Trader's Little Helper

[roann]

Sorry for being so late with a reply, but I wasn't at home for a couple of days.

Originally Posted by YokohamaJ

... ***EVERY*** time I try to fix sbes I always get this error message:

Preview of changes:
-------------------
C:\WINDOWS\shntool.exe (2796): *** fork: can't reserve memory for stack 0x40000 - 0x240000, Win32 error 487
3 [main] shntool 2704 sync_with_child: child 2796(0x6C4) died before initialization with status code 0x1
2545 [main] shntool 2704 sync_with_child: *** child state waiting for longjmp
shntoold: fork: Resource temorarily unavailable
Error: error while forking child process, see above ...

When fixing SBEs Trader's Little Helper acts as a frontend for the command-line application shntool, i.e. TLH tells shntool what to do, and then just catches the output of shntool. So that error message is an error message shntool creates, not TLH. If you would use shntool directly from the command-line (no TLH involved) you would get the same message. The problem is that Windows OS refuses to give shntool the memory needed. AFAIK this sometimes happens on WinXP SP2.

A way to get this "fixed"? Until now *nobody* could tell me what to do. Maybe someone on this list has the magic answer??? A few users reported that it helps to run TLH or the subcomponents shntool.exe, shorten.exe, cygwin1.dll in an older DOS compatibility mode WinXP offers. On other machines that doesn't help at all. Important: all the files "shntool.exe", "shorten.exe", "cygwin1.dll" have to be located in your *Windows* directory, and there have to be no other instances of these files (in Windows\system32, for example).

Originally Posted by YokohamaJ

... ***AND*** every time I try to verify ffps, I always get this error message on every track:

Line 001: file'gd86-12-31d1t01.flac'failed verification (checksum in metadata block does match, but md5 checksum does not match) ...

When you encode a wav file to flac format by default a checksum of the *wav* audio data (the so called flac fingerprint) is stored in the header of the flac file. *All* programs that create a ffp from an existing flac file just read that fingerprint from the flac file header. When verifying a ffp file TLH not only compares the ffp in the checksum file with the one in the flac file header, but additionally re-calculates the checksum from the *decoded* audio data and compares it against the other ones. This is the only way to *really* check if your flac file isn't corrupt.

The error message tells you that the checksum given in the checksum file matches the one in the flac file header, but if you decode flac audio back to wav audio and re-calculate the checksum of the wav audio, this checksum does not match. In other words, the audio data of the flac file has become corrupt, or the header of the flac file has become corrupt *before* someone made the ffp file.

It's strange that it occurs *every* time you try to verify flac fingerprints. Because shntool is involved in the verification process the reason could be the same as for the memory problem described in (1) ... but if so there should be the same error message ... You can run a test to see if the problem in (1) is the reason or if your flac files are really corrupt: take a wav file, then use flac frontend to encode it to flac format and to create a ffp file. Then use TLH to verify that ffp file. If there are no errors reported by TLH it's likely that your Dead files are corrupt ...

Originally Posted by YokohamaJ

... The other thing I've noticed is that when verifying md5s, especially on dvd-rs in my burner, it seems to take TLH much longer than mkwACT to get the job done. ...

Yeah, I know, it was stated earlier in this thread ... somewhere (still don't know where) during the process of creating/verifying a md5 checksum Trader's Little Helper slows down more and more (especially when working on DVDs). This will be fixed with the next release of TLH.

Robert

[YokohamaJ]

Thanks so much again for taking the time to give such a detailed reply to my questions/problems. I'll be sure to let you know if I have any luck in setting things straight.
Joel

[snocko]

All of a sudden I am no longer able to decode shn files. It worked as of just a few days ago but suddenly stopped working. It still works fine for flac files. I have the most recent version of tlh and I'm using Windows XP. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Shawn

[roann]

Originally Posted by snocko

All of a sudden I am no longer able to decode shn files. It worked as of just a few days ago but suddenly stopped working. It still works fine for flac files. I have the most recent version of tlh and I'm using Windows XP. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Shawn

Shawn, this is a little too much information ... what *exactly* happens when you try to decode shn files?

