSSH for windows in my desktop - i now comfortably can login to any of our servers without putty.

access to sweet linux, from the illusionary windows! ;)

Windowz :: Development :: Tools
Sivaramasundar

Finally! got over the SVChost blues! Yippie!

2006-12-20T13:29:00.000+05:30

Well, there are reasons enough for this jubiliation, over such a small thing.
It had been a mystery for over a month and half for me - why the svchost goes hyper once a while, eating away all my CPU.

Finally, with a lot of thanks to PE (Process Explorer - ProcExp) of pstools (windows sysinternals):

1.i could trace out which svchost - thread was causing the overload.
2. i was able to get to the *actual* dll, which was causing trouble
3. Which turned out to be a TAPI related thing dll and well,
4. There was ONLY one TAPI related application in my system - shoretel/shoreware client.
5. Surprise - Surprise, the tapi logs under shoretel had grown to a whopping 4+ GB over these couple of months. Wierd!
6. I got rid of shoretel/shoreware client and sweet me! all's well now!

Thanks a lot to SysInternals Tools.
:) me's a happy system now. (and with 1GB of RAM)!

Windowz :: Development :: Tools
Sivaramasundar

Sweet Apples

2006-12-18T15:04:00.000+05:30

Since all the experience that i got
with computers was thru Windows i normally used to have very good
opinion on Win (Ofcourse before meeting Mr.S ., The Engg. Boss of my previous company).

Then started the journey on Linux. A compact powerful OS.
U know i now recommend others also to go for Linux.

Then came the story of Apple machines.
UnBelivable. The look of apple machines
it self is awesome., Last week i started working on Apple machines.,
All the applications
on apple are quite interesting .,
The window animation, the image editing S/W
everything are fascinating.,

Really Sweet Apple.

Culprit SVCHost blues continued...

2006-12-05T15:21:00.000+05:30

related to my earlier post on the SVCHost blues, well, i haven't yet found a soultion for the same!
in the meanwhile i started getting issues with my network maps being unable to connect...
whenever i try to connect to a mapped drive i used to get a "the drive could not be mapped as no network was found" message!

doing a google, this site helped me
in fixing the issue.

Now this issue has been casued by the failure of "Workstation" Service - which is stopped (thanks to svchost) when i kill the
culprit svchost manually, that takes away 100% of my cpu atleast twice a day.

Also this kills my "Windows Audio" service there by silencing my system.

Stupid concept of running multiple services by a single SVCHost!
Hats off to the designer. Wish atleast there was a log for the SVCHost instances and the services so i can figure out the culprit service and disable it.

Windowz :: Development :: Tools
Sivaramasundar

Firewalls and the world of mad mad network traffic!

2006-12-05T13:31:00.000+05:30

We had an interesting problem off late.
'Interesting' by the sheer technical nature of it but not very 'interesting' by its effects and aftermath.

Our network had been developing a high latency over a period and for unknown reasons.
And one fine day it just blew out - the latency was so high everything started to timeout.
we started out doing all the wrong things that didn't give us a clue about what was happening!

#1. Checked for faulty cabling
#2. Pinged with our ISP for any issues, and they put their hands up clearly denoting the problem as our brainchild.
#3. Checked out pulling our desktops and laptops from the network but with no avail

Sigh! No clues yet.
and when i was called into the picture, i changed the approach.
we did a logical backtracking from our router back to the internal lan.
And to my nightmarish delight we had this linux box sitting before the router/firewall as a single point, gateway.
Neat isn't it?! Well, the story continues....

We had all our voice + data being dumped through this poor machine and which has started to buckle under the
sheer load of traffic passing through it. Not sure what was the design decision behind this though!!! Its all an Inherited Mess and there's nothing much to be done about it!

and this poor machine was an age old mandriva which none of our SA's dared to tamper with - for all its fragility.
Hence no suffiecient monitoring tools. SIGH!

and with plain netstats and /proc information, found the major problem - there was an unusual flood of UDP packets
and almost all of them UDP packets were being dropped @ the gateway!
Congestion???!! Probably ... but could never find the root cause.

