Customise Ubuntu 12.04 and Gnome 3.x with Gnome Extensions

GNOME Shell extensions are small pieces of code written by third party developers that modify the way GNOME works. (If you are familiar with Chrome Extensions or Firefox Addons, GNOME Shell extensions are similar to them.) You can find and install GNOME Shell extensions using https://extensions.gnome.org/.


Support for installing extensions from the website was first added in GNOME 3.2, so if you are using GNOME 3.0, you'll need to upgrade to a newer Linux distribution. You can check what version of GNOME is installed on your system using the "System Information" panel of "System Settings". If you are using GNOME 3.2 or newer and installation still doesn't work, check to make sure that the "GNOME Shell Integration" plugin is installed and enabled in your browser preferences. Read on for my favourite extensions...

SSH & Screen: Cheat sheet & tips for use with the command line (CLI)

My cheat sheet for SSH and screen...

SSH is a network protocol for secure data communication, remote shell services or command execution and other secure network services between two networked computers.

Screen is an application that can be used to run multiple virtual terminal consoles. It allows a user to access multiple separate terminal sessions inside a single terminal window or remote (SSH) terminal session. 

Configure Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot & Gnome 3 to improve user experience

This is a collation of tips and tweaks I've gathered along the way to configure Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot and Gnome 3 to improve my experience:

Wireless on BackTrack5 and Samsung NC10

How to connect to a WPA encrypted access point in BackTrack5 using wpa_supplicant and a Samsung NC10. Read on...

Ubuntu: Sound-juicer enable missing MP3 codec profile

Sound-juicer on Ubuntu 10.04 does not have lame for gstreamer included as standard hence the MP3 profile is not available out of the box. The required gstreamer lame mp3 plug in does not exist as a dependency for sound-juicer or in the standard synaptic repository. To enable the MP3 profile in sound-juicer, the underlying gstreamer lame mp3 plug is required. To install the gstreamer lame mp3 plug in from the default synaptic repository use:

sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse

Ubuntu: Install makemkv and update simply

MakeMKV is software to convert blu-ray and dvd to mkv, whilst it is in development it is currently free as shareware for Linux. As a consequence it updates every other month and you have to install and update it manually. You will occasionally need grab a new licence key for the shareware version which is avaiable from the MakeMKV forums. I started to write my own script to download, install and keep up to date MakeMKV. However, after getting my own script to work I found this far more elegant solution that I wanted to share. All kudos to Jeff Bower at ebower.com...

FTPS Limit issues with TLS / SSL 3.X and PROT P (Filezilla error 534 and ProFTPd)

I use ProFTPd as my FTP server which I occasionally run externally to let friends grab files from my home server and to upload content to when I'm away from home. I opt to encrypt both the command and data channels using explicit FTP over TLS and posted about setting this up last year getting ProFTPd working with TLS / SSL. In trying to create a more limited user account with only read only access to a limited number of shared directories I hit a challenge in allowing the user to list the content of the directories when TLS was in place, receiving the error 534 Unwilling to accept security parameters. Here's my solution...

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...