Playing Flash Videos in External Player

I have had a lot of issues with flash videos in the past. I have had some difficulties with it crashing in firefox, and I have had issues with full screen support. There are services that let you download and then play the flash video in an external player, but normally I just want to immediately watch it, but be able to watch it in an external player.

There is an easy solution to this. Just load the video in firefox, and then hit pause once it starts playing. Then, open up the terminal, and run the following command:

smplayer /tmp/Flash*

or

vlc /tmp/Flash*

This probably also works for many other video players using similar commands.  I have had success with youtube, and vimeo when using this, but I would assume that it also works with many other video services.  This will not work with encrypted flash videos though.

Copy SSH Key to Server in One Line

Here is a simple way to copy your public key from your computer to your server (which can allow password-free login):

ssh user@hostname "echo `cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub` >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys"

If you receive an error about ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub not existing, run the following to create it first:

ssh-keygen -t rsa

Using Squid with DDWRT

Squid has several different uses.  It is a proxy for internet connections.  It can be used to speed up the internet by caching commonly used pages/images to speed up page load times, and decrease bandwidth usage.  It can also be used to filter Internet connections (remove ads or block bad webpages) by configuring and adding plugins to it.

In this particular case, I am going to be focusing on how to setup and use Squid with your router running the open source firmware, ddwrt (also confirmed to work on tomato firmware mods).

Configuring Squid:

You are going to need a computer that is either on 24/7 or one that is on whenever you need access to the internet.  I have a server running at my house that is always on, so I decided to use that.  I am running ubuntu on my server, so my instructions will be specific to that, but if you are running a different distribution of Linux, you should be able to easily figure out what what commands you will need to use in order to install and configure squid. Read the rest of this entry »

Virtualbox with USB Support

This guide is specific to ubuntu jaunty (9.04).  It may work on previous version, or other distros, but it is untested.  If you do not need usb support in your copy of virtualbox, you can just install the open source version from the ubuntu package repositories by typing:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-ose

If you need usb support in your virtualbox install (great for hooking up devices that are not compatible with linux), you need to install the proprietary version (also free), and do a few tweaks in order to get it to work.

Installing USB Version:

Make sure the open source version of virtualbox is uninstalled:

sudo apt-get remove virtualbox-ose

First, add the respective line to your /etc/apt/sources.list file according to the current version you are running (for example, add the first line if you are running Jaunty):
Read the rest of this entry »

Converting Ext3 to Ext4

The new version of ubuntu brought the option of selecting the ext4 filesystem instead of ext3.  After reading some reviews, I chose to do this on mine, and noticed quite a speed increase (benchmarks: http://www.linuxinsight.com/first_benchmarks_of_the_ext4_file_system.html).

After installing, my root partition was an ext4 partition, but my home partition was not since it was on a separate partition.  I decided to convert my home partition over to ext4 to get all of the benefits that it provides.

WARNING: Do not do this to a root partition unless you know what you are doing.  I have not tested this/looked it up, and I do not know how this will end.  Also, as with all tweaks (especially on a filesystem), there is some danger of messing up your computer.  I am not responsible for anything that happens.  Make sure all of your files are backed up before attempting this.

Converting

Make sure your operating system supports ext4, and if not, apply any relevant patches to the kernel.

Make sure you are using a live cd, or do not have the file system mounted.  Then, unmount the volume that you are converting, and convert it.

Example with /dev/sda1 (run “fdisk -l” to see your filesystems):

umount /dev/sda1
tune2fs -O extents,uninit_bg,dir_index /dev/sda1

Read the rest of this entry »

Xilinx ISE 10.1

I then ran the setup script in the root of the download folder. This appeared to install correctly, but after the software was installed, I could not figure out how to run the software (it installs no shortcuts for you). So, after a while, I figured out that the ISE software did not install because I was running a 64 bit version of Ubuntu. I eventually solved this by downloading the full version of webpack (instead of the 50mb web install). Then, I ran:

bin/lin/setup

This gave me an error:
error while loading shared libraries: libuuid.so.1

So, I looked this up online, and download the 32 bit libuuid deb from here (http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/e/e2fsprogs/libuuid1_1.38-2ubuntu2_i386.deb), extracted the deb file (right click, and select extract here), and extracted data.tar.gz. Then, cd to the data/lib folder from the extracted data.tar.gz, and move the two files to /usr/lib32

sudo cp libuuid.so.* /usr/lib32

After this, go to the install directory, and run:

10.1/ISE/bin/lin/ise

Most of ISE programs worked for me, but I had some trouble getting the floorplanner to work. You need libXm (http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/multiverse/o/openmotif/libmotif3_2.2.3-2_i386.deb). Install this in the same way that you installed libuuid (for more help, please request in the comments).

Impact:

I never got this to work (it didn’t work for me in Windows XP either though). I had to use the export software that came with with my fpga board). Since this does not work in linux, I tried running it through virtualbox (with usb host sharing). This unfortunately did not work, so I got it working under qemu (there are more details on how to get this working here (http://alien.slackbook.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=slackware:qemu#using_an_usb_device_in_qemu))

Sources:
http://braiden.org/?p=55
http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Comp/comp.arch.fpga/2008-03/msg00838.html
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=203459

For school, we have just started using Xilinx 10.1 with the Digilent Basys board. When I looked on the Xilinx website, I was happy because the webpack (the software I needed for my class) worked with linux. I downloaded the software, and was hoping that it would be smooth sailing from there.

Mythtv Global TV Terminator

The most recent issue I have been having is getting my analog tv tuners to work. I have a Wintv-hvr-950, and a kworld global tv terminator. I have used my wintv-hvr-950 in the past in a mythbuntu box to record and watch ota atsc broadcasts. I also have struggled (yet never succeeded) to get my global tv terminator to work. Now, I am planning on bringing my computer to my college dorm so I can hook it up to the cable there, and record tv. Unfortunately, cable is an analog signal, so I attempted to use either of my tuners in analog mode (they both support this).

I had a lot of trouble getting sound with my wintv-hvr-950, and decided to try to get my kworld global tv terminator to work. I struggled with this for a while, sometimes getting audio to work, but the audio was playing back too fast, and it sounded like chipmunks were talking. Obviously, this was unwatchable.

I then remembered that I had a cable with the tuner that had audio out. I decided to hook this up to the line-in on my sound card. I set the correct options in mythtv, and eventually got this to work. No matter what I did, this audio also sounded aweful. It wasn’t playing back too fast, but there were popping noises, and clipping. Eventually, I decided to go back, and try using the tuner without the line-in, since that was not giving good quality.

I set the audio device in the backend back to /dev/dsp1, and then proceeded to play around with the sampling rate in the frontend:

setup/setup/TV Settings/Recording Profiles/software encoders/live tv

I eventually got 32000 to work for the sampling rate, and no one sounded like chipmunks anymore!

Notes:
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/KWorld_Global_TV_Terminator – A reference for the Kworld Global TV Terminator.

I edited /etc/modprobe.d/saa7134 to

options saa7134 card=65 tuner=54

for the Kworld Global TV Terminator in ubuntu/mythbuntu.

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Hauppauge_WinTV_HVR-950 – A reference for the Hauppauge WinTV HVR-950. I am not going to go into how to get this card working because there are other sites out there that do a much better job at explaining how to setup/use this card. Just search through the ubuntu forums for help getting it setup in ubuntu/mythbuntu.