If you’ve followed our previous posts about using Azure App Service to host web apps in the cloud (1. Introduction to App Service, 2. Hosting web apps that use SQL) you’re already familiar with how easy it is to get an app running in the cloud; but what if the app doesn’t work correctly (it’s crashing, running too slow, etc.)? In this post we’ll explore how to use Azure’s Application Insights to have always on diagnostics that will help you find and fix these types of issues.
Azure Application Insights provides seamless integration with Azure App Service for monitoring, triaging and diagnosing code-level issues. It can easily be enabled on an existing web app with a single button click. Profiler traces and exception snapshots will be available for identifying the lines of code that caused issues. Let’s take a closer look at this experience.
Enable Application Insights on an existing web app to investigate issues
We recommend you follow along using your own application, but if you don’t have one readily available we will be using the Contoso University sample. The instructions on how to deploy it to App Service are in the readme file.
If you are following along with Contoso University, you will notice the Instructors page throws errors. In addition, the Courses tab loads a bit slower than others.
Let’s turn on Application Insights to investigate. After the app is deployed to App service, Application Insights can be enabled from the App Service portal by clicking the button on the overview blade:
Fill out the Application Insights enablement blade the following way:
Create a new resource, with an appropriate name.
Leave all default options for Code-level diagnostics on. The added section Code level diagnostics is on by default to enable Profiler and Snapshot Debugger for diagnosing slow app performance and runtime exceptions.
Click the ‘OK’ button. Once prompted if to restart the web app, click ‘Continue’ to proceed.
Once Application Insights is enabled, you will be able to see its connection status. You can now navigate to the Application Insights overview blade by clicking on the link next to the green check mark:
Generate traffic for your web app in order to reproduce issues
Let’s generate some traffic to reproduce our two issues: a) Courses page loading slowly, b) Instructors page throwing errors. You are going to use performance test with Azure portal to make requests to the following URLs:
You are going to be creating two different performance tests, once for each URL. For the Courses page you are going to simulate 250 users over a duration of 5 minutes, since you are experiencing a performance issue. For the Instructors page you can simulate 10 users over 1 minutes since we’d generally expect less instructors than users on the site at any given time.
Profile your app during performance tests to identify performance issues
A performance test will generate traffic, but if you want to understand how you app performs you have to analyze its performance while the test is running using a profiler. Let’s do exactly that, using the Performance | Configure Profiler blade while one of our performance tests is running:
Later on we will walkthrough how to use the profiler to identify the exact lines of code responsible for the slow-down. For now, let’s focus on simply profiling . After clicking on “Profile now”, wait until the performance test finishes and the profiler has completed its analysis. After a new entry in the section “Recent profiling sessions” appears, navigate back to the Overview blade.
Diagnose runtime exceptions
If your web app has any failed requests, you need to root cause and solve the issues to ensure your app works reliably. After running your performance test on the Instructors page you have some example failed requests to take a look at:
Let’s go to Failures blade to investigate what failed.
On the Failures blade, the top failed operation is ‘GET Instructors/Index’ and the top exception is ‘InvalidOperationException’. Click on the ‘COUNT’ column of the exception count to open list of sample exceptions. Click on the suggested exception to open the End-to-End Transaction blade.
In the End-to-End Transaction blade, you can see ‘System.InvalidOperationException’ exceptions thrown from GET Instructors/Index operation. Select the exception row and click on ‘Open debug snapshot’.
If it’s the first time you use Snapshot Debugger, you will prompt to request RBAC access to snapshots to safeguard the potentially sensitive data shown in local variables:
Once you get access, you will see a snapshot view like the following:
From the local variables and call stack, you can see the exception is thrown at InstructorsController.cs line 56 with message ‘Nullable object must have a value’. This provides sufficient information to proceed with debugging the app’s source code.
To get a better experience, download the snapshot and debug it using Visual Studio Enterprise. You will be able to interactively see which line of code caused the exception:
Looking at the code, the exception was thrown because ‘id’ is null and you are missing the appropriate check. When your app is running in the cloud, resources are dynamically provisioned and destroyed and so may not always get the chance to access the state of a failed component before it is reset. The Snapshot Debugger is a powerful tool that can maintain the failed state of the component even after the component’s state has been reset, by capturing local variables and call stack at the time the exception is thrown.
