Posts by chrisbliss18

Thank you for the very informative response Dani. As of this moment, I don't have access to post frequency data. I'll see if I can get ahold of the information and update the thread with it.

I'm a member of a large gaming community that is currently split among three different sites. We are now gaining sponsors and need to consolidate our presence to one site. I'm the head of the team that will design the change and implement it.

After looking at all the major CMSs and forum software packages, we have chosen vBulletin as the system to build the new community site around. Interestingly enough, DaniWeb is what convinced my "bosses" in the clan that vBulletin is more than capable to handle the type of load we currently have while being more than capable to expand in the future.

So, now for my question. I'm having a hard time finding reliable information about what kind of hardware is required to support vBulletin installations that run at specific activity loads. For example, we have more than 4000 unique registered members across the three sites currently and average anywhere from 100-200 concurrently active users at any one time. Are there any basic hardware specs for the server that anyone here can recommend that will ensure that the site remains quick and responsive?

If I may be so bold, I'd like to hear a recommendation from Dani since she has definitely succeeded in creating a very responsive site running a very large number of concurrent users.

I'm trying to delve into some communication protocols, and I want to watch what network requests are made in real time. I've seen mention of such a program some years back, but I don't remember what it was called. I googled around a bit, but I don't know the proper words to search with. Can anyone help me find such a program?

Just for my own curiosity, do you have

use strict;
use warnings;

at the top of your script? It may have caught something which would have solved this faster. It's always a good idea to include both those statements on production code.

ps. Please mark this as 'SOLVED' by editing your first post in this thread.

I did originally have "use strict". I added warnings when the problem occurred. The warning told me that I was trying to read a closed file handle. Helpful information, but that did not get me pointed in the right direction immediately.

BTW... I don't think it's possible to edit posts. I didn't know we could mark threads solved now, so after a bit of looking around I found a little link at the bottom of the page above the quick reply box for marking the thread solved. A very unintuitive and hard to find link if you ask me.

After bringing in an expert I know, a solution was found. The problem is that I use the CGI package to pull in all the form variable data. I let my CGI object variable go out of scope. Apparently, something either with my Perl packages or my system caused the CGI object to be garbage collected before my program could use the data.

After putting a copy of the object reference in a variable that had a top-level scope, the problem went away.

Thank you very much for your help KevinADC and trudge.

A couple things. First, is it wise to have the binmode within the loop

while(my $bytes = read($fileHandle, $buffer, 2096))
	{
		$bytesRead += $bytes;
		binmode IMAGEFILE;
		print IMAGEFILE $buffer;
	}

I've always called it first after opening the file handle, but before operating on the file.

Second, the error refers to a module 'CDownloadEditor.pm line 293'. Is this code part of that module, or does the script call that module. What is the code around line 293, or is that line the call to this subroutine?

Good point on the binmode in the loop. I've fixed that in other code, but it never caused any problems. That section of code doesn't matter however as the read() fails before the loop even executes.

As for CDownloadEditor.pm, that is the file that I have the large portion of code taken from. Line 293 is the while loop with the read() call (the beginning of your quoted code).

Thanks for the response KevinADC. Unfortunately, it's nothing as simple as that. I run these tests myself using a variety of different browsers and with both small and large files with the same results. The Apache error logs don't report any problems either whereas they would typically report a short send by a connection failure or stop button.

I have a situation where a file upload program that has been running without any problems for months now suddenly uploads completely empty files. When I turn on warnings (perl -w), I get a message like the following:

FATAL WARNING: read() on closed filehandle fh00001license.txt at CDownloadEditor.pm line 293.

Here is my main problem. I had this happen on a different server about a month ago. After a full day of scratching my head, delving back into the apache config, making slight modifications, looking at up2date logs, etc, I gave up for the day. When I tried using the program the next morning, it worked. So, I had made many different changes and rewritten the code many times with no change, it still did not work when I left, and it worked when I came back (no one else had access BTW). To further complicate things, my up2date logs showed that nothing changed overnight.

