I dislike MP3 but less than I dislike WMA :-) Anyway, my car CD player wouldn't want to play WMA. So: 1. Install Medibuntu repository in 1 line sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/$(lsb_release -cs).list output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list && sudo apt-get -q […]
Slow Internet - Connection Issues in Windows Vista
I had to fix a computer with Vista Family Premium 32 bits installed where browsing the internet was nearly impossible. Any loading of a web page would take minutes, because of a very slow DNS resolution. After investigating for a while, I found out that buggy IPv6 implementation in Vista was the […]
Install custom firmware 3.55 on the PS3
Turned out to be quite easy, as long as you have a firmware <3.55 to start with. It is also recommended that the PS3 doesn't have access to the Internet. Download the original 3.55 firmware from a trusted source Copy it on a USB stick formatted in FAT32 under a folder tree called PS3/UPDATE Start […]
Extract audio from a DVD
Extract audio tracks out of a video DVD appeared to be a one liner in Ubuntu. Command line power! for i in {01..11}; do mplayer -vc null -vo null -ao pcm:fast -ao pcm:file=output$i.wav -chapter $i-$i DVD://01; done The previous example extracts audio from chapters 1 to 11 and store them is wav files […]
Clean up Linux history
Login history: sudo -i echo > / var / log / wtmp echo > / var / log / btmp Terminal command history: history -c or echo > ~ /. bash_history source
Windows 7 Service Pack 1 Installation fails
It looks like Windows engineers forgot that other OS can coexist with the beast. As a result, the SP1 installation can fail (error code 0x800F0A12) if the Windows partition is not marked as active. Here is a soft fix: search Disk Management and run it. Find any partition which has 'system' flag, […]
Install Firefox 4 in Ubuntu 10.10
Quite easy in fact: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-stable Then update! Too bad that my favorite theme, Whitehart, won't be supported in FF4... Source
Chromium in Ubuntu colors
Although I still use Firefox a lot, I find the interface and performances a bit outdated. I sure hope version 4.0 will change this. Meanwhile I learned to appreciate Chromium, although it doesn't integrate too well in the Ubuntu desktop. The following themes are here to fix that: […]
Refill Toner Hack for Samsung ML-1640
I got myself a very unexpensive laser printer bundled with a third party toner. The printing industry being quite conservative when it comes to refilling, the printer didn't accept the toner in question. I had to flash a modified firmware so that the printer wouldn't complain anymore. Note that the […]
XBMC Live, Network disabled
I had no network connection during the installation of XBMC Live, and this is why it was disabled at runtime. It was not very difficult to fix: Edited /etc/network/interfaces and added the ethernet interface -- I do not need the wifi (wlan0) and didn't add it. # Loopback interface auto lo iface lo […]
XBMC Live, HDMI Output
XBMC Live is based on Ubuntu and can be installed permanently just the same. In the future, OpenELEC might surpass the official XBMC build, but it is not there yet. It worked just fine; however I ran through a weird issue with HDMI sound output that I wanted to document here. By default, even if […]
Cleaning duplicate files
I went trough the cumbersome exercise of cleaning up my Pictures library, which consists of more than 20 000 images. Needless to say it's completely impossible without a good tool. I usually use fslint under Ubuntu, but there are not so many options. Under Linux, one can do quite powerful tools in a […]
Amstrad CPC revival
Nostalgia... I recently got a good old Amstrad CPC+ to play with, unfortunately without monitor. The Amstrad monitors also act as power supplies. I therefore need to find a power supply and a SCART cable. Power supply is easy: the CPC+ only needs 5V and 2400mA (the 12V line was necessary for the […]
Setup OpenVPN Server on Linksys WRT54G with DD-WRT
As of DD-WRT v.24 SP1, it is now possible to set up DD-WRT as an OpenVPN server. Which is a pretty good thing, because I needed to setup one of these beasts! I used Windows as a client, but also to generate the various configuration, certificate and key files. Initial setup First, install OpenVPN […]
Bug: Ubuntu 10.10 does not apply themes properly
After the upgrade from 10.04 to 10.10 I noticed the Ubuntu theme was sometimes reverted to the default Gnome one, meaning fonts, icons, toolbars are all reset. I tried a clean reinstall but the same bug raised up again. It seems to be a race condition appearing on higher hardware (combination of SSD […]
Enabling NumLock in the Gnome login screen
Install numlockx using apt-get, aptitude or Synaptic Edit /etc/gdm/Init/Default Find the line exit 0 Add the following code above that line if [ -x /usr/bin/numlockx ]; then /usr/bin/numlockx on fi source 1 […]
How to secure delete files in Linux
Shred shred OPTIONS filename Common options: -n N Overwrite a file N times. -u Remove the file after you’ve shredded it. -z After shredding a file with random bits (ones and zeros), overwrite the file with only zeros. So, for example, to shred a file “topsecret.txt” with 26 iterations, and delete it […]
Some hints to fix a non booting Windows 7 / 2008 R2 without reinstalling
Fix the MBR: bootrec /FixMbr Fix the partition boot record: bootrec /FixBoot Fix the boot menu: bootrec /RebuildBcd To run the Bootrec.exe tool, you must start Windows RE (recovery console). To do this, follow these steps: Put the installation disc in the disc drive, and then start the computer. […]
Configuring anonymous public shares with Samba
I recently had to setup a simple, straightforward file server. I chose to install the Turnkey File Server Appliance as it had everything I wanted, ready to use. Following a SAMBA tutorial I could set the server so Samba users can have access to shared resources. However, for a public share I wanted […]
How to resolve orphaned users in SQL Server
I recently got to duplicate / migrate a SQL Server 2008 database. I had trouble with the logins, which were broken after the move. It has to do with mismatching SID for DB users. To fix, one needs to select the database in question then exec sp_change_users_login 'Report' The procedure lists any […]