Diagnose bad performance from your web app
The server response time chart on the overview blade provides quick information on how performant your web app is over time. In the Contoso example, we see some spikes on the chart indicating there is a short period of time where users experienced slow responses for the requests they made.
To investigate further, navigate to the Performance blade in App Insights portal:
Zoom into the time range 6pm-10pm in the ‘Operation times: zoom into range’ chart to see spikes on the Request count.
Sort the Operations table by duration and request count to figure out where your web app spent the most time. In our example GET Courses/Index operation has the longest average duration. Let’s click on it to investigate why this operation takes so long.
The right side of the blade provides insights based on the Course/Index operation.
From the chart you can see although most operations only took around 400ms, the worst ones took up to 35 seconds. This means some users are getting really bad experience when hitting this URL and you should address it. Let’s look at Profiler traces to troubleshoot why GET Courses/Index was being so slow.
You should see profiler traces similar to the following:
The code path that’s taking the most time is prefixed with the flame icon. In this particular request, most time was spent on reading the list of courses from the database. Browsing to the code CourseController.cs we can see that when loading the list of courses the AsNoTracking() optimization option is not used. By default, Entity Framework will turn on tracking which caches the results to compare with what’s modified. This could add an approx. ~30% overhead to your app’s performance. For simple read operation like this one, we can optimize the query performance by using the AsNoTracking() option.
Conclusion
We hope that you find it easy to use Application Insights to diagnose performance and errors in your web apps. We believe Azure App Service is a great place to get started hosting and maintaining your web apps. You don’t have to enable App Insights upfront; the option is always there to be turned on when and as needed without re-deployment.
If you have any questions or issues, let us know by leaving comments below.
Catherine Wang Program Manager, VS and .NET
Catherine is on Azure developer experience team and is responsible for Azure diagnostics, security and storage tools.
In this ongoing tour of Linux, we’ve looked at how to manipulate folders/directories, and now we’re continuing our discussion of permissions, users and groups, which are necessary to establish who can manipulate which files and directories. Last time, we showed how to create new users, and now we’re going to dive right back in:
You can create new groups and then add users to them at will with the groupadd command. For example, using:
The first root in the output is the user owner and the second root is the group owner.
To transfer the ownership of the /photos directory to the photos group, use
chgrp photos /photos
The chgrp command typically takes two parameters, the first parameter is the group that will take ownership of the file or directory and the second is the file or directory you want to give over to the the group.
Next, run ls -l / and you’ll see the line has changed to:
drwxr-xr-x 1 root photos 0 jun 26 21:14 photos
You have successfully transferred the ownership of your new directory over to the photos group.
Then, add your own user and the guest user to the photos group:
sudo usermod <your username here> -a -G photos
sudo usermod guest -a -G photos
You may have to log out and log back in to see the changes, but, when you do, running groups will show photos as one of the groups you belong to.
A couple of things to point out about the usermod command shown above. First: Be careful not to use the -g option instead of -G. The -g option changes your primary group and could lock you out of your stuff if you use it by accident. -G, on the other hand, adds you to the groups listed and doesn’t mess with the primary group. If you want to add your user to more groups than one, list them one after another, separated by commas, no spaces, after -G:
sudo usermod <your username> -a -G photos,pizza,spaceforce
Second: Be careful not to forget the -a parameter. The -a parameter stands for append and attaches the list of groups you pass to -G to the ones you already belong to. This means that, if you don’t include -a, the list of groups you already belong to, will be overwritten, again locking you out from stuff you need.
Neither of these are catastrophic problems, but it will mean you will have to add your user back manually to all the groups you belonged to, which can be a pain, especially if you have lost access to the sudo and wheel group.
Permits, Please!
There is still one more thing to do before you can copy images to the /photos directory. Notice how, when you did ls -l / above, permissions for that folder came back as drwxr-xr-x.
