Confounded Technology: 2011

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...

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:

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 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...

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.

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

ProFTPD grew out of the desire to have a secure and configurable FTP server that aims to offer the feature set required for more sophisticated FTP sites. Out of the box the FTP transactions are not secure, they are not encrypted at all. Seeking to encrypt my traffic I spent hours trying to get ProFTPD 1.3.2c (the version in Ubuntu 10.04's repositories) working with TLS. Only to find out there is a bug in ProFTPD 1.3.2c read on to see how I overcame the problem...

OpenDNS markets itself as the fastest growing internet security and DNS service. OpenDNS is the leading provider of security and infrastructure services that make the Internet safer through integrated Web content filtering, anti-phishing and DNS. OpenDNS services enable consumers and network administrators to secure their networks from online threats, reduce costs and enforce Internet-use policies.

For OpenDNS to work the service needs to know which IP address your network resides on. If like me your internet service provider assigns you a dynamic IP address then you have to setup a dynamic updating service that keeps OpenDNS updated with your current IP address. This posts walks through the steps I used to set up ddclient (a linux dynamic dns updating tool) with OpenDNS. Read on...

With the aim of managing bitorrenting on my network (i.e. preventing torrents) I opted to install a proxy server on a Ubuntu gateway server to control access to torrent sites for the clients on the network. This was a basic set up with a minimal Squid proxy server config in order to get up and running quickly, and to ultimately start preventing torrent usage. Squid is a caching proxy for the Web supporting HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and more. It reduces bandwidth and improves response times by caching and reusing frequently-requested web pages. Squid has extensive access controls and makes a great server accelerator. Read on...

I've been experiencing woes with a Samba server recently with all sorts of gremlins around access, and write access specifically. After gutting the Samba config several times to the bare minimum I happened to notice that mysteriously the whole EXT4 file system partition on which the Samba shares resided had become mounted as read only. After a little investigating I think the culprit is a hard drive on its way out. Ironically the drive in question is a Seagate drive and the image I think is therefore, rather suited. Read on...

I've recently been struggling to access my Ubuntu Samba server from Windows XP clients experiencing intermittent success and at times receiving the message "is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource." Reading through the Samba documentation it appears that the Encrypt Passwords parameter must be set when using Windows clients, read on for the solution...

All files accessible in a *nix system are arranged in one big tree, the file hierarchy, rooted at /. These files can be spread out over several devices. The mount command serves to attach the file system found on some device to the big file tree.

The configuration file /etc/fstab contains the necessary information to automate the process of mounting partitions. In a nutshell, mounting is the process where a raw (physical) partition is prepared for access and assigned a location on the file system tree (or mount point). Here's how to manually set up fstab to automatically mount your devices and partitions at boot:

The Linux kernel in Ubuntu provides a packet filtering system called netfilter, and the traditional interface for manipulating netfilter are the iptables suite of commands. iptables provide a complete firewall solution that is both highly configurable and highly flexible.

Becoming proficient in iptables takes time, and getting started with netfilter firewalling using only iptables can be a daunting task. As a result, many frontends for iptables have been created over the years, the Uncomplicated Firewall (ufw) is a command line based frontend for iptables and is particularly well-suited for host-based firewalls; gufw adds a graphical user interface to ufw. Here's how to setup Ubuntu's firewall with ufw and gufw:

The Apple TV 2 (ATV2) seems like a good bit of kit for the price certainly better value than the iPad HDMI connection kit. I picked up an ATV2 primarily to wirelessly share my iPad stowed photos (from the Apple Camera Connection kit) on a large LCD TV. Furthermore, I was also intending to share photos and music from my home server running Ubuntu to the ATV2. Not wanting to jail break the ATV2 I was thus sad to see a lack of either native uPnP or DLNA support on the ATV2 out of the box rendering my home server useless with respect to the ATV2... the solution was to install iTunes to my home server and use Apple HomeSharing feature to get access to my server based media. Here's how to do it:

By default, Nautilus displays the pathbar, a series of buttons with directory names, to display the current location. Some users prefer to use a location bar, with the full path displayed. Here's how to configure Nautilus to display locations using the location bar:

