Yearly Archives: 2011

Having Spotify playing through two devices simultaneously with one premium account [mobile]

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I was a little disappointed at first when I learned that I could not have more than 1 mobile device playing songs via Spotify, just the way I can do with Netflix. There are instances where my son wants to listen at home while I want to do the same at work. He is too young to have his own account and it is not worth paying another $10/month for just having him play whenever he wants to, in my opinion.

Luckily, there is a way to work it around. Offline playlists. But you need to follow additional steps:

  1. Enable the playlists of your choice for offline sync. Wait until they are all synched up (I recommend it as an overnight task).
  2. Once all synced up, fire up Spotify.
  3. Go to preferences, select “Offline mode”
  4. Play your favorite music.
  5. The other device can now stream from the cloud without disrupting your session.

I have not tried it with 3 or 4 devices, but the process should be similar. Spotify Premium supports up to 3 devices in offline mode (and the PC or laptop being the fourth in “Online” mode).

 

How to Recover a Spotify Playlist

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I love Spotify. in fact I use it on a daily basis. My wife and son use it every now an then, mostly through an Android Smartphone.

Lately, I’ve been hit with a flaw that Spotify needs to address: deleted playlists. Granted, they happened maybe because my son inadvertently deleted them. The fact is, once you delete a playlist, all songs are gone.

There is a way to get it back if you use Spotify on more than 1 PC or laptop:

  1. Locate the desktop or laptop that is currently offline that has been synchronized with Spotify previously.
  2. If it’s in sleep mode or hibernating force shut/down and restart by deleting restoration data. If you do not perform so, Spotify might fire up right after the device resumes and resync all playlists, removing the deleted one.
  3. After restarting disable all network connectivity. Wireless and/or wired.
  4. Open Spotify. It will do so in offline mode.
  5. Create a brand new playlist.
  6. Locate the playlist that was deleted.
  7. Copy all the contents to the new playlist you just created.
  8. Enable network connectivity.
  9. You will see that the deleted Playlist will disappear.
  10. Rename the newly created playlist with the name the deleted one had.

There are other ways to restore playlists but unfortunately didn’t apply to me as I have around 50 of them. Not easy to spot the file name of the missing playlist.

Lesson learned: I will always keep more than 1 device synchronized to Spotify.

Spotify service is not working – Onkyo TX-NR609 [Fixed]

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Wanted to share a quick post. Since Thursday of this week, Spotify service has been acting up and is not able to stream on Onkyo receivers that support it.

I got a TX-NR609 which was working beautifully. I have been contacting @Spotify and @Onkyo_USA via twitter with no avail yet.

Let’s see how long they take before fixing it.

 

Update 09.21.2011:

Onkyo gave signs of being aware of the situation yesterday on their Facebook Page. Today I got a reply back from Spotify and they informed that they are looking at the issue currently. Spotify referred me to open a support ticket with Onkyo as they are the ones that developed the app.

Support ticket links:

Update 09.22.2011:

Onkyo posted on their Facebook Page. They are working with Spotify to resolve the issue.

 

Update 09.23.2011:

Service seems to be fixed. It is working correctly on my receiver.

Update 09.27.2011:

Got this email confirmation today:

 Hi!

We have completed the investigation: due to a configuration error, ONKYO users were unable to stream music from the Spotify servers.

The problem has been fixed and everything is now back and running!

VCenter Server 4.1 Running under SQL Server pushes tempdb storage allocation through the roof

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And to alleviate the problem temporarily we needed to bounce the instance and clear up the temp database files.

But luckily there is a patch.

More information provided in this article.

We also needed to disable the Read Committed Snapshot Isolation Level in order to keep the growth under control. More information about it this article.

Offending query:

