Ubuntu: Playing 1080i HD content with Nvidia hardware acceleration decoding

Playing HD content on Linux has not always been that easy to achieve. Firstly, you ideally need a supported graphics card and from my research it seems preferable to go with Nvidia over AMD/ATI for Linux supported drivers at the time of writing. Secondly, you will need to configure your system to make the best use of the hardware based decoder on the current generation of graphics cards. Here's how I configured Ubuntu 11.10, an Nvidia G210 / N210 and VLC to playback 720p and 1080i HD content on a lowly Intel Atom based system...

Fix no sound in Adobe Flash on Linux under Firefox, Chromium, Opera et al.

After moving to Ubuntu 11.10 I have been experiencing issues with Adobe Flash not playing sound at all through any brower on this PulseAudio equipped operating system. PulseAudio is a sound server which accepts sound input from one or more sources and redirects it to one or more sinks (E.g. sound cards). One of the goals of PulseAudio is to reroute all sound streams through it; common issues include programs locking the ALSA sound device which then prevents other applications from mixing and using the audio device. To correct the issue I experienced with Opera and Flash I followed the following method which routes ALSA apps directly through pulse:

Ubuntu: auto mount samba network shares on boot via smbfs & fstab

Increasingly all of my data is stored on a network server which allows me to access it from multiple devices/platforms and to reduce local storage for each device. Having migrated recently from Windows XP to Ubuntu 11.10 for my main desktop workstation I want to automatically mount my network based data currently hosted as a Windows share on a samba server when my Ubuntu system boots up. Here's how...

DD-WRT web interface not responding, restart httpd over ssh / telnet

DD-WRT is a third party developed firmware released under the terms of the GPL for many ieee802.11a/b/g/h/n wireless routers based on a Broadcom or Atheros chip reference design.  DD-WRT runs a small httpd server used for configuring the router (remember that opening WEB server to the world could be potential security problem). I am currently running DD-WRT v24-sp2 (07/22/09) vpn and occasionally cannot connect at all to the web interface after the router has been under heavy load or operating for a substantial amount of time. Rather than reboot the router the following commands can attempt to restart the web interface, executed via ssh or telnet:



Stopservice httpd

Startservice httpd

Exact Audio Copy EAC under Ubuntu with Wine

Looking to improve upon my automated CD > FLAC ripping experience I've investigated moving away from the simple but excellent sound-juicer CD ripping app to Exact Audio Copy (EAC). Exact Audio Copy is a CD ripper for audio CDs using standard CD and DVD-ROM drives. The main difference between EAC and most other rippers is that it reads audio CDs almost perfectly. If there are any errors that can’t be corrected, it will tell you on which time position the (possible) distortion occurred, so you could easily control it with the media player. It effectively strives for a bit perfect reproduction of the original CD/DVD. Unfortunately there isn't a native bit perfect CD ripper under Ubuntu that I'm aware of, the closest tool is RubyRipper but that doesn't ensure a bit perfect copy from what I understand. Read on to see how I implemented EAC with Wine under Ubuntu...

Comparison of Audio Compression

I stumbled across a really interesting link here from Nigel Coldwell comparing different audio compression techniques and bit rate.
To quote his opening lines:

"I've compiled a table containing the same audio sample compressed into different bit rate using several common compression techniques. Namely MP3 (constant bit rate and VBR,) windows media audio, ogg vorbis, AAC and flac. My intention is that you can use this to work out the lowest bit rate at which the audio sounds clear to you. this will depend on the equipment you're using, and your hearing. I firmly believe that if you can't hear the difference then there is no point wasting space."

I'm still a firm convert to FLAC but nevertheless this is a very interesting read and listen. especially if you are space constrained. Check it out here: http://nigelcoldwell.co.uk/audio/

Ubuntu: Automatically rip CD to FLAC and convert to ALAC m4a for iTunes & HomeSharing

Since getting iTunes running smoothly on my Ubuntu server under VirtualBox I was looking to upgrade and automate my CD ripping process. My aim here was to have a near 'zero click' approach for ripping an inserted CD to FLAC for opensource goodness and then to convert the files to ALAC for iTunes compatibility and HomeSharing. The two click solution I've reached involves 1) to select the right CD metadata from an CD info site and 2) to hit the button to rip, the script does the rest. It now takes me under 15 minutes to rip a CD to FLAC and get it into iTunes and shared over HomeSharing with just two clicks, here's how...


