Paul’s Linux Blog

At last I managed to get handbrake-gui on my pc big woohoo.

Not that excited hmm maybe not but I have tried many times to install handbrake, the only success I have had was on windows I have managed to get the Linux CLI version installed but could not get the out of my files quite right. The gui version I thought would be a simple install however I kept running into dependency issues.

Finally I did it, and worst of all it was far easier than expected.

First ensure you have subversion installed and configured as follows.

• sudo apt-get install subversion

Now setup subversion

• sudo svnadmin create /svn

Now to sort the dependencies.

• sudo apt-get install  yasm build-essential autoconf libtool zlib1g-dev libbz2-dev intltool libglib2.0-dev libdbus-glib-1-dev libgtk2.0-dev libhal-dev libhal-storage-dev libwebkit-dev libnotify-dev libgstreamer0.10-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev

To begin the install you will need to fetch the latest build of handbrake as follows:

• svn checkout svn://svn.handbrake.fr/HandBrake/trunk hb-trunk

Once the handbrake source code has downloaded change into the src directory.

• cd hb-trunk

To configure and install handbrake in one easy go use the following command.

• ./configure --launch

Once the build has completed you should be able to launch the gui as follows.

• cd build/gtk/src

• ./ghb &

NOTE: You are able to copy the ghb binary file to anywhere on your system.

I would recommend moving it to the local bin dir, then you should be able to launch it from a terminal screen by typing handbrake-gui &

• mv ghb /usr/local/bin/handbrake-gui

If all was good you can delete the installation directory.

• rm -rf hb-trunk

NOTES: I have run through these instructions on crunchbang / ubuntu 8.04 & 8.10 with no problems.

There are times when you want to be able to start, stop, restart, reload and even permantly stop  services from running.

I always run through my system services and ensure I have turned off all the services I do not wish to be running, this serves several good reasons:

1) Reduce's the amount of memory used.
2 Can make an increase in system performance.
3) Why run a service you don't need, that could be a security risk.
4) PC will boot faster.

How do I manage my services?

There are many ways to manage services on linux.

The services that start reside in the init.d and rc?.d folders in /etc.

To start and stop a service for example networking you would use:

 # sudo apt-get install pptp-linux

 # sudo /etc/init.d/networking stop

 # sudo /etc/init.d/networking start

Redhat uses these locations to start and stop services but also offers a shell command that can mange these services so they stay on or off permanently.

chkconfig - This command alows you to see all the services in a list and which of them are on or off in any runlevel.

NOTE:  A run level is the level the system is operating at this list is a guide to the levels not necessarily the setup that your linux uses.

1 - Single user mode
2 - Not used
3 - Full system no GUI
4 - Not used
5 - Full system with GUI

To find out what your default runlevel is you can look at the /etc/inittab file.

Using chkconfig

To see which services are configured as system services use:

 # sudo chkconfig --list

To turn off a service use:

 # sudo chkconfig --levels 345 sshd off

NTSYSV

Redhat also provides a command called ntsyv.

ntsysv - This is a text user interface that function as the above command.

It can be used to configure the running runlevel as follows:

 # sudo ntsysv

or for other runlevels use:

 # sudo ntsysv --level 345

What if I'm running Crunchbang.

In crunchbang these utilities are not installed, you will need to install them yourself if you wish to configure you services manually.

Use the following commands to install the above commands.

 # sudo apt-get install chkconfig

crunchbang does not have ntsysv but it does have a similar command called sysvconf.

 # sudo apt-get install sysvconf

I need a GUI not command line

If you really need that gui tool then use the humorously named BootUpManager aka BUM

 # apt-get install bum

This tool allows you to manage all your services as above but in a graphical way.

Remember when playing with services you need to be root, use sudo in front of all the commands before running them.

There are many posts on the web about installing firefox 3.5, I have tried several methods some failed and one worked but did not install as expected so I ended up with 2 versions, this guide will get you a working version easily.

To install the latest version of firefox (3.5 at time of writting)  copy and paste the following at the end of:
/etc/apt/sources.list

Use vi or gedit to edit the file which ever you prefer.

vi /etc/apt/sources.list

Copy and paste the 2 lines below to the end of the file.

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

Then add the Launchpad PPA GPG key:

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 247510BE

Install Firefox

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install firefox-3.5

Once Firefox has been installed it will automaticly update when a new version is available in the mozilla repo.'

To manually do this run:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Fix old Firefox link

After I had done this I noticed firefox 3.0 was still opening as the default browser.

To fix this I removed the current firefox link and replaced it with a new one as follows.

sudo rm /usr/bin/firefox

Add the new link

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/firefox /usr/bin/firefox-3.5

Remove old Firefox versions

Note: when you type firefox and tab it out you may notice other versions installed.

To remove these after you have tested 3.5 works with your profile use the following to list the installed ones first.

dpkg -l | grep firefox

Then remove the old versions as below:

sudo apt-get remove firefox-3.0

I did notice a few addons failed to work with 3.5 but the majority did, some just had to be reinstalled again such as the dictionary.

Hopefully all will be good

I have been using crunchbang for some time now and it seems sensible to perform an update.
After looking though several articles I notice there is no official way to perform the upgrade so I followed the Ubuntu upgrade path instead.

To upgrade crunchbang you will need an internet connection and some time., they recommend not doing the upgrade over an ssh connection but I am fearless so I did it against the warnings.

The first step is to make sure you have update-manager-core installed.

 sudo apt-get install update-manager-core

Then to perform the upgrade type:

 sudo do-release-upgrade

This start's the upgrade process, you will be asked a few questions before it starts to download the many packages and begin the install procedure this can take some time.

I left mine overnight, it did not help much as in the morning I noticed the upgrade was waiting for some manual input into what to do with some of the package configurations, before installing the next package in the list.

If you say yes you would like to keep the current configuration for example on grub, then when you reboot you will not see the new kernel as it has not been appended to the config, if you say use package mainainers config then you will lose any custom settings in your own one, most people would be ok with this but I had made a few changes such as adding vga=791 to the kernel line as I like my text on boot to be smaller and I like to remove the quiet boot option too. (Note this does affect the boot graphics, until the Login box appears)

The best thing to do would be open another terminator / console and make a backup of the file then accept the new config. It is a bit slower but safer.

 # cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /boot/grub/menu/lst.20090729

Let me know if it works for you.

Today was one of those days when I had to fall back to windows

I wanted to backup my DVD to avi for the PS3 and found my unusual method of using dd to dump the DVD to an iso file failed. I kept getting the message error reading disc.

I tried my other method of using vobcopy but this failed as well with errors.

My next try was DVD-Shrink via wine this method has worked on occasion but only on old discs, this time the app hung.

My last resort was booting into windows and using DVDFab, I could have installed it via wine but after spending so long trying I just wanted it done, so I could get on with other things.

Anyway windows came through and the image can now be converted into a ps3 compatible format.

In case you wonder why I do it the long way, I just don't like having my DVD drive spinning for several hours when I am converting video, especially if I do higher resolution backup.

Well it's almost done and I have probably saved another disc from the sticky hands of my kids.