Tag Archives: linux

Linux

CLI Video Ripping.

Gui are fine and well, but sometime you just can't beat the command line.  Here are a few examples.

First, make sure you have mplayer installed correctly.  Below is what I have:

[ebuild   R   ~] media-video/mplayer-1.0_rc4_p20120105  USE="X a52 alsa ass bluray cddb cdio cdparanoia cpudetection dts dv dvd dvdnav enca encode faac faad gif iconv jpeg live mmx mp3 network openal opengl osdmenu png pulseaudio quicktime rar real rtc shm speex sse sse2 ssse3 theora toolame tremor truetype twolame unicode vdpau vorbis x264 xscreensaver xv xvid xvmc -3dnow -3dnowext -aalib (-altivec) (-aqua) -bidi -bindist -bl -bs2b -debug -dga -directfb -doc -dvb (-dxr3) (-esd) -fbcon -ftp -ggi -gsm -ipv6 -jack -joystick -jpeg2k -ladspa -libcaca -libmpeg2 -lirc -lzo -mad -md5sum -mmxext -mng -nas -nut -oss -pnm -pvr -radio -rtmp -samba -sdl -tga -v4l (-vidix) (-win32codecs) -xanim -xinerama -zoran" VIDEO_CARDS="-mga -s3virge -tdfx" 0 kB

An example of ripping a DVD could be:

mencoder dvd://1 -dvd-device /dev/sr0 -aid 128 -nosub -info srcform="DVD ripped by cdstealer" -oac faac -ovc x264 -o "/home/cdstealer/Desktop/full_metal_jacket.avi"

But this won't play on a PS3 or Xbox.

mencoder dvd://1 -dvd-device /dev/sr0 -aid 128 -nosub -info srcform="DVD ripped by cdstealer" -oac faac -faacopts mpeg=4 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4 -ffourcc mp4v -o "full_metal_retards.mp4"

This will create an MP4 format file that will play :)

You can also dump and decode the DVD using

mplayer dvd://1 -dumpstream -dumpfile ~/Desktop/file.mpg

This will create a "lossless" copy of which you can transcode using mencoder, ffmpeg et al.

These encoders have a VAST array of options:-
http://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.html
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/mencoder.html

PS3 supported video formats:

 

  • Memory Stick Video Format
  • MPEG-4 SP (AAC LC)
  • H.264/MPEG-4 AVC High Profile AAC LC
  • MPEG-2 TS H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, AAC LC
  • MP4 file format
  • H.264/MPEG-4 AVC High Profile (AAC LC)
  • MPEG-1 (MPEG Audio Layer 2)
  • MPEG-2 PS (MPEG2 Audio Layer 2, AAC LC, AC3(Dolby Digital), LPCM)
  • MPEG-2 TS MPEG2 Audio Layer 2, AC3 Dolby Digital, AAC LC
  • MPEG-2 TS H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, AAC LC
  • AVI
  • Motion JPEG (Linear PCM)
  • Motion JPEG (μ-Law)
  • AVCHD .m2ts / .mts
  • DivX
  • WMV
  • VC-1 WMA Standard V2

eg
ffmpeg -i file.mkv -vcodec libx264 -acodec copy file.mp4

Input #0, matroska,webm, from 'file.mkv':
Duration: 00:23:42.88, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 2489 kb/s
Stream #0:0(eng): Video: h264 (High 10), yuv420p10le, 1920x1080 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 23.98 fps, 23.98 tbr, 1k tbn, 47.95 tbc (default)
Stream #0:1(eng): Audio: aac, 48000 Hz, 5.1, s16 (default)
Stream #0:2(jpn): Audio: aac, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16
Stream #0:3(eng): Subtitle: text (default)
Linux

WordPress tweaks

Disable SmartQuotes

Create the file TurnOffSmartQuotes.php and paste the below into it:

<?php /* Plugin Name: TurnOffSmartQuotes Plugin 
URI: 
Description: Stops WordPress from converting your quote symbols into smartquotes. The lines below stop the smartquote conversion. 
Version: 1.0 
Author: Steve Moyes Author 
URI: http://cdstealer.com */ 
remove_filter('the_content', 'wptexturize'); 
remove_filter('widget_text', 'wptexturize'); 
remove_filter('the_excerpt', 'wptexturize'); 
remove_filter('the_rss_content', 'wptexturize'); 
remove_filter('the_title', 'wptexturize'); 
remove_filter('single_post_title', 'wptexturize'); 
remove_filter('comment_text', 'wptexturize'); 
remove_filter('comment_author', 'wptexturize'); 
remove_filter('list_cats', 'wptexturize'); 
remove_filter('category_description', 'wptexturize'); 
remove_filter('bloginfo', 'wptexturize'); ?>

Now it's just a case of enabling the plugin within the plugins menu in siteadmin.

