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  • 1 min read

Removing your Master Boot Record (MBR)

Removing MBR (including the partition table):

dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/sdX bs=512 count=1

Removing MBR (excluding the partition table):

dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/sdX bs=446 count=1

sdX is the device you want to remove the MBR of (like a USB-stick).

  • in Linux
  • 1 min read

Chromium and middle-click-loads-URL

Chromium is pretty great. It’s damn quick and I rather enjoy the interface. But for some reason the people developing it haven’t yet decided if they are going to implement the whole mark-an-url-and-press-the-scrollwheel-on-your-mouse-to-load-the-url. Phew, that’s a mouthful. Anyway, it has been annoying me like mad. Luckily, I found an extension at which seems to do the trick. So have a look, enjoy, and let’s hope that the developers make up their mind.

  • in Linux
  • 1 min read

Fedora 11 post updated

Hellooo.

I’ve now updated the post Fedora 11 on the Acer Aspire One with a new thing; How to enable autologin.

I will also be explaining how to properly format your USB-pen so that making a Live-USB is easier, and less troublesome. Head on over and have a look. :)

Password protecting folders with nginx

Ever wondered how you can password protect a folder and the underlying content with nginx the same way Apache does? Pretty simple.

First create a htpass-file like so:

htpasswd -bc htpass NewUser NewPassword

Edit your site’s configuration file by adding the following lines of code inside the server-block:

location ^~ /secret {
    auth_basic "Restricted";
    auth_basic_user_file /etc/nginx/htpass;
}

And your folder should be password protected. :)

  • in Linux
  • 1 min read

Want to try out Chromium in Fedora 11?

Easy peasy.

First we need to create a file called chromium.repo in /etc/yum.repos.d/ and put the following content in it:

[chromium]
name=Chromium Test Packages
baseurl=http://spot.fedorapeople.org/chromium/F$releasever/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0

Save and close the file. When done, execute the following command:

yum install chromium

And you’re done. :)

Getting Flash to work with Chromium on a 64-bit system

It’s actually not as hard as you think:

wget http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplayer10/libflashplayer-10.0.32.18.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz
cd /usr/lib64/chromium-browser/plugins/
tar -zxvf /root/libflashplayer-10.0.32.18.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz

Now start up Chromium with:

chromium-browser --enable-plugins

Works great!

  • in Linux
  • 1 min read

How to join multiple .avi or .mpg files – Part Two

25th of May 2008 I wrote a post about how you could join multiple files that looked something like movie.avi.001, movie.avi.002 and so on. I found a new tool that does the job a bit easier, lxsplit. The syntax of lxsplit is like so:

[jorge@ashitaka ~]$ lxsplit 
LXSplit v0.2.4 by Richard Stellingwerff, O. Sezer.
Home page: http://lxsplit.sourceforge.net/

Usage: lxsplit [OPTION] [FILE] [SPLITSIZE]

Available options:
 -j : join the files beginning with the given name
 -s : split the given file.  requires a valid size
Splitsize examples: 15M, 100m, 5000k, 30000000b

Examples:
    lxsplit -s hugefile.bin 15M
    lxsplit -j hugefile.bin.001

So to join all our files, we execute:

lxsplit -j movie.avi.001

And it will join all files named movie.avi.00{1,2,3} and so on. :)

Converting an avi to the Nokia E71 size

This is a oneliner to convert an avi-file to the correct dimensions of a Nokia E71. The screen is small, but sure beats to buy an iTouch if your cell already can play movies for you. :)

ffmpeg -y -i input.avi -acodec libfaac -ab 72k -s 320x176 -aspect 16:9 -vcodec libx264 -b 300k -qcomp 0.6 -r 25 -qmin 16 -qmax 51 -qdiff 4 -flags +loop -cmp +chroma -subq 7 -refs 6 -g 250 -keyint_min 25 -rc_eq 'blurCplx^(1-qComp)' -sc_threshold 40 -me_range 12 -i_qfactor 0.71 -directpred 3 output.mp4
  • in Linux
  • 1 min read

Increasing the speed of Samba

Often found that Samba is slow, for some reason?

The socket option TCP_NODELAY is the one that seems to make the biggest single difference for most networks. Many people report that adding socket options = TCP_NODELAY doubles the read performance of a Samba drive. The best explanation I have seen for this is that the Microsoft TCP/IP stack is slow in sending TCP ACKs.

Simply add this following line under the [global]-section of your smb.conf:

ocket options = TCP_NODELAY  IPTOS_LOWDELAY SO_SNDBUF=65535 SO_RCVBUF=65535

And restart the service. Notice the difference?

If not, it might be a problem with Windows. Often a speed problem can be traced to the client. The client (for example Windows for Workgroups) can often be tuned for better TCP performance. Check out this article to find out more about what you can do to increase the speed.

Good luck!

  • in Linux
  • 1 min read

Firefox and Java on 64 bit Linux

Wondering what you need to do in order to install Java on a 64 bit Linux installation? Few and simple steps really.

First head over to the Download-section at . Select to download the file named Linux x64 RPM (if you’re using an RPM-based distribution like Fedora). Once it’s downloaded, and assuming it has been downloaded to the folder Download, do the following:

After agreeing to the license terms, just type Yes and press enter. Now making the plugin work with Firefox. Just execute the following command:
ln -s /usr/java/latest/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/

Cross your fingers, restart Firefox, and things should hopefully be working. :) Head over here to check out if it worked.
Good luck!