Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2011 January 15

= January 15 =

Another Flash 8/AS2 question
Frame 3, button 'Fight': on (release) { var ci:Boolean = false; var ydie:Boolean = false; var ldie:Boolean = false; var sdie:Boolean = false; yealth = 16; lealth = 20; slealth = 10 gealth = 38; cin = 2; gotoAndPlay(4); }

After clicking the button, the computer prompts me to stop the script. Why is that?  Kayau  Voting  IS   evil 01:29, 15 January 2011 (UTC)


 * It could be a loop. What's the exact message? Also, what's in frame 4?--Best Dog Ever (talk) 01:42, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It was something to do with slowing down the computer. Frame four is where the player clicks on the guard to attack him. It goes to frame five, which directly goes to six, where you go either back to frame 4 if gealth > 0 or to frame 7 if gealth = 0.  Kayau  Voting  IS   evil 02:26, 15 January 2011 (UTC)


 * It's really hard to say without looking at the FLA file.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 03:02, 15 January 2011 (UTC)


 * That is too large to upload on t35. I'll try to find some other way...  Kayau  Voting  IS   evil 12:50, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It's now on The new official site for the game. :) Kayau HAPI   B-DAY   WP  14:07, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * When I click on the link, I see and error message that says, "Resource not found."--Best Dog Ever (talk) 20:02, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Whoops! Corrected.  Kayau  Voting  IS   evil 01:51, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * ok. Thanks. It looks like the frames you're having trouble with are in Scene 7, right? Well, I played them and didn't see any error messages. I got to the third frame and clicked the button to fight the guard. Then, it went through to the beginning of the game -- Scene one -- since there are no stop actions in frame 4 and it says to go to and play at frame 4. If anyone else is interested in taking a look, you go to Window --> Other panels --> Scene and click on the seventh one.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 22:49, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Hm, that's odd, because I played it again and still got an error message. Perhaps I could explain what I'm trying to do. What I was thinking is that when the player reaches frame 4, it goes straight to frame 5 (hence nextFrame), and when the player reaches 5 it goes straight to 6 (again nextFrame), and at frame 6 the guard hits, then the player either goes back to 3, if the former slave is still alive, or to 7, if the slave is dead. I haven't added in any code for victory yet, but I don't think I should jump the gun when defeat isn't done yet.  Kayau  Voting  IS   evil 10:48, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Browsing OpenJDK source
I'd like to browse the source to a few java source files (e.g. things in java.io and java.lang) of the OpenJDK project. I'd really rather not download the whole JDK source, but rather pick it out of the Mercurial web interface (in the way one can do likewise on the GNU Savannah website). The OpenJDK folks do have links to a Mercurial browser on their website, but the tree it shows only has a few infrastructure things (some makefiles etc.) not the actual JDK .c and .java source. Am I somehow missing this stuff in there, or is that stuff elsewhere (or no-where)? Thanks. 87.113.112.90 (talk) 03:50, 15 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Ah, I found it (here). -- 87.113.112.90 (talk) 04:28, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Windows 7 information to XP computer
I have on my main computer XP sp3 and I have downloaded on this computer movies and have them in a download file.I also have a Popcorn hour hooked up to this computer so that I can put all the movies on a hard drive that the Popcorn hour has...then I can play all the movies when ever I want using the Popcorn hour's hard drive and keeping the main computer's hard drive free.

On my laptop which is windows 7 I have movies downloaded but wish to access the Popcorn hour and am not getting much help from these people.

I have got as far as I can and the information I have got from the Popcorn people is for XP not Windows 7.

