Write zero’s to disk Infinite loop

I was bored… So this is a little i wrote that will write zero’s to a hard disk infinately until you press CTRL+C. It uses dcfldd instead of plain because i like the progress output it provides.

#!/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
2010
07/30
CATEGORY
shell scripting
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Convert High-Def MKV to play on xbox 360 using Linux

There are a million different tutorials out there on how to convert a into a format that an will play. You may have found, like i did, that most of them use 50 different questionable pieces of software to manipulate individual tracks and separate the mkv, etc, etc… I think those are ridiculous.

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 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 . 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/

2010
06/29
CATEGORY
Linux
Ubuntu
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6 comments

Script to run handbrake on an entire folder

UPDATED 8-10-10:
This has been superceeded by its newer version at http://www.surlyjake.com/2010/08/script-to-run-handbrake-recursively-through-a-folder-tree/. The new version features all of the previous features, but can also traverse recursively through a folder structure.

#!/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”

2010
06/10
CATEGORY
Linux
shell scripting
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Updating FreeBSD ports nicely using nice

Thanks to: http://scottspare.com/bsdfun/?p=75 for pointing me in the right direction. port updates can take a while and slow down your server. What you can do is use the ‘nice’ utility to force the processes to a lower priority. This will help your server to run almost normally during an .

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  -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

2010
06/08
CATEGORY
FreeBSD8
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Freebsd-update fetch interupted

I lost power while - fetch was downloading patches up to 8.0-Release-p3. When the server came back online, I ran a -update fetch again and it still found two files that needed updating. after running -update install, got this error:

#  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

2010
06/07
CATEGORY
FreeBSD8
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