Cyberdelia

The ultimate codec guide

upsignal — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 23:08:13 +0000

OK, so you want to use your Mplayer to play all the media files, including the famous RMVB? Follow this commands:

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
add the following lines:
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu intrepid universe multiverse deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu intrepid universe multiverse

sudo apt-get update
sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/intrepid.list --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install w32codecs libdvdcss2

Now, open up your Mplayer, right click on the video window, go to preferences:
Select the Video tab and change the Available drivers: to x11 X11 (XImage/Shm).
Select the Codecs & demuxer tab and change the Video codec family: to RealVideo decoder and the Audio codec family: to FFmpeg/libavcodec audio decoders. When you’re done, click OK and close down MPlayer.

You’re ready to go. Open an rmvb file with mplayer, it should do the trick

Subtitles issues in MPlayer

upsignal — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:56:28 +0000

This tip is mainly for Portuguese guys ;). So, did you ever got annoyed because some subtitles change “ás vezes” to ” ? vezes”. Words with ‘ or ` get all messed up? here’s the solution:

Go to your home folder, open up “.mplayer” , edit the config file and paste this:

[default] subfont-text-scale = 5 subfont-osd-scale = 5 fontconfig = yes subcp = iso8859-1

Try it now :) you can edit the subtitles size at your way of course

Miss windows live messenger on ubuntu?

upsignal — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 12:43:32 +0000

You won’t miss it anymore. Try for yourself:

sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install emesene

Check their forum for themes, emoticons and sounds:

http://emesene.org/smf/index.php?action=forum

Features:

Emesene features:


    * Clean and easy to use GUI

    * Tabbed chat

    * Custom emoticons

    * File transfers

    * Offline messaging

    * Personal messages

    * Nudges

    * Multilingual GUI

    * Customization

          o Themes

          o Smileys

          o Sounds

          o GUI

          o Conversation format

    * Plugins

    * MSN Plus!

    * Chat logging
Features available in development versions

* Webcam receiving * Winks

Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex)

upsignal — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 12:40:23 +0000

That’s right, it’s coming in 5 days!! Here’s a taste on what’s new :

GNOME 2.24

Ubuntu brings you the newest GNOME 2.24 desktop environment with tons of bug-fixes and new features, some of which include:

Nautilus file manager has tab support (by Christian Neumair) and Eject icons for removable drives in Places sidebar (by Stefano Teso, Cosimo Cecchi, Christian Neumair, and others).

File Roller archive manager now supports ALZ, RZIP, CAB, TAR.7Z file types also (by Paolo Bacchilega and Changwoo Ryu).

X.Org 7.4

X.Org 7.4, the latest stable version of X.Org, is available in Intrepid. This release brings much better support for hot-pluggable input devices such as tablets, keyboards, and mice. At the same time this will allow the great majority of users to run without a /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. A new failsafe X is introduced, to give better tools for troubleshooting X startup failures.

Two of the older nvidia binary drivers are not available for X.Org 7.4 yet, so users of these drivers will be automatically switched to the corresponding open source drivers.

Linux kernel 2.6.27

Ubuntu 8.10 RC includes Linux kernel 2.6.27, a significant release with better hardware support and numerous bug-fixes.

Encrypted private directory

The ecryptfs-utils package was recently promoted to Ubuntu main, with support for a secret encrypted folder in your Home Folder (by Michael Halcrow, Dustin Kirkland, and Daniel Baumann).

You can help test this new feature by going to Applications → Accessories → Terminal and typing:

sudo aptitude install ecryptfs-utils

ecryptfs-setup-private

Guest session

The User Switcher panel applet (package fast-user-switch-applet) now provides an extra entry for starting a Guest session (by Martin Pitt). This creates a temporary password-less user account with restricted privileges: the account cannot access any users’ home directories, nor permanently store data. This is sufficiently safe to lend your laptop to someone else for a quick email check.