N.B. As of October 2011 ALAC is now open source too.

Setup Virtual box 4.x.x with Windows XP and iTunes for Home sharing under Ubuntu

After experiencing intermittent success with iTunes under Wine since upgrading iTunes to 10.4.1; both from the perspective of iTunes working with Wine and also with Wine/iTunes worknig with Apple TV2 (ATV2). I've decided to bite the bullet and run iTunes within a virtual instance of Windows XP running on top of Ubuntu 10.04. I've tried this on both an Intel Atom based server (without native support for virtualisation) and with an AMD Neo server (with native virtualisation support). I've had good results on both set ups using Oracles free VirtualBox and Windows XP SP3, best of all it was rather simple - here's how...

Successfully kill and restart iTunes in Wine (Ubuntu & Apple TV 2 / ATV2)

I run iTunes under Wine on my Ubuntu server to share media to an Apple TV 2 using Home sharing. Since upgrading to iTunes 10.4.1 under Wine I've had regular issues with my Apple TV 2 no longer seeing the Ubuntu based iTunes Home share after a period of time. The easy way I've found to fix this is to kill iTunes in Wine and restart it is as follow a helpful script to achieve this follows...

Watch BBC iPlayer on your phone offline in 6 simple steps (Download streams)

Since BBC iPlayer app on Android only works on wifi and has no support for offline playback I was looking for another way to watch BBC content on my Android device. Previously I had used an Android app called MyPlayer which allowed me to watch BBC streams over 3G but the app has since been pulled at the BBC's request I believe. It's a shame their own app is so poor the future of TV is user driven on demand any time any where viewing and the BBC needs to keep up with this if they're going to compete in the Web2.0 digital age of streaming. If I'm on wifi it's likely that I have a TV nearby - the BBC is missing a huge audience with its wifi online only based app where it needs to be is 3G streaming or offline show shifting (with DRM if it must). Furthermore the lackluster quality of the Android flash feeds versus the Apple H.264 feeds from the BBC is another hot topic where as a license payer I feel hard done. Part of my solution to watch BBC content of the go offline is with get_iplayer read on...

Firefox "Apply Update" fails on Windows

Mozilla Firefox since version 6.0 (thru 6.0.1 to 6.0.2) has not been installing software updates properly for me on a Windows 7 machine via the usual 'Help > About Firefox > Apply Updates' command. Firefox always shows the 'Apply Update' button and fails to upgrade or check for new updates. Firefox does close and attempt to update eventually restarting without update occurring  and the only way I have found to update is to manually install the latest version over the top. However this manual workaround hasn't corrected the embedded Firefox update functionality. Read on for the solution that worked for me...

Set up an email alert for SSH connections (Ubuntu + Openssh + Sendemail)

Looking to monitor my SSH server and trigger an email alert for any SSH connections to my Ubuntu server I've pulled together a very basic script that will send an email when someone logs into an SSH server. Read on...

Configure iPhone iOS to use an IPSec VPN tunnel and resolve reconnect issues

Following on from my post that walks through the set up of an Ubuntu based IPSec VPN server using Openswan and Android, I've now had the chance to also configure an iOS device to work with the same configuration. Read on to see how I configured the iOS 5.0 iPhone 3GS to work with my Openswan IPSec VPN...

Android IPSec PSK VPN - Nexus One with OpenSWAN

Looking to secure my internet traffic when on a public network and away from home I decided to set up a VPN between my phone and my Ubuntu server. This would allow all of my phone's traffic to be encrypted and tunneled through my Ubuntu server and home internet connection. Effectively this will make it difficult for people to listen to my traffic and in essence would offer additional security to my browsing and email when on a public network. My phone is an Android Google Nexus One; and unfortunately Android versions up to and including Gingerbread (2.3.4) do not support OpenVPN out of the box, unless you root your device. Read on to see how I set up my Android to Home IPSec VPN...

Ubuntu as an Apple Time machine capsule with Netatalk

I use my Ubuntu server for nearly everything, it'd be great if my Macs could back up to it too using the great built in Apple Time Machine functionality. TimeMachine relies on the AFP as the transfer protocol for backing up and transmitting data over the network. Netatalk is the Open Source implementation of AFP. Mac OS X requires encryption to work properly but the standard package of netatalk provided in the Ubuntu repositories doesn’t include this feature. So we have to build our own netatalk package from the sources with the encryption feature enabled. Read on...