I am getting bored with the current WordPress theme on the blog and was interested in getting another theme (preferably free), got any recommendations? And nothing from the 10 ugliest WordPress themes please. 🙂
Month: May 2011
Using cached domain (active directory) credentials or not?
If you are ever in a situation where you want to find out if you logged into using cached domain credentials (AD) or authenticated against the domain controller then the easiest way is to open Event Viewer and look for the entry where the source is NETLOGON and Event ID 5719.
The description would be something like:
Log Name: System
Source: NETLOGON
Date: 27/05/2011 08:53:17
Event ID: 5719
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: YOUR-Full-Qualified-Computer-Name
Description:
This computer was not able to set up a secure session with a domain controller in domain YOUR-DOMAIN-NAME due to the following:
There are currently no logon servers available to service the logon request.
This may lead to authentication problems. Make sure that this computer is connected to the network. If the problem persists, please contact your domain administrator.
ADDITIONAL INFO
If this computer is a domain controller for the specified domain, it sets up the secure session to the primary domain controller emulator in the specified domain. Otherwise, this computer sets up the secure session to any domain controller in the specified domain.
Here is a screenshot (on Win 7) showing a (filtered) view of the same event.
Troubleshooting WCF Performance – Part 1
More related details on Dustin’s post – WCF scales up slowly with bursts of work.
How to create a Mini Dump?
If you ever want to get a Mini Dump of a process (of course for debugging purposes) the easiest way to do so is to use Task Manager (or use Sys Explorer). Just find the process you are interested in, right click and select “Create Dump File” and voila.
One thing to be careful – make sure you are using the same version of the Task Manager (or Sys Explorer) as the process. For example if your process is x32 (and you are running on a x64 system), then make sure you are using x32 version of Task Manager and not the x64 as that will cause issues.
PowerShell script to kill named processes
There are times when you need to kill a number of processes in one-go like today when Chrome crashed a few times hanging all the running instances – next time Google says, one tab cannot bring down all of them – send them my way :). For such times, a PowerShell script is all you need.
I wrote up a simple one which takes the process name as input and then kills all the processes which match that name.
#Script is not signed, so need this. Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted #Need to set the param to a variable $target = $args[0] if($target) { $orphanProcs = get-process | where {$_.Name -eq $target} #Check if list is null; if not kill all the procs if ($soonToBeDeadProcs) { #display list $soonToBeDeadProcs #kill list $soonToBeDeadProcs | foreach { $_.Kill() } } else { Write-Host "Oops, no processes found older with the name: $target" } } else { Write-Host "Oops, no arguments passed. You need to provide one argument (the Process Name)." Write-Host "Example 1: killproc chrome" Write-Host "Example 2: killproc 'some other process'" }
Example Output (Killing Chrome in this case):
PS C:\Users\amit.bahree\Desktop> .\killproc.ps1 chrome
Handles NPM(K) PM(K) WS(K) VM(M) CPU(s) Id ProcessName
——- —— —– —– —– —— — ———–
139 30 34292 46708 164 3.87 376 chrome
137 22 20932 33648 149 2.48 1260 chrome
141 21 17896 31328 148 3.01 3572 chrome
5434 37 56932 66528 266 1,134.36 4940 chrome
139 22 20288 33084 150 4.12 5032 chrome
145 21 16576 31368 149 0.58 5148 chrome
147 19 14384 26992 150 1.42 5604 chrome
142 23 32292 37416 156 8.42 6528 chrome
136 17 12456 23964 142 0.30 6732 chrome
144 26 27004 39136 156 0.98 6736 chrome
1586 90 151224 209888 512 395.87 7184 chrome
138 22 21388 33916 151 3.76 7504 chrome
123 13 7756 15196 126 0.56 7512 chrome
142 21 23112 35552 150 2.01 9860 chrome
140 18 13032 25148 150 1.73 10432 chrome
Hadoop in Azure
My dear friend Mario has finally got around to blogging and one of his latest posts shows, it is possible to run Hadoop (which if you are not familiar with, can be thought of as an open source version of Google’s MapReduce) in Azure. You need to setup a typical configuration of nodes (Name Nodes, Tracker and Slaves).
Sure, there are a number of dependencies some you would expect, others not (e.g. Cygwin – cringe!; but hopefully that will go away with Hadoop 0.22). I wonder what overheard the Cygwin runtime has?
It would be interesting to know if someone is (or planning) to use this at work.
Tips on Buying a UPS?
After moving to Bangalore, it turns out that I would need to get one or more UPS’s for the machines at home. The place we will be moving to in a few weeks does have power backup, but if/when there is a power cut it takes a few minutes for the generators to kick in and is not instantaneous as I was thinking.
I have never bought a UPS until now and don’t have any experience with it – what are the things that I need to consider? I will have the following equipment running which will need to be powered up for about 15 minutes:
- 4 Desktops (including a MCE and WHS)
- Two 17” LCD Monitors
- A set of powered Speakers (optional)
- Few switches
- KVM Switch
- VOIP Phone
- Wireless Router
- DSL Modem
Would it make sense to buy a few smaller UPS’s instead of one big one? Which is a good one? How much wattage/capacity should I look to get? Can one get second-hand ones – are they recommended? Does the UPS required any maintenance or are they maintenance free these days? 😕
Of all the machines, the WHS is one of the most critical ones. Is there any UPS’s which work well with some Add-Ins? I am interested in WHS shutting down in an orderly fashion so as to save all the data whenever the UPS battery gets low (in case for some reason the generators don’t kick in).