BimmaBlog

Not a big problem with Firefox, but if you forget the password you used to access a web page or site in IE, it can be a right pain to retrieve it.

Found this little script that runs as a bookmark: Reveal Password

Simply right click on the link above and add it to your bookmarks - sorry, favourites.

Next time you come up against a site you have the password “dotted” out, simply go to your favourites and choose this link. A small popup will appear showing the password in plain text.

This also works for Firefox, and is the lazy mans way of discovering the password.

All credits to originator.

Enjoy

It’s been a long time coming, over three and one half years, but I can finally put all the hardware in the house to good use and use my PC (internet wise) as I was using Windows. And using a Sony Playstation Eyetoy to boot!

From my post on ubuntuforums, here is how to get the eyetoy working with Skype:

Close Skype before continuing.

Using K/X/Ubuntu 9.04 +, the gspca module in the kernel will run the eyetoy cam as a webcam, but to use it under Skype, and to prevent the pink and green horizontal lines, you need to edit the config file. This is tucked away in your home directory:

/home/user/.Skype/skype-user/config.xml

where user is your login, and skype-user is your skype login

If you are the cautious type, back up this file first:

cp /home/user/.Skype/skype-user/config.xml /home/user/.Skype/skype-user/config.xml.bak

Open up the config.xml file in your text editor, and browse down through the file, you should find a <Video>…</Video> section.Add the following:

<CaptureHeight>480</CaptureHeight>
<CaptureWidth>640</CaptureWidth>
<RecvPolicy>callpolicy</RecvPolicy>

Mine looks like this:

…..</StatsSender>
<Video>
<AutoSend>1</AutoSend>
<CaptureHeight>480</CaptureHeight>
<CaptureWidth>640</CaptureWidth>
<Device>/dev/video3</Device>
<Disable>0</Disable>
<RecvPolicy>callpolicy</RecvPolicy>
</Video>
<table_insert_history>….

Start up Skype and head for video settings to select and test.

You can also select the Eyetoy Microphone to use, you may need to play around with your main sound settings to get this working. I had to change from Mic2 to Mic1 in Sound Settings / Mixer, and of course chose eyetoy microphone in audio settings in Skype

This has been an issue for me for quite a while, but I have simply overcome it by using the menu to change the aspect ratio.

It all stems from the perplexing confusion of recording dvb tv for later playback. Watching live TV on the TV, the picture fills the screen. It’s a 16:9 42″ TV (720p). When I record dvb tv using my main pc in its raw .ts state it is 720×576 (16:9). If I play this back using the GeexBox, mplayer squeezes the picture to a display of something like Cinemascope, so a change of aspect ratio to 4:3 usually sorts this out. But it got me thinking, if the original video is 16:9 why doesn’t play as such? The Pc in use to run GeexBox has an nvidia 6200 and is connected to the TV using VGA (DVI/HDMI went “pop” a while ago on the TV!).

First off, I tried all sorts of encoding options, changing the aspect ratio and resolution using mencoder. I got some success if I encoded with aspect=4/3 as an option. but this still didn’t make sense; if I had a 16:9 aspect ratio TV, why the original video didn’t fit.

This is what I did to sort things out. I have a HDD install of GeexBox so can ftp in to edit files. If you use a live cd, then you will need to edit the files before you generate a custom iso.

Boot up the GeexBox

FTP in, and make doubly sure you get into the right place

/mnt/GeexBox-partition/GEEXBOX/etc

Open up tvout in that directory and change the Aspect Ratio line to this:

TVOUT_ASPECT=”16:9″

and save.
By just making this change alone, it squeezed my display horizontally to make a 4:3 image, so more to do

Browse to /mnt/Geexbox-partition/GEEXBOX/etc/mplayer and open up mplayer.conf
In the [default] section, add the following two lines:

monitoraspect=”16:9″

aspect=”16:9″

and save. It may be worth noting that I have vo=vidix,vesa in the default section of mplayer.conf

Log out of the ftp and reboot the GeexBox. The Main Menu and background.avi should be filling the screen.

Now try playing any recorded dvb tv or video that was previously letterboxed, even though it was 16:9 ratio or 720×576 resolution. You should see it playback in full screen.

Caveats: This may not work in your setup, and you may not need to make all the adjustments to get this to work, this is what worked for me.

