Category: Information

Crucial CT16G4SFD824A RAM works in the Synology DS1819+

[Update 2021-02-06] I finally got around to purchasing a new 16GB stick, and I’m now successfully running 32GB in my Synology 1819+.

[Update 2020-04-20] My Synology has been responding slowly during FCPX edits, so I decided to revisit the RAM that I purchased. It turns out that one of the two 16GB sticks must be bad because I tried the 16+4 stick setup as mentioned earlier, and it wouldn’t boot. I tried the other 16GB stick and it booted quickly. Annoying. The problem was a bad stick all along.

Below is the original post from 18 Dec 2019.

I recently bought two sticks of Crucial 16GB DDR4-2400 SODIMM 1.2V CL17 non-ECC RAM (CT16G4SFD824A) hoping that I could upgrade my Synology DS1819+ from 4GB to 32GB. Unfortunately, when both sticks of the RAM are installed, the NAS doesn’t boot, and instead simply blinks the power light indefinitely (even after waiting 45min).

I did find that when I installed one 16GB stick alongside the existing 4GB stick, the system would boot, recognize the stick and report 20GB of RAM, but it also gave the warning about non-Synology RAM. I’m guessing this is because the RAM I purchased was non-ECC, whereas the Synology RAM is ECC.

For now, I’m returning to my 4GB configuration.

adif.plugin = Korg USB MIDI driver

[Update 2019-12-14] According to the macOS Catalina support for KORG/VOX Products article on the Korg website, the default Apple driver with macOS Catalina will support the device. The article gives instructions for removing the old driver.

Background

macOS Mojave is giving warnings about 32-bit software as the next version, which is macOS Catalina, will no longer support 32-bit software.

I’ve been able to determine what software relates to each warning except for one – “adif.plugin”. No amount of Googling helped (I don’t have any amateur radio software installed), but I finally figured it out today. To help others who might be Googling for this, here is the answer.

It belongs to the Korg USB MIDI driver that was installed to provide MIDI support to some piece of Korg hardware. In my case, it was the nanoKONTROL2, but the driver is generic and used for a lot of their hardware.

The last update for macOS (as of this writing) is version 1.2.5 r2 released on 2019-02-21. I don’t know if there are plans for a new version, but hopefully anyone searching for “adif.plugin” will now know that it is used for Korg USB MIDI.

If you want to verify this yourself, you can with these steps.

  1. Open Finder
  2. Go to the /System/Library/Extensions/adif.plugin folder using the Go > Go to Folder menu, or ⇧⌘G keyboard shortcut.
  3. Open the context menu for adif.plugin (right click or Ctrl-click) and select Show Package Contents.
  4. Inside the Contents folder will be an Info.plist file. Hit the space-bar to preview the file. You will see references to Korg USB MIDI listed.

McDSP VENUE 6.4.0.15+ plug-ins don’t work on Avid S3L-X

I tried installing the latest versions of the McDSP VENUE plug-ins on my Avid S3L-X today, but they don’t work. The announcement says they are for the S6L, but all past versions have also worked on the S3L, so I’d hoped they would continue working. Alas, they don’t. Stick with the older 6.3.0.11 release.

The specific behaviour I see is that the plug-ins install successfully, as I’d expect, but when I open a show file using one of the plug-ins, they appear with the yellow/red triangle and are listed as “not available”. Plug-ins that I don’t have loaded in the current show file don’t even appear in the tree of available plug-ins, although they are listed on the plug-ins install page.

To get back to working plugins, I downgraded all plug-ins to the previously working versions in the VENUE 6.3.0.11 bundle installer.

[Update: 2020-12-19] I updated the VENUE link with one provided to me by McDSP when I upgraded individual plug-ins to the Everything Pack v6.4 HD.

[Update: 2019-03-03] McDSP released a new VENUE S6L Installer v6.5.0.12. I tried it, and it doesn’t work. They continue not listing support for the S3L, so I’m saddened, but not surprised.

