MEE SQA Blog

Annual Bug - Update Copyright Statement

mensming — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 17:08:09 +0000

With the new year, it is time for me to write my annual bug. Like many products, ours includes a copyright statement of the format "© 2006–2008 Company Name" that is displayed to our users. Every year, I submit a bug to change the ending year.

The United States Copyright Office provides the following guidelines in the copyright basics PDF.

Form of Notice for Visually Perceptible Copies

The notice for visually perceptible copies should contain all the following three elements:

The symbol © (the letter C in a circle), or the word “Copyright,” or the abbreviation “Copr.”; and

The year of first publication of the work. In the case of compilations or derivative works incorporating previously published material, the year date of first publication of he compilation or derivative work is sufficient. The year date may be omitted where a pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work, with accompanying textual matter, if any, is reproduced in or on greeting cards, postcards, stationery, jewelry, dolls, toys, or any useful article; and

The name of the owner of copyright in the work, or an abbreviation by which the name can be recognized, or a generally known alternative designation of the owner.

By these guidelines, the second date is not required. However, sometimes it is better to go with the flow.

Michael Hunter’s “You Are Not Done Yet”

mensming — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 05:23:16 +0000

Over several months, Michael Hunter, in his blog on Dr. Dobb’s Portal, ran a series of posts with the title of "You Are Not Done Yet", each of which picked an area of a software deliverable and listed items that a tester needs to consider before considering themselves done testing it. This is a great series and I have referred numerous individuals to it time and again.

I recently wanted to refer someone to it and it took me a while to find the particular URL I needed. So, in order to save myself some time, here is the link to the table of contents to all of the articles in the series.

Browser Compatibility Matrix

mensming — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 02:48:54 +0000

Bruce McLeod recently posted on the topic of browser compatibility testing. This is an excellent post and I agree with Bruce’s analysis as to what to include and to why. It was also timely because Google’s Chrome had just gone out of beta which spurred me to reconsider what to include in my matrix.

What is lacking in Bruce’s post is an analysis of which operating systems should each browser be run on. This is especially important when considering Firefox which is often run on Windows, Linux and Mac. Taking Bruce’s list, I would modify it as follows:

Internet Explorer 7.x - Windows Vista
Internet Explorer 6.x - Windows XP
Firefox 3.0 - Windows XP or Windows Vista
Firefox 3.0 - Mac OS X
Safari 3.x - Mac OS X
Internet Explorer 8.x - Windows Vista
Google Chrome - Windows XP or Windows Vista

This is what I would put on my tier B list (after completing the list above):

Safari 3.x - Windows Vista
Firefox 3.0 - Linux

Sandboxie - An Alternative Environment for Installer Testing

mensming — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 22:51:09 +0000

While it has been a while since I needed to do installer testing, I recently researched a product that may be helpul in this task. Sandboxie strives to isolate programs from making changes to the rest of the operating system. The Sandboxie website describes it as:

Sandboxie runs your programs in an isolated space which prevents them from making permanent changes to other programs and data in your computer.

and lists as a benefit:

Windows Stays Lean: Prevent wear-and-tear in Windows by installing software into an isolated sandbox.

Sandboxie adds a third approach to installer testing. The first approach, to install over and over on the same instance, is expediant but not necessarily the most realistic. The second approach is to re-image / restore the system. When I first started, this meant using a program such as Ghost, now owned by Symantec. This approach has been supplanted using virtual machines. Virtual machines have made this process much faster.

Using Sandboxie, it is possible to have the cleanliness afforded by virtual machine or images plus the expediency of installing over and over on the same system. On a single system, multiple sandboxes could be created - one for each install test. This approach seems reasonable to me. It is still necessary to do installer testing on native system, but this can be done after many bugs our found and resolved.

Pricing is very reasonable for a commercial license. Check it out.

How to Verify that HTTP TRACE is Disabled

mensming — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 21:39:30 +0000

In the past, the TRACE command in the HTTP specification was considered a “safe” command. However, due to the information disclosed combined with other cross-domain exploits, TRACE is no longer considered safe. See US-CERT Vulnerability Note VU#867593 for more information.

I was asked how to verify that the TRACE command (in Apache) is disabled. The easiest way to do this is to use telnet. Launch telnet.

telnet hostname 80

Now, we can issue the TRACE command for a given url.

TRACE /index.html HTTP/1.0
If TRACE is enabled, you will get output that looks something like this:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2008 05:59:45 GMT Server: Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.3 with Suhosin-Patch Connection: close Content-Type: message/http


TRACE /index.html HTTP/1.0

Connection closed by foreign host.

Now, if TRACE is disabled, the output will look like this:

HTTP/1.1 405 Method Not Allowed Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2008 21:26:13 GMT Server: Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 with Suhosin-Patch Allow: Content-Length: 347 Connection: close Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1






405 Method Not Allowed



Method Not Allowed


The requested method TRACE is not allowed for the URL /index.html.




Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 with Suhosin-Patch Server at localhost Port 80




Connection closed by foreign host.

