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.

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!