[Update: 2018-10-16] I fixed the link to the VENUE 6.3.0.11 bundle installer. I had incorrectly pointed to a nonexistent 6.4.0.11 version.

[Update: 2018-09-06] McDSP released a new 6.5.0.3 plug-in version for Windows that supports iLok Cloud. I tried this version (via manual install), and it also does not work.

[Update: 2018-09-04] I noticed today that the term “S3L” was removed from the VENUE installer on the McDSP Downloads page, and only the S6L is listed as supported for the 6.4.0.15 release. I’m guessing they have unofficially dropped support for the S3L, although I can’t find any other confirmation to that effect.

[Update: 2018-09-01] I tried manually downloading and installing the 6.4.0.14 version of the EC300 and NR800 plug-ins on a separate Windows machine, copied the installed plug-ins to a USB stick, and installed them on my S3L-X. This also did not work. (I’ve successfully used this method in the past to install the SA-2 Dialog Processor before it was included in the VENUE bundle installer, so I know it works.)

My Audioquest DragonFly Red works on macOS High Sierra again!

I don’t know what Apple is doing with audio timing in macOS High Sierra, but they have serious quality control issues in this area. See my post on Avid S3L-X, AVB, and macOS High Sierra for other troubles I’m having.

When Apple released 10.13.2, my Audioquest DragonFly Red started having strange issues. Similar to the clicking issue with AVB, I was having strange timing issues that sounded like phasing, almost like the individual waveform samples were being triggered at a different clock rate than the audio device. It wasn’t constant, but frequent and annoying enough that I gave up using the device. I wasn’t the only one having the issue.

In any case, 10.13.4 fixed my Dragonfly issues, so I’m again happy.

Avid VENUE S3L-X, AVB, and macOS High Sierra

Long story short, if you need use an Avid S3L-X with macOS and playback via AVB, do not install macOS High Sierra. macOS Mojave works fine, as does the older macOS Sierra, but High Sierra has clocking issues that manifest as constant clicking during playback, rendering the audio unusable.

If all you need to do is record via AVB, macOS High Sierra works without issue.

References

Note, all versions of macOS High Sierra through 10.13.6 are affected.

[Update 2019-03-03] I continue to have no problems with macOS Mojave (currently 10.14.3).
[Update 2018-09-29] Preliminary testing with macOS Mojave (10.14.0) and 64-channel recording and playback indicates that the AVB problems have been fixed.
[Update 2018-07-28] Increased affected versions to 10.13.6.
[Update 2018-06-05] Increased affected versions to 10.13.5.
[Update 2018-03-31] Increased affected versions to 10.13.4.

Moving to OS X Lion…

I decided to take the plunge into OS X Lion. Based on previous experience with .0 releases of OS X, you’d think I’d know better than to install another one, but alas I simply couldn’t wait. 🙂 This article will chronicle surprises and workarounds I’ve dealt with along the way.

I have a few different machines at home:
– Late 2007 13″ MacBook
– Late 2009 27″ iMac
– Early 2010 13″ MacBook Pro

The MacBook Pro is provided by my employer, so it won’t be touched.

the iMac

I started with the iMac. Download of Lion was smooth with decent bandwidth. It took a few hours, but I figured it would. Keeping the non-technical user in mind, I figured that Apple would take the approach of removing the installer once it was installed, so I backed up the disk image (http://osxdaily.com/2011/06/08/create-burn-bootable-mac-os-x-lion-install-disc/) to my NAS before installing. Good thing I did as the installer was removed. Install was smooth. No issues.

SSL Issues
The only major issue I ran into was that SSL wasn’t working in Chrome or Safari, which also caused problems for iTunes and the App Store. I run a Squid proxy at home, and even though I don’t have SSL going through the proxy (it goes DIRECT instead), I still had issues. Turns out I needed to check the “Automatic Proxy Configuration” box as well (https://discussions.apple.com/message/15663396#15663396) in the Network Settings, something not previously needed.

