Apparently, the issue is only present on Toshiba A215 models running 64bit Windows 7 with 4GB of memory. Toshiba is aware of the issue, although it is unknown as to if or when there will be a patch/update released to correct this. As a workaround, they are recommending users either downgrade their memory to 3GB or place their computer in hibernate instead of standby.

While I find this issue incredibly annoying, I’m not sure I want to bumped down my memory. My laptop has two 2 GB DIMMS, so unless I go out and purchase a 1GB stick of memory, I’m actually downgrading to 2GBs.   I’m not sure this is something I could live with given I routinely run virtual machines on my laptop and need as much memory as possible.

The hibernation work around is also out for me since I experience a hard lock a few minutes after coming out of hibernation.  The issue has been reported across other devices and doesn’t seem to be related to the standby issue.  According to Microsoft, it’s a known issue of bad drivers.  I have yet to test this, but plan on loading all the latest Windows 7 drivers for my laptop today to see if it makes a difference.

I guess the good news is the problem has been identified and there are other users experiencing the exact same issue, so hopefully they’ll release an update.

UPDATE 1/12/09: Just a quick follow-up on the Windows 7 hibernation issues I was experiencing.  I was able to correct these by downloading and installing all the latest Windows 7 drivers for my laptop.  Thankfully, I’m now able to use the hibernation work-around to get by the annoying standby audio/video issues.

I looked up the error message and was directed to this Microsoft article which I followed to the letter.  Unfortunately, it did little but blow my existing email profiles out of the water.  After setting up a new profile, I still continue getting the error.

After a bit more searching I came across the fix on a personal blog site (sorry, I no longer have the link).  The fix is to start Outlook from the run box by typing:

outlook.exe /resetnavpane

I have no idea what causes this issue and still experience it from time to time.  Fortunately, this fix seems to repair it every time.

I was able to narrow down the source to my home Linux server and a quick Wireshark packet analysis showed my email service as the culprit.    This led me to the syslog where I found this message:

reject: MAIL from localhost[127.0.0.1]: 552 5.3.4 Message size exceeds fixed limit;

Apparently, the Postfix mail system caps messages at 10MB.  By chance, I had two messages on the remote server with large attachments.  Because of this, my home server would start downloading these files, but fail once it had reached the 10MB limit.  Unfortunately, it would then try again at 10 second intervals.  This caused the perfect bandwidth storm — and potentially a mailbox storm for the sender who would have received a rejected message after each failed attempt.  (Apology letter already sent )

The fix was relatively simple.  I added the following line to my Postfix main.cf file, which removes the size limit for messages all together:

message_size_limit = 0

A quick restart of Postfix loaded the new config and a final temporary bandwidth meter spiked subsequently occurred while the files were downloaded.

This time around the install went much smoother and everything seemed to be detected and operational. I’m really digging the new interface including the taskbar, which I wasn’t too sure about at first.

All was chugging along well until my laptop went into standby. When it woke up, I discovered there was no sound. The systray speaker icon had a red X and an error message “No Audio Output Device is Installed” appeared when I hovered the cursor over it.

A reboot “fixes” the issue until the laptop goes into standby again. A few Google searches have turned up similar issues on other versions of Windows, but no solid fixes.

I tried a few different things, including updating the bios and installing the latest Realtek Windows 7 drivers. Both upgrades went well, but ultimately did not correct the problem.

At this point I’m at a loss. It’s almost as if the audio is shut down at standby, and Windows “forgets” to turn it back on during the wake up process. Misery loves company, so feel free to post in the comments if you’ve experienced similiar issues, or better yet, if you have a fix.

UPDATE:  Toshiba has released a number of BIOS updates to correct this issue (I’ve confirmed the fix works on my laptop).   Kudos to Toshiba for releasing a fix for this problem!

I’ve used rsync successfully for many years, but recently I started experiencing a “memory allocation error(12)” while syncing data between my Linux system and a Windows Vista system, with the Linux system as the source.  Using the Vista system as the source did not result in this error.

I searched all over the web looking for a resolution, but information was minimal and the best answer I found was to try splitting the  rsync command into smaller chunks. Unfortunately, that didn’t work.

I noticed when this error occurred, the shares on the Vista system became inaccessible with a reboot of Windows the only workaround. This led me to investigate the event logs on the Vista machine. Lo and behold, there in the system log I see this:

“The server was unable to allocate from the system nonpaged pool because the server reached the configured limit for nonpaged pool allocations.”

A quick online search for this error message indicated it was caused by a problem with SMBv2, which is the default version of SMB used  in Windows Vista. However, you can force Vista to use SMBv1 by making a simple registry change.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE ->SYSTEM ->CurrentControlSet ->Services ->LanmanServer -> Parameters and create a DWORD called SMB2 with a value of 0.

With the value set in the registry and a quick reboot of Vista, rsync was able to complete successfully.

Apple has released an update (OS 3.0.1) through iTunes to patch this vulnerability.  Unfortunately, because iTunes checks for updates on a weekly basis, you’ll need to manually tell iTunes to check for new updates in order to get it.  This can be done by clicking the “Check for Update” button on the Summary page for your phone in iTunes.

It should be noted that while the vulnerability on the iPhone has drawn most of the attention from the news media, the vulnerability is not limited to the iPhone and is actually related to the way SMS is implemented.  Other phones (I’m looking at you, Windows Mobile) could be vulnerable as well.

Core ran Gentoo on a retired HP Vectra VL420 desktop which I salvaged from one of my previous employers.  The PIII 800 was sufficient to run all the necessary services and apps I needed like email, web server, and general file storage.  It ran cool and quiet and only drew about 44kw of power while running, but after 4+ years of silently serving the family, I felt it was time to upgrade to a newer server.

[core]

The new server needed to be quiet and power efficient.  I ended up going with an Intel e5200 cpu with 4GB ram running on an ECS board.   A 1TB Western Digital Green hard drive dedicated to storage (system is on it’s own drive) and a Seasonic 300watt power supply (80plus certified) rounded out the parts list.  Total cost was about $300 including the basic case from CompUSA.

It took 2 hours to build the server from scratch and about 2 days to install an instance of 64bit Gentoo.  I contemplated installing a different Linux distribution on the new server, but at the last minute I just couldn’t give up the control I have with Gentoo.

‘Serenity’ was born.  A week later, I had finished migrating all our, email and other data over to Serenity so Core officially went into retirement.

[serenity]

Performance-wise, Serenity kicks Core to the curb.  I don’t have any formal benchmarks between the two to post, but I certainly saw a huge performance gain while compiling operating system.  As per the power efficiency, I’m right where I wanted to be.  Core was pulling a pretty stable 44w, while Serenity is pulling anywhere between 41w and 44w.  Not bad for a much more powerful server!

Expect posts mainly dealing with my various hobbies and interests with the humorous picture or video thrown in from time to time. In keeping with the subtitle of the page, don’t expect a post every day. While I’ll make an attempt to post periodically, let’s be realistic. No one gives a hoot about what I did today and what not.  The goal is to post items that may be helpful to others with similar interests. I’ve learned a lot from the Internet. It’s time to give some knowledge back.

So pardon the dust around the site for the next couple of weeks. This is going to be slow to start, but hopefully we’ll build momentum and continue it for a long time to come.