If you read the article I recommended at the beginning of this post, you’ll know that the first d indicates that the entry in the file system is a directory, and then you have three sets of three characters (rwx, r-x, r-x) that indicate the permissions for the user owner (rwx) of the directory, then the group owner (r-x), and finally the rest of the users (r-x). This means that the only person who has write permissions so far, that is, the only person who can copy or create files in the /photos directory, is the root user.
Running ls -l / after that will give you /photos permissions as drwxrwxr-x which is what you want: group members can now write into the directory.
Now you can try and copy an image or, indeed, any other file to the directory and it should go through without a problem:
cp image.jpg /photos
The guest user will also be able to read and write from the directory. They will also be able to read and write to it, and even move or delete files created by other users within the shared directory.
Conclusion
The permissions and privileges system in Linux has been honed over decades. inherited as it is from the old Unix systems of yore. As such, it works very well and is well thought out. Becoming familiar with it is essential for any Linux sysadmin. In fact, you can’t do much admining at all unless you understand it. But, it’s not that hard.
Next time, we’ll be dive into files and see the different ways of creating, manipulating, and destroying them in creative ways. Always fun, that last one.
See you then!
Learn more about Linux through the free “Introduction to Linux” course from The Linux Foundation and edX.
Welcome to Seeking Dawn, a multiplayer survival VR adventure that takes you far beyond the solar system. Step into the shoes of a soldier discovering a hostile planet, where predators roam free and enemies are ruthless.
Nick Rye, the "King of the Skies" is ready to go - literally - above and beyond, to discover uncharted territories. Once you're stranded on the red planet, your mission is simple: stop the Martian Arachnid invasion and get back home safely.
Fortnite Season 5 Battle Pass: Free V-Bucks, Skins, Price, And How It Works
With a new season in Fortnite: Battle Royale comes a new Battle Pass. Season 5 is officially live, and with it, we have the Season 5 Battle Pass. For those already familiar with past versions, the basics of how it works have not changed dramatically--you'll play, complete challenges, rank up, and earn rewards--hopefully including the sought-after level 100 skin, Ragnarok. There are a variety of new skins available along with other cosmetic rewards, and we've also gotten a new category of item called "toys" that you can obtain and then play with during a match.
There are, however, some key differences with the Battle Pass to be aware of. One of changes is great news for those who don't want to pay for any V-Bucks to spend on the Battle Pass but still want new things to do each week. Here's everything you need to know about the Season 5 Battle Pass, including its price, changes to challenges, and the skins you can unlock.
How Does The Battle Pass Work?
The Season 5 Battle Pass operates much as it did in the past. As you play, you level up your profile, which rewards you with Battle Stars. These Battle Stars in turn rank up your Battle Pass, thus unlocking a variety of rewards. These rewards are divided into two tiers: A small number obtainable by all players, and those that are reserved for Battle Pass owners. You don't have to purchase the Battle Pass right away in order to avoid missing out; you can buy it mid-season and retroactively earn the premium rewards based on the tier that you've already reached.
However, there is is a benefit to grabbing the Battle Pass sooner rather than later. Among the premium rewards you'll receive are XP bonuses, both for playing in general and those for playing in a party with friends. Because leveling up with XP translates into Battle Stars (thus ranking up your Battle Pass), it's in your interest to grab the Battle Pass early and benefit from those bonuses. Purchasing the Battle Pass also gets you access to all challenges throughout the season (more on those in a moment), which are an easy way to earn Battle Stars and rank up further.
How Much Does It Cost?
As in the past, the Battle Pass costs 950 V-Bucks, a premium currency obtained with real-world money. Buying the smallest available bundle (1,000 V-Bucks) costs $10, leaving you with 50 V-Bucks to begin saving toward purchasing a skin, cosmetic, or a future Battle Pass. There is no option to buy the Battle Pass directly with real-world money, as had been the plan at one point. That said, it is arguably an excellent value due to the way the Battle Pass rewards you with further V-Bucks (something we dive into further below).
Everyone Gets (Some) Challenges For Free
Weekly challenges have been a big highlight of past Battle Passes. By purchasing one, you'd receive a set of seven new objectives to complete each week, which in turn allowed you to rank up your Battle Pass more quickly and earn rewards. Those without the Battle Pass could still earn a very select number of rewards, but they only had access to a single set of seven Starter challenges for the duration of the season.
