gluth

I bet that you have heard, that Polish student developers (which by some blogs have been changed into just 'polish developers') are third largest active group in Windows Marketplace counting by number of applications. If you wonder, how it could be, let me introduce you how such numbers are created. There is .Net developers portal (called CodeGuru), which is filled with marketing, but along with that, there are developer articles, tutorials and all this stuff, which beginners found useful. This portal is active in academic environment, create conferences, pushes students to it's own platform. Raising developers from students.

Some day, they found that it will be a good idea, to make contest. It was called: get a windows phone in geek club. What is a geek club? This is developer activity promotion, where you get paid in points for various platform related actions, blog posts, applications, comments. Media relationship of our times. What was the contest rules? Create five different applications, let them be judged by jury, each of them will give you one hundred points. Five hundred points can be exchanged to a new Windows Phone. Clear? Where is a catch? Contest is active until phones are available, nobody said how many phones there was, and when they will run out.
Well, that's almost all. When there is first in - first out queue to phones, with time passing your chances to get one of them are eroding very fast. Some of developers have gave up, some have lost faith. Contest end time have been extended to end of January, additionally to stimulate movement and flow of applications, one of the contest attendee (signed as Microsoft itself) have made comments on the contest forum. One of them was "do not worry, every valid application which will be sent to contest before 31st of January will be granted with Windows Phone", second one was "do not hurry, put your effort to quality of application" (this is not word-by-word Polish to English translation - you can find those comments cited in this forum post).

This was the steam which was needed, application stream have flooded.Applications have been sent to judgment and big waiting for phones have started.
How this story ends? This is not fairy tale, there is no 'happy end'. Phones have run out very fast and contest have been closed, comments have been edited out and there was almost no trace of them. Only in few repeated questions in following comments. Simple calculations made by forum users showed that there was no phones left when contest end time was extended, there was also no phones left when this contest was promoted on one of the conferences.
I've talked with one of the developers, which was taking part in this event, there was few more which he was knowing personally. Guess what, none of them have got their phones. They made their five applications, which were judged as correct from rules point of few (technically speaking they won), they have their five hundreds points but they have nothing.

How to f**k enthusiastic developers? Make contest without prizes, change rules during play, and ignore their questions.

Microsoft ended up with lots of shitty applications in the Marketplace and even more angry developers. Nicely done!

Background

So, you have read very nice article about writing new WMI drivers for kernel, you have downloaded and read how to start manual, you have even read very interesting kernel WMI reference on Ubuntu site. And you are so buzzed with good feelings about this all that you push some commands to dump WMI information from DSDT. Then in completely unexpected way you have to face with...

Reality

    97845ED0-4E6D-11DE-8A39-0800200C9A66:
        object_id: BC
        notify_id: 42
        reserved: 43
        instance_count: 1
        flags: 0x2 ACPI_WMI_METHOD 
    466747A0-70EC-11DE-8A39-0800200C9A66:
        object_id: BD
        notify_id: 42
        reserved: 44
        instance_count: 1
        flags: 0x2 ACPI_WMI_METHOD 
    ABBC0F72-8EA1-11D1-00A0-C90629100000:
        object_id: ?
        notify_id: D2
        reserved: 00
        instance_count: 1
        flags: 0x8 ACPI_WMI_EVENT 
    05901221-D566-11D1-B2F0-00A0C9062910:
        object_id: MO
        notify_id: 4D
        reserved: 4F
        instance_count: 1
        flags: 0

What the heck? It is clearly written what is a function, what is and event and what is something else, articles authors tell you about structures from their computers, but they does not tell a word about your machine. There is no function or parameter description, just "there is a GUID, do what you want with that". You are half lucky if you connect to events and are able to collect some data in the field, but when your machine (like mine) require to send some greetings in advance to receive them, then you are in big troubles. There are two ways of dealing with this...

Ninja

Dig through DSDT, observe function calls flow, chop-out parameters and their type, guess, try and guess again. Then, you should sit near the fireplace and tell all of this to your grandchildrens. There is a chance to get crazy in the process, but you are dealing with "The Kernel", you were warned before you have started. To take away risk, I have for you...

Solution

There is a tool in the Windows Driver Development kit, called wmiofck. Which is designed to check mbf (compiled mof file), and to create interface definitions for it. Most of the WMI based DSDT have in them something called WQXX buffers, they are nothing more than compiled mof files. Just dig them out, and save as a binary file (not so complicated if you know some of the script-fu). Call wmiofck tool on this binary file with parameters:

wmiofck.exe -hwmidevs.h -m -u moftable.mbf
in result you will receive very nicely formatted C .h file, where all WMI functions will have the same names as your device manufacturer wanted them to have. Some of them will have comments, all your parameters will be fully described. Sometimes even some constants will be exposed. You don't belive me? See for yourself:

