System.StackOverflowException with IronPython 2.6.0 and 2.6.1
by DotCom on May.21, 2010, under Engineers Corner
Recently we were trying to fix our High CPU utilization by moving from 2.0.x iron python to 2.6 as it has a interpreter built in and they claim it will use a lot less CPU in the compilation of the python scripts. Well when we upgraded to the new versions and put anything more then 1 request simulataneously to the site it would crash it with a Kernel.dll error in the Event Viewer claiming an error of 0xe053534f which indicates a Stack Overflow. This was a difficult one to chase down because just attaching ADPlus in crash mode slowed the site down so bad it was causing site to stack and not work properly. (continue reading…)
32 Bit vs 64 Bit Memory Allocation / Garbage Collection
by DotCom on Apr.14, 2010, under Engineers Corner
Recently we deployed some of our Web Services to a new and shiney 64 bit OS and 8 processor machine. A few days later I was pinged with cacti graphs showing that the web service was using 1.4 gb of memory. At first I assumed that this was due to some kinda of memory leak so I started getting the dump off the box for that w3wp process hosting the web service. Pulled the data up in windbg and noted a very large number of System.XML.DocumentXpathNavigator objects, in excess of 1.2 million. So with this I started investigating roots of these object of which none I could find. Started banging my head because the same code in 32 bit OS only consumed 250 meg max and ran just fine.
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The underlying truth
by DotCom on Feb.18, 2010, under Truth or Not
I have suspected with the way things are going in the economy and how the government seems to have forgotten they represent the people that there would be a place and time people started flipping out. Today a sad but inevitable event happened where a guy couldn’t take anymore of the years of government manipulation and twists to our nations laws. He finally went over the deep end.
Since the larger portion of the press do not truely cover whats truthful in many cases, word for word, I decided I would post the letter left by the software engineer(pilot) as it surprised me how the excerpts they used truly painted the picture in my head differently then what his letter did.
I am sorry for any of the people injured or involved and my wishes go out to you.
Ahhh Memories
by DotCom on Sep.16, 2009, under Arcade, Crack 4 Geeks
Recently at work we had an arcade game down and I remember my good old days of working with A&A Services in the southern region of the US on the arcade games they supplied to many military installations down there. Well got to dig into an old Wells Gardner monitor which are popular for use in many of the arcade games in the industry. This game was from the 80’s, so when opening it and looking at the board it brought the memories flooding back. It was pretty sweet that I didn’t need a flowchart to check the components as I remembered most of them. This monitor needs a cap kit but other than that the humor of the issue was that the board ended up good to go. What ended up being the problem on this monitor was the cabinet had been rewired and they drove the monitor power from two switches in the cabinet and the one switch had somehow knocked itself into the off(non service mode) position. The Service switch for the door had been remounted due to the fact the door was warped and wouldn’t hold it in properly. Pulled it out back into service mode and bingo. A few adjustments later, its back up and running. But for you techies I got to digging around and found a few things that can help you troubleshoot your old arcade games and monitors.
A little how a raster monitor works
Some Randy Fromm videos(Serious arcade genius)
SQL Server Errors out with 80071736 “The cluster Resource ‘Sql Server’ cannot be brought online” Problem
by DotCom on Jan.22, 2009, under Engineers Corner
We have been working on a remote distributor Highly available SQL 2008 / Windows Server 2008 installation. We have come across many issues in doing this. Microsoft claims they are geocluster capable. FALSE**** The truth of the matter is that many geographically distributed datacenters in many cases due to security and the such also have there own VLAN’s or Subnets. The old solution to clustering across datacenters was to create a VLAN that spanned the two datacenters.  With Geoclustering this was supposed to be solved.
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Well after working with Microsoft teams and getting to the guys in the SQL development group. There geocluster solution requires that each server have a NIC with the IP address of each Subnet the cluster will live in.  Guess what? That means you still have to stretch the VLAN/Subnet across datacenter opening possible security issues. Geocluster my butt. Even there developers have been arguing its not truely geoclustering.  They say that in future versions this would probably be taken care of.  Anyways now to the new errors we had installing the solution.
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When installing SQL on the primary cluster node, toward the end of the install it will attempt to bring the cluster online. If it doesn’t and errors out with the code above, you may want to check to make sure you have the NIC IP physically set, instead of using DHCP. We got this error because it was set to DHCP and we are not running an environment that DHCP is supported in, so theres no servers to dish out IP’s.
Another Error we ran into was when we “Add a SQL Node” on the secondary nodes was “INVALID SKU” error. You must retrieve the Cumulative Update #1 for sql 2008 to fix this issue.  They say it will be in the first service pack for 2008 but as of right now you must request it from Microsoft.Â
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I will try to keep people up to date on our implementation and issues we see as we progress through this. I am also curious to hear from others what there experience is in the 2008/2008 installs.