For Season 5, there are no Starter challenges. Instead, each set of weekly challenges has been broken up into free and premium sections. These objectives offer up either five or 10 Battle Stars, with the latter being reserved for Hard-difficulty ones. Each week will have one Hard challenge for free players, while the other two are reserved for Battle Pass owners. Notably, the 5k XP bonus available each week is reserved for Battle Pass owners; you have to complete four challenges in a given week to unlock this, meaning it's only possible with access to the week's full suite of challenges.
You Still Get Free V-Bucks
As noted above, the Battle Pass costs 950 V-Bucks, but that arguably pays for itself if you play routinely. Among the premium rewards available in the Battle Pass are V-Bucks--every six to 10 tiers, you'll earn 100 free V-Bucks. (There are also two 100 V-Buck rewards in the free reward tier, at ranks 18 and 34.) By reaching rank 58, you'll have earned 1,000 V-Bucks, which is more than you'll have spent on the Battle Pass in the first place.
There's an additional 500 V-Bucks still to be earned after that, though doing so will require a fair amount of playtime. Epic estimates earning every reward in the Battle Pass takes from 75-150 hours, but if you play regularly and complete a lot of challenges, it shouldn't be hard to earn back most or all of what you invest in the Battle Pass.
Road Trip And Drift Take Are The New Blockbuster And Carbide Challenges
One of Season 4's wrinkles to the Battle Pass was the introduction of Blockbuster and Carbide challenges. These are back for Season 5, but with new names: Road Trip and Drift, respectively. Both of these require you to purchase the Season 5 Battle Pass to complete.
Road Trip challenges task you with completing all seven challenges from any single week. The reward is a loading screen which--if Season 4 is any indication--will lead you to a secret Battle Star that ranks up your Battle Pass by one tier. There are seven Road Trip challenges in total, and by completing all of these (meaning you fully complete seven weeks of challenges), you'll earn a bonus reward that looks to be a Legendary skin. We won't be sure of what it is until at least the seventh week of challenges are live.
Drift challenges are similar to Carbide, in that you're basically just asked to play a lot. This time around, however, rather than being asked to reach a certain level, you're tasked with gaining a certain amount of XP--from 10,000 up to 200,000. Each of the five challenges offers a new style option for the Drift skin, an outfit which you'll receive for free as soon as you buy the Battle Pass. If you complete four of the five Drift challenges (meaning you've earned 100,000 XP total), you'll also receive the Rift Edge harvesting tool, an alternative for the pickaxe.
What Are The Rewards?
You'll immediately get a handful of rewards for purchasing the Battle Pass, including the aforementioned Legendary Drift skin, as well as as the Epic Huntress skin. You also get access to all challenges and an immediate XP bonus, as well as five free Battle Pass tiers for Season 6's Battle Pass.
By ranking up the Battle Pass, you'll earn a variety of skins, V-Bucks, sprays, emoticons, gliders, harvesting tools, back blings, loading screens, emotes, contrails, and XP bonuses. There's also a new type of item, toys, that allow you to play around with others during a match. These include a golf ball and a basketball. You can see every single reward available in our rundown, or check out all of the skins and cosmetics here.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 07-16-2018, 02:37 AM - Forum: Lounge
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Japan is taking steps to legalize paid esports tournaments
Laws aimed at illegal gambling have long prevented Japanese esports events from offering cash prizes, but the country is looking to change that through a licensing program that exempts some players from those very laws.
As Bloomberg reports, this is both a shifting moment for Japanese esports competitors and for game companies themselves. Developers and publishers in Japan stand to make a significant amount of money by selling tickets, advertising, broadcast rights, and merch for major esports competitions. Until now, Japan was closed off to those opportunities.
The Japanese government will issue a select few licenses to a “few dozen players” that rank well in an esports event this weekend. Those licenses then permit those players to compete in paid video game events in the future.
This weekend’s event will see players will compete for professional licenses in Winning Eleven 2018 (AKA Pro Evolution Soccer 2018 in the West),Call of Duty: WWII,Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition, and Tekken 7, along with the smartphone games Puzzle & Dragons and Monster Strike.