Multiple Desktop Screens
The one minor issue I had was that I previously had four desktops, configured through spaces, but I couldn’t figure out how to do the same in Lion. Completely by accident, I figured out that when I was in the Mission Control environment, placing my mouse pointer on the right edge of the screen near the top, caused a plus (+) icon thingy to pop out. Clicking it allowed me to create more desktops. I later found in the Keyboard section of the System Preferences that I could change the keyboard shortcuts to flip between screens. My old settings were carried over from Snow Leopard, so no changes were necessary.

the MacBook

Last night, I stayed up until 03.00 working on the MacBook. Ha!

Knowing that Lion was coming out soon, I figured this would be a good time to also add some RAM and upgrade the HDD in the machine. I planned to go from 2G to 4G of memory, but unfortunately one of the memory sticks I bought seems to be bad as the Mac beeps in a very upset manner, and Google tells me that the particular beep sequence means the memory isn’t passing checks. So, I’m only at 3G instead of 4G.

For the HDD, I choose the Seagate Momentus XT 320G as it has 4G of MLC cache added on, and the drive will cache frequently used things on its own. I

Interesting videos from the TED Women 2010 conference

In my day-to-day job, I work for the most part with men. I don’t mind, but from time-to-time I wonder and think about why there are so few women in my industry. As my interest has grown, I’ve started working with an internal women’s group to support other women in my office in their career and professional growth.

I’m also a long-time TED viewer, and recently got the opportunity to watch a live stream of the TEDWomen Conference through the women’s group. Several of the videos were very intriguing, but only a few were streamed. Looking more through the TED site, I’ve found a couple more that I felt were worth sharing with a larger audience.

Sheryl Sandberg: Why we have too few women leaders
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg looks at why a smaller percentage of women than men reach the top of their professions — and offers 3 powerful pieces of advice to women aiming for the C-suite.
http://www.ted.com/talks/sheryl_sandberg_why_we_have_too_few_women_leaders.html

Halla Tomasdottir: A feminine response to Iceland’s financial crash
Halla Tomasdottir managed to take her company Audur Capital through the eye of the financial storm in Iceland by applying 5 traditionally “feminine” values to financial services. At TEDWomen, she talks about these values and the importance of balance.
http://www.ted.com/talks/halla_tomasdottir.html

– k8

The absolute minimum IPC Android Service I could make work

I’m not a Java programmer by trade, but I do dabble now and again with it. As such, I’m kind of slow when it comes to solving coding problems for the first time.

I’m working on an Android project where I want to:
  • do some processing and background downloads of HTML data in a Service,
  • communicate to the service using IPC
  • build the IPC interface with AIDL
Mostly for my own personal reference in the future, I’ve typed up the bare minimum of code I need to get this going again in the future. Because Blogger doesn’t have the nicest of interfaces for editing this post, I’ve included it in my Snippets page.

Getting Freenet running on Nexenta

THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS. I don’t have full working instructions yet 🙁

I had a few problems getting Freenet 0.7.5 running on my Nexenta 2.0 Server installation, so I thought I would mention what I did.

Summary

To get Freenet running under Nexenta 2.0 Server, you need the following:

Freenet 0.7.5 wrapper
http://downloads.freenetproject.org/alpha/installer/freenet07.tar.gz
Freenet 01222 build
http://freenet.googlecode.com/files/freenet-build01222.jar
apt-get installed packages
java-runtime-headless nevada-compat

Instructions:

  1. Install the packages with apt-get.
  2. Extract the freenet07.tar.gz package somewhere.
  3. Copy the freenet-build01222.jar file into the extracted package directory where the run.sh file is. Name it freenet.jar
  4. Start the software with run.sh start.
  5. Try to figure out the rest because I haven’t had time.