This seems to be a common issue for people using the built-in Ubuntu remote desktop server, vino, and the proprietary Nvidia drivers along with compiz visual effects; whereby the remote desktop screen on the VNC client fails to update unless you reconnect to the server. There seem to be plenty of bugs lying around open for this issue and it seems to affect a range of VNC servers (it doesn't impact TightVNC from my experience) a work around is as follows:

Rsync is a fast and extraordinarily versatile file copying tool. It can copy locally, to/from another host over any remote shell, or to/from a remote rsync daemon. It is famous for its delta-transfer algorithm, which reduces the amount of data sent over the network by sending only the differences between the source files and the existing files in the destination. Rsync is widely used for backups and mirroring and as an improved copy command for everyday use.

As part of the HP Microserver build: seeking to add the Microserver to my NeoRouter zero-configuration VPN I installed the Linux NeoRouter client. NeoRouter is a cross-platform zero-configuration VPN solution that securely connects Windows, Mac, Linux and FreeBSD computers at any locations into a virtual LAN and provides a networking platform for various applications like remote desktop, shared folders and printers, offsite backup, voice & video chat, etc. NeoRouter Free features bleeding-edge technologies and is released frequently. It is 100% free for both commercial and non-commercial usage. Read on...

Adobe Flash at the moment is constantly under fire with security exploits and hence fixes to keep it patched. With the constant stream of security updates I'm keen to ensure my Ubuntu boxes run with the most recent stable. Adobe Flash builds. The easiest way to install Flash is via the Debian package however, this has the disadvantage that Adobe won't be managed under the Synaptic package maanger and updates will not be automatically downloaded and installed. With this in mind I opted to install Adobe through the Synpatic package manager in Ubunutu. Here's how to do it, read on...

As part of the HP Microserver build: seeking to possibly set the server up as a Media Centre I installed XBMC. XBMC is an open source software media player and entertainment hub for digital media that's available for Linux, OSX, and Windows. XBMC functions as a standard media player application that can be used to play almost all popular audio and video formats around. It was designed for network playback, so you can stream your multimedia from anywhere in the house or directly from the internet using practically any protocol available. It can also scan your media and automatically create a personalized library complete with box covers, descriptions, and fanart. There are playlist and slideshow functions, a weather forecast feature and many audio visualizations. Once installed, your computer will become a fully functional multimedia jukebox. Read on...

Out of the box I tend to find WOL under Ubuntu will not work, despite WOL being enabled in a PC's BIOS. The way I've often resolved this is to install ethtool which allows the querying settings of an ethernet device and the changing of settings. Read on...

As part of the HP Microserver build: seeking to enable media sharing/streaming across the networked devices on the local area network i.e. TV's, Xbox360, iPad, Apple TV and smart phones I installed uShare. uShare is a free UPnP Audio Visual & DLNA Media Server. It implements the server component that provides UPnP media devices with information on available multimedia files. uShare uses the built-in http server of libupnp to stream the files to clients. It does not act as an UPnP Media Adaptor and thus, can't transcode streams to fit the client requirements. Read on...

As part of the HP Microserver build: seeking to have a backup remote administration (VNC) service I opted to install TightVNCServer. TightVNC is a free remote control software package which allows you to see the desktop of a remote machine and control it with your local mouse and keyboard, just like you would do it sitting in the front of that computer. TightVNC is free for both personal and commercial usage, and compatible with standard VNC software. The main reasons for installing TightVNC are that I often find it to be faster and more responsive than the Ubuntu built-in Remote Desktop VNC server, vino, and also I find that vino can often be unreliable with the screen not updating. Read on...

As part of the HP Microserver build: seeking to have a web based GUI remote administration tool to allow the box to be easily administered without having to result to a remote shell / command line interface I opted to install Webmin. Webmin is a web-based interface for system administration for Unix. Using any modern web browser, you can setup user accounts, Apache, DNS, file sharing and much more. Webmin removes the need to manually edit Unix configuration files and lets you manage a system from the console or remotely. Read on...