I thought of it as a weird fluke and shrugged it off, now it is happening on a different server. Both of these two servers are fairly small and the problem only affected one client. Now I'm concerned that this problem might occur on one of our critical servers that hosts many clients.

Another piece of important information is that while both the program that failed and then worked and this current program are programs to upload files, they are completely different versions of code that work differently. They don't even share any …

At my office, we have anywhere from 3 to 6 computers on the network during a normal day. All of them are hardwired through a switch which connects to a Linux box that acts as a router. We are trying to streamline our network setup and decided to retire the Linux box from its router job. In its place, we would like to install a robust yet simple router.

I've used a variety of different routers at my home with varying degrees of success and pain, so I thought I would get an outside opinion on what hardware to look at. The router doesn't have to have wireless capabilities, but it would be a nice bonus if it had such a feature. A basic list of needs is as follows:

• Basic routing from a cable connection to a switch.
• A hardware firewall with solid port forwarding.
• The ability to not choke on large amounts of packet traffic as data is sync to or from the office to remote servers.
• A price at or below $300.

I know that our need is extremely basic, but I have worked with very stable routers that had horrible port forwarding, routers with great firewall rule creation abilities that flake out at any large amount of sustained traffic, and routers that are generally stable but "forget" configuration options at random times.

Does anyone have any recommendations that meet these needs?

hi this is Harendra from Australia,

when I am starting PC it makes no sound(no beeps-no POST, no harddrives reading sound, no window stratup sound), monitor didn't show anything, when I remove data cable from monitor it shows "no signal- self diagnostics"-display. can you please help me, how to solve this problem?

First, read this thread.

Second, it is normal to see the "no signal - self diagnostics" message when you remove the cable. That is a message that many monitors display when they stop receiving data from a computer. Since you removed the data cable, it would logically follow that you would see that on the monitor.

Third, post a new thread detailing your problem since this is someone else's thread about their own problem and the thread is more than two years old. When you post this new thread, include details about what you tried from the thread I linked above and what the results were.

Thanks for the reply to my very old problem demonica61.

This actually occurred at my office, and I looked through all the machines for any trace evidence of torrent or other P2P programs. I found nothing. I decided to shut down every machine, including our linux firewall/router and the cable modem, before leaving for the night as a general rule from then on. We got another complaint, showed evidence that our connection wasn't even active, and have not gotten any other complaints since.

I suppose we kept getting hit because we have a static IP. I have since discovered that certain bittorrent clients allow you to manually specify your internet IP, for reasons of correcting false IP identification. I presented this information as evidence of the ability for people to masquerade as someone else, resulting in people being wrongly accused of downloading material that they did not download. I think the ISP tech I sent this information to was quite surprised.

FYI: I have so many instances PuTTY because I'm a web developer, and all the systems I maintain/program are remote Linux systems.

The command to run the file system integrity checker is "sfc /scannow", not "scannow". If you are typing in the command just like that, it's possible that your path is messed up. You can get around this by typing in the full path to the program. If your Windows folder is in the C:, you can run the programs like so:

C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\chkdsk /r
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\sfc /scannow

If those still don't work, your system may have serious file system issue or have a very nasty virus that is removing files. You have one last chance to try to fix the problem without reinstalling Windows. You should be able to run those programs directly off of the Windows install disk. If your Windows install disk is loaded in your D:, you can run the programs like so:

D:\chkdsk /r
D:\sfc /scannow

If this also fails, you will most likely have to reinstall Windows.

The only thing I can think of is to run the following from Recovery Console after running chkdsk.

sfc /scannow

That command finds and replaces any missing system files.

what is jre

Java Runtime Environment

I have a problem where I am receiving reports from my ISP about torrents being downloaded when I am not downloading them. You can read more details at my Hidden Torrent Programs? thread. While thinking about the problem, an idea occurred to me. What if there is a torrent client that allows you to lie about your IP address to the swarm.

