Zagura’s blog

Today I encountered a strange problem with Midnight Commander 4.6.2 in Ubuntu. I wanted to change the default Ubuntu setting to use the internal edit. I actually like the mc internal editor and I want to use it. The problem was that the setting was not saved when I chosed “Save setup” even if a message “Setup saved to ~/.mc/ini” appeared. There was no ~/.mc folder. After I did
mkdir ~/.mc
everything worked as expected.
This seems to be a bug in mc.

Here is a picture of the internal board of my newly aquired Emtec S800 PVR. It works on Linux but Emtec was not so kind to provide the sources of the PVR application (there are some sources of an alternative OEM - Ellion available on the net). I needed to open the box to put a resistor at the internal fan because it was too noisy.
dsc_0806.JPG

Here is a python script to convert an .iso of a DVD to avi and to encode it using mpeg4. It is a slightly modified version of the script found at http://lists.mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/mplayer-users/2003-April/032226.html to work with newer versions of mplayer/mencoder.

Later edit:
It seems that mplayer/mencoder know to play/convert .iso files directly so we can do:
mencoder in.iso -o /dev/null -ovc xvid -xvidencopts pass=1:bitrate=800:threads=2 -oac copy
mencoder in.iso -o out.mpeg -ovc xvid -xvidencopts pass=2:bitrate=800:threads=2 -oac copy


The development for Midnight Commander seems to be revived. There is a new site that supports it’s development at http://www.midnight-commander.org They are keeping the sources on a git repository and they accept patches.

This is good news for me, as I have some old issues with Midnight Commander and this might stimulate me to fix them

If you encounter the following error when you try to mount a cifs filesystem:
CIFS VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -22

try to:
#emerge mount-cifs

I did not find any indications on the net that a separate package should be installed in order to use cifs.

Later Update: same problem in ubuntu, you need to install smbfs
#apt-get install smbfs

As I started to look at GWT and its related widgets, tutorials and utilities, I thought that it might be an idea to put the information together into a Wiki site. This way, GWTpedia.com was born. Everyone is free to edit.

Here is a python script to generate words using Markov chains. The archive also contains some dictionaries (English, Romanian, Romanian names). This is similar with http://www.fourteenminutes.com/fun/words/ but you have the possibility to use your own word dictionaries.

Here is a script to easy publish your ssh2 public key to the remote sites you frequently connect to.

Example:
sshpubkey.sh user@example.com

You will now be able to connect to example.com from your machine without entering the password.

Here is a script to easy change the default blue scheme of Midnight Commander.

Unpack the archive and do:

./mc_change_theme.sh puthre.theme

To revert to the default scheme just:

./mc_change_theme.sh default.theme

The script will modify your ~/.mc/ini file. Please make sure that Midnight Commander is not running when you change your theme.

Here is how a theme file looks:
BASE_COLOR=lightgray,blue
NORMAL=lightgray,blue
SELECTED=black,cyan
MARKED=yellow,blue
MARKSELECT=yellow,cyan
ERRORS=white,red
MENU=white,cyan
REVERSE=black,lightgray
DNORMAL=black,lightgray
DFOCUS=black,cyan
DHOTNORMAL=blue,lightgray
DHOTFOCUS=blue,cyan
VIEWUNDERLINE=brightred,blue
MENUHOT=yellow,cyan
MENUSEL=white,black
MENUHOTSEL=yellow,black
HELPNORMAL=black,lightgray
HELPITALIC=red,lightgray
HELPBOLD=blue,lightgray
HELPLINK=black,cyan
HELPSLINK=yellow,blue
GAUGE=white,black
INPUT=black,cyan
DIRECTORY=white,blue
EXECUTABLE=brightgreen,blue
LINK=lightgray,blue
STALELINK=brightred,blue
DEVICE=brightmagenta,blue
CORE=red,blue
SPECIAL=black,blue
EDITNORMAL=lightgray,blue
EDITBOLD=yellow,blue
EDITMARKED=black,cyan
ERRDHOTNORMAL=yellow,red
ERRDHOTFOCUS=yellow,lightgray

Here is the result:

Disable confcache in /etc/make.conf if you are getting this when trying to emerge device-mapper.1.02.19 on Gentoo:
checking target system type… config.sub: missing argument
Try `config.sub –help’ for more information.
configure: error: /bin/sh autoconf/config.sub failed

!!! econf failed
!!! If you need support, post the topmost build error, and the call stack if relevant.
!!! A complete build log is located at ‘/var/tmp/portage/sys-fs/device-mapper-1.02.19/temp/build.log’.