ffmpeg|avconv -i input.m4v -vcodec copy -acodec copy out.mkv

So easy this post is actually done here.

/dev/sda:

ATA device, with non-removable media
	Model Number:       Corsair CMFSSD-128D1                    
	Serial Number:      1044318XXXXXXdeleted
	Firmware Revision:  2.0     
Standards:
	Supported: 8 7 6 5 
	Likely used: 8
Configuration:
	Logical		max	current
	cylinders	16383	16383
	heads		16	16
	sectors/track	63	63
	--
	CHS current addressable sectors:   16514064
	LBA    user addressable sectors:  250069680
	LBA48  user addressable sectors:  250069680
	Logical  Sector size:                   512 bytes
	Physical Sector size:                   512 bytes
	device size with M = 1024*1024:      122104 MBytes
	device size with M = 1000*1000:      128035 MBytes (128 GB)
	cache/buffer size  = unknown
	Nominal Media Rotation Rate: Solid State Device
Capabilities:
	LBA, IORDY(can be disabled)
	Queue depth: 32
	Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard, no device specific minimum
	R/W multiple sector transfer: Max = 1	Current = 1
	DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6 
	     Cycle time: min=120ns recommended=120ns
	PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4 
	     Cycle time: no flow control=120ns  IORDY flow control=120ns
Commands/features:
	Enabled	Supported:
	   *	SMART feature set
	    	Security Mode feature set
	   *	Power Management feature set
	   *	Write cache
	   *	Look-ahead
	   *	Host Protected Area feature set
	   *	WRITE_BUFFER command
	   *	READ_BUFFER command
	   *	DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE
	    	SET_MAX security extension
	   *	48-bit Address feature set
	   *	Device Configuration Overlay feature set
	   *	Mandatory FLUSH_CACHE
	   *	FLUSH_CACHE_EXT
	   *	SMART self-test
	   *	General Purpose Logging feature set
	   *	Gen1 signaling speed (1.5Gb/s)
	   *	Gen2 signaling speed (3.0Gb/s)
	   *	Native Command Queueing (NCQ)
	   *	Phy event counters
	   *	DMA Setup Auto-Activate optimization
	    	Device-initiated interface power management
	   *	Software settings preservation
	   *	Data Set Management TRIM supported (limit unknown)
	   *	Deterministic read data after TRIM
Security: 
		supported
	not	enabled
	not	locked
	not	frozen
	not	expired: security count
	not	supported: enhanced erase
Checksum: correct

Seriously? Awesome. Never knew about this, good to know. Might come in handy again.

perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
LANGUAGE = “en_US.UTF-8″,
LC_ALL = “en_US.UTF-8″,
LANG = “en_US.UTF-8″
are supported and installed on your system.

Use this!

export LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
locale-gen en_US.UTF-8
dpkg-reconfigure locales

Worked for me. Of course, replace en_US with w/e your primary language is.

ls -1 | while read file; do N=$(echo $file | tr -cd '\11\12\40-\176'); mv "$file" "$N"; done

What this does is basically:

• get every filename in the current directory and toss it to tr
• the -c and -d options used like this command tr to only output characters that we actually specify
• the quoted argument tells tr to only retain the octal characters 11, 12 and 40 to 176. Octal 11 is Tab, 12 is linefeed (technically, this should be omitted from a filename, but I also use this to filter textfiles, so it comes in handy and is of no real harm here). 40 to 176 are the standard keyboard characters from space to ~, which we actually like in our filenames.
• finally, we move the garbled filename to the new, cleaned up version.

I tried to check out their new 4.x preview just yet (oh, and no, it’s definitely not ready for production), and as I always do, generate my own keys to go with it. But after the usual /usr/NX/bin/nxserver –keygen, a restart failed with

NX> 500 ERROR: Cannot start service: nxserver
NX> 500 Authentication as user nx using the NX SSH key-pair failed.
NX> 500 This may be due to the configuration of your SSH server. Please
NX> 500 ensure that the location and file name of the SSH authorized
NX> 500 keys is the same in both the SSHD and NX server configuration
NX> 500 files and that the nx user is listed among the accepted users
NX> 500 in the SSHD configuration file.
NX> 999 Bye.

Got seriously frustrated, because all seemed well according to documentation. Well, it seems like there is one important step missing – renaming or copying

/usr/NX/share/keys/default.id_dsa.key

to

/usr/NX/share/keys/server.id_dsa.key

If you don’t do that, nxserver will happily continue to use its prior key (which makes sense I guess, you aren’t going into production with new keys the second you generate them) while the nx user will already have the new keys in place.

So basically the procedure is:

# /etc/init.d/nxserver stop
# /usr/NX/bin/nxserver --keygen
# chown nx:root /usr/NX/home/nx/.ssh/authorized_keys2
# chmod 0644 /usr/NX/home/nx/.ssh/authorized_keys2
# chown nx:root /usr/NX/home/nx/.ssh/default.id_dsa.pub
# chmod 0644 /usr/NX/home/nx/.ssh/default.id_dsa.pub 
# cp /usr/NX/share/keys/default.id_dsa.key /usr/NX/share/keys/server.id_dsa.key
# /etc/init.d/nxserver start

Of course, your client(s) will also need to import the new server key.

