Wednesday, January 19, 2011

The system clock may run fast when you use the ACPI power management timer as a high-resolution counter on Windows 2000, XP and 2003

The system clock may run fast when you use the ACPI power management timer as a high-resolution counter on Windows 2000-based, Windows XP-based, and Windows Server 2003-based computers.


SYMPTOMS

When a Microsoft Windows 2000-based, Windows XP-based, or Windows Server 2003-based computer runs in Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) mode and uses a high-resolution counter, the system clock may run fast.


CAUSE


This issue may occur if the time increment in a program changes and the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) cannot measure the time interval between successive clock interrupts. This causes the system clock to lose a short period of time. When the HAL misses many time-interval measurements in quick succession, the time loss may be significant.

Note

· This issue may occur on a computer that is running Halaacpi.dll (UP, ACPI, or APIC), Halmacpi.dll (MP, ACPI, or APIC), and Halmps.dll (MP, non-ACPI, or legacy) because these DLLs use the Real Time Clock (RTC) to generate clock interrupts.

· This issue does not occur on a computer that is running Halacpi.dll (UP, ACPI, or PIC) or Halx86.dll (UP, non-ACPI, or legacy) because these DLLs use the 8254 Programmable Interval Timer (PIT) to generate clock interrupts.


WORKAROUND


To work around this issue, use one of the following methods:

· Modify the program to call the timeBeginPeriod function at startup and to call the timeEndPeriod function on exit. This workaround eliminates repeated time increment changes.

· Modify the program to use the QueryPerformanceCounter() API.

Link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/821893

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Teamviewer @ Ubuntu - run it as a service

You could try to make shell script like this one:

#!/bin/bash
/usr/bin/teamviewer

or whatever is the path to the teamviewer executable save it to:

/etc/init.d/teamviewer_start

and change permission:

chmod 777 /etc/init.d/teamviewer_start

create link:

ln -s /etc/init.d/teamviewer_start /etc/rc5.d/S99teamviewer

and it should start with the machine regardless of the fact that no user has yet done login.

Remark:
/etc/rc5.d/ is the directory where startup scripts are located (default init level is 5, that's why it is named rc5.d). Scripts whose names start with capital "S" are executed in alphabetical order, starting from S00 to S99.
Following the analogy, the directory /etc/rc0.d/ contains stop script executed when machine goes down. Their names begin with "K" starting from K00 to K99.

How to change your default locale on Ubuntu Linux

To check which locale you currently have as your default just run: locale

Changing the default locale is a little different on Ubuntu compared to most Linux distros, these are the steps we needed to go through to get it changed:

Add the locale to the list of 'supported locales'
Edit /var/lib/locales/supported.d/local and add the following line:
en_GB ISO-8859-1

Regenerate the supported locales
Run sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

Change the default locale
Edit /etc/environment and ensure the LANG and LANGUAGE lines read as follows:
LANG="en_GB"
LANGUAGE="en_GB:en"


Reboot!

Rerun locale to check that your default locale is now en_GB

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