All my computer and Popcorn Hour are hooked up through a router (hard wired)

I am new at this soooo...please excuse my ignorance on how things work! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Golferknut (talk • contribs) 21:53, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Golferknut — Preceding unsigned comment added by Golferknut (talk • contribs) 14:23, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Updating DirectX 9.0
Hello there,

I am trying to get the recent build of DirectX 9.0. Trying to troubleshoot a game, and I have been instructed to get the package from here. However, once this has downloaded, running it I get a dialogue box asking me where I want to put the 'extracted files' - as if I should have any idea - then it gives me 155 .rar files and two .dll's. There is no help at all on that page, and the people who told me to get this package have gone home for the weekend. I have tried installing the 'websetup' version, but that just tells me I already have a later version (maybe this means a later version of DirectX 9.0, or perhaps it is referring to the fact I have DirectX 10 and 11 - who knows?) and won't let me install. All I want to do is update to this latest build. Is there any way I can do this? -- KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 15:37, 15 January 2011 (UTC)


 * If you have a more recent version like DirectX 10 or 11, I don't see why you need to rollback to a previous version.General Rommel (talk) 03:24, 16 January 2011 (UTC)


 * That's actually not the latest version, for some reason Microsoft never released a redist for November 2010 . But anyway if you don't want to use the webinstaller, choose a directory to extract the files and then run dxsetup.exe. Despite the statement above, no rollbacking should ever happen (even if you run an old version although I wouldn't try an 8 year old version just to see) and the updater should update whatever version you have (10, 11) if it contains an appropriate update. However if the webinstaller is telling you you have the latest version, then you probably have the latest version. Try running dxdiag.exe if you aren't convinced. If you are running Windows Vista, you may want to consider installing DirectX 11 if you haven't already, see . Nil Einne (talk) 15:04, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Database backup
How do the Wikimedia database dumps work? How do you make a copy of a database that is constantly being modified? 70.162.9.144 (talk) 18:28, 15 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Backups are performed using the DumpBackup.php tool, which in turn uses Export feature of Mediawiki. In essence that does a giant SQL query on the table(s) being dumped.  As things are being simultaneously updated all the time on the live Wikipedia (etc.) site, there's no particular guarantee that the resulting dump will be entirely logically consistent. 87.113.112.90 (talk) 19:00, 15 January 2011 (UTC)


 * &mdash; I have never done this; but 87's link is bad, and the problem of getting a copy of a database that's constantly being modified was solved decades ago; a database dump doesn't just do a byte-for-byte copy like your OS does when copying a file, but copies the database as it existed as of a certain timestamp. I don't see an article specifically about this topic, but our backup article refers to databases several times.  Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:06, 15 January 2011 (UTC)


 * The page is here. The core backup code itself is in Export.php in the mediawiki distribution. 87.113.112.90 (talk) 19:13, 15 January 2011 (UTC)


 * The database transaction article is relevant, I think. Computer file systems are databases too. They often lack transaction support, but that's because operating systems suck. Windows finally got transactional NTFS with Vista. Shadow Copy allows you to mount a snapshot of the filesystem for backup purposes (the better backup programs use this behind the scenes). Applications and services are notified just before the snapshot is made so they can flush unwritten data and make the disk more-or-less consistent. -- BenRG (talk) 19:17, 17 January 2011 (UTC)


