No, I've been lazy...or just hung up at work.
It's pretty close to Christmas eve, and that's kind of a big thing here in DK...and the days up until that special evening, is always kind'a hectic. No news this year..
Been thinking a little bit about 'security'.. Not a BIG problem in the linux world.
Or... is it? It is a big deal when you're a noob, you never know what to look out for, and that's why I'm going to explore this area a bit when I get back from the holidays..
Another area of exploration is the new Ubuntu release 'Dapper Drake' which is due in April 2006, there's been a lot of talk about how this release is going to rocket linux into a new era, where we will see linux workstations take over market shares from Windoze Vitza...G. gotta love that war...
Happy new Year..
Friday, December 23, 2005
Monday, December 12, 2005
Get rid of those unwanted siblings.
From using windows I know that from time to time you need to do a little housework.. Cleaning!
You want to get rid of those orphaned files, those files that where left behind from an uninstalled program.
In windows you'd be doing this by using one of many programs, that clean the system registry and removes orphaned DLL's.
But how do you do this in linux? and here, I'm thinking Ubuntu.
If you're a normal user you'll hardly run into the problem of orphaned files, because when you remove something you'll tell synaptic/aptitude that it is going to remove the program completely, that means all other programs that depend on this, if you don't, they will be broke afterwards.
But sometimes this approach will tell you that "gdm" (Gnome Display Manager) or some other essential system file are going to be removed as well, and you don't want that to happen..
I have been through a number of installs, to get some other programs to compile. The new Kino 0.8.0 for instance.
I installed quite a lot of dependent libraries, to try and get this thing to compile, and I forgot all about what those libraries where. That's why I was looking for a program to give me a list of orphaned libraries, and I found "deborphan", which will give you a list of programs that you can remove without breaking anything.
And then at the end, or actually you should do this often, run another program called "debfoster", which will keep track of packages you want and the ones that are obsolete. It will ask you a few questions the first time, and then start uninstalling the unwanted programs. Very handy tool.
You want to get rid of those orphaned files, those files that where left behind from an uninstalled program.
In windows you'd be doing this by using one of many programs, that clean the system registry and removes orphaned DLL's.
But how do you do this in linux? and here, I'm thinking Ubuntu.
If you're a normal user you'll hardly run into the problem of orphaned files, because when you remove something you'll tell synaptic/aptitude that it is going to remove the program completely, that means all other programs that depend on this, if you don't, they will be broke afterwards.
But sometimes this approach will tell you that "gdm" (Gnome Display Manager) or some other essential system file are going to be removed as well, and you don't want that to happen..
I have been through a number of installs, to get some other programs to compile. The new Kino 0.8.0 for instance.
I installed quite a lot of dependent libraries, to try and get this thing to compile, and I forgot all about what those libraries where. That's why I was looking for a program to give me a list of orphaned libraries, and I found "deborphan", which will give you a list of programs that you can remove without breaking anything.
And then at the end, or actually you should do this often, run another program called "debfoster", which will keep track of packages you want and the ones that are obsolete. It will ask you a few questions the first time, and then start uninstalling the unwanted programs. Very handy tool.
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Learning by doing....mostly wrong!
By trying and trying, again and again, you learn alot! but you also get frustrated alot!
I'm going to write a good portion of my experiences on "How to make homemade DVD's." here.
I wanted to be able to edit my video, place this video on a DVD with a nice title screen and a menu. The menu should make it possible to jump to different chapters/sections...this happens to be a little more difficult than I expected.
I have, as mentioned before, Kino to edit my video, uh ohh, did I mention that this piece of software is awesome...Well it is! I tried to install the new 0.8.0 version, no-go! had to compile it myself, and ran into 'dependency hell'(that's another story).
Stick to the old version which rocks anyway :)
Then I've done different trials to find the perfect menu generation tool for DVD's. There's actually only one - 'dvdauthor' but it's command line, and you have to do a lot of stuff before you can generate your menu. For a 'non commandline' guy you'll be better off with an easy and userfriendly gui.
I tried some of these out, here's a list :
Anyway, to get the DVDstyler working I had to downgrade 2 programs :
mjpegtools and libmjpegtools0 to version 1.1.6.2 from the Breezy version 1.1.6.3. This might interfere with Kino and encoding to divx, but I use the normal mpeg2enc anyway to encode my movies, so I have no worries.
The way I accomplished the downgrade was, I added the marrilat repository in my /etc/apt/sources.list
deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ etch main
Then in Synaptic, select the file, mjpegtools in this case, and choose 'Package' > 'Force version', to select another version than the one you have.
One thing I did, and you should'nt, was getting Kino to encode every scene to a different file, that way I thought I could choose whichever scene to jump to, but this was too big a job for DVDstyler, and dvdauthor. So don't do that!
