This one always gets me. With Debian & Ubuntu I can never remember the @^!*% file that lists the association between the MAC address and the interface name (eth0, eth1, etc.). If there is only one NIC, then it’s not a big deal, but with my servers with multiple NICs then my OCD kicks in and I like to have my ports in a nice orderly fashion. For example, if I have three NICs in a server where one is the going to be the primary NIC, and then the other two are for LACP for storage, etc. then I like to make eth0 my primary and eth1/2 my bonded interface. Read more
Sony VAIO, Linux Mint, and a (missing) wireless switch
I am the proud new owner of a Sony VAIO S-series laptop (model# SVS151190X), running Linux Mint 13 (Maya). Everything installed beautifully and all hardware was found. That was a first for me and a new laptop, probably a testament to the hard work of the Linux devs. Also very glad to be done with my MacBook Pro. Anyhoo, I recently disabled the wireless from the network manager menu (right-click, uncheck ‘Enable Wireless’). When I went to re-enable it it was grayed out and I couldn’t re-enable the wireless.
Wireshark for non-root users
Nothing Earth-shattering here, but this one always trips me up and I spend 10-15 minutes trying to remember how to set it up so that I can wireshark as a non-root user. Works like a charm under Ubuntu, Xubuntu, and Debian 6.x. Prolly works under all Deb derivatives, but I won’t stake my career on that 🙂
Anyhoo, here is the code:
sudo setcap cap_net_raw=+ep /usr/bin/dumpcap
Sweet! Props to the folks on the Ubuntu forums: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1086288
Wireless Mesh (almost there…)
Overview
I’ve been testing a wireless mesh system for the past few weeks and thought I’d post my thoughts. The system I’ve been testing is the Open-Mesh, and more specifically the OM1P which is a pretty slick little device. For those unfamiliar with the Open-Mesh products, it is designed to be a plug-n-play “public” wi-fi setup, but with an extra twist – these things all talk to one another and create a wireless mesh which allows anyone to quickly setup wi-fi hotspots. Read more
Most Awesome CMS, ever!
Ubuntu 10.04 + AVCHD + FFmpeg: Converting .MTS files to MP3
Well, it’s been awhile since I posted last. Been a little busy.
Where I work, we have to convert a lot of audio/video to another format for transcription purposes. Mplayer and ffmpeg have been lifesavers for me. However, getting setup to convert the newer .MTS (AVCHD) files that the latest videocams use was a little tedious as Google searches often yielded a lot of results that were not quite the solution I needed for Ubuntu 10.04. I realize this is a moving target for each release of Ubuntu, but hopefully this will help Ubuntu users (NOTE: this is more helpful for me as I will forget how to do this in 2 weeks). Here goes nothing!
OK, ready? Get a cup of coffee as this is going to take awhile…
The Pesky HP “Only One Copy?” Mystery Solved!
Here is one that took a bit o’ detective work to solve. A client of mine was lamenting how they couldn’t print multiple copies to their HP4200 printers, unless the document was longer than one page. If the document was one page, you could set the number of copies to one bazillion and it would still only print one copy.
A Google search turned up a boatload of hits, but no fix. The solutions ranged from unchecking/checking “collate”, disabling “mopier/job storage” options, etc., etc. Tried them all to no avail.
But then the answer came down from high, so I’ll spare you the boring details of how I arrived at the solution. Actually it was part luck, and part deductive reasoning (well, OK, mostly luck). The answer simply boiled down to the Print Processor setting. Read more
Automount SMB Share on OpenSUSE: How I got SqueezeCenter to read from a SMB share
Here are the steps:
Automagic Bridged Networking Under *Ubuntu (and maybe Debian?)
I use Virtualbox for all of my virtual machining needs. For some of my guest vms I like to use “host” networking, meaning that essentially the vm will share the hosts network adapter using a bridge and a TAP interface on the host computer to perform its virtual networking magic. However, it can be a little more tricky to setup than using Virtualbox’s other type of networking, NAT.
However, with two packages “bridge-utils” and “uml-utilities” the chore of setting up a bridge interface on Ubuntu (and maybe even Debian) is almost pain free. Read more
Ubuntu and mount.cifs
Using SMB/CIFS under Nautilus was too slow. For Windows shares that I use regularly I figured it would be faster and easier to have the share mounted permanently as part of the file system. This also has the benefit of all Linux programs being able to access the files, not just Gnome based apps. Here is how I mounted a R/W Windows share under Linux. Read more