 * See this section of WP:DUMP. It is explained that the enormous size of the Wikipedia database is so huge that modern MySQL servers sometimes fail to work correctly.  "The dump process has had difficulty scaling to cope with the size of the very largest wikis, and as a result the system failed for several years to produce valid, complete dumps of the English-language wikipedia. Even now, the system struggles to create valid dumps."  So, even with the established techniques that should guarantee logically-consistent timestamped database copies, "implementation errors" in MySQL (and the surrounding web application frameworks provided by MediaWiki and the toolserver) currently are not capable of producing correct and logically-consistent copies for a single timestamp of the 20+ terabyte English Wikipedia back-end database.  Nimur (talk) 19:17, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Acrobat Reader X monitoring pdf files - how to stop?
Whenever I pass with my mouse over a .pdf file, AcroRd32.exe appears in Windows Task Manager and is doing something for a second or two... It seems there's some process or program monitoring .pdf files for mouseover. How this could be stopped? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.66.7.118 (talk) 18:34, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I think this is somehow similar with the way .avi files are treated - the system adds additional info about them in a special tab of File Properties, so probably each time you hover the cursor over the file the system has to update this info so Acrobar Reader is called. This treatment of .avi files can be remedied by registry hack - something in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Ext\Settings As to .pdf files, I don't know... Maybe somebody else could help? 213.8.52.97 (talk) 09:45, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * There's a tab named "PDF" in File Properties of every .pdf file. So this really could be the reason behind Acrord32.exe activities - it is probably updating info in the tab. The question is - how to disable this? 109.66.7.118 (talk) 15:38, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Disable the Adobe Reader add-on in your browser. Here's the process for Internet Explorer: and here's the process for Firefox: . Also, open Adobe Reader, go to Edit --> Preferences --> Internet and uncheck "Display PDF in browser."--Best Dog Ever (talk) 10:02, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The add-on is disabled and "Display PDF in browser" is unchecked. So these settings are not related 109.66.7.118 (talk) 15:21, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Ubuntu dual-boot troubles
I just made a new Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition Live CD using Linpus Linux for the Acer Aspire One with Intel Atom and Windows Vista for an Acer Desktop PC (I don't know which, with some kind of AMD chip, I don't know which). I downloaded the .iso Ubuntu disk image using Linpus and burned it onto the CD-RW (700MB as required) using Vista.

Now, the CD seems to work fine, but when I try to boot without installing I get messages like: 'GLiB warning: getpwuid_r: failed due to unknown user id'.

I've tried looking for help, but I don't understand all this gobbledygook. Could some kind soul tell me what to do using minimal jargon and how to do things in specific, non-vague terms, please? I really want to replace Linpus and I could use the help. Thank you very much for your time.

These are the two places I looked for help: and

-- Editor510  drop us a line, mate  20:57, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I dual-boot a variant of Ubuntu. While this answer may not help much, I get that error everytime (not from the CD, but from my drive partition) I boot, and so far as I know it has not caused me any problems.  I have no idea what it is talking about, but I would be interested in finding out.  It isn't stopping it from booting is it? Falconus p  t   c 04:43, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, it freezes up at the Ubuntu logo. Could it be the CD drive? If it is, that means the CD I spent ages making is useless.-- Editor510  drop us a line, mate  18:51, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

This error message, by itself, doesn't provide enough information for us to fix the problem - but we're close. I'll try to explain the root-cause of the error in general, and in the hope that it may hint at finding solutions for your specific case. It is the convention in many Linux/Unix operating systems Debian (and therefore in Ubuntu) that certain system processes, called daemons, have their own user account. For example, a web server (which is a standalone program that is running at all times) may log in to the computer as WebServerUser. This makes it easy for the operating system to know when Web Server accesses files; it is trivial to guarantee that file-permissions are correct (simply deny access to blocked files for the entire web server login account). Similarly, other system processes (such as certain hardware drivers and some software abstraction layers) also have their own user account. If you see an error like GLiB warning: getpwuid_r: failed due to unknown user id, the actual problem is that a system service can not start. It was probably configured to use its own login-id; and later system-setup may have removed that login-id (without uninstalling or reconfiguring the program that expects to use it). If the daemon isn't critical, your system boots as normal and you barely notice anything. But if that was a needed system tool, the program can't start, and the boot halts. So, to fix this problem, we need to know exactly which user-id is being sought, and by which daemon. We need a more complete printout of the error-message you are seeing. Then, we can give you specific instructions to uninstall, remove, or repair that specific part of the system that is failing. Can you give us more of the error message (any text surrounding it)? Nimur (talk) 19:25, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It also says 'mktemp: error while loading shared libraries'. Does that mean anything to you?-- Editor510  drop us a line, mate  21:38, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * mktemp is another system utility; it is documented here. Again, we still do not have enough information to determine the root-cause of this problem - almost any program may use mktemp to set up temporary configuration.  Can you determine which program is failing to start from the error-log, or can you post the entire error log (at least, the last few complete lines)?  Nimur (talk) 23:20, 17 January 2011 (UTC)


 * irc://irc.freenode.net/linux ¦ Reisio (talk) 15:11, 17 January 2011 (UTC)