Then started the exercise to track the machine which was flooding. Thanks to one of my responsive SA's, who overcame his dread
to tamper with this system and got an IPTraf instance, installed, up and running.

Thanks to the IPTraf, we found the culprit machine which was flooding and brought that down. which happened to be a
spare / lesser used servers which was not supposed to do anything significant!!!

and The next day ... dawned up with another sudden issue - mails were failing! for no reason! trackback again and
we come to know that the server we brought down had a stupid, undocumented service which had been configured to
JUST FORWARD MAILS! By God!

I HATE THE JACKASS, FIX IT NOW, RECKLESS NETWORK DESIGNERS! AND UNDOCUMENTED SERVICES ON TOP OF THAT!

We brought back things in place just to find the latency issue had returned ...
Mails falied - Mailserver timed out ...
any external browsing had come to a grinding halt...

What to do now!? Where to Turn?! Whom to blame?! How to get this thing fixed!?

It is beyond words to describe those few days when complaints started pouring in and in...
with a mix of people trying to find a vehicle out of systems failure to cover up their non performance....
And mounting the pressure upon the SA's by nagging them every 5-10 mins for an ETA to an unknown problem!!!
That was when it just blew out of proportions....

(...to be continued)

Linux :: Networking :: Tools
Sivaramasundar

a tryst with code::blocks & BC 5.5 command line tools

2006-11-05T19:56:00.000+05:30

Well, i had almost a two hours' tryst with BC 5.5 command line tools, integrated and run from within the code::blocks C++ ide.
(Had had to workout my MSc.IT lab exercises).

at first i got the DevC++ ide with the GCC compiler but saw that the recommendations for writing sources was in borland c++.
it is always better that i follow what has been prescribed as far as the educational curriculum is concerned.
Thus begun the tryst with BC++.

All was fine - the compilation was smooth but alas, the linking process failed for no reason.
ended up getting a list of unresolved externals such as this :
"Unresolved external '___CRTL_VCL_Init' referenced from C:\BORLAND\BCC55\LIB\C0X32.OBJ", from the linker.

ended up breaking my head to no end. all the library/include paths were specified appropriately!
all the compiler/linker directives were correct. but still the problems persisted.
tried out creating a bcc32.cfg & ilink32.cfg with no avail.

finally, finally, bumped onto the usage of the .lib files in the ilink32 command line. tried including the cw32.lib by hand but in vain.
this time though the list of unresolved externals were reduced. and finally, found an option under code::blocks ide->Settings->Compiler & Debugger->Linker->Link Libraries.

Manually added cw32.lib, cw32i.lib, cw32mt.lib, cw32mti.lib and import32.lib to the Link Libraries.

and That did the magic! whew! my program compiled like a beauty!
dunno if i have to say this as my stupidity or was it a missing step in code::blocks ide's automatic detect & config of the BC 5.5 command line tools.

anyways, am happy i got the problem solved.

Windowz :: Development :: Tools
Sivaramasundar

First application using boxely!

2006-11-05T16:51:00.000+05:30

Tried out using boxely, today.
here are the first observations :

- boxely validates for the following namespaces
"xmlns="http://www.aol.com/boxely/box.xsd"
xmlns:s="http://www.aol.com/boxely/style.xsd"
s:fill="white" in the window tag.

- boxely uses different types of boxes for controlling the interface layout.
vbox, hbox & box

- allows creation of custom gadgets, easy and quick. just like delphi!

well, over and above that the custom gadgets, styling and events are neat, but haven't had the
patience to try them out each feature in detail!

overall, it is small, chic but needs more supporting libraries/api for serious "desktop" development.
and what it badly needs is an ide, with a neat help. to develop those .box & .js files using notepad++ and shuffling around the
windows isn't a fancy task.

one major punch for boxely is its size. but once boxely starts building meat around itself by providing api's,
it is bound to become heavy in size. So, what does it offer us differently from XUL & XAML?