Installing Windows XP on a Compaq Presario C500

mensming — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 04:34:30 +0000

A little over a year ago, my mother purchased a Compaq Presario C500 laptop. Her needs for a laptop are primarily web browsing and other light processing. This machine is more than adequate for her needs. I was in town visiting right after she bought the machine and asked me to look at the machine because it was "so slow". I booted it up — it took a very long time. It came with Windows Vista and only 512MB of RAM. The fact that this machine was sold in this configuration is appalling. The amount of RAM in this machine makes it impossible to run Vista. I brought the machine home with me, purchased a copy of Windows XP and installed it on the laptop. It was a snappy machine. I shipped it back and Mom was pleased with her laptop.

A couple weeks ago, I got a call regarding this machine. A grandchild had used the machine and it was now running slow and the malware protection software was going nuts. Mom took it to a local shop to wipe it and reinstall Windows XP. This so called "professional" sent it back to her saying only Vista works with the machine and she should call HP to get a copy of Vista. Sigh. I told her to ship the machine back to me with the XP disk and I would get it back up and running. It took less than 5 minutes on the web to find the "trick" needed to install Windows XP on the machine. Below is what I did - just so I will know what to do next time this machine is shipped back to me.

Power up the machine
Press F10 to enter the BIOS setup
Go to the "System Configuration menu"
Set "SATA Native Support" to disable - this is the trick to install Windows XP. In fact the text on the screen says set this to disable to install "legacy" operating systems.
Check boot options under system configuration to make sure you can boot from CD.
Put Windows XP CD into drive
Press F10 to Save and Exit
Machine will reboot
Install Windows XP normally
Install all updates

I installed the following software to help my mother:

Install AVG Free
Install WinDefender
Install Firefox
Install Ad-Aware 2008

I now wanted to update all of the drivers and re-enable native SATA support. This ended up being a little more difficult - many of the solutions I found on the web did not work. With that caveat, this is what worked for me.

Visit the HP site and download all of the drivers for the correct mode. NOTE: When I did this, the SATA drivers were included in the set of files. Installing this package failed for me.
Install the HP drivers / software as directed
Search for "Intel Graphic Media Accelerator 950" and review the links on the Intel site. Search for a page with both the video driver download and an "INF Update" utility.
Install the video driver
Run the "INF Update" program
The SATA drivers downloaded from the HP site should now install without a problem. Install.
Reboot
Press F10 to enter the BIOS setup
Go to the "System Configuration menu"
Set "SATA Native Support" to enable
Press F10 to Save and Exit
Machine will reboot
Verify the setup

Hopefully, this write up will save you (or myself, next time I need to do this) some time.

New Job at Conenza, Looking to Hire

mensming — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 04:15:56 +0000

I have not posted for awhile. This is partially due to laziness. It is also due to me wrapping up my time at SiteScout. I found a new position at Conenza as Director of Product Development. I am excited about the company, the people, the product, the customers and the potential embodied in Conenza’s vision. During my search, I came across one of my new co-worker’s blog, Savan Kong - Seattle Startup Life. In his March 13, 2008 post, Savan describes life at Conenza. I have found what he said to be true.

We are looking to hire more people. See the Conenza Career Opportunities page for details. In particular, I am looking for a QA Engineer (or perhaps a lead). Please let me know if you are interested. We are also looking for Web & Middle Tier Architects, Senior Software Engineers, System Engineers and Product Managers.

Testing Perl Code - Suppressing Warnings

mensming — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:12:57 +0000

A lot of developers I have worked with have been amazed to see that I expand a suite of tests they developed by a factor of four. This is almost always because I am stressing error handling which is often not tested at all. Unfortunately, these tests will often cause many warnings. Sometimes I want to verify the exact warning. Other times it just clutters the output being sent to the screen. This can be very dangerous - it may lead someone running the test to believe there is a newly introduced bug.

Luckily, perl has a well defined mechanism for overriding the warn behavior. If you want to suppress warnings from being displayed in a section of tests do the following:

{ ... }



{

     local $SIG{__WARN__}=sub{}; #Temporarily suppress warnings




     # Insert test code here

}

Once the scoping ends, whatever warning handler was in effect before will be active again.

PNSQC CFP Deadline Extended - May 1, 2008

mensming — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 04:37:14 +0000

In a prior post, I mentioned the call for papers (CFP) for the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference (PNSQC). I received a notice last week that the deadline has been extended to May 1. More details can be found here.

VMWorld 2008 Call for Papers

mensming — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 03:15:11 +0000

One of the best conferences I have ever attended was the 2007 VMWorld conference held in San Francisco. Part of this was probably because I was new to VMWare. The quantity and quality of the information shared was uniformly high. For a vendor sponsored conference, this is saying a lot.

However, most of the sessions I attended were presented by VMWare employees. I would like to see more user based presentations. In particular, VMWare experiences outside of the standard server consolidation usage pattern. With this being said, VMWare has issued a Call for Papers for the 2008 VMWorld to be held in Las Vegas on September 15-18, 2008.