Don’t like backup programs, but I do like cp. I save all my work to an external HDD but I like to make a copy of this onto my server, prior to burning. As I don’t do things in sequence, I may need to make several “backups” before commiting to disk, so needed an easy way of only copying over changed or new files:

cp -urvp /pathto/externaldrive/* /pathto/backup/directory/

What does it all do?

cp         the copy command

-u         update only new or changed files with a newer date

-r          recursive to all sub directories

-v          verbose, tell me what is happening

-p          preserve file attributes

In my case, the path to the external HDD is /media/HANDY120/* - (the device is a Fujitsu HandyDrive 120GB) . Don’t forget the / and the * at the end to ensure everything on the drive is copied.

The path to the backup location can be anywhere, but you must use the same route each time

Windows 7 to replace Xubuntu?

Whenever a new version of Windows comes out, I am normally one of the first to go grab a copy. Think into “grab” what you like, from the past, but with the arrival of Windows 7 I went for the RC which was on off for free to use until June 2010.

I thought, we’ll have a look, but I can’t see how they will have learnt any lessons after the resource hog they created with Vista. How wrong, install was under half an hour on my Shuttle SN41, boot up time from cold was under a minute to usable desktop, and ram usage was around 380mb, down by 200 mb on Vista, whilst CPU activity was next to nothing. No drag, no delays, no problems…. hang on, all I have done in the last three years is use linux, and found the need to move towards lighter and lighter systems to maintain speed and productivity. Yep, but W7 seems to be a real contender, until June 2010 comes round!

OK, its one thing to get the OS up and running, can I “do” everything I can do on Xubuntu 9.04, and access my linux server (that one won’t be changing!). This is a work in progress, but here we go so far:

1. Remove the watermark about evaluation. easily found on the net
2. ExtFsd - provides access to ext3 partitions on the HDD
3. Ensure samba server up and running on the linux server (it is, for my kids and their windows PCs)
4. Install Winrar - I know I will have to download some rar files to get up to speed
5. Firefox - IE8 shoved politely to one side, all required extensions installed nicely
6. Putty - now able to ssh into server
7. UltraVNC - now able to vnc to server and other boxes
8. Geany - helps to overcome linux text files, and mirrors usage on Xubuntu. No need for any other text editor.
9. VLC - mplayer won’t do dvb on Windows yet, so VLC for viewing and recording dvb streams. Will have to spend some time writing batch files to ease planned recordings and viewings, but had to do this on Linux.
10. Brother MFP drivers - original CD no good for W7, but Vista drivers on the Brother site did the job.
11. Gwhere - yes there is a Windows version - for cataloging DVDs
12. Skype - and the Eyetoy webcam experience is here at last
13. CDBurnerXP - on trial as I write. My trusty Nero OEM CD proved to be no good for W7

To come:

• pdf access and creation
• image editing (this will probably be photofiltre)
• video encoding will get shunted off to the server for mencoder to deal with, don’t do video editing as a rule

Note: All mail is up on Google, so no need for a mail client, as with Calendar & To Do, and Google Docs will do if I do not install OO.  For work I have to use Windows, and need access to full Acrobat, Illustrator, IE6+ for Management
systems, and Sage for accounting. I try to emulate this at home, so do need Windows in some form.

Issues

1. a. Several little crashes of programs, and on one occasion the vlc.exe file disappeared, requiring a reinstall
2. Tried, but could not get NFS Services to work, so gave up and used samba instead
3. vlc is a swine to use for dvb but I’ll get there
4. mplayer / smplayer crashed and burned when trying to play video over smb shares and killed the Aero effect until I rebooted.
5. WMP OK for occasional mp3 play, but never saves playlist automatically. Failed to play most of the videos I threw at it
6. Windows Media Center just so unintuitive, and bring machine to its knees. such a shame, it looks great. Has been “dumbed down” so little chance to configure precisely
7. Navigating the file system, and the layout of Windows Explorer is quite alien (might seek out something more simple!)
8. Perhaps most worrying was the dirth of useful information on the net about how to get setup, in particular with regard to dvb and vlc.  (A new user coming from Linux would struggle!!!
9. Seems to grind to a halt after a while, needing a reboot to get back to normal

It scares me just how much I have forgotten about Windows and how it works, but for an underlying OS, it seems pretty  stable and responsive, and very usable on my oldish hardware.

Watch this space for more adventures from a linux user on Windows

For the last couple of years I have had two boxes running out in the garage providing up a variety of services to the rest of the house, and “the world”. Mostly used though for a storage repository.