Windowz :: Development :: Tools
Sivaramasundar

Boxely! an XUL contemporary / rich client desktop ui design & prog. toolkit

2006-10-30T12:57:00.000+05:30

Boxely, from aol is an XUL contemporary and targeted for rich client side desktop ui app development, using Javascript! Whew! Oops! And this has been the brainchild of Joe Hewitt. First looks are awesome and am digging more deep for sure! ;)

More on boxely here...
christiandudes
Shawnsblog

Windowz :: Development :: Tools
Sivaramasundar

A nice delphi hack from Hallvard

2006-09-26T11:22:00.000+05:30

Not sure how relevant this would be for a practical use in these days of huge everything (ram/harddisk/cpu power et.al)!
But anyways, this is a cool, lesser known compiler directives provided by delphi!
Pity it is only for D2006.

Create smaller .EXE Files (using a compiler flag)

Hallvard has more to offer in his blog!

Windowz :: Development :: Tools
Sivaramasundar

Changes in PHP behavior, between versions! A Feature?

2006-09-22T21:02:00.000+05:30

Scenario:
Passing of string data as result from a java class, invoked and executed by a php script via the php-java bridge
The Java class uses the "String" object to return data.

Behavior in Question:
Php4 converts and assigns the java result string to a php string type. Works beautifully as expected.

Php5 converts and assigns the java result string to a php String Object(?) instead of the expected php string type. Code Breaks.
(More Intelligent behavior?)

Solution:
Did a force string conversion of the result string from the java class, using StrVal() function of php!
All's well, return to normality!

Linux :: Development :: Tools
Sivaramasundar

Pondering Why Is It Always So: #2??

2006-09-22T20:15:00.000+05:30

An innovative Firefox Promotional Campaign!
By a Delphi programmer!

An unusual promotional site for Firefox!
Find more about the creators!

Wonder :: Ponder :: Why
Sivaramasundar

Newspaper (aka) Multiple Columns (as in word)

2006-09-20T15:51:00.000+05:30

Bumped upon a new/lesser known netscape/firefox only html tag, to generate newspaper column (multiple columns) like contents.
check out more about the multicol tag here!

Web :: Development :: Tips
Sivaramasundar

Pondering Why Is It Always So: #1??

2006-09-13T23:50:00.000+05:30


Why are Apple applications smarter, easier to use and have a huge fan following?
Why are they so inspiring?

Expose      
Voiceover      
Dashboard      
Spotlight      
iCal      
Keynote   
Pages   
Aperture   
KeyCue....

PS: Hey, last but not the least why does all the mac stuff have so cool, feel so comfy names... as opposing to the ironically artificially robotic  monotonous 'manager/editor/assistant' variations?

Wonder :: Ponder :: Why
Sivaramasundar

M$ Project : Keyboard Shortcuts

2006-09-13T23:31:00.000+05:30

Frequently used Keyboard Shortcuts for quick access in M$ Project.


Outlining:

Alt+Shift+Right Arrow                  Indent Task
Alt+Shift+Left Arrow                   Outdent Task
Alt+Shift+Hyphen (Minus/-)             Collapse Task / Subtasks
Alt+Shift+Plus (+/=)                   Expand Task / Subtasks
Alt+Shift+Asterisk (*)                 Expand all Tasks / Subtasks

Other handy quickies:

F5                                     Goto by ID / Date
Alt+F10                                Assign Resources - Resources List / Popup
Ctrl+F2                                Link Tasks
Ctrl+Shift+F2                          Unlink Tasks
Shift+F5                               Find
Shift+F4                               Find Next
Shift+F6                               Quick Split windows
Alt+F3                                 Column Definition Box
Ctrl+D                                 Select Cells & Fill down all the cells with the contents of first cell
Shift+F8                               Additive Select

Windowz :: Productivity :: Tips
Sivaramasundar

Scott Henselman : The Ultimate developer and power users Tool List for Windows : 2006

2006-09-12T16:45:00.000+05:30

A MUST know / Must Have list of tools for *any* windows power user / developer.
Scott Henselman announces his power tools list for 2006.