Linux

Build your own Gentoo Live CD/DVD

Always wanted to create your very own Gentoo disc?  Well now you can.  You can have anything you want e.g. a full gnome/kde... desktop environment to a full customised util/rescue disc.  The script that is here, if left will create a "minimal" cd (288Mb) with the latest "stable" kernel.

The script does NOT have any intelligence and is designed to just run, do it's job and exit.

When editing the script for your needs, there are a few things to keep in mind:

1)  Kernel config included is for 3.0.6.  If the kernel is newer, you will be prompted for any new options.
2) Packages you wish to have MUST be defined in the CHROOT script (approx. line 75)
3) The script MUST be run as root.

Build Script

Happy hacking!

Linux

Handy One liners

Diff 2 remote files:
diff <(ssh <user>@<server1> 'cat /path/to/file1') <(ssh <user>@<server2> 'cat /path/to/file2')

If using it in a script you'll need to add a $ like so:
diff <$(ssh <user>@<server1> 'cat /path/to/file1') <$(ssh <user>@<server2> 'cat /path/to/file2')

Video capture your desktop.
ffmpeg -f x11grab -r 25 -s hd1080 -sameq -i :0.0 out.mpg

Convert epoch time in CSV file
for f in `cat | awk -F',' '{print $2}'`; do sed -i "s/"$f"/$(date --date "$f seconds 1 January 1970" +%d-%m-%Y)/" ;done

Linux

RAID1 setup

I decided it was about time I actually setup some redundancy for my data.  Having never done a full backup and only storing the odd chunk of data somewhere on a dvd.  Losing the HDD would be a severe PITA!  I purchased a Startech PEXSAT32 and popped it in.  As my current HDD is SATA and is running under AHCI, the card was picked up out of the box.

Before connecting any drives I ran a quick speed check (3 times) with the onboard SATA controller and got the following results.

# hdparm -tT /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
 Timing cached reads:   10954 MB in  2.00 seconds = 5479.70 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads: 264 MB in  3.01 seconds =  87.64 MB/sec

# hdparm -tT /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads: 11060 MB in 2.00 seconds = 5533.11 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 264 MB in 3.01 seconds = 87.71 MB/sec

# hdparm -tT /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads: 10698 MB in 2.00 seconds = 5351.98 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 262 MB in 3.02 seconds = 86.71 MB/sec

Fairly poor for a SATAII controller and a SATAII drive!!!

Time to connect the drives...

At the risk of not losing any data and the fact that I just didn't have anything big enough to backup to, I just bought 2 x WD 1TB Eco.  The current drive is SATAII one of these :)

Due to the way the RAID is setup, both drives will be erased upon setup.  This rules out cloning the original drive and building the array. The way I had to do this was to setup the RAID1 and then clone the original drive...FAIL!  The original drive was a few blocks larger than the RAID drives :(
The work around was to mirror the partitions of the original.  This doesn't have to be an exact science, but does have to accommodate the data to be copied.  Once the partitions have been setup (done via a Gentoo minimal CD and fdisk) it was time to start migrating data.

I created 2 directories:
/mnt/master
/mnt/raid

/boot /dev/sda1    100M
swap /dev/sda2    2Gb
/ /dev/sda3    5Gb
/dev/sda4    Extended partition
/var /dev/sda5    10Gb
/usr /dev/sda6    20Gb
/tmp /dev/sda7    10Gb
/root /dev/sda8    1Gb
/home /dev/sda9    870Gb

/dev/sda being the original drive, I mounted the in the following order.

mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/master
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/master/boot
mount /dev/sda5 /mnt/master/var
mount /dev/sda6 /mnt/master/usr
mount /dev/sda7 /mnt/master/tmp
mount /dev/sda8 /mnt/master/root
mount /dev/sda9 /mnt/master/home

I did the same with the raid drive (/dev/sdb) as above but mounted to /mnt/raid.

