he1ix' blog

my way to conveniently convert an MPEG “Transport Stream” (TS) to a DVD:

1. open the TS-file with avidemux
2. choose “yes” to index the MPEG
3. select “Auto” -> “Optical Disc” -> “DVD”
4. click “save” to demux the MPEG-TS into an MPEG-PS

1. open “DVDStyler”
2. select “MP2” as audio format in the project wizard
3. add the new MPEG file
4. hit “burn”

done. demuxing and creating the iso takes usually less than 15 minutes.

This posting describes the steps required to build the Funambol add-on for Mozilla Thunderbird 3 on Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat). It is mostly based on Bas’ Blog entry .

Part I: the prerequisites

1. define the buildroot

   BASE="${HOME}/buildenvs/mozbuild.maverick_amd64"

2. install required packages

   sudo aptitude install mercurial autoconf2.13 colormake libcurl4-gnutls-dev libtool git-svn

3. I had problems using a freshly debootstrapped ubuntu maverick (10.10) chroot that was missing the “staff“ group, so if it’s missing, add it via “vigr“…
4. install build-dependencies

   sudo apt-get build-dep thunderbird

hp-snmp-agents error: Service snmp has to be enabled to start service hp-snmp-agents

If you get an error like:

Setting up hp-snmp-agents (8.5.0.1.1-2) ...
insserv: Service snmp has to be enabled to start service hp-snmp-agents
insserv: exiting now!
update-rc.d: error: insserv rejected the script header
dpkg: error processing hp-snmp-agents (--configure):
subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1

Edit the file:

/var/lib/dpkg/info/hp-snmp-agents.postinst

(copied 1-on-1 from craighoffman)

might be interesting for the unfortunate minds that are stuck with one of those MacOS computers:

HowTo: Make Ubuntu A Perfect Mac File Server And Time Machine Volume

norman hooper’s blog

The X-Windows Disaster

to restore a dump from a MySQL database created on a debianish Linux system, just feed the dumped SQL to the command-line mysql client like this:

mysql -u root -p < mysql-all-2010-03-28-0515.sql

since the whole content of all MySQL databases are overwritten with that stored in the dump, credentials are affected as well. that’s the reason why debian’s system tools won’t work any more after restoring the old dump, since debian creates a maintenance-user called “debian-sys-maint” during the installation and stores the randomly generated credentials in “/etc/mysql/debian.cnf” so it’s sufficient to just copy the “password” values from the old file into the new one and restart mysql. otherwise, you will run into an error like this:

/etc/mysql/debian-start[3181]: Running 'mysqlcheck'...
/etc/mysql/debian-start[3181]: /usr/bin/mysqlcheck: Got error: 1045: Access denied for user 'debian-sys-maint'@'localhost' (using password: YES) when trying to connect
/etc/mysql/debian-start[3181]: FATAL ERROR: Upgrade failed

examine the superblock of a device:

mdadm --examine /dev/sdd1

re-assemble an array when autodetection fails:

mdadm /dev/md0 --assemble --force /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1 /dev/dm-6

That’s just a few records on my personal experience regarding the hot-swapping/hot-plugging capabilities of SATA… Continue reading ‘hotplugging SATA harddisks in Linux’ »

want to know which files in /etc have been changed on your debian-like Linux system?

one part can be done with the package debsums, which compares the md5sums delivered with a debian-package with those of the current files:

$ sudo debsums -a -s
.
.
debsums: checksum mismatch apache2.2-common file /etc/apache2/sites-available/default
debsums: checksum mismatch apache2.2-common file /etc/apache2/ports.conf
.
.

Note 1: this does NOT cover configuration files that are not part of the .deb-package itself, e.g. those manually created by a user AND as well those built by a package’s configuration/post-install scripts. You have been warned!

Note 2: debsums can give hints about a compromised system, but it’s absolutely no guarantee that a non-suspicious output comes from a clean system – if the system’s compromised, an attacker could as well change the md5sums-database of a package (residing in /var/lib/dpkg/info/PKGNAME.md5sums)