The main incentive for picking up an iPad was to use it as a photo back up device during a long vacation; this post focuses on further woes with iTunes that stem from syncing (or not as it turns out) an iPad with photos that had been imported to the iPad via the official Apple iPad Camera Kit from an SD card.

The initial plan was to use the iPad to import images from a camera's SD card through the Apple iPad camera connection kit and onto the iPad; and eventually syncing the iPad back to a desktop PC running Windows XP to archive the photos. Essentially this would allow me to carry a small amount of flash memory on a long trip. Testing this out for the first time this week I noted that on syncing the iPad it only synced photos that had been transferred onto the iPad originally by iTunes and would not sync photos imported via the Apple iPad Camera Kit; cue big disappointment.

iTunes has recently been eating up the C drive of one of my machines with backups of an iPad. The C drive in question is purposely small at around 15gb to allow for a Windows XP install only; with all other data being stored on other drive letters. This is partly to improve fragmentation and to maximise the performance of read/write operations. iTunes stores the backups of Apple devices within the user profile of the current user.

After setting up the iPad with iTunes, syncing and upgrading the next challenge was to setup Gmail. I ran the standard iPad mail account setup procedure, selected the built-in Gmail configuration option and followed the prompts which worked successfully. The success was short lived as I discovered that upon opening up the Gmail mailbox within the iPad mail client there was no 'delete' command, mail could only be 'archived'. Read on...

Looking to move away from Hamachi I've been looking around for alternative free zero config VPN tools since LogMeIn has taken over Hamachi and I suspect the days of the free Hamachi are limited. NeoRouter is a cross-platform zero-configuration VPN solution that securely connects Windows, Mac, Linux and FreeBSD computers at any locations into a virtual LAN and provides a networking platform for various applications like remote desktop, shared folders and printers, offsite backup, voice & video chat, etc. I like NeoRouter since 1) it's free 2) you can host your own server and 3) it has a free Android client these are all thumbs up from my perspective.
Read on for the configuration of the client and server...

For the last couple of months I have experienced an issue whereby flash videos on the BBC News website would not play. A black box would render in place of the video as if buffering with a red loading logo and then nothing, no sound, no video. Youtube and other flash sites played without issue which left me rather bemused and despite reinstalling flash, upgrading, downgrading I could not remedy or pinpoint the issue. Read on...

My latest iOS mission has been to enable Apple AirPrint introduced in iOS 4.2 to work with non AirPrint printers. At the time of writing I am only aware of HP printers that are AirPrint compatible out if the box; therein lies the problem since poor experience with HP and Canon consumer printers in the 90's has left me a staunch Epson owner ever since.

Epson at the moment have no AirPrint enabled devices available and have taken the stance that they will not be retrospectively updating firmware for existing models to enable AirPrint support. I've only recently acquired several variants of the Epson SX600FW family which have been great to date, so being keen to maximise their potential I spent an hour or two 'enabling' AirPrint compatibility using an Ubuntu server to act as an AirPrint server. Read on...

There's been a lot of noise recently about the HP Proliant Microserver HP-N36L / HP-N40L which can be picked up for circa £120 ($192) after HP £100 rebate. I think it's a cracking deal for a small low powered server running an AMD Neo CPU when you consider that there are plenty NAS boxes on the market costing a lot more than these Microservers and offering a lot less in terms of flexibility and build quality. I picked up one of these units with the aim to set up a fully fledged media centre & server running Ubuntu 11.04 (when it is released) with XBMC acting as the front end. It'll also be used to host an rsync server, AirPrint server and act as an Apple timemachine server for backups of various Macs. Out of the box it won't be able to handle HD media playback so I intend to add on various parts to get it up and running to satisfaction. Read on...

My first foray into the world of owning an iPad was recently helping a relative to setup their newly purchased iPad 1. I have been contemplating picking up one for myself for several months and had been holding out for the Retina Display to arrive with the iPad 2... it looks like I'll be holding out (restraining myself) for another 18~ months with fingers crossed for iPad 3. Read on...