I then executed the following to copy the data:

cd /mnt/master
tar cf - . | (cd /mnt/raid; tar xfp -)

This took quite a few hours due to the sheer amount of data.  Although the tar command would be a little slower than say dd.  It does allow me to copy *ALL* files from each partition, including hidden files/folders.

Once that completed, I powered off the machine and removed the original drive.  Powered back up and booted into the Gentoo CD again.  I repeated the procedure and mounted the partitions (except sda1 or /boot).
Next we need to chroot into the drive's installed OS.  cd into /mnt/(where you mounted the / partition).
chroot /mnt/(where you mounted the / partition) /bin/bash
env-update
source /etc/profile

This has now put us into the OS installed on the drive.  As we have only copied the OS files, we need to install grub onto the MBR.  If you ignored me and mounted /dev/sda1 then you will fail and grub will complain!!
type "grub" to enter the grub command line interface.
type "root (hd0,0)"  This will return the format of the file system ie 0x83
type "setup (hd0)"  This will return several lines of "stage" files if successful.

That's it.. job done.  Exit the chroot by typing "exit" and "reboot".

Now... the pros and cons for me for this setup is although I now have the redundancy should a drive die, there is *NO* performance boost at all.  Infact, upgrading to SATAIII only gained me approx 10Mb/s increase.

# hdparm -tT /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads:   11322 MB in  2.00 seconds = 5664.09 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 286 MB in  3.00 seconds =  95.26 MB/sec

# hdparm -tT /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads:   10200 MB in  2.00 seconds = 5102.15 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 272 MB in  3.00 seconds =  90.56 MB/sec

# hdparm -tT /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads:   10500 MB in  2.00 seconds = 5252.27 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 276 MB in  3.02 seconds =  91.33 MB/sec

I found the below info on a forum regarding slow performance, but I also read elsewhere that SATAIII is a complete waste of time with mechanical drives.

fdisk -H 224 -S 56 /dev/sdb

running fdisk with these parameters ensures that every partition you create is aligned to 4KiB boundaries.  I have not run the above command, this is something for me to test when I have time.

Linux

Simple File System Encryption

It's soooo easy to "misplace" your removable drive, so encrypting it is a good way to help protect your data should it be lost :)

In this example, I will be using a USB2 2Gb flash drive.

The first port of call is to ensure you have the DEVICE_MAPPER driver compiled into the kernel.  If you're using a binary distro, this almost certainly is already present.

Device Drivers ->
Multiple devices driver support (RAID and LVM) ->
Device mapper support
Crypt target support

Also ensure you have compiled the required encryption...

Cryptographic API -> (both options below are the default encryption used)
AES cipher algorithms (x86_64)  <---- only available on 64bit OS
AES cipher algorithms (AES-NI)

Now insert your drive then run the following commands:

cryptsetup -y luksFormat /dev/sdX# (whatever your node is)
cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sdX# <name>  <-- this opens the encrypted device ready for mounting.  The new device will now exist under /dev/mapper/<name>
mke2fs -j -L <name> /dev/mapper/<name>  <-- formats the partition
cryptsetup luksClose /dev/mapper/<name>  <-- unmounts the encryption

You can now unmount the drive and test it by re-inserting it.  Your GUI should prompt you for the passphrase if all has worked ok.

If you need to mount from the cli do the following:

cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sdX# <name>
mount /dev/mapper/<name> /mnt/usb/

To unmount from the cli do the following:

cryptsetup luksClose /dev/mapper/<name>
umount /dev/mapper/<name>

That's it... simple :)

Linux

Gnome3 Tweaks

1) Removing icons from the System status area

Gnome 3 has a fixed number (well, kinda fixed, because Shell Extensions can be used to create more) of icons in the System Status Area. Some of these icons, like accessibility, may not be useful to you and just taking up space.

