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!

I recently decided to return to my Aikido training after a near four year hiatus I took at the time my son was born.  This has led to numerous conversations with friends and family who know very little, if anything about Aikido.  The easiest way to explain this martial art used to be mentioning that it was the style Steven Seagal used in his movies.  Unfortunately, saying that today almost guarantees receiving questionable looks and/or snide remarks.

And that’s very unfortunate indeed.  You see, back before Steven Seagal starred in his own films, had an album, or his energy drink, his complete focus was on the practice and instruction of Aikido.  Very few  realize that Steven Seagal IS a master Aikido practioner.  Thanks to sites like YouTube, previously unseen footage of Seagal, complete with a wild curly head of hair, practicing Aikido can now be viewed.  His technique is hypnotic, extremely fast and very effective.

It was his proficiency in this art that grabbed Hollywood’s attention in the early 80’s and made him an action star.  Thanks to movies like Above the Law, Hard to Kill, Out for Justice, Marked for Death, and Under Siege, Aikido was introduced to mainstream audiences.  In my opinion, the adoption of Aikido by many westerners was largely based on the influence of Seagal’s early films. Or at least, that’s what perked my interest in the art.

Unfortunately, it appears that his movie career may have been his undoing.   Today, the once prominent Aikido master is nothing more than a punch line for most.  Very Sad.

Here are some videos of “Aikido” Steven Seagal

You see, in an attempt to squeeze every last dollar from the consuming public, Apple has handicapped the iPhone so it cannot handle synchronization from multiple calendars. To make matters worse, Apple has chosen not to release the calendar APIs to third party developers, which destroys any hope of a third party solution to calendar synchronization.
Apple’s attempts to justify this is nothing more than eyewash as it’s plainly clear to see this is nothing more than a marketing initiative, not a technical problem. Apple’s MobileMe service promises to synchronize all your calendars for a $99 annual fee. In other words, out of box iPhone calendar synchronization is possible, but it will cost you $99 to activate. How the consuming public puts up with this type of behavior still gets me. No thanks, Apple. I’ll figure out a way to do this on my own.

My work calendar is natively synchronized to the iPhone via its exchange synchronization. But I also have a personal calendar I use at home that I’d like to merge with my iPhone calendar.  Googling “iPhone multiple calendar synchronization “ returns a myriad of links regarding the problem, with very few solutions. The solutions I was able to find were rather hoaky or required syncing from a web service, such as Plaxo or Funambol. We’ll talk more about Funambol in a bit.

I realized fairly quickly that I needed to evaluate this problem from a different angle and then it hit me! Because the iPhone was already syncing with my work’s Exchange server, the simplest solution was to sync my work exchange calendar with my personal calendar. After a lot of reading and research I finally stumbled onto the underlying answer: SyncML. SyncML is a standard to sync PIM information between devices.

Here’s what you need to get it to work – or at least what I did:

• A home server with Internet access – I used my existing Gentoo Linux server.
• A groupware solution that supports SyncML – Since it had an existing package for my Linux distro,  I chose eGroupware as my server solution. Funambol is another good option since they make their server software available to download for free.
• A client that supports SyncML – I used the free Funambol client plug-in for Outlook.

After installing the Funambol client to all my outlook clients (work, home computer, personal laptop) I configured them to sync to my Gentoo server on a regular schedule over an encrypted SSL channel. End result? No matter which computer I’m using, my Outlook calendars are synced… and as an added bonus, so is my iPhone.