The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for 2014

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How can a partition be full if du does not show it is? (via: linux – Super User) #OpenSuSE #btrfs #snapshots

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/04/09

A long time ago I asked this OpenSuSE/Linux question: How can a partition be full if du does not show it is? – Linux on Super User.

With help of the OpenSuSE forums, I did figure out the source of the problem and solution, but I totally forgot to blog about it.

So below it is, just in case SuperUser ever shuts down, or the StackOverflow moderators are taking over SuperUser as well.

But first the comments in the questions about where I found the source and solution:

I found it through the openSUSE forums: it uses btrfs and snapshots. So the snapshots take up a lot of space. And I need to find out a way to delete old snapshots. forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/…

and

I think I found it: nrtm.org/index.php/2012/03/13/…

I wasn’t alone, so here are some more useful links and links from people asking for help:

–jeroen

PS: here is my SE question on it: linux – How can a partition be full if du does not show it is? – Super User.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Linux, openSuSE, Power User, SuSE Linux | Tagged: | 1 Comment »

Need to draw an ASCII diagram? ASCIIFlow is awesome:… (via: Ilya Grigorik – Google+)

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/04/09

ASCIIFlow.com:  Brilliant!

And from the comments PlantUML which generates UML diagrams from text, of which the sequence diagrams can also be generated as ASCII (the others only as images).

Finally there is ditaa which goes from ASCII diagrams to images. The complete circle is done (:

--jeroen

via: Ilya Grigorik – Google+ – Need to draw an ASCII diagram? ASCIIFlow is awesome:….

Posted in ASCII art / AsciiArt, Development, Diagram, Fun, LifeHacker, PlantUML, Power User, Software Development, UML | 2 Comments »

Big Ball of Mud | Jeroen on software

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/04/09

Just bumped into this Big Ball of Mud article by (another) Jeroen on software (this Jeroen is Jeroen De Dauw).

It is a very nice article with annotations on the (very old, but still very prevalent Big Ball of Mud design pattern of which a lot of software projects suffer).

I didn’t know about the design pattern yet, but have seen it in so many places, and even helped quite a few of them to become less big, and contain less mud. If the article and paper are tool long, you can read a WikiPedia BBM abstract.

I’m glad that the .NET/Delphi based suite of projects I landed on recently – though containing quite a bit of legacy – is different. Still a lot of improvements to be made, but it is very manageable.

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, Delphi, Development, Software Development | Tagged: | 1 Comment »

The C language specification describes an abstract computer, not a real one – The Old New Thing – Site Home – MSDN Blogs

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/04/09

Interesting read:

The C language specification describes an abstract computer, not a real one – The Old New Thing – Site Home – MSDN Blogs.

In other words: any language that merges null behaviour in the underlying storage will have a problem somwehere.

So if you want to have true nullable types, your null flag should be stored outside the underlying storage.

The .NET framework 2 and up, most database management systems and many other environment support that.

But most languages don’t support it for pointer types. So there will be portions of address spaces either inaccessible, or only accessible when skipping the null pointer checks.

Note that the thread above contains some very interesting bits, for instance this one:

Matt 28 Mar 2013 5:58 PM #

@MarkY “Dereferencing null is undefined?  Cool!  I thought it was guaranteed to crash, just like a false assertion or something.  So crashing is the OS guarantee, not the language guarantee apparently.”

Nope. It’s not an OS guarantee either. The OS won’t ever normally allocate memory at address zero, but there’s nothing to stop you telling it to. Try doing “VirtualAlloc(1, 4096, MEM_RESERVE | MEM_COMMIT, PAGE_READWRITE)” on your pre-Windows8 machine.

In fact, this is the reason why null-dereferences in kernel mode are often exploitable as elevation of privilege attacks. The null-page is mappable and within the user-addressable region of memory, so if the kernel dereferences a null pointer, it reads attacker controllable data.

And btw, this is the reason why on Linux and Windows8+ you can’t map the null-page.

–jeroen

via: The C language specification describes an abstract computer, not a real one – The Old New Thing – Site Home – MSDN Blogs.

Posted in .NET, .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, Borland C++, Borland Pascal, C, C#, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, C++, C++ Builder, Database Development, Delphi, Development, Pascal, Quick Pascal, Software Development, Turbo Pascal, VB.NET, VB.NET 10.0, VB.NET 11.0, VB.NET 8.0, VB.NET 9.0 | Leave a Comment »

Updating Windows Defender signatures (only) on Windows 8, 7 and XP (via: twm’s blog)

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/04/08

Based on Updating Windows Defender signatures (only) » twm’s blog (thanks Thomas!), I found it would not work on all my Windows systems.

