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I Hate Linux

Sunday, December 30, 2007

How many tabs is too many?

Ever wonder how many console tabs the Windows Home Server Console can display?

So did I... so I built a few extra projects and deployed them to my Home Server:

Projects Dir

The answer is... 100 and believe it or not... that's a bad thing!

100 Tabs

As much as I would like to see such wide spread WHS development that there were 100+ add-ins to choose from... it'll likely be a long while before we see anything like that ... it's also probably unlikely that when that day happens very many people (if any) will install that many add-ins... but for those that do an obvious problem will hit them hard... some tabs not being displayed.

Look again at the above image of all of the tabs being scrolled through. Missing a few important things isn't it?

When tabs are loaded, the assemblies they are contained within are loaded in alphabetical order and once the limit is reached, no new tabs are added to the Console and only warnings are added to the event HomeServerConsole log file:

[1]071230.131656.5468: Init: Error: Too many tabs - extra is ignored
[1]071230.131656.5625: Init: Error: Too many settings - extra is ignored
[1]071230.131656.6562: Init: Error: Too many tabs - extra is ignored
[1]071230.131656.7031: Init: Error: Too many settings - extra is ignored
[1]071230.131656.7656: Init: Error: Too many tabs - extra is ignored
[1]071230.131656.8906: Init: Error: Too many settings - extra is ignored
[1]071230.131657.4218: Init: Error: Too many tabs - extra is ignored
[1]071230.131657.6250: Init: Error: Too many settings - extra is ignored
[1]071230.131657.7031: Init: Error: Too many settings - extra is ignored

This is an interesting non-graceful failure as it is very possible that after a user adds too many tabs to their Home Server Console... they will not be able to easily remove an add-in or two to bring them back under the 100 tab limit using the Add-ins Settings page as they ordinarily would as it is very possible that it would be one of the first victims of this limit... after all it is located in the HomeServerConsoleTab.Storage.dll assembly which is pretty late in the alphabet

For reference, here is how the same non-graceful failure appears in the Settings dialog:

Settings - Start

Settings - End

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posted by Brendan at 2:43 PM

2 Comments:

  • The limit of 100 AddIn-Tabs/Settings is even hardcoded. Use Reflector to look at the code in:

    public void FindTabs(int tabWidth, int tabHeight, int settingsWidth, int settingsHeight);

    Declaring Type: Microsoft.HomeServer.Controls.TabFinder
    Assembly: HomeServerControls, Version=6.0.0.0

    --
    Andreas M.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 6:28 AM  

  • I'd encountered that value a while back as well (although avoid using Reflector against the WHS software as often as possible)... I still wanted to see how the failure would occur and confirm it through a surplus of tabs.

    By Blogger Brendan, at 2:26 PM  

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