'Cannot run /etc/X11/xdm/Xsession ...'

when requesting a new session on an Ubuntu server, this – at least for me – fixed it:

sudo mkdir /etc/X11/xdm && sudo ln -s /etc/X11/Xsession /etc/X11/xdm/Xsession

mkvmerge -o <output>.mkv --default-track 0 --language 0:<language> <subtitles>.srt <input>

You can list the language codes by invoking mkvmerge with the --list-languages (e.g. eng for English, ger for German) parameter. The --default-track parameter just sets the newly muxed subtitles as default for the player to use. If you are muxing multiple subtitles, you of course have to change the language code preceding number.

Sounds simple? I’m sure it isn’t, even more so if you look at the supported sites:

 • Amazon		• Last.fm			• 4chan
 • Baidu (百度)		• MySpace			• Reddit
 • deviantART		• Picasa Web Albums	        • Imgur
 • eBay			• Twitter			• Panoramio
 • Facebook		• Wikipedia			• Fotolog
 • Flickr		• Windows Live Photos	        • VKontakte (ВКонтакте)
 • Google Images	• Yahoo				• YouTube
 • Google+ 		• WordPress

Apart from these officially supported sites, I found Hover Zoom working well for quite a lot of other websites on which it ‘just works’.

The author has done an amazing jobs keeping the extension really simple and unobtrusive, with options for whitelisting certain sites, adjustable delay and fading effects and zoom on keyhold. It even displays captions below the zoomed image if it’s able to catch one. This is the kind of extension that’s hard to describe, but once you’ve installed it you are going to miss it on any browser that doesn’t have it.

Hover Zoom is available from the Chrome Web Store.

Screenshot shows the Chrome Extension.

All stuff still applies, but newer freetype/fontconfig builds now support the Byte Code Interpreter, which provides a truly great font experience in combination with good fonts (*cough* hint: ChromeOS Fonts *cough*). My updated .fonts.conf is as follows (enabled BCI, enabled Sub-Pixel Rendering, enabled LCDFilter):

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!--?xml version="1.0"?>-->
<!--DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">-->
<!-- ~/.fonts.conf for per-user font configuration -->
<fontconfig>
  <!-- Alias commonly used default names -->
  <!-- serif, sans-serif, sans and monospace -->
  <!-- to the ChromeOS fonts -->
  <alias>
    <family>serif</family>
    <prefer>
      <family>Tinos</family>
    </prefer>
  </alias>
  <alias>
    <family>sans-serif</family>
    <prefer>
      <family>Arimo</family>
    </prefer>
  </alias>
  <alias>
    <family>sans</family>
    <prefer>
      <family>Arimo</family>
    </prefer>
  </alias>
  <alias>
    <family>monospace</family>
    <prefer>
      <family>Cousine</family>
    </prefer>
  </alias>
  <!-- Replace Arial, Times New Roman, Verdana and Courier New -->
  <!-- with their counterparts. Strong binding used to override -->
  <!-- distribution defaults -->
  <match target="pattern" name="family">
    <test name="family" qual="any">
      <string>Arial</string>
    </test>
    <edit name="family" mode="assign" binding="strong">
      <string>Arimo</string>
    </edit>
  </match>
  <match target="pattern" name="family">
    <test name="family" qual="any">
      <string>Times New Roman</string>
    </test>
    <edit name="family" mode="assign" binding="strong">
      <string>Tinos</string>
    </edit>
  </match>
  <match target="pattern" name="family">
    <test name="family" qual="any">
      <string>Verdana</string>
    </test>
    <edit name="family" mode="assign" binding="strong">
      <string>Arimo</string>
    </edit>
  </match>
  <match target="pattern" name="family">
    <test name="family" qual="any">
      <string>Courier New</string>
    </test>
    <edit name="family" mode="assign" binding="strong">
      <string>Cousine</string>
    </edit>
  </match>
  <match target="pattern" name="family">
    <test name="family" qual="any">
      <string>Courier</string>
    </test>
    <edit name="family" mode="assign" binding="strong">
      <string>Cousine</string>
    </edit>
  </match>
  <match target="font">
    <!--    BCI Hinting     -->
    <edit name="hinting" mode="assign">
      <bool>true</bool>
    </edit>
    <edit name="hintstyle" mode="assign">
      <const>hintfull</const>
    </edit>
    <edit name="rgba" mode="assign">
      <const>rgb</const>
    </edit>
    <edit mode="assign" name="lcdfilter">
      <const>lcddefault</const>
    </edit>
    <!--    Auto Hinting, BCI works better for me 
        Your mileage may vary 
-->
    <!--
        <edit name="autohint" mode="assign">
                <bool>true</bool>
            </edit> 
        <edit name="hintstyle" mode="assign">
                <const>hintmedium</const>
            </edit>
-->
    <!--    Turn off Autohinting for bold fonts -->
    <!--
    <match> 
        <test name="weight" compare="more">
                <const>medium</const>
                </test>
        <edit name="autohint" mode="assign">
                <bool>false</bool>
               </edit>
       </match>
-->
  </match>
</fontconfig>

I am now truly satisfied on my Arch Linux box – while Ubuntu might have the best font experience out of the box, an equal experience on any decent modern distribution is just a configuration file and some great fonts away.

It is pretty well known and documented that setsebool -P ftp_home_dir=1 allows access to system users’ home directories. But what about other directories outside of /home? audit2allow to the rescue!

# audit2allow -a
============== ftpd_t ==============
#!!!! This avc can be allowed using the boolean 'allow_ftpd_full_access'

allow ftpd_t tftpdir_rw_t:file { write create unlink append };

Basically this little known, but invaluable helper goes through your audit.log and tells you what can be done to avoid those denies; in this case

setsebool -P allow_ftpd_full_access=1

therefore allows vsftpd to write to any system directory the currently logged in user can get access to.