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SELECT HOST.NAME AS HOST, VOLUME.HOST_ID AS HOST_ENTITY_ID, CASE VOLUME_TYPE.TYPE
WHEN 'parallelScsi' THEN CAST(VOLUME_TYPE.HOST_ID AS VARCHAR(255)) + '-' + VOLUME.UUID
WHEN 'block' THEN CAST(VOLUME_TYPE.HOST_ID AS VARCHAR(255)) + '-' + VOLUME.UUID
ELSE VOLUME.UUID
END AS ENTITY_ID, VOLUME.CANONICAL_NAME, VPX_PSA_PATH.LUN_NUMBER, VPX_HOST_BUS_ADAPTER.DEVICE_VAL + ':C' + CAST(VPX_PSA_PATH.CHANNEL_NUMBER AS VARCHAR(3))+ ':T' + CAST(VPX_PSA_PATH.TARGET_NUMBER AS VARCHAR(3)) + ':L' +
CAST (VPX_PSA_PATH.LUN_NUMBER AS VARCHAR(3))
AS RUNTIME_NAME, VOLUME.DISPLAY_NAME AS NAME FROM VPX_SCSI_LUN VOLUME
INNER JOIN VPX_ENTITY HOST ON VOLUME.HOST_ID = HOST.ID
INNER JOIN VPX_PSA_DEVICE DEVICE ON VOLUME.KEY_VAL = DEVICE.LINK_KEY
INNER JOIN VPX_PSA_PATH ON VPX_PSA_PATH.SCSI_LUN_ID = DEVICE.ID
INNER JOIN (SELECT DISTINCT VPX_PSA_PATH.HOST_ID AS HOST_ID, SCSI_LUN.UUID AS UUID, CASE HOST_BUS_ADAPTER.VPX_TYPE
WHEN N'vim.host.ParallelScsiHba' THEN 'parallelScsi'
WHEN N'vim.host.FibreChannelHba' THEN 'fc'
WHEN N'vim.host.InternetScsiHba' THEN 'iscsi'
ELSE 'block'
END
AS TYPE FROM VPX_PSA_PATH, (SELECT VPX_SCSI_LUN.UUID AS UUID, VPX_PSA_DEVICE.KEY_VAL AS KEY_VAL FROM VPX_PSA_DEVICE, VPX_SCSI_LUN
WHERE VPX_PSA_DEVICE.LINK_KEY = VPX_SCSI_LUN.KEY_VAL) SCSI_LUN, (SELECT VPX_HOST_BUS_ADAPTER.VPX_TYPE AS VPX_TYPE, VPX_PSA_ADAPTER.KEY_VAL AS KEY_VAL, VPX_PSA_ADAPTER.HOST_ID AS HOST_ID
FROM VPX_PSA_ADAPTER, VPX_HOST_BUS_ADAPTER
WHERE VPX_PSA_ADAPTER.HOST_ID = VPX_HOST_BUS_ADAPTER.HOST_ID
AND VPX_PSA_ADAPTER.LINK_KEY = VPX_HOST_BUS_ADAPTER.KEY_VAL) HOST_BUS_ADAPTER
WHERE VPX_PSA_PATH.LUN_LINK_KEY = SCSI_LUN.KEY_VAL
AND VPX_PSA_PATH.ADAPTER_LINK_KEY = HOST_BUS_ADAPTER.KEY_VAL
AND VPX_PSA_PATH.HOST_ID = HOST_BUS_ADAPTER.HOST_ID) VOLUME_TYPE ON HOST.ID = VOLUME_TYPE.HOST_ID AND VOLUME.UUID = VOLUME_TYPE.UUID, VPX_HOST_BUS_ADAPTER, VPX_PSA_ADAPTER
WHERE (HOST.TYPE_ID = '1')
AND (VPX_PSA_PATH.ADAPTER_LINK_KEY = VPX_PSA_ADAPTER.KEY_VAL AND VPX_PSA_PATH.HOST_ID = VPX_PSA_ADAPTER.HOST_ID
AND VPX_PSA_ADAPTER.LINK_KEY = VPX_HOST_BUS_ADAPTER.KEY_VAL AND VPX_PSA_ADAPTER.HOST_ID = VPX_HOST_BUS_ADAPTER.HOST_ID)
AND VOLUME.LUN_TYPE='disk'
ORDER BY HOST_ENTITY_ID, ENTITY_ID, RUNTIME_NAME

Max Memory Configuration set too low [SQL Server]

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We have been experiencing an issue with a clustered node where instances will run extremely slow and the only process eating CPU resources is “NT Kernel & System”. We have upgraded drivers and even wiped out and reinstalled Windows and SQL Server (both 2008 R2) and the issue reappears.

In the process of troubleshooting with Microsoft, we needed to fail over instances to collect log information. We have done this several times. Because our latest cluster implementations include Active/Active nodes, we need to adjust Max Memory to SQL Server whenever all instances are in one node.

Yesterday something did not go right and a human error caused the instances to failed. Even experienced DBAs will eventually break something, but they will do anything possible to correct. Memory was set to 27 instead of 27000 MB. No connections could be made to the instance.

There are 3 ways this situation can be resolved:

  1. Opening a dedicated connection to the instance (DAC) and changing the max memory configuration.
  2. Shutting down the instance and starting it via command prompt using the -f option. It will fire up the instance with minimal configuration. After that change the max memory configuration.
  3. Bouncing the instance and changing the memory configuration as soon as the instance starts. We are taking advantage of a fresh instance with no allocated cache yet.

Changing the memory configuration:

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sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1;
GO
RECONFIGURE;
GO
sp_configure 'max server memory', 27000;
GO
RECONFIGURE;
GO

Coaching point, double or even triple check before issuing a configuration command.

SQL Server Memory Configuration via SSMS

SQL Server Memory Configuration via SSMS