You can remove the icons that appear in the System Status Area by editing the file /usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/panel.js, and commenting out some of the items that are assigned to the STANDARD_TRAY_ICON_ORDER array.

const STANDARD_TRAY_ICON_ORDER = [/*'a11y',*/ 'display', 'keyboard', 'volume', 'bluetooth', 'network', 'battery'];
const STANDARD_TRAY_ICON_SHELL_IMPLEMENTATION = {
//    'a11y': imports.ui.status.accessibility.ATIndicator,

This is at circa line 36

Be aware that updates to this file will most likely undo any changes you make, so if the icon pops back, just edit the file again.

To make your change "live", press ATL-F2 and type r then press enter.  This will cause the GnomeShell to restart.  This usually doesn't close any running apps, but save any work you have just to be safe.

2) Installing Gnome Shell Extensions

Gnome Shell Extensions provide a number of official enhancements to the Gnome 3 desktop.  You can download and make the extensions for yourself using the following commands.
  1. mkdir ~/temp
  2. cd ~/temp
  3. git clone http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-shell-extensions
  4. cd gnome-shell-extensions
  5. git checkout 3.0.0
  6. ./autogen.sh
  7. make && make install
  8. press ALT-F2 and run the command "r" (without the quotes) to restart the Gnome Shell

Step 5 checks out the version of the extensions that works with the current version of the Gnome Shell. You can omit this command to get the latest version of the extensions, but their manifest.json files do mandate a more recent version of the Gnome Shell (like 3.0.1 or 3.0.2).

You can add the --enable-extensions="alternate-tab windowsNavigator auto-move-windows dock user-theme alternative-status-menu gajim" option to step 6 to install the additional extenions. Your luck may vary - my version of Gnome 3 would not load with all the extenions.

For a complete list of the extenions that can be supplied to the --enable-extensions option, see the configure.ac file under the ALL_EXTENSIONS= section.

To check for any errors that may have occured while loading the extenions, press ALT-F2 and run "lg" (without the quotes). This will open a JavaScript console, which has an Errors tab.

3) Manually Tweaking

A powerful gconf style editor is available called dconf-editor.  To access this, press ALT-F2 and type dconf-editor.  Be careful what you tweak, you could prevent the gnome-shell from starting.

Linux

Gnome Terminal

Gnome terminal doesn't like to obey the "normal" locale file.  It uses "/etc/X11/gdm/locale.alias", and therefore usually has the incorrect character encoding.  eg.

instead of:

The way to solve this is to create a symlink to the correct locale.

1) Backup the original file:

mv /etc/X11/gdm/locale.alias /etc/X11/gdm/locale.alias.bak

2) Create the symlink:

ln -s /etc/locale.gen /etc/X11/gdm/locale.alias

It's also worth noting that I only have the following in my file:

en_GB ISO-8859-1
en_GB.UTF-8 UTF-8

 

 

Linux

Swap space.

To quickly add some extra swap do the following (as root):

dd if=/dev/zero of=/extraswap bs=1M count=12288

This will create a 12Gb swapfile in /

chmod 600 /extraswap

This will set the correct permissions on the file.

mkswap /extraswap

This will format the space for use as swap.

swapon -s

This will show what is currently mounted as swap.

If you want this to be a temporary setting just run:

swapon /extraswap

If you want this to be persistent, add this to your /etc/fstab:

/extraswap        none        swap        sw        0 0
Linux

Gnome3 overlay install

Can't wait for Gnome3 to the portage? The below steps a basically what I completed to upgrade gnome-light.

Follow these "simple" steps:

edit $HOME/.config/autostart/compiz.desktop and change "X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=false" to "X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=false".  Compiz is NOT compatible with Gnome3 and will just prevent you from logining in.

edit /usr/portage/profiles/package.mask and comment out the following.  (This will need to be done every time you sync.)