So I wrote a small batch file that works on my Windows 8.x, 7 and XP systems: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »

Obtaining a sub-interface from an interface (via: Stack Overflow: Delphi)

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/04/08

Eric Grange (author of DWS) asked for some interface magic: delphi – Obtaining a sub-interface from an interface – Stack Overflow.

–jeroen

Posted in Delphi, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Software on RAMdisk can be at least 10x faster than on SSD

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/04/08

Wow nice tip in the comments of this article: Hynix ontwikkelt ddr4-module met capaciteit van 128GB – Computer – Nieuws – Tweakers.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Connect feedly to over 300 apps with Zapier | Building Feedly

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/04/08

Looks like a kind of ifttt: Connect feedly to over 300 apps with Zapier | Building Feedly.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Spring4D now has projects for Appmethod, but it cannot support Appmethod in the automated build engine.

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/04/08

Recently I pushed two sets ofchanges for Spring4D with packages and test projects that support Appmethod. The test projects are configured to use Firemonkey (conditional define FMX) as that is what Appmethod is centered around.

This weekend I filed Appmethod issue AP-64 that prevents Spring4D and other open source projects to automatically build the underlying projects. Since the new Quality site does not (yet?) make reports on public reports visible to the public, the full report is at the end of this post.

The issue comes down to that Embarcadero has intentionally made the command-line compilers dysfunctional. They are there, but – as you see when running this small batch file – they all will display “This version of the product does not support command line compiling.“. It makes it impossible for open source projects to just distribute the sources, and ship a small build tool that builds and installs the compiled binaries into the available products. So this issue doesn’t only affect Spring4D. The large JCL open source project also requires the command-line compilers.

In the past, only some free or trial products came without the command-line compilers, and I personally am anxious why the command-line compilers were crippled. On the other hand – even though the compiler DLLs list themselves as version 19.50, the functionality in Appmethod basically is the same as in RAD Studio XE5.

The Spring4D team regrets the lack of command-line compiler support in Appmethod. We really hope this restriction is removed soon, preferably in this version, but – since the docteam is prepping for XE6, Delphi XE6 is around the corner (the first XE6 webinar is in slightly more than a week from now) and Appmethod is based on the most recent Delphi version – in a future version.

We could go the long path of encapsulating the DLL versions of the compilers, but those do not have a public API. Reverse engineering that would cost a lot of effort, which we’d rather put into enhancing Spring4D.

If Another thing we could do – if we’d get the compilers, or Embarcadero would build the Spring4D sources with them – is provide precompiled packages for every Appmethod version. We’d rather not do that either because of the exact same reason: extra effort that we’d rather spend on other Spring4D things.

So for now, the Spring4D team keeps the Appmethod support as is. If there are people interested, they can manually compile and install the packages and test projects from within the IDE.

–jeroen


for /f "usebackq tokens=2* delims= " %%c in (`reg query HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Embarcadero\BDS\13.0 /v RootDir`) do (
dir "%%d\bin\dcc*.exe"
for %%c in ("%%d\bin\dcc*.exe") do %%c
)

view raw

test-Appmethod-command-line-compilers.bat

hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Full bug report: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Appmethod, Delphi, Development, Software Development | 4 Comments »

Heartbleed: Serious OpenSSL zero day vulnerability revealed | ZDNet

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/04/08

The fixed OpenSSL 1.01g is already available in source and for many platforms.

When do they become available anyone using OpenSSL 1.01 or 1.02 must deploy the patched version as fast as possible.

You also need to have all your certificates re-issued.

During the vulnerability period, your private keys may have been exposed, and there is no way to tell that they were not exposed.

Note the official binaries for Win32 1.01g are not available for yet (expect them soon), but the Indy team made Win32 and Win64 versions available.

Note that OpenSuSE did a backport of the patch to 1.01e for 12.3 and 13.1. Older openSuSE versions do not have updates for this issue, but you want to upgrade anything lower than 0.98 as they contain serious other vulnerabilities.

–jeroen

via

Posted in *nix, Delphi, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi 6, Delphi 7, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Development, Linux, OpenSSL, openSuSE, Power User, Security, Software Development, SuSE Linux | 7 Comments »

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