Tag Archives: Linux

Quicktime to Divx Conversion.

mencoder -ovc divx4 -oac mp3lame -noskip detect_640_dl.mov -o detect_640_dl.avi

Great! My machine doesn’t play Quicktime movies very well – it’s under powered. It does play Divx files fine though.
The above command will convert a Quicktime file into a Divx file. Not sure yet how the filesize of the new avi will compare to the .mov file. There are options to set the bit rate and other Divx parameters so it’ll take some experimentation to get right if past experience with Windows encoders is anything to go by.
Update! Audio sync is way off. This pagepage has some more info that might come in handy for further experimentation.

Linux to Symbian File Transfer – HOWTO

I finally got to see my phone’s filesystem from Linux this morning! I used p3nfs to connect my Nokia 7650 and Red Hat 9 Linux box. Here’s how.

  • Login to your Linux box as root.
  • Make sure you have the following rpms installed: bluez-libs-devel, bluez-libs, bluez-utils. They’re available from your local apt-rpm repository (just apt-get install them!) or from http://bluez.sf.net
  • Copy the following lines to your /etc/modules.conf

    # bluetooth stuff
    alias net-pf-31 bluez
    alias bt-proto-0 l2cap
    alias bt-proto-2 sco
    alias bt-proto-3 rfcomm

  • Start Bluetooth services: /etc/init.d/bluetooth start
  • Create the bluetooth device if it doesn’t exist: mknod /dev/rfcomm0 c 216 0
  • Create a directory for the mobile to be mounted on: mkdir /mnt/psion
  • Download p3nfs from the site above. Copy the nfsapp for your phone to your phone (you’ll have to mail it to your phone, wap, or bluetooth in Windows.)
  • p3nfsd doesn’t compile on Red Hat 9, but it’s simple to fix that. cd into the nfsd directory, edit “mp_mount.c” and remove any mention of extern int errno from it and add #include <errno.h> at the top of the file. Do the same in “mp_xmit.c” and compile using make clean;make
  • Follow the instructions in README.bluetooth.linux (find the BDADDR, bind to the device, and start the nfs app and servers.
  • cd into /mnt/psion and look around your phone!

This is in fact more useful than the Windows tools I have. I couldn’t send images from my phone to my desktop software, and there’s quite a few of them. Using this, I simply went into /mnt/psion/C:/Nokia/Images/ and “mv”ed the files onto my PC!
There’s an “Installs” directory there too so I presume that’s where the .sis and .jar files go to install applications. Will test later. /me’s happy!
This howto wouldn’t have been possible without the invaluable page Tom wrote about his own experiences. Thanks! And of course Google helped me compile p3nfsd!

MonMotha's IPTables Firewall

I’ve looked around for ages for a decent firewall generator script but I ran into problems with all of them. (No, I haven’t got time to learn about yet another firewall implementation! I gave up after ipfwadm!)
This script looks like it’ll do the business though! Just enter the network addresses of your internal lan(s), what ports you want to keep open, internal and external interfaces, and finally what networks to masquerade. Simple!
Update! Bah! Had to remove it again. It worked fine, except 2 users on our network had consistent problems connecting to our gateway for minutes at a time! Didn’t happen to anyone else though!

XPde desktop environment

I’m posting this from within XPde. It’s not bad. There’s no way I’d use it for day to day activity, but it might be useful for bringing over some of the masses to Linux!
Anyone who’s used to Windows will be immediately at home here. Like Windows, you have “My Documents”, “My Computer”, etc on the desktop.
Just like a virgin install of Windows you can’t do much with it either. There aren’t many applications on the desktop menu.
I’m already missing ALT-dragging windows however. That’s one aspect of the Windows GUI I’ve always despised. No doubt there’s a way to get that working but I CBA!

To cap it off, XPde is one to keep an eye on, and may be very useful in the future! Well worth checking out!

ssh login attack

Looking through my log reports this morning I was shocked to see lots of failed logins for users such as root, ftp, nobody, apache, operator, amanda, mysql, etc. All originated from one host, ns1.webmediaworks.net, A visit to their website explained everything..

TechTeaM OwnZ u box dollarz@bol.com.br

Unfortunately, the whois db seems to be down so I can’t even contact the webmedia site owners..

SCO – modem configuration

I know a hell of a lot more now about SCO than I did 24 hours ago. I know all about “Modem Manager”, /usr/lib/uucp/Devices and /usr/lib/uucp/Dialers – Argh! It’s so archaic! For those of you in the Windows world, imagine having to debug or use a Windows 3.1 application. That’s what SCO looked and felt like compared to the modern Linux systems I use everyday. Even a 4 year old Linux box is friendlier to the developer/user.
Finally, thank you Google for finding most of the information I needed. A few hints from a SCO applications developer in Dublin helped too. (“Have you tried 9600? Our modems have trouble connecting at different speeds” *ding*)
It was funny to see a Netscape icon on the desktop and ridiculous to see ncsa-httpd in the output of “ps”. Of course the guys in the office had no idea there was a webserver on the machine…
(Topic is Linux, close enough to Unix to not matter :P)

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Consider installing a browser extension that blocks ads and other malicious scripts in your browser to protect your privacy and security. Here are a few options.

  • uBlock Origin is a free, open source, ad blocker for your browser.
  • Use pi-hole if you have a spare Raspberry Pi on your network.
  • Set the private DNS settings on your phone to dns.adguard.com to block adverts and trackers.