Network Manager 0.7

Ubuntu 8.10 RC ships Network Manager 0.7 (by Dan Williams and others), which comes with long-expected features, such as:

system wide settings (i.e., no need to log in in order to get a connection)

management of 3G connections (GSM/CDMA)

management of multiple active devices at once

management of PPP and PPPOE connections

management of devices with static IP configurations

route management for devices

More information can be found on the Network Manager wiki.

DKMS

DKMS (by Dell) is included in Ubuntu 8.10, allowing kernel drivers to be automatically rebuilt when new kernels are released. This makes it possible for kernel package updates to be made available immediately without waiting for rebuilds of driver packages, and without third-party driver packages becoming out of date when installing these kernel updates.

Samba 3.2

A lot of new features have been added in Samba 3.2 amongst them:

clustered file server support

encrypted network transport

ipv6 support

better integration with the latest version of Microsoft Windows™ clients and servers.

PAM authentication framework

Ubuntu 8.10 RC features a new pam-auth-update tool, which allows simple management of PAM authentication configuration for both desktops and servers (by Steve Langasek). Packages providing PAM modules will be configured automatically, and users can adjust their authentication preferences by running sudo pam-auth-update.

More information can be found in the Ubuntu wiki.

Totem BBC plugin

Ubuntu 8.10 RC features a new plugin for the Totem movie player that fetches free digital content from the BBC. To enable it, start Totem (Applications -> Sound & Video -> Movie Player), enable the plugin (Edit -> Plugins -> BBC content viewer) and select “BBC” from the drop-down labelled “Playlist”.

Thanks to the BBC and Collabora for their work developing this feature.

Server Virtualization

python-vm-builder

This is a complete rewrite of ubuntu-vm-builder featuring a better template system, a plugin architecture allowing support for other distributions, front-ends and additional functionalities such as post install task (–exec, –copy) or first boot (–first-boot, –first-login). It provides a compatibility mode with the previous command-line syntax and adds better reporting.

Python-vm-builder allows you to create a new virtual machine in a few minutes without going through the interactive installation process. It can be very useful for developers, software vendors or system administrators. A tutorial is available at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/JeOSVMBuilder

Ubuntu as a Xen guest

Using Ubuntu as a Xen guest is now a supported option included in the standard server kernel and is a choice when building virtual machines with python-vm-builder.

JeOS is now an option in the server installer

In an effort to simplify our build process and avoid confusion when trying to install JeOS on real hardware, JeOS is no longer provided as a separate ISO. Instead, it is an option that is activated on the server installer by pressing F4 on the first screen and selecting the “Install a minimal virtual machine” option.

Notable inclusion in the main repository

The following packages have been included in the main repository and are now supported options that can be of particular interest for server administrators:

Sun’s Java OpenJDK 1.6 – an open source implementation of the Java development kit

Apache’s Tomcat 6 – A Java servlet container

ClamAV – a virus detection engine that can be coupled to mail servers

SpamAssassin – A spam detection engine that can be coupled to mail servers

Boot degraded raid setting

Traditionally, booting an Ubuntu installation with the root filesystem on a degraded RAID drops the system into a busybox prompt in the initramfs. This is the safest choice as it will prevent any further possible harm to data and let administrator pick what to do, but was causing issues with server hosted in remote locations. A system administrator can now statically configure their machines to continue on booting even if a disk is bad in the array by issuing the following command:

Additionally, this can be specified on the kernel boot line with the bootdegraded=[true|false] parameter.

Service command now supported

Fedora or Red-Hat administrators will now feel a bit more comfortable using Ubuntu as the service command they had been using to manage daemons is now standard on Ubuntu. In addition to the traditional sudo /etc/init.d/ [start|stop|restart] way of managing a process, it is now also possible to use sudo service [start|stop|restart].

In addition, numerous standard services now support the status option so that, e.g., sudo service postfix status will now report if the service is running or not.

OpenLDAP using ”cn=config”

The default installation of the OpenLDAP server now uses the cn=config extension, which allows automatic synchronization between LDAP replicas of configuration changes made.