I did get the files merged though, by just doing this
# cat file1.mpeg file2.mpeg > outfile.mpeg
But this broke my internal file counter somehow, and spumux refused to work with the files. After hours of searching I found the command, to run my merged files through a re-encoding, here's the command :
# mencoder -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd:tsaf -o %newfile.mpeg -oac copy -ovc copy %sourcefile.mpeg
or with an AMD64 version of mencoder:
# mencoder -of mpeg -o %newfile.mpeg -oac copy -ovc copy %sourcefile.mpeg
Now I had no errors at all, the DVD was ready to burn. And lucky me :) My dad gave me some DVD+R in a bulk with 25pcs, I thought it was the same as a DVD's he'd handed me over to test, that DVD was 4x, but these new ones was 8x, wohoo!
I'm thinking of writing a howto, but let's see, the time is limited, and it's soon going to be christmas. I need to do at least 4 new DVD's.... capture, edit, encode, and package before 24th of December...
Later I have learned that this command could do it :
mencoder -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd:tsaf /somedirectory/* -o test.mpeg -ovc copy -oac copy
I'm going to write a good portion of my experiences on "How to make homemade DVD's." here.
I wanted to be able to edit my video, place this video on a DVD with a nice title screen and a menu. The menu should make it possible to jump to different chapters/sections...this happens to be a little more difficult than I expected.
I have, as mentioned before, Kino to edit my video, uh ohh, did I mention that this piece of software is awesome...Well it is! I tried to install the new 0.8.0 version, no-go! had to compile it myself, and ran into 'dependency hell'(that's another story).
Stick to the old version which rocks anyway :)
Then I've done different trials to find the perfect menu generation tool for DVD's. There's actually only one - 'dvdauthor' but it's command line, and you have to do a lot of stuff before you can generate your menu. For a 'non commandline' guy you'll be better off with an easy and userfriendly gui.
I tried some of these out, here's a list :
- Varsha, Java based front end, problems with saving.
- Qdvdauthor, becoming an overall DVD author Gui, but not quite there yet!
- Tovid, more problems with error messages, probably the mjpegtools version.
- DVDstyler(get the file from post#23), very simple intuitive and userfriendly, but I still had to downgrade the mjpegtools.
Anyway, to get the DVDstyler working I had to downgrade 2 programs :
mjpegtools and libmjpegtools0 to version 1.1.6.2 from the Breezy version 1.1.6.3. This might interfere with Kino and encoding to divx, but I use the normal mpeg2enc anyway to encode my movies, so I have no worries.
The way I accomplished the downgrade was, I added the marrilat repository in my /etc/apt/sources.list
deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ etch main
Then in Synaptic, select the file, mjpegtools in this case, and choose 'Package' > 'Force version', to select another version than the one you have.
One thing I did, and you should'nt, was getting Kino to encode every scene to a different file, that way I thought I could choose whichever scene to jump to, but this was too big a job for DVDstyler, and dvdauthor. So don't do that!
I did get the files merged though, by just doing this
# cat file1.mpeg file2.mpeg > outfile.mpeg
But this broke my internal file counter somehow, and spumux refused to work with the files. After hours of searching I found the command, to run my merged files through a re-encoding, here's the command :
# mencoder -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd:tsaf -o %newfile.mpeg -oac copy -ovc copy %sourcefile.mpeg
or with an AMD64 version of mencoder:
# mencoder -of mpeg -o %newfile.mpeg -oac copy -ovc copy %sourcefile.mpeg
Now I had no errors at all, the DVD was ready to burn. And lucky me :) My dad gave me some DVD+R in a bulk with 25pcs, I thought it was the same as a DVD's he'd handed me over to test, that DVD was 4x, but these new ones was 8x, wohoo!
I'm thinking of writing a howto, but let's see, the time is limited, and it's soon going to be christmas. I need to do at least 4 new DVD's.... capture, edit, encode, and package before 24th of December...
Later I have learned that this command could do it :
mencoder -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd:tsaf /somedirectory/* -o test.mpeg -ovc copy -oac copy
Thursday, December 01, 2005
Another milestone passed.
I was, as mentioned in an earlier post, having some trouble with a netbanking applet, which was supposed to work according to the webbanking survey database.
But apparently I was infected with some sort of Windoze 'virus', the one that tends to copy files UPPERCASE, instead of the original case. Java is case sensitive as well, and that might be the actual problem and why the banking applet couldn't find the file it was looking for.
I found the solution at the webbanking survey site, salute!
And me.... I was looking east and west for a solution to the "Netscape security model is no longer supported." problem...doh!
And.... as I was writing in that post, I now have absolutely no use for my WinXP partition.....Erase and rewind! ahemm...My wife just told me that she actually uses XP and another banking application (the competitor) which means, I'll have to migrate that as well...Dang! Well, no time to waste, let's get on with it..
But apparently I was infected with some sort of Windoze 'virus', the one that tends to copy files UPPERCASE, instead of the original case. Java is case sensitive as well, and that might be the actual problem and why the banking applet couldn't find the file it was looking for.
I found the solution at the webbanking survey site, salute!
And me.... I was looking east and west for a solution to the "Netscape security model is no longer supported." problem...doh!
And.... as I was writing in that post, I now have absolutely no use for my WinXP partition.....Erase and rewind! ahemm...My wife just told me that she actually uses XP and another banking application (the competitor) which means, I'll have to migrate that as well...Dang! Well, no time to waste, let's get on with it..
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