I know there are programs that claim to hide your IP (a la Hide-My-IP.com), but all they are doing (as far as I can tell) is provide a paid anonymous proxy service. This wouldn't solve my problem of people using my IP to download torrents. So there must be something more involved.

Going back to my initial idea, what if you could lie about your IP to the swarm? As far as I know, you don't have to be honest about your IP on the swarm since firewalled connections can still transfer data. So, is this possible? Can a client lie about its IP and still download data? Could someone be using my IP to jump on a swarm and download while giving me the legal problems?

+++++ Update +++++
After searching around for a bit, I found out that my idea isn't so crazy. If you read Tweaking your system to get the most out of BitTorrent, you will find that you can give the official BitTorrent client a command as follows:

"c:\program files\bittorrent\btdownloadgui.exe" --ip 123.45.67.89 --responsefile …

I have received emails and calls from my ISP recently claiming that I am using the connection to download copyrighted torrents. I didn't recognize the files listed, but I removed all my torrent programs and potentially shady freeware apps as a preventive measure. I then ran checks on my machines in order to remove all potential nasties. This was last Tuesday that I did all this. Today, I receive a new notice informing me of infractions that occurred last Friday. I am completely befuddled, please help me with my logs for both machines and see if you can find anything suspicious. Thank you very much.

FYI: I am on a static IP, and I know for a fact that neither system has torrents running on them or even a client with which to download torrents.

Thanks in advance.

Machine #1
Logfile of Trend Micro HijackThis v2.0.0 (BETA)
Scan saved at 1:50:26 PM, on 5/21/2007
Platform: Windows XP SP2 (WinNT 5.01.2600)
Boot mode: Normal

Running processes:
C:\WINDOWS\System32\smss.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\winlogon.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\services.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\lsass.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\svchost.exe
C:\WINDOWS\System32\svchost.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\spoolsv.exe
C:\Program Files\Intel\ASF Agent\ASFAgent.exe
C:\WINDOWS\System32\nvsvc32.exe
C:\WINDOWS\System32\svchost.exe
C:\Program Files\Roxio\Easy CD Creator 5\DirectCD\DirectCD.exe
C:\WINDOWS\System32\hpnra.exe
C:\Program Files\QuickTime\qttask.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\ctfmon.exe
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 5.0\Distillr\AcroTray.exe
C:\Program Files\Extensis\Suitcase 9.2\Suitcase.exe
C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\thunderbird.exe
C:\Program Files\PuTTY\pageant.exe
C:\Program Files\Gaim\gaim.exe
C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe
C:\Program Files\Winamp\winamp.exe
C:\Program Files\PuTTY\putty.exe
C:\WINDOWS\System32\svchost.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\NOTEPAD.EXE
C:\Program Files\Macromedia\Dreamweaver MX\Dreamweaver.exe
C:\Program Files\Programmers Notepad\pn.exe
C:\Program …

Your list is quite exhaustive. Frankly, some of the "issues" that you are having are not problems for OSes to handle, and expecting an OS to perform such tasks or provide such features is really piling on the bloat (bloat is the primary reason Windows is plagued with as many problems as it is).

No more defragging.
No filesystem is free of file fragmentation. NTFS (which has been the default filesystem since XP on Windows systems) produces much less fragmentation than previous filesystems (FAT and FAT32). The act of constantly filing up the drive, removing files, and putting on more files in a constant "freeing up space" race is why so many people have constant fragmentation issues and no filesystem can protect you from that.

real time chk dsk while idle, if needed.
No, there aren't automatic background checks. Just like XP, Vista automatically runs file consistency checks at boot time if it finds a partition to be "dirty". Waiting for this check can be annoying at times, but in my experience, it happens very seldomly and typically takes less than five minutes.

15 second or under boottime.
I don't know where this number came from, but it definitely sounds like one of those "pie in the sky", with a very specific set of bare-minimum install options on a very specific set of hardware, it might happen kind of thing. In my opinion, they were probably talking about 15 seconds to come back …

I've since found half a solution to this problem. If I go into the Computer Management console, there is a "New Share" option when you right-click the active shares sub-folder. From that wizard, I can add a share to anything, including drives.