// ASUSManagement - ASUSManagement #define ASUSManagementGuid \ { 0x97845ed0,0x4e6d,0x11de, { 0x8a,0x39,0x08,0x00,0x20,0x0c,0x9a,0x66 } } #if ! (defined(MIDL_PASS)) DEFINE_GUID(ASUSManagement_GUID, \ 0x97845ed0,0x4e6d,0x11de,0x8a,0x39,0x08,0x00,0x20,0x0c,0x9a,0x66); #endif // // Method id definitions for ASUSManagement #define initialize 1128616019 typedef struct _initialize_IN { // ULONG AP_version; #define initialize_IN_AP_version_SIZE sizeof(ULONG) #define initialize_IN_AP_version_ID 1 } initialize_IN, *Pinitialize_IN; #define initialize_IN_SIZE (FIELD_OFFSET(initialize_IN, AP_version) + initialize_IN_AP_version_SIZE) typedef struct _initialize_OUT { // ULONG BIOS_version; #define initialize_OUT_BIOS_version_SIZE sizeof(ULONG) #define initialize_OUT_BIOS_version_ID 2 } initialize_OUT, *Pinitialize_OUT; #define initialize_OUT_SIZE (FIELD_OFFSET(initialize_OUT, BIOS_version) + initialize_OUT_BIOS_version_SIZE)
This is decompiled version of MOF file from the article mentioned in the beginning of this post, first GUID definition is the GUID for a endpoint called ASUSManagement, then you have method id and input/output parameter descriptions. If you are lucky, and your machine manufacturer was not lazy you will have full API for your machine. Served as you like, chilled with some #define on top.

Full version of generated .h file can be grabbed here. It is very good lecture, especially when used as a reference for initial how to.

Prawie pamiętam dzień w którym zaczęło się to szaleństwo. Po koncercie Lata z Radiem w Jarosławiu (w czasach, gdy zdarzało się im jeszcze grywać w "Polsce B") gdy przechadzałem się przez pobojowisko pod sceną zauważyłem zdeptany parasol. Żal mi się go zrobiło, więc odłamaną rączkę zabrałem ze sobą, od tamtego czasu, podczas deszczowych i wietrznych dni wypatruję w koszach na śmieci porzuconych przez właścicieli parasoli. Zabieram ze sobą jedyną nadającą się jeszcze do użycia rzecz - rączkę, wzbogacając tym samym moją kolekcję.

Identyfikacja

Pozyskanie

Eksponat

Wszyscy lubimy niezwykłe zwierzęta. Są różne, różniste potwory. Pająki z uśmiechem, palczaki - są też stwory, które są zapowiedzią czegoś o wiele gorszego. Weźmy takiego hipopotama, bydle wielkie i niebezpieczne - odpowiada w końcu za większość przypadków zgonów ludzi zaatakowanych przez zwierzęta w afryce, jednak sama jego nazwa wskazuje, ze jest to zwierzaczek hipotroficzny - karłowaty, mikry. Czekam dnia, w którym odkryty zostanie zaginiony hiperpotam. Jednak zawsze może być gorzej, w tej samej dziurze co hiperpotam pewnie siedzi cała masa innych dziwactw, z których każdy kolejny jeszcze gorszy od poprzedniego: dźwiedź, lopa czy też mrożący krew w żyłach toperz. Strzeżcie się, one tam siedzą i tylko czekają jakby tu wyleźć i kogoś wciąć na kolację.

Ktoś je znalazł i powiesił, obrosły brudem, jednak nie wróciłeś, nadal wiszą tam gdzie je ktoś zostawił. W szarym, zakurzonym miejscu.

Nowa myszka, wysłużona podkładka, pomocna naklejka i leciwy laptop. Powiało luksusem tak mocno, że aż okno musiałem świeżą słomą dopchać, coby mi domowa atmosfera nie uciekła.

If your whole application environment is working within one particular timezone, then you are a happy man. Sometimes, especially when you are performing synchronizations with partners from different timezones, and those timezones are changing their time basing on the DST rules. This might be a nightmare, when your scheduled task change their execution time back and forth by one hour every time they want. Simply saying: you may adjust those time manually, it is doable, but please, do you want to do this up to four times a year? What a horrible loss of time!

There are two approaches nice and hard, which one is applicable for you? It depends on the cron compilation configuration. Check it by calling:

man 5 crontab

in console. Of course, you know how to configure cron, scroll down up to example, and when you see something like this:

Your way is the easy way, change CRON_TZ variable to desired timezone (in which next command will be executed). Timezone may be changed many times inside of one crontab, default timezone is this one from server.

When you are out of luck, and you don't see that crontab supports CRON_TZ  you will have to write your own mini script, which will perform checking not implemented in cron. First, specify desired timezone for your script:

Determine what are the highest, and the lowest possible differences between server timezone and desired timezone - when each timezone can change time by one hour, maximum difference is two hours, this results in four hour window in which script should be executed.
The last thing which we have to create is the cron script which will be executed at desired hours and will check current time against desired execution time (hard to explain, example next):

No i stało się, wepchnąłem swoją pierwszą aplikację do sklepu. Stałem się pełnoprawnym kupczydłem, na tę okazję (w końcu na jednej się nie skończy) utworzyłem specjalną stronę, gdzie jak na razie jest opis tylko jednej, ale będę tę listę sukcesywnie rozszerzał.