>=gnome-base/gdm-2.26
>=x11-wm/metacity-2.34
>=media-gfx/gthumb-2.13
>=gnome-extra/nautilus-open-terminal-0.19
>=x11-misc/notification-daemon-0.7

Add the following to /etc/portage/package.keywords

# Gnome3-light
app-arch/file-roller
app-editors/gedit
app-text/gnome-doc-utils
app-text/poppler
dev-lang/vala
dev-libs/atk
dev-libs/gjs
dev-libs/glib
dev-libs/gobject-introspection
dev-libs/json-glib
dev-libs/libgweather
dev-libs/libunique
dev-libs/nss
dev-python/pygobject
dev-util/gtk-doc-am
gnome-base/dconf
gnome-base/gdm
gnome-base/gnome-applets
gnome-base/gnome-control-center
gnome-base/gnome-core-libs
gnome-base/gnome-desktop
gnome-base/gnome-fallback
gnome-base/gnome-keyring
gnome-base/gnome-light
gnome-base/gnome-menus
gnome-base/gnome-panel
gnome-base/gnome-session
gnome-base/gnome-settings-daemon
gnome-base/gnome-shell
gnome-base/gsettings-desktop-schem
gnome-base/gvfs
gnome-base/libgnome-keyring
gnome-base/libgnomekbd
gnome-base/nautilus
gnome-extra/evolution-data-server
gnome-extra/gconf-editor
gnome-extra/gnome-media
gnome-extra/gnome-power-manager
gnome-extra/gnome-screensaver
gnome-extra/gnome-shell-extensions
gnome-extra/gnome-tweak-tool
gnome-extra/gnome-user-share
gnome-extra/gnome-utils
gnome-extra/nm-applet
gnome-extra/polkit-gnome
gnome-extra/zenity
media-fonts/cantarell
media-gfx/eog
media-libs/clutter
media-libs/clutter-gst
media-libs/clutter-gtk
media-libs/gst-plugins-base
media-libs/gstreamer
media-libs/libcanberra
media-libs/libexif
media-plugins/gst-plugins-*
media-plugins/gst-plugins-ogg
media-plugins/gst-plugins-pango
media-plugins/gst-plugins-theora
media-video/cheese
media-video/gnome-video-effects
net-dialup/ppp
net-im/pidgin
net-im/telepathy-logger
net-libs/libnice
net-libs/libsocialweb
net-libs/libsoup
net-libs/rest
net-libs/telepathy-glib **
net-libs/xulrunner
net-misc/networkmanager
net-print/cups
net-print/cups-pk-helper
net-voip/telepathy-haze
net-wireless/gnome-bluetooth
sys-apps/accountsservice
sys-apps/gnome-disk-utility
sys-auth/polkit
sys-fs/udev
www-client/epiphany
www-client/firefox
x11-libs/gdk-pixbuf
x11-libs/gnome-pty-helper
x11-libs/gtk+
x11-libs/libwnck
x11-libs/libxklavier
x11-libs/mx
x11-libs/pango
x11-libs/vte
x11-terms/gnome-terminal
x11-themes/gnome-icon-theme
x11-themes/gnome-icon-theme-extras
x11-themes/gnome-icon-theme-symbol
x11-themes/gnome-themes-standard
x11-wm/metacity
x11-wm/mutter

# Gnome3 Empathy
net-im/empathy
app-misc/geoclue
dev-libs/folks
media-libs/libchamplain
net-libs/telepathy-farsight

# Gnome Fallback
dev-lang/lua
app-cdr/brasero
app-crypt/seahorse
app-text/evince
dev-libs/gmime
dev-libs/libburn
dev-libs/libisofs
dev-libs/totem-pl-parser
gnome-base/gnome-core-apps
gnome-extra/gnome-user-docs
gnome-extra/yelp
gnome-extra/yelp-xsl
media-libs/quvi
media-libs/taglib
media-video/totem
net-libs/farsight2
net-libs/libsoup-gnome

execute 'echo "-introspection" >> /etc/portage/profile/use.mask

OK, now 'emerge layman'.  Once complete, execute 'echo "source /var/lib/layman/make.conf" >> /etc/make.conf'.  Now execute 'layman -a gnome'

This is where the fun begins.. this is NOT flawless, but hopefully the errors will be easy enough to remedy.

eg.  You may need to unmerge gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes gdm gnome-panel gnome-netstatus to prevent blocked packages.

Now just run 'emerge -puvND world'  if you are happy with the result, remove the 'p' switch.

To checkout the newest upstream, run layman -S.

You can always check what has been updated and when by going here

If you want to have legacy menu's then emerge gnome-fallback.  This will install more apps that you probably don't use that are "standard" in gnome.