There still is a problem with not being able to access the security tab for any of the drives, so I still need some help with that.

I've been running Vista since it first released. Since day one, I've been able to share the root of a drive (share the entire drive, not just a folder in a drive).

I recently added a new drive, shared it, and have had problems with it the whole time (file permissions that don't stick, file access problems across the network). I tried fixing this tonight and found something very peculiar. All the "Sharing..." and Security options for every drive are gone. All the previous shares are just as they were and work perfectly, but I cannot access a Sharing or Security tab for any of the drive properties. I can access a share wizard if I right-click a folder and select Share, but that option no longer exists for any of my drives.

If I were to guess, the last patch my system got changed this behavior. Has anyone else experienced this and found a solution? Thank you for any input.

It certainly is possible to use Perl to serve up pages in that environment. ActivePerl makes doing this much easier.

Is your monitor a CRT or an LCD?
How old is the monitor?

The Ultimate Boot CD allows you to reset the Administrator's password to whatever you'd like it to be. Simply download and burn the ISO, reboot your machine to boot from the CD, and run the Offline NT Password & Registry Editor to reset the password.

You're going in the wrong direction and are just headed for more problems. The RPM that you downloaded isn't a compiled package, it is a package that includes the source. You can compile the RPM using "rpmbuild --rebuild [filename]" in order to generate a RPM file that you can install the software with, but I doubt that is what you want to do. You can usually identify a source RPM if the filename ends in "srpm" or the filename contains "source" or "src". The RPM that you need to download will be a RPM built for your specific platform. There should be RPMs available that are built for Fedora Core. If there aren't, look for ones that are compatible with Red Hat.

What steps have you done other than just plugging the two together using a crossover cable? Have you tried running the Network Setup Wizard on both machines?

I can understand why you don't want to use a router if there are just two machines, but the difficulties that you are experiencing shows just how valuable such tools are in preventing headaches when networking computers.

• What do you mean by "limited connectivity"?
• Why are you setting it up this way?
• Why not just use a router?

That's odd. I read posts there all the time and have yet to be denied access to any of them. Maybe I'm just lucky.

I was really excited when I read the initial press releases about Vista. It was going to patch some of the glaring flaws in XP, add some great new features and functionality, include new scripting abilities, and simplify making advanced configuration changes. It was to be to XP what Windows 95 was to Windows 3.11, a huge leap forward.

However, each successive press release made me more and more dismayed with Vista. It seemed that each press release told the disappointing news of how Microsoft had decided to push some feature or function from Vista back to Longhorn. Over the past few months, I have gone from being excited about the new version to being completely apathetic. I can't stand the idea of needing to upgrade my hardware (which runs XP extremely well) just to be able to qualify for the minimum requirements of Vista.

From all the documents and press releases that I have read, it seems that the only major noticable difference between XP and Vista is the fact that Vista has an extremely bloated "shiny" new interface. This doesn't impress me very much because I really don't care at all about what the interface looks like. Actually, I always try to minmize the interface because I find space used for appearance and not for functionality is a waste.

That's my rant and my feelings about Vista so far. I'd love for someone to provide some examples of how Vista is different than I perceive …

All I did was disable WEP in the router and wireless card and boom connection is back

That's not a fix, that's avoiding an issue. By disabling WEP, you are removing a very necessary component for securing your network. If you don't use WEP, WPA, or similar protocol to secure your communications, your data is wide open for people to snoop on. Furthermore, if you don't provide another means of prohibiting network access, anyone can join your network in order to leach bandwidth or access networked systems.

I urge anyone that runs an unsecured network to secure it immediately. It's only a matter of time before unsecured networks will become prime targets for all sorts of attacks.

You don't have to pay to access the answers, just scroll past all the ads.

