Half a Page of Scribbled Linux

My Android phone’s camera stores videos in 3GP format, but my Mom’s computer can’t play them. To convert, use VLC. On the Media -> Convert / Save menu, on the File tab, choose Add to select the 3GP file, then click Convert/Save. Choose a destination file name with an ASF extension and choose “Video – WMV + WMA (ASF)” in Settings and click Start.

I’ve been creating DVD’s from my DSLR video for a few months. The most effective method has been to convert the videos from HD to DVD with FFMPEG:
ffmpeg -i video.MOV -target ntsc-dvd video.mpeg
then import them into DeVeDe and let it create the DVD disk structure and menus. If I let DeVeDe convert the videos, the quality is horrible.
The last time I did this, however, when DeVeDe was creating the directory structure, complained it couldn’t and suggested I check if there was enough disk space. There was. The problem was that although I had told DeVeDe that each video was already in DVD format, I had left off the -target ntsc-dvd from the FFMPEG command line for one of the videos. Re-converting it with the proper flag fixed the problem.

The Canon Pixma Linux blog recommends a printer driver from Canon Asia. The debian package wouldn’t install, so I built from source. The top level directory has a Make file that, while not working itself, listed the subdirectories to be built. In each subdirectory, there was an INSTALL file that listed how each was to be built.
Then I restarted the printer service
service cups restart
and ran System > Administration > Printing, clicked Add, selected Network Printer and chose AppSocket/HP JetDirect. I entered the IP of the printer and left the port at its default of 9100. The IP can be found on the printer’s menu under Settings > Device Settings > LAN Settings > Display LAN Settings.

Unfortunately, the Pixma MP970 wasn’t listed. The closest model number was the MP830.

Another search turned up a newer driver, so I tried that by following the instructions in the README file. After the installation, I ran System > Administration > Printing, clicked Add, then the + next to Network Printer and then Find Network Printer and the Canon showed up. I selected it (it already had the URI) and clicked Forward. It searched for drivers, then had me choose a driver, but still no MP970. The MP150 will print greyscale supposedly (I got grey, magenta and yellow).

To enable on-screen display of the volume, mute and screen brightness buttons, edit /etc/rc.local and add
echo enable,0x00ffffff > /proc/acpi/ibm/hotkey

The TrackPoint on a ThinkPad can scroll pages without pointing to the scrollbar. If enabled, with the mouse pointer in the window you want to scroll, hold the middle mouse button and move the trackpoint in the direction you want to scroll. In Ubuntu 10.04, it’s not enabled by default. You need to download sysfsutils, configure-trackpoint and gpointing-device-settings (called “Pointing devices” in the Ubuntu Software Center) and do a little set-up.

This is a ThinkPad T60 with Windows XP in the default configuration, 150GB WinXP partition and 5GB recovery partition.
Initially using GParted failed to shrink the Windows partition. I ran the disk check and defragment from the C: > Properties > Tools tab. After this GParted was able to shrink the Windows partition. There was 40GB in use. I shrank it to 50 and created an ext3 partition for Linux of 50 GB.
For the installation, some care must be exercised to prevent disabling the ThinkVantage button. This means not installing GRUB on the MBR, but the new / partition instead. Use the manual partitioning option and don’t forget to add a swap partition twice the size of your RAM.

Note: In the steps below, /dev/sda1 is Windows and /dev/sda3 is Ubuntu root.

• Boot with Ubuntu install disk
• Select Rescue a Broken System
• Select new Ubuntu installation / as root and chose “execute a shell” on that file system.

The following is adapted from Matthew J. Miller’s HOWTOs: Dual Booting Ubuntu Linux and Windows XP

• cd /mnt
• mkdir windows
• mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/windows
• dd if=/dev/sda3 of=/mnt/windows/ubuntu.bin bs=512 count=1
• Reboot into windows: “exit”, then choose Reboot
• Edit the Windows bootloader to point to GRUB by adding C:\ubuntu.bin="Ubuntu Linux" at the end of the file.

You’ll now reboot into the Windows boot loader with an option to load either Windows or Linux.

In my last post about network speed, I realize there’s another variable in the loop–disk access. One of the machines is a very old Dell Dimension XPS T600. To remedy that, I needed a test that doesn’t rely on disk.

First I tried netio. The server side ran, but the client complained there was no route to the server host. I tried unsuccessfully using both the TCP and UDP modes before moving on.

Next, I tried iperf. What’s nice is that it’s part of the standard distribution in Ubuntu and Fedora. The result was throughput between the PCs connected via Ethernet to the Actiontec router is about 70 Mbps. Both machines have 10/100 cards in them, so I’m no longer worried about the router being a bottleneck.

There are two gotchas I found when installing Windows 2000 Server on VirtualBox on my Ubuntu 10.04 LTS desktop. The first is that the disk name can’t have a space. I can’t say if this is still an issue with current versions of VirtualBox, because making a new VM without a space in the name didn’t fix my problem, which was that the Windows 2000 installation would restart itself over and over. It would get to the component selection, then copy files and reboot.

What did fix the problem was a start-up message:
[ 15.482935] vboxdrv: Warning: 2.6.31+ kernel detected. Most likely the hardware performance
[ 15.482937] vboxdrv: counter framework which can generate NMIs is active. You have to prevent
[ 15.482938] vboxdrv: the usage of hardware performance counters by
[ 15.482939] vboxdrv: echo 2 > /proc/sys/kernel/perf_counter_paranoid

Although /proc/sys/kernel/perf_counter_paranoid doesn’t exist on my system, /proc/sys/kernel/perf_event_paranoid does and running echo 2 > /proc/sys/kernel/perf_event_paranoid stopped the looping installation problem.

In pursuit of cutting the cable TV cord, I need to have ethernet available to all TVs in the house. Right now, there’s 802.11g WiFi and Coax. You can use FiOS’ coax as a LAN with a MOCA bridge, but you’ll need either a dedicated MOCA bridge (~$70) or a used ActionTec router. Another option is to run Ethernet cable through the house–something I’d rather avoid if I can. So the question is, how much bandwidth do I need? According to the Wikipedia artlcle on HD video 1080p needs between 3.5 and 8.25 Mbits/sec, depending on the source.

To test my existing connections, I first did a speed test (Broadband Blue Angles (4MB) from the closest provider) of my FiOS connection on my desktop connected directly to the FiOS router. The speed varies between 6 and 7.5 Mbits/sec. This is enough for most streaming. But what about if I’m connected via WiFi? The same test from my laptop connected to the FiOS router over WiFi yeilds about the same result. So WiFi isn’t limiting my Internet speed.

Lastly, I want to know how much bandwidth I have internally to use a Myth TV box that’s not streaming from the Internet. To do this, I set up a random 100MB file:
$ dd if=/dev/urandom of=100MB.bin bs=1M count=100
to transfer around. Across two boxes over a wired FiOS connection I got only 4-5.5MB/sec. Between one wired and one WiFi box I got 2-2.5 MB/sec. This would seem to indicate the ActionTec router is limiting my intranet speed.

Things I’ve learned:

• There is no signal to be had from a FiOS coax cable without a cable box.
• I can pick up a few stations in the basement with an old set of Radio Shack rabbit ears, but they pixelate too badly to watch.
• Kids quickly learn to stay in one spot so the TV signal stays good.
• There are 34 over-the-air channels I can get with our old attic antenna.
• I’ve got a lot of wires in my basement ceiling that don’t go anywhere.
• One of those stations is analog.
• Analog has apparently not been banished.
• My youngest daughter acts like a crack addict when a new TV is brought into the house.