Services running on Box1:

Ubuntu Fiesty
nfs sharing
Apache
GNUmp3d
ssh
vnc

Services running on Box 2

Ubuntu Fiesty
nfs sharing
ssh
virtualbox headless

I had eight hard drives in these two boxes, but some of the smaller ones were not in use, and also, due to not updating regularly Fiesty was now refusing to update on both machines.

Time for some rationalisation, so decided to cram everything into one box.

Box 2 seemed the one to go for, given that I had an IDE controller card in there, to allow for 4 x HDDs and a CDrom.

Did some fancy work on the partitions of the key drive in preparation for a fresh install of Jaunty, and shunted loads of data about (Music/Video and back ups from other PCs in the house). That which I could move immediately I saved for later to do across the network.

Jaunty Xubuntu install went fine (I do a full desktop install as this cuts down on dependency hell later on for things like virtualbox, but alos provides a desktop / vnc experience when I am feeling lazy! I usually log out of the desktop and kill gdm when not working on the server with gui)

Services installed:

gnump3d - just the best browser accessed music sharing server, now out of the Ubuntu repos, unbelievably!
nfs - the easiest way to share files on a linux network
samba - for my kids who won’t use linux ( I resisted samba like the plague for over two years, but this howto has redeemed it, IMHO!)
ssh - for command line access
screen - for running things when logged out
virtualbox - to run an XP for access via rdesktop
aria2 - command line file downloader
mplayer/mencoder - for encoding of TV programs as described here
moc - I have hooked up some speakers so I can listen to music in the garage when working on cars/boats etc
mc - command line file management
ushare - for upnp file sharing to GeexBox(this is brilliant!) and XBox(this is rubbish!)
vsftpd - ftp server for when I need one, directed at none media files
fail2ban - helps to cut down/protect ssh from outside attack
transmission - its there if I need a torrent/ want to seed, fortunately it runs in command line mode too, but aria2 can cope with torrents too

I have opened up a couple of ports on the router to allow external access, so I can get at things from work / elsewhere.

This was chugging away fine until we went away for a week. I switched the box off. On booting up when we came back, the IDE controller refused to work. So I had to unplug the cdrom, and go master/slave with the four drives. This is only annoying when its time to use a CD/DVD!

The Box?

Foxconn motherboard
AMD 1.4 mhz single core processor
RAM 1.5 gb
HDD Hitchi 500gb / Samsung 400gb / Samsung 250gb / Maxtor 160gb All PATA

I am feeling pretty pleased with myself tonight, having resolved another issue with my encoding of dvb-t streams to avi.

Having sorted out the crashing problem, I was now having a/v sync issues. This is easy enough to deal with by using the +/- keys to adjust a/v sync with mplayer, but annoying for other users.

I have solved the problem by demuxing the stream to its component video and audio parts, using Projectx, Mencoder and ffmpeg.

Projectx is a great java tool that allows you to crop and cut a dvb or mpeg stream and then output either to a ts/ps/m2p a/v stream or to demux the stream. By demuxing you end up with a video m2v file and an audio mp2 file.

It is easy enough to then encode the video using mencoder, then to use ffmpeg to encode the audio, and finally to use mencoder again to mux the video and audio encodes back together, which gives a perfect a/v sync. I put together a script that will encode all m2v/mp2 collections in a directory, so I can leave it running overnight if I have more than one encode to do. Here it is: Mencoder Batch Mux Script

I am using default mencoder libraries and encoders with a two pass approach, but will give h264 a crack later to see if I get better quality for the time and cpu cycles taken. The current script produces eminently watchable video on my 42″ LCD using GeeXBoX so I’m a happy bunny

If you get stuck or need help, give me a shout….

This has been an annoyance for sometime, when encoding anything with mencoder, but specifically ts files from recorded TV. Mencoder would start off fine and then freeze the PC completely or Seg Fault, not necessarily in the same place. Other PCs I have would encode fine using the same settings.

I found the solution today on the mplayerusers email list. About 18 months ago I had overclocked my machine, up from 1.7 to 1.9 mhz and increased the FSB. Apparently mencoder doesn’t like overclocked PCs, even though the writer with the solution said it wasn’t mencoder’s fault! So I put my settings back to “Optimal” / “Auto”, and everything is now rosy in the garden, just a tad slower than before I can live with that!