Lawmakers formed an esport-centric coalition last year called the JeSU to handle matters relating to Japan’s esports industry late last year, following rumblings that competitive video games could be featured in future Olympic events. The licensing program in the fruit of that committee’s efforts, and mirrors programs in place for professional golf, baseball, and tennis.
“This is the first big step,” JeSU vice president Hirokazu Hamamura told Bloomberg. “What’s really important for the esports movement is whether our players can become stars. And I think that’s coming.”
Join the Hunt for the Savage New Warframe in The Sacrifice on Xbox One
We didn’t think it was possible. Building, testing, and launching The Sacrifice on Xbox One in three weeks? All while in an intense crunch mode for TennoCon, our third-ever Warframe convention in two days? We must believe in miracles, ‘cause the incredible Warframe console team made our dream a reality, and The Sacrifice is now live on Xbox One!
The third in Warframe’s Cinematic Quest storyline, The Sacrifice follows the Apostasy Prologue (revealed last December), with a foreboding vision that will take you on the hunt for this seemingly savage new Warframe. When progress on Umbra was finally revealed at TennoCon 2017, players were crying with overwhelming joy (okay maybe not physically crying; I like to imagine), but they were ecstatic! The three-year wait for the Umbra Warframe was finally happening, and it was worth the wait. The Sacrifice answers questions left unanswered in The Apostasy Prologue, but also leaves players with entirely new questions.
You should know that The Sacrifice is for all Warframe players, but it is available deeper into the game than, say, Plains of Eidolon. Only Tenno who have been through the roller coaster of The Second Dream, The War Within, Chains of Harrow, and the Apostasy Prologue will be able to learn the plight of The Lotus, Ballas, and more.
What else can we tell you without spoiling the goods? The Sacrifice update includes several quality of life additions. Exalted weapons such as Excalibur’s Exalted Blade and Valkyr’s Talons are now moddable in the Arsenal; you can show off your fashion frames in a new Captura scene based on The Sacrifice or emblazon your profiles with a new Umbra Profile Glyph, and if you like free things, you can use this promo code, OLDFRIEND, for a free Orokin tea set decoration and a 3-day Affinity Booster until July 20, 2018 at 11:59 p.m. ET at warframe.com/promocode. Also, we’ve taken the first step in revamping Warframe’s UI by adding a few customizable UI themes, updated vendor menus (like Baro, Syndicates, etc.), new UI sounds across all menus, and more.
We said from the beginning with Umbra that we wanted to give players a lore-driven narrative behind him, and not just an Excalibur skin. Finally, we’re able to share that story and I’m overjoyed that we’re able to make it happen before TennoCon 2018! We eagerly await your reactions, questions, and excitement, and I personally can’t wait to word-vomit lore theories with you on Xbox One @ 1!
Video: Learn More About Octopath Traveler In This Detailed Overview Trailer
Octopath Traveler has been one of the most anticipated Switch releases since its original announcement. Still, there’s likely a number of individuals out there who are confused as to what all the fuss about or aren’t even fans of the JRPG genre.
If you are one of those people, perhaps the trailer above might convince you the Nintendo published title is worth your time. It’s a brief but comprehensive overview highlighting the eight travelers, path actions and the finer points of the battle system.
Have you got your hands on Octopath Traveler yet? Are you enjoying it or are you unsure if it’s right for you? Tell us below.
Dota Plus: — * Added a new Summer Terrain * Added a new Plus in-game prediction charm, grants you increasing amounts of shards for correct predictions in a row (10/20/30/40/50 for 1/2/3/4/5x, 50 for subsequent) * Added a new feature to let Plus members spectate their friends’ games live, seeing only what their friend’s team can see. You can join in any time the game is ongoing. * Added dozens of new Hero Quests * Playing Turbo games now grants half the normal hero xp for wins/losses, rather than none. * Added a new global Hero Trends page * You can now purchase some Tools for shards in the Plus Rewards store.
* Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause Plus guides to get stuck and not work. * Improved the item/ability/lane suggestions * Plus item suggestions now default to the first suggestion, with a button to examine alternatives. * The full popular items list is now shown even when you have a specific sequence selected. * Suggested items that have already been purchased are now greyed out, to improve readbility.
