After spending a frustrating hour or two trying to format a string, i stumbled on python’s repr() funcion. repr() allows you to inspect a string object when you’re troubleshooting your code. For example:

I was trying to understand a string that was shown in the terminal like this:

print mystring

Node - 192.168.1.104
ERROR:
Description = Generic failure

Seems pretty simple to remove the extra newline characters right? no. doing a string.replace(“\n”, ” “) did not fix it, but actually mangled the string. So here comes repr() to the rescue…

print repr(mystring)

'Node - 192.168.1.104\r\r\nERROR:\r\r\nDescription = Generic failure\r\r\n'

\r\r\n… i’ve never heard of it before, but knowing that it’s there, i could easily change my replace to:

print mystring.replace("\r\r\n", " ")

Node - 192.168.1.104 ERROR: Description = Generic failure 

I was running ntpd locally on a server and wanted to check in on ntpd’s status. ntpq -p was not producing any output even though ntpd was running.

# ntpq -p
localhost: timed out, nothing received
***Request timed out

This is because I had the option “restrict default ignore” set in /etc/ntp.conf. ntpq. This makes ntpd ignore EVERYTHING, even queries to the loopback interface. Ntpq queries ntpd over the loopback interface at 127.0.0.1. To allow these local queries, add:

 restrict 127.0.0.1

to /etc/ntp.conf, then also add restrict lines for your other upstream ntp servers.

restart ntpd:

/etc/rc.d/ntpd restart

Now ntpq -p will show you status of it’s peers

# ntpq -p
     remote           refid      st t when poll reach   delay   offset  jitter
==============================================================================
 dns3.untangle.c .INIT.          16 u    -   64    0    0.000    0.000   0.000
 mirror          .INIT.          16 u    -   64    0    0.000    0.000   0.000
 153.16.4.133    .INIT.          16 u    -   64    0    0.000    0.000   0.000

Handbrake is a fantastic tool for (among other uses), converting videos into mobile formats. It is extremely easy to use and can usually get a video properly converted in just a few clicks. To get Videos encoded for use on my phone, I use the “iPhone & iPod Touch” preset. It will convert your video to .mp4 as well as scale it down to a consumable size. This format will work on any smartphone I’ve seen.

My issue is that when converting a folder full of videos, I don’t want to have to use the gui to add a bunch of videos to the queue one by one. Its a very clicky process. This simple bash script will walk handbrake through all the files in a selected folder (and its subfolders). This uses the find command to traverse recursively through a directory structure. It will place the transcoded file in the same folder as its source and change its extension to “.mp4″.

Usage: handbrakefolder.sh [FOLDER]
Run handbrake on all the files contained in [FOLDER]. (the current directory by default)

#!/bin/bash
#
# Change this to specify a different handbrake preset. You can list them by running: "HandBrakeCLI --preset-list"
#
PRESET="iPhone & iPod Touch"
if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
	TRANSCODEDIR="."
else
TRANSCODEDIR="$1"
fi
find "$TRANSCODEDIR"/* -type f -exec bash -c 'HandBrakeCLI -i "$1" -o "${1%\.*}".mp4 --preset="$PRESET"' __ {} \;

Save that into a .sh file like “handbrakefolder.sh” and grant it the execute permission (chmod +x handbrakefolder.sh).

Thanks to Vinnie and http://mywiki.wooledge.org/UsingFind for their help in this.

Now you can simply execute this script against a folder containing your video files. like this:

For a folder structure like this:
Videos
-> show1
    vid1.avi
-> show2
    -> season 1
        ep1.avi
        ep2.avi
    -> season 2
        ep1.avi
        ep2.avi
-> show3
    vid1.avi
    vid2.avi

hostname% handbrakefolder.sh Videos
...
....
...
When done, it will look like this:
Videos
-> show1
    vid1.avi
    vid1.mp4
-> show2
    -> season 1
        ep1.avi
        ep1.mp4
        ep2.avi
        ep2.mp4
    -> season 2
        ep1.avi
        ep1.mp4
        ep2.avi
        ep2.mp4
-> show3
    vid1.avi
    vid1.mp4
    vid2.avi
    vid2.mp4