zpool destroy zfsdiskpool@Sat

and got:

cannot open 'zfsdiskpool@Sat': invalid character '@' in pool name

This is because to delete snapshots in ZFS, you should use ‘zfs destroy’ instead of ‘zpool destroy’. DOH!

zfs destroy zfsdiskpool@Sat

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. It’s a very clicky process. This simple bash script will walk handbrake through all the files in a selected folder (and it’s subfolders). This uses the find command to traverse recursively through a directory structure. It will place the transcoded file in the same folder as it’s source and change it’s 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

#!/bin/bash
echo -e "Which disk would you like to wipe out? (sda, sdb, sdc)?   \c"
read DISK
read -p "You picked "$DISK", are you sure? (y/n)" -n 1
if [[ $REPLY =~ ^[Yy]$ ]]
then
C=1
for (( ; ; ))
do
        echo -e "\nStarting zero Sweep number "$C" ..."
        dcfldd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/$DISK
        echo "Zero's written to Disk "$C" time(s)"
        echo "[ hit CTRL+C to stop ]"
        let C=C+1
done
fi

Please read the FAQ regarding xbox360 file format compatibility.  It may help you pick better options for your particular files than the general ones i offer below.

The solution is simple: Use Avidemux.

1. Install avidemux. To install it is simple. It’s in the Ubuntu repositories and I imagine you can also find it in other distros quite easily.
2. Open avidemux and open the mkv you want to convert. If prompted some garbage about 264 and safemode, just use safe mode and dont worry about it.
3. Select File -> Properties. This will tell you some info on the formats in use in your video file. Take this opportunity to identify what the xbox doesn’t like. When you are finished, click OK. If you want a second opinion, open up the folder with your mkv in it. Right click -> properties -> Audio/Video tab. This will also tell you the video and audio formats.
4. We obviously know that it wont play a video in a MKV container, so first thing to do is change the “Format” dropdown to say “MP4″ (you can, of course use AVI, but the majority of files I run into are h.264 and aac audio. For this combo, you want mp4…)
5. From the Properties menu, recall the video codec. H264 files show as “AVC1″ inside of avidemux. I’m sure theres a technical reason for this, but do you want to talk about it or watch your video?
   Most of the time, you can leave the video droptown in avidemux on “Copy” this is nice because it means that your processor wont be re-encoding the video. This saves you quality and time.
6. From the properties menu, recall the audio codec. If you have a video with AAC stereo audio, leave the dropdown on “copy”.
   This is where most of my files need some love. Many MKV’s have 5.1 surround audio tracks. This is great, but not for an xbox360. To mix the audio down to stereo, select AAC on the audio dropdown, then click “filters”. In the mixer dropdown, select “stereo”.
7. Click “save”. Avidemux will prompt you for a filename for the converted file. It does not default a file extension, so do yourself and your xbox a favor and add one yourself like “<videoname>.mp4″.

Once avidemux is finished with your file, it’s ready to go.

http://avidemux.sourceforge.net/

#!/bin/bash
if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
	TRANSCODEDIR="."
else
TRANSCODEDIR="$1"
fi
for file in "$TRANSCODEDIR"/*
do
	HandBrakeCLI -i "${file}" -o "${file}.mp4" --preset="iPhone & iPod Touch"""
done

Save that into a .sh file like “handbrakefolder.sh”

When you use the ‘nice’ command inside of csh or tcsh, you need to mind that you give the full path to the binary so you dont use the built-in ‘nice’ command.

# /usr/bin/nice -n 10 {your update command}

What i use is:

# /usr/bin/nice -n 10 portupgrade -aRrP

Man page for ‘nice’: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=nice&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+8.0-RELEASE&format=html

# freebsd-update install
Installing updates...gunzip: (stdin): unexpected end of file
gunzip: (stdin): unexpected end of file
 done.

I guess a patch archive was corrupted. no problem though, just remove the download:

# rm -r /var/db/freebsd-update/files

now you can run

# freebsd-update fetch
Looking up update.FreeBSD.org mirrors... 3 mirrors found.
Fetching metadata signature for 8.0-RELEASE from update5.freebsd.org... done.
Fetching metadata index... done.
Fetching 2 metadata files... done.
Inspecting system... done.
Preparing to download files... done.
Fetching 2 files... done.

The following files will be updated as part of updating to 8.0-RELEASE-p3:
/boot/kernel/kernel.symbols
/boot/kernel/nfsclient.ko.symbols
# freebsd-update install
Installing updates... done.

no problems

# df -h
Filesystem     Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
themirror       39G     39G      0B   100%    /home/jacob/themirror
# rm 3gfile
rm: 3gfile: No space left on device
# dd if=/dev/null of=3gfile
0+0 records in
0+0 records out
0 bytes transferred in 0.000046 secs (0 bytes/sec)
# rm 3gfile

#/boot/loader.conf
vm.kmem_size="1024"

everything worked, but I wanted to see what would happen if i doubled it. Unfortunately, setting vm.kmem_size to 2048 kept the FreeBSD kernel from booting. At startup it would just do this:

panic: kmem_suballoc: bad status return of 3
cpuid = 0

To fix the erroneous variable setting, I had to :

1. Reboot.

2. Wait for the FreeBSD Boot menu. (the screen that lists Default, ACPI disabled, safe, and single user modes)

3. Press 6 to select “Escape to loader prompt”

4. At the loader prompt, type “show”. This will provide all the default variable settings. press the spacebar to page down. In my case, at the end, the incorrect variable was: vm.kmem_size=”2048″.

5. to switch it back and allow the system to boot, type

set (variable)=(correct value)

in my case this was:

set vm.kmem_size=1024M

6. type

boot

When you are finished with all that fun, you should edit the /boot/loader.conf file back so you don’t have to do this again.
Thanks to “crsd” from the FreeBSD IRC channel for the help.

/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules

In Debian 4 (etch) it is in this file:

/etc/udev/rules.d/z25_persistent-net.rules

To apply changes in Lenny: “udevadm trigger” or “udevtrigger” (in Etch)