Service-aware Uncomplicated Firewall (ufw)

Common services now inform ufw of the ports that are recommended for their proper enabling, so the administrator can open them in a single simple command ufw allow .

		echo "BOOT_DEGRADED=true" | sudo tee -a /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/mdadm

Ubuntu with XP fonts

upsignal — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 12:31:59 +0000

If you recently moved from windows xp to ubuntu, you might hate the look of ubuntu fonts and the impact they make on firefox. I’m gonna help you changing that.
As usual, open your terminal:

sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts

Now, download this file and paste it on /home/$username/.fonts (probably you need to create the folder first)
Right click on your desktop, go to appearance options and make it like this:

Now, the best part… download this widget extract it and just click the install icon. After that, close firefox and open it again :) It’s amazing how it looks good now, huh?

Bluetooth on ubuntu

upsignal — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 19:17:28 +0000

So, you have a bluetooth device, but when you click “search devices” ubuntu gives you this error:

obex://[mac:address]” is not a valid location.

I have the solution for you. Just open synaptic and search/install the following package:
gnome-vfs-obexftp
Now, search the devices again :)

Firefox adsl tweaks

upsignal — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 16:53:58 +0000

If you have a fast connection, this is for you:

1. Type: about:config
2. Set:
network.http.max-connections : 96
network.http.max-connections-per-server : 32
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy : 24
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server: 12

network.http.pipelining : true
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests : 8
network.http.proxy.pipelining : true

network.http.keep-alive.timeout : 30
network.ftp.idleConnectionTimeout : 60

nglayout.initialpaint.delay : 0

content.notify.ontimer : true
content.notify.interval : 100
content.switch.threshold : 100000
content.notify.backoffcount : 200
content.max.tokenizing.time : 3000000

browser.xul.error_pages.enabled :true

general.smoothScroll: false

browser.cache.disk.capacity : 76800

config.trim_on_minimize : false

You should now open pages a lot faster ;)

PlayOnLinux !

upsignal — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 13:30:30 +0000

The PlayOnLinux ist a front end made on python for installing windows softare on wine .It original purpose was for the newbies on linux install their favorite games from windows on a easy way.But the evolution of this program now allows you to install MS Office and other softwares for DOS like the DosBox.

PlayOnLinux has the following requirements for it to run (as of 2.0.4):

Wine
Bash
Python > 2.4
Wxwindows bindings for Python > 2.6
Lynx
xterm
unzip

More info is available on the official webiste !

By Szadek

Play .rmvb movie files easily.

upsignal — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 22:20:15 +0000

Download the bin file here
Then open the root terminal and submit :

Sudo apt-get install libstdc++5

sudo chmod a+x /Place_where_you_downloaded/Realplayer.bin ( the name of the file can change)

sudo /Place_where_you_downloaded/Realplayer.bin

and now you should be able to complete the installation of the player =)

By Szadek

Is there any way to mount virtual drives like daemon tools does on windows ?

upsignal — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 21:28:22 +0000

Yes there is.But the best part of this is that you dont need any program to do it.Remember that the free edition of daemon tools brings you spyware to your computer .If you want the professional , you have to find a crack , and you know what you get surfing on these crack/serials websites dont you ?Spyware , adware , etc …

But in linux , all programs are free and there are no malware to concern , and if you can do things without a program for the purpose , better .And this is the case.In windows to mount a virtual drive , you have to download a program for it , ex: daemon tools , alcohol x% , etc … in linux , at least in ubuntu , you only need the terminal.

Here is the trick :

1 – open the terminal , or even better , root terminal , you need admin previleges to do this.

2 – type : sudo mkdir /mnt/Name_of_the_drive_you_want

3 – type : sudo mount /Path_where_your_file_is.iso -o loop /mnt/Name_of_the_drive_you_want

And thats it , now you should have a drive icon on the desktop , if there is not , it is on the file system , on the mnt directory.Have fun .

Ps : it works with movie dvd’s and every kind of iso file.

By Szadek