What operating system are you using?
Did you install the software for the player on your system?
Did it work at one time and has stopped working or has it never worked?

Are you trying to duplicate all settings from the old laptop, including the ones in TCP/IP Properties? If so, that shouldn't be necessary. Just set your connection to obtain the IP address and DNS server addresses automatically. After you make that change, run "ipconfig /renew" to get a new TCP/IP settings.

If this doesn't work, run "ipconfig" as holly suggested and post the results here.

Would you mind making it available? We'd be extremely grateful.

Since Windows is copyrighted, we can't share the file. However, you can find it in the Windows installer disk I386 folder.

Please clarify what you mean when you say that it turns off. Does the monitor go into standby mode or does it completely power down? Once it's "turned off", how do you get it to turn on again?

It's very hard to understand what you want. If possible, please try separating your statements into sentences by using periods as appropriate.

I think I understand a little bit, but I'm not sure. You think you need to upgrade your graphics card because it isn't performing very well while you are playing Halo. You bought a new graphics card to fix the problem, but you don't know how to open up the case and install the new card.

So, are you wanting to know how to open up your computer case so that you can install the new card?

You're asking many basic questions that can be fixed by just searching around. When I searched for "alternic" in Google, the second result had information saying that Eugene Kashpureff was arrested for fraud in 1997 resulting in AlterNIC going dead.

Searching the web for this basic type of information is really quite simple, you just have to try.

lagspike,

Why do you have two routers? Furthermore, why are your broadcasting a wireless signal in addition to the wireless signal being broadcast by one of your routers? It sounds like you have an unnecessarily convoluted setup.

Unless you have a very good reason for needing your current setup, take your router without wireless out of the loop and stop broadcasing a wireless connection from your desktop.

Let us know if there is a reason why you have your network set up that way.

How did you get your computer?

If you bought it from a large company, what company built it and what model number is it?

If you had it built for you, ask the person who built your machine.

You can try running Everest. Everest will tell you what hardware your system is running.

I can't find the find the info about your BIOS on Compaq's website, nor anywhere else for that matter. It would seem that you have a Phoenix BIOS, but your beep codes don't match the Phoenix beep codes at all, so I'm unsure as to what may be the exact issue.

No matter what the issue is, it seems that there is a major problem with your computer. Since it is quite old by now, it may more expensive to have it repaired than it would be to have it replaced.

I'm sorry that I don't have any more ideas. Maybe someone else has some ideas.

Do you know exactly which processor you have? i.e. What model and speed your chip rated for.

My best guess is that your BIOS changed the bus-speed or CPU-multiplier. I'm sure those words sound foreign, so I'll briefly explain. The speed your processor runs at is produced by multiplying the speed of the bus with the CPU-multiplier, both of which are set in the BIOS. If one of the settings is reduced, the chip will run at a reduced speed. If your processor is supposed to run on a bus-speed of 166MHz with a multiplier of 11 (producing 1826MHz) and you reduced the bus-speed to 100MHz, the effective speed would end up being 1100MHz. If this is what happened with your settings, all you would need to do is load up the BIOS settings and change the bus speed to 166.

The method of loading up your BIOS configuration varies by computer but is almost always loaded by pressing a key or combination of keys when the computer begins loading. If you watch the screen when the computer first starts loading up, you should see instructions on what button to hit in order to load the BIOS configuration. Once you're in there, you will need to look around in order to find out where to modify the bus speed. It varies greatly by computer but is usually referred to as "bus speed", "memory clock speed", "processor bus speed", etc.

Before you make any modifications however, let us …

Try reinstalling the drivers for your motherboard. Some motherboards also have special drivers to install just for the USB bus.

