Month: March 2011

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Tech

Generating Error Snapshots with LoadRunner Controller

LoadRunner Controller throws up errors here and there almost all the time; 99% of these errors are due to either scripting problems or code changes (the other 1% are out of memory exception errors ;))

The errors generated in the Controller are usually enough to figure out what the problem is, however there are times where the errors generated leave one searching for clues like a scavenger hunt.

Then I came across this option in the Controller… “Generate snapshot on error“… hmm, this looks like it could prove very useful for web testing.
Indeed it did. Turns out that every-time an error is encountered in the Controller, a snap-shot of the page the error was encountered on will be saved and stored in the results folder in .html format.

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Tech

Using Adsiedit to Increase User Mailbox Size Beyond 2GB on Exchange Server 2003

If you use Exchange 2003 (I’m not sure if the same applies to later versions), you may have noticed that you cannot set a user’s mailbox size to anything greater than 2097151KB (2GB).

The good news is that this limit is only GUI imposed (soft limit) and not a hard value fixed on the exchange server software it self (hard limit).

Increasing a user’s mailbox is really easy and safe – however, I don’t recommend that you configure the size to some unreasonable or extreme limit.
As always, a full backup of the mail store is recommended before changing any settings on the Exchange.

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Tech

Get Firefox 4 to Ask You to Save Tabs on Exit

One weird thing I noticed when I upgraded to Firefox 4 is that you no longer get offered the option of saving your tabs on exit.

This often came in handy for me at times when I needed to restart the browser for what ever reason (plug-in install, computer restart, etc) so I do wonder why it is disabled by default on Firefox 4.
Perhaps it is not used as often as I thought it might be…

Anyway, you can easily re-enable this prompt by following the simple steps below:

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Tech

Dropbox – Automatically Standby PC After Sync

Dropbox – another piece of software I couldn’t possibly live without.

If you use Dropbox, you may have come across a situation whereby you’ve just put a few large files in your Dropbox which will take some time to sync.

One solution to this problem (without leaving your machine on all day or night) is to use a batch file which does the following:

  1. Uses a small executable created by a member of the Dropbox forums
  2. This executable checks the status of Dropbox (synching, in-use, up-to-date etc)
  3. The batch script simply runs in the background and checks the status of Dropbox every 30 seconds
  4. If the status is up-to-date, the script executes a command which puts the machine in to standby.
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Tech

Using Two or More Load Generators with LoadRunner

LoadRunner is a suite of applications designed specifically for performance testing of computer systems.

Put at a very high level, LoadRunner is used to throw load (or Virtual Users in LoadRunner terms) at a system to check for performance counters such as throughput, CPU per transaction etc. LoadRunner supports a variety of different architectures including Web, ERP, CRM and more.

This article details the steps of how to set-up multiple load generators to work with your LoadRunner Controller environment.

There are several drivers for going with this approach:

  • Your load generator may actually sit on the same box as your Controller (design flaw)
  • Your load generator may be a low spec box which maxes out at X number of VUsers
  • You want load to hit the target from multiple machines to introduce threading.
  • etc
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