A bit late on the bandwagon, but shelled out for an 8GB SSD Aspire One the other day (factory refurb). A nice blue one. On arrival it refused to charge, so required a bios upgrade to 3309. Told the supplier they need to be aware of this problem. They said thanks.

Linpus Lite….hmmm, I guess it does what it says on the tin, and I like the way it adds the SD card onto your home directory. ButI needed more freedom, and wasn’t in the mood to learn how to yum. So out with the Gparted CD and the SSD was reshaped with a 2GB, a 3GB, and a 2.5GB partition and no swap. I kept the Linpus installation for reference, but it will probably go when things move on, I have the recovery CD after all.

So the1st partition, 2GB is for a Windows XP Pro install, to install from USB, it has to be the first partition.

The 2nd parition, 3GB is Linpus

The third partition, 2.5GB will be for Xubuntu 9.04, not a remix distro, but my own.

XP

Making up the USB XP drive was fun, requiring an XPSP3 disc and some other softs. Instructions said i could do it with multiple partitions but that was just laying down a challenge! If I remember rightly (I didn’t take notes) this is how it was done.

I used, in the main, this tut for creation of the USB drive and installation. Just had to be careful when picking the right partition to format and install.

http://jargongeneration.com/AcerAspire/dualbootXP/intro.php

and this one

http://www.eeeguides.com/2007/11/installing-windows-xp-from-usb-thumb.html

Windows will boot quite happily while the USB drive is still in place, but take it out and it borks. I needed to edit the boot.ini file so that it was looking at the right partition, not the one on the USB drive, but the one on the hard drive. After that things were fine.

At this point all I can do it boot into Windows having overwritten the mbr. I’ll get grub back on board and be multi-booting once Xubuntu is installed.

Xubuntu 9.04

To be honest, I went for arch-linux first, but struggled with some of the packages I needed to run on the cli, so gave up and went for good old faithful xubuntu.

Alternate CD, F4, Command Line Install. Openbox, Xorg, Wicd to manage being wired or wireless, vga=788 for framebuffer (won’t go any higher than 800×600) in grub on the kernel line. I didn’t want an xfce desktop environment, as I was seeking to have a mainly CLI setup but to be able to run Openbox with startx if needed.

CLI apps that cut the mustard here were: (link provided where not in the repos)

moc                       music player
mc                         file manager
directvnc               graphical remote control
dvtm                      multiple console windows
screen                   multiple console sessions
fbi                          view images and pdfs
calcurse                 calendar/to do
elinks                     text browser
links2                     text and graphical browser
cmatrix                  matrix like screen
pydf                       colourful df
htop                       colourful top
mplayer                 video player
gpm                       console mouse

For Openbox I installed:

thunar                   file manager
wicd                      network manager
firefox                   browser
xfce4-terminal      terminal
obmenu                menu builder
obconf                  appearance manager
vinagre                 graphical vnc viewer
tango-icon-theme-extras

I needed to add some fixes, drawn mainly from the ubuntu community page for the Aspire One . I followed the SSD life extending suggestions, added the backport modules to get the wireless LED working, made the pciehp entry to help with SD card mounting, and added the acerhdf module to control the fan speed, and some of the tweaks for improving SSD performance. Automounting of USB drives failed due to the bug with hal, so I applied this fix.

Yet to try out skype and webcam under this setup, although I know that the webcam works with cheese, and must do some more research to get all the function (Fn) buttons working, although I know this is a general issue.

My favourite toy is directvnc. Working in the framebuffer is clever enough given that you can run a graphical browser (links2), view images (fbi) and watch video (mplayer) but to be able to run remote graphical sessions from other PCs in the framebuffer knocks me over. I had to resize my remote PCs resolution to 800×600 to get it working right.

Next steps, probably to drop the linpus install, expand the size of XP so I can get Office on it (or Word/Excel/PPoint), and test out battery life - don’t know what happens when the power runs out when I am at the cli

 Keep meaning to log this here, as I seem to have to do it every time I do a command line installation. For some reason, USB devices - flash drives, USB hard drives etc, refuse to mount, even with Thunar and volman installed. A repair is required to the PolicyKIt.conf as follows:

sudo nano /etc/PolicyKit/PolicyKit.conf

and add the following lines in between the <config> tags:

<match action=”org.freedesktop.hal.storage.mount-removable”>
<return result=”yes” />
</match>

You will possibly need a reboot to get this working right.

Now your USB devices should automount correctly