Detail

I run my Nexenta server in a closet with no keyboard or monitor attached, so getting Freenet running in a headless mode was desirable. Using the headless system instructions from the “Linux and other Unix-like systems” section Freenet Download page, I got the software installed.

wget http://downloads.freenetproject.org/alpha/installer/freenet07.tar.gz
cat freenet07.tar.gz | gzip -d | tar xv
cd freenet
./run.sh start

When I called the run.sh script though, it failed as I didn’t have Java installed.

$ ./run.sh  start
Enabling the auto-update feature
Detecting tcp-ports availability...
Can not bind fproxy to 8888: let's try 8889 instead.
/opt/freenet/0.7/bin/1run.sh: line 49: java: command not found
/opt/freenet/0.7/bin/1run.sh: line 53: java: command not found
Can not bind any socket on 127.0.0.1:
              IT SHOULDN'T HAPPEN!

Make sure your loopback interface is properly configured. Delete Freenet's directory and retry.

So, I installed the java-runtime-headless package. It in turn pulled in a few extra packages and recommended a few more. I ignored the recommendations.

$ sudo apt-get install java-runtime-headless

Trying to run it again, I got a new error.

$ ./run.sh  start
Unable to locate any of the following binaries:
/opt/freenet/0.7/./bin/wrapper-solaris-i86pc-32
/opt/freenet/0.7/./bin/wrapper
Starting Freenet 0.7...

Let's start the node without the wrapper, you'll have to daemonize it yourself.
dl failure on line 685Error: failed /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.10/jre/lib/i386/client/libjvm.so, because ld.so.1: java: fatal: libCrun.so.1: open failed: No such file or directory

After some searching on Google, I found an article entitled Installing JDK6 in Nexenta Zone that mentioning the need for the nevada-compt to fix the libCrun.so.1 error. So, I installed that package.

$ sudo apt-get install nexenta-compat

Trying to run it again, I got a new error.

$ ./run.sh  start
Unable to locate any of the following binaries:
/opt/freenet/0.7/./bin/wrapper-solaris-i86pc-32
/opt/freenet/0.7/./bin/wrapper
Starting Freenet 0.7...

Let's start the node without the wrapper, you'll have to daemonize it yourself.
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: freenet/node/NodeStarter
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: freenet.node.NodeStarter
      at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:200)
      at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
      at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:188)
      at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:307)
      at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:301)
      at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:252)
      at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClassInternal(ClassLoader.java:320)
Could not find the main class: freenet.node.NodeStarter.  Program will exit.

Argh… After poking around I now figured out that the actual Freenet software wasn’t included in the freenet07.tar.gz package. Looking at the files provided on http://freenet.googlecode.com/ I found the freenet-build01222.jar that looked interesting. I downloaded a copy to the same directory where the run.sh script was.

$ wget http://freenet.googlecode.com/files/freenet-build01222.jar -O freenet.jar

Trying to run it again, I got a new error.

$ ./run.sh startUnable to locate any of the following binaries:
/opt/freenet/0.7/./bin/wrapper-solaris-i86pc-32
/opt/freenet/0.7/./bin/wrapper
Starting Freenet 0.7...

Let's start the node without the wrapper, you'll have to daemonize it yourself.
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/tanukisoftware/wrapper/WrapperListener
      at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method)
      at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:621)
      at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:124)
      at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(URLClassLoader.java:260)
      at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$000(URLClassLoader.java:56)
      at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:195)
      at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
      at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:188)
      at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:307)
      at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:301)
      at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:252)
      at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClassInternal(ClassLoader.java:320)
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.tanukisoftware.wrapper.WrapperListener
      at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:200)
      at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
      at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:188)
      at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:307)
      at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:301)
      at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:252)
      at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClassInternal(ClassLoader.java:320)
      ... 12 more
Could not find the main class: freenet.node.NodeStarter.  Program will exit.

I’m giving up for the moment. I’ve got other work to do, so I’ll put this on the back burner. Maybe somebody else can figure this out.