* Added the Plus Hero Badge to the Post Game screen. * The Profile screen now shows your Plus Hero Badge and Relics
General Changes: — * Ranked Roles: Added a new type of report function that can be used during the picking phase for players that don’t adhere to the selection they queued for. Does not consume normal reports. * Trivia: Added a button that lets you disable playing trivia sounds automatically.
* Turbo: Added an ability that lets you toggle the couriers auto deliver behavior. * Turbo: Courier will deliver gems and other shareable items picked up from your teammates. * Ctrl-alt clicking HP bars now correctly messages raw HP/Mana values of the target to the rest of your team. * Fixed a variety of consistency issues with alt-click modifier messages not being worded from the point of view of the person sending them. * Fixed a bug that caused AFK abandons to be assesed earlier than intended in cases where the player was AFK during the pick phase and was forced to a random hero. * Monkey King’s Disguise now uses the correct bounty rune model for 5 minute runes. * Minimap icons for Viper and Slardar have been updated to their remodeled verison. * Enabled custom minimap icons for Primal Split Brewlings * Added a custom minimap icon for Arc Warden’s Tempest Double * Refresher cast sound effect now audible to nearby teammates and enemies.
* Custom Games: Fixed the lobby list connection sort not working correctly * Custom Games addoninfo.txt: “HeroGuidesSupported” setting is now defaulted to truebv * Custom Games addoninfo.txt: Added a new setting “ShouldForceDefaultGuide” which will cause default_* files to be utilized (if none is defined it will use the default from the base game) * Custom Games Lua API: Linked several missing modifier properties * Custom Games Lua API: Added function “SetUseDefaultDOTARuneSpawnLogic” to let custom games opt into the current set of rune spawning rules (previously it was forcing usage of an older rule set ) * Custom Games Lua API: Added “SetPowerRuneSpawnInterval” and “SetBountyRuneSpawnInterval” functions to customize rune spawn intervals (works with either the current or backwards compatible ruleset of rune spawning) * Custom Games Lua API: Added several functions for asking for basic stats on units on the server “GetBaseAttackRange”, “GetStatusResistance”, “GetEvasion”, “GetSpellAmplification( bool bBaseOnly) ”
Metal Gear Movie Director Celebrating Series' Anniversary With Art
The long-anticipated Metal Gear Solid movie is still coming along slowly, but the director is signaling that the project is very much on his mind with a celebration of the series' 31st anniversary. He sent out a note marking the date, and promised he'll be dropping 31 days of fan art with "some surprises along the way."
In a tweet, director Jordan Vogt-Roberts provided a playful CODEC scene with Roy Campbell explaining that Snake has been sent to retrieve new information about the Metal Gear Solid movie. In the meantime, he's giving us a look at concept art he's created, though the message is careful to note that this shouldn't be interpreted as hints at the film itself.
"As a thank you to fans of this franchise, that bearded director, Jordan Vogt-Roberts, will be releasing concept art he created with a series of 'next-gen artists,'" reads the message. "For the next 31 days, we will be releasing 31 pieces of art. We must stress that this is, quote, 'fan art', and is not meant to represent what is or not in the forthcoming film."
❗️Follow and retweet this thread to celebrate the 31st anniversary of @HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN's METAL GEAR with 31 pieces of never before seen nano-machine-infused-artwork.
Tune in every day for new updates. Some surprises along the way...
Today's art is a piece by Nick Foreman, showing an iconic Metal Gear mech over a dimly lit scene. Thirty more are set to follow, and Vogt-Roberts may drop a hint or two about the film given his promise of surprises.
DAY 1 of #METALGEAR31st There’s many beautiful+insane+iconic images to come...but I want to start with this piece by Nick Foreman. The bond we formed via mechs reinforced that we should be loud w/ our love of this franchise as we may find friends & collaborators in the process. pic.twitter.com/5Zj4vRsu5T
As of last year, the director was reworking the script to make it more reminiscent of the work of Hideo Kojima. To that end, he even met with Kojima himself.