Scott Hanselman's 2006 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows
Scott Henselman's 2005 List
Scott Henselman's Original List

Windowz :: Development :: Tools
Sivaramasundar

Got the Turbos! Go get 'em!

2006-09-11T12:24:00.000+05:30

(Many thanks to nick hodges, for the warning label!)

Got the new Turbos!
Thanks Borland! for taking the first step, even if it has been way too late.
Turbo Delphi available for free (open source) is a great thing!
Hope and pray, it brings back the spirit of delphi and wish to see it being used widely!

and now to my first run of turbo delphi!
#1. I Sorely miss the 'Alt VC', to get a quick the list of components. I have to get used to the other shortcuts for quick access.
#2. The UI is okie, but not alike the D7 (oldie days!)
#3. Ran into a few crashes - mostly with the IDE. Missed to get the screen shots though! :(
#4. Yet to check adding up new components / controls and check out the limitations.
#5. Some of the demo's had issues with missing components! Need to dig to find the cause!

I somehow get a feeling that the IDE is bloated and not sure if i can attribute that to anything other than .Net!
need to check out the camtasia demos!, by nick hodges.
i think i should create a single .iso, out of the camtasia videos by nick. (when am free, of course!)

there is a nice review of turbo explorer on pcmag here!(though but a short one!) and more on bitwise magazine!

PS: oh yeah! the final dialog of the installation mentions to keep downloading the updates (.net / windows)!
Ironic. Got a smile (cynical) to my face!
go get 'em!

Windowz :: Development :: Tools
Sivaramasundar

Linux Server Monitoring Tools!

2006-08-22T14:59:00.000+05:30

Once every three months on average i will be forced to look into our servers for tweaking/tuning performance (as we triple/quadrapule our content), and time and again i will be looking for better monitoring tools, to better benchmark our server performance and to get new stats.

JFFNMS - Just For Fun Network Management System is a beautiful tool (free and opensource), which provides me with a lot of punch (check out the Screenshots), when it comes to monitoring and stats. It boasts a nice architecture which enables me to customize it to our needs, written in php and way cool to work with. Supports for various methods of gathering monitoring data (SNMP, SysLog, Custom traps) et. al, along with user defined polling options.

Well infact i use this for monitoring our software (yes, you read it right!) modules, apart from the hardware devices!

One another set of tools is the time tested RRDTool along with RRDUtil. Just Love them.

There's another specific tool for monitoring mysql, mysqlard (demo is available here Mysqlard Demo), which is quite handy (again based on RRDTool).

Linux :: Server :: Tools
Sivaramasundar

Hello World!

2006-08-22T11:48:00.000+05:30

echo "Hello World!";

Let me begin this b.log with the techie tradition of "Hello World!"

I would not term this b.log as another personal rambling, you'd find on the endless realms of the www!

Well, you have to start from my laptop to understand what triggered what and thus ended up in bringing us to the existance of this b.log.
If you happen to see my laptop and to have to work on it (unfortunate enough if it is on my absence), you'll notice the O/S will be a hybrid mix of Win.XP/Gnome/OS X.

You'll not find your familiar windows explorer, nor any trace of the windows desktop per se!
And you'll have the pleasure to launch applications by custom commands at your cursor tip, on a hot-key press!

If not for those nifty applications, with a proclaimed love of the 'mousey cliks', the rest of my system is configured to be driven by pure keyboard on steroids.

And oh yeah, i have a collection of nifty tools, which help me achieve this and make me highly productive - literally to get things done by the keypress!

Now as you wonder - "hey, how does all this relate to this b.log", well, it is here because of my itch to share about the collection of productivity tools, links, etc., and partly to give back my share of information to where i turn in the times of need - the priceless web!

So, Enjoy maadi!
If the info. helps you in time of need, the reason of this b.log's existance would be justified.