All you need to do is add the location of your javac program to the path variable of your computer. That way, you can execute javac from anywhere. Using this method, all you need to do is change to your project folder and execute "javac file.java". To add a location to your path variable, right-click My Computer, select Properties, select the Advanced tab, and select Environment Variables. There should be two path variables: one for your user and one for the system. If you use multiple users, add to the System path variable; otherwise, modify your User path variable. To add a location to the path variable, select path, click Edit, go to the end of the variable value, add a semi-colon (semi-colons seperate locations in the path variable), and add the location you want to add (c:\j2sdk1.4.2_04\bin in your case). After you click OK on all the dialog windows, close any remaining command windows, reopen them, and you now can access the programs in the "c:\j2sdk1.4.2_04\bin" folder from anywhere.

If you don't want to set the path variable, you can always compile by referring to the javac program by it's full name while in your project folder, such as:

c:\j2sdk1.4.2_04\bin\javac hello.java

One thing you might want to check before you do anything is what Windows thinks the partition is. Right-click My Computer and select Manage. Select Disk Management from the Computer Management window that pops-up. You'll see a list of all the available drives and their respective partitions. From there, you should be able to see if Windows recognizes the format on the partition.

Is this a new drive that you've added or is it a drive that previously had a working partition and no longer appears as a drive in Windows?

The easiest way to fix this is to load up Microsoft Window's Recovery Console and run the following command:

chkdsk /r

After the process finishes, restart the computer.

If this doesn't work, more in-depth measures may be necessary. You can follow the instructions here to do a more thorough fix.

Are you sure that the connections that you have on your machine support the USB 2.0 spec? How old is your computer and what is the make/model of the system?

hi
sorry don't have any answers but joined specifically with the same problem. I have netgear wireless router . I have it cabled to my main computer and it works perfectly but on my laptop i get disconnected from internet every 10 mins or so !! Any solution suggestions????

thanks in anticipation
Kaye

kaye,

Please start your own thread. Even though your problems sound similar, I believe them to be very different. If you start your own thread, we can better focus on the different problems faced in your situation.

If you let me know exactly what model of laptop you have, I can give you more concrete information, but I do know a bit from what you've told us.

Depending on what type of BIOS you have, - . . . beep code refers to bad memory, bad video memory, or video adapter failure. That diagnosis based on the symptoms seems critical, but I would guess that something either got too hot and needed to cool down or some component got worked loose inside the system.

I'd let the laptop sit to cool down for a while and try again. If the same problem happens again, you might need to have the system opened up to check for loose components.

Are you doing the following?

• Set the router to use the static IP
• Connect the computer to the router via a CAT5 cable
• Set the computer to automatically get an IP address rather than assigning one manually
• Turn everything off
• Power on the modem, then the router, and then the computer

I'm guessing that you are still leaving the manual IP setting on your network connection configuration which is the main source of your woes.

In figuring out network issues, start simple and then get more complex. First confirm that your computer can connect directly through the modem (sounds like you are able to do this). Then add the router and use a direct connection to the router with a cable (this checks to make sure that everything is connecting and communicating correctly without adding the problems of troubleshooting a wireless connection). When the system is connecting through the router, remove the cable, and try to get the router and computer communicating wirelessly.

The information that you provide is nowhere near adequate to make good suggestions on what your friend's problem is.

The system is fairly old, so if your friend is trying to run the latest games and programs, it will be quite slow.

You really must provide more information.

Did the computer become slower when Windows XP was installed? If so, then that would be because the machine won't be able to run Windows XP very well.

Please be more specific with the problem. Let us know exactly what is running slow, what was changed on the computer before it became slow, and what you expect the machine to do.

I'll assume that you are using Internet Explorer. If that is the case, you can fix that by doing the following:

• Close all browser windows but one.
• Open a new window from a link on the remaining window.
• Close the old window (not the new one that just opened up).
• Adjust the window to be the size you want all the new windows to be (you cannot use the maximize button for this, you have to actually change the size of the window to be what you want the windows to automatically open up as).
• Hold down the Ctrl key while closing the window.

From now on, all your new windows should open up to that size until perform a similar process telling IE that you want all new windows to be the new size.

Most likely what occured is that you manually sized a window to that size, closed it, and IE remembered that as your preferred window size.