[snocko]

It is telling me that the file is possibly truncated or corrupt. Thanks, Shawn

[roann]

Originally Posted by snocko

It is telling me that the file is possibly truncated or corrupt. Thanks, Shawn

Well, sad but true, the file *is* truncated/corrupt. In your previous post you wrote "It worked as of just a few days ago but suddenly stopped working. It still works fine for flac files.". Sounded like Trader's Little Helper crashes when processing shn files, or refuses to process them ...

[Sid]

Originally Posted by roann

Well, sad but true, the file *is* truncated/corrupt. In your previous post you wrote "It worked as of just a few days ago but suddenly stopped working. It still works fine for flac files.". Sounded like Trader's Little Helper crashes when processing shn files, or refuses to process them ...

Hi roann
This is odd
about 1week ago my tlh started acting funny as well...
As of this morning it will not:
Check for sbe's---error
Fix sbe's---error
Create md5 fp[works but does not generate fingerprint]

I'm running XP Media edition
I have auto updates "off" & I have not updated in mo's

Later on today I'll post some screen shots

more later

[Sid]

V - 101 Beta-1 (72)
[I can't use the new version at all - many errors]

This version has worked fine until this past week
See screen shots

note:
the md5fp no longer generates fp's.....what you see is what I get

[Sid]

cont.....

[roann]

Originally Posted by Sid

V - 101 Beta-1 (72)
[I can't use the new version at all - many errors]

This version has worked fine until this past week
See screen shots

note:
the md5fp no longer generates fp's.....what you see is what I get

I'm afraid I can't help you at all ... $%*!#& ... nonetheless please read the following lines.

All problems you've documented are based on the fact that shntool is involved (Trader's Little Helper just acts as a frontend for shntool). The error message you see comes from shntool, even if you create a checksum, but there the message is truncated after 32 characters by TLH.

shntool is a command-line application (a DOS program). For reasons I don't know Windows OS (seems to start with XP SP2) refuses to give shntool the memory needed, so shntool will stop executing with that "... can't reserve memory ..." error message. If you would run shntool from the command-line with no TLH involved you would get into the same problem with the same error message.

A way to get this fixed? Until now *nobody* could tell me what to do. For me it's impossible to test things because on my WinXP SP2 machine there aren't any problems at all ... A few users reported that it helps to run TLH or the subcomponents shntool.exe, shorten.exe, cygwin1.dll in an older DOS compatibility mode WinXP offers. On the other hand other users reported that it does not help to do that.

Conclusion: if shntool doesn't work all the important features of TLH (md5 fingerprints or fix of SBEs, for example) are gone ...

--- SOS --- SOS --- SOS ---

Robert

[roann]

Sid, there is something I forgot to ask you in my reply above (I'm getting old you know ...). Please open Windows Explorer and go to your Windows directory. There you'll find a file called "cygwin1.dll". Please right-click that file and select the Properties item. Go to the "Version" tab. What file version is displayed there?

[Sid]

Originally Posted by roann

Sid, there is something I forgot to ask you in my reply above (I'm getting old you know ...). Please open Windows Explorer and go to your Windows directory. There you'll find a file called "cygwin1.dll". Please right-click that file and select the Properties item. Go to the "Version" tab. What file version is displayed there?

[roann]

Thanks Sid! This is a very old version of cygwin1.dll. Maybe a newer one will help solving the problems (but don't expect too much). Please do the following:

1) Download the new cygwin1.dll (in zip format) here.
2) Rename the one in your Windows directory to _cygwin1.dll, so you can undo the changes in the next steps.
3) Unzip the downloaded file to your Windows directory.
4) Run Trader's Little Helper, keep fingers crossed, and test some functions.

What happens???

[Sid]

No luck...

Same results

What really freaks me out is that I was able to do these functions up until last week

[roann]

Originally Posted by Sid

No luck...

Same results ...

I was afraid this wouldn't work but want to give it a try ...

Originally Posted by Sid

... What really freaks me out is that I was able to do these functions up until last week

Other users reported that too ... yesterday it worked, today it fails ... as I wrote above: SOS SOS SOS ...

Robert