The values I use are;

-c : ignore clipping
-p : preserve file modification time
-r : apply Track gain
-d 6.0: makes it 95.0 dB (defaults to 89.0)

The script I use moves to the main Podcast folder then line of script finds all mp3′s in the sub-folders with it.

$ cd /home/martin/Podcasts

$ find . -name *.mp3 -exec mp3gain -c -p -r -d 6.0 ‘{}’ \;

This then levels out the gain on all podcasts to 95db.

$ sudo apt-get install python-crypto
$ sudo apt-get install python-qt4
$ wget http://pymazon.googlecode.com/files/Pymazon-0.9.1.tar.gz
$ tar -xzf Pymazon-0.9.tar.gz
$ cd pymazon-0.9
$ sudo python setup.py install

and run from a Terminal with;

$ pymazom

Open the [Preferences] options and change the [Save Directory] to one of your choice.

Then buy your audiobook/music on Amazon, during the process it will ask you to download their Linux version of the software unfortunately it does not support 64 bit and even the 32 bit versions have dependencies missing. So just click on the link following the text which says “If you have already installed the Amazon MP3 downloader click here” and continue the purchase. Once complete a download should start of an .amz file e.g AmazonMP3-12345678.amz which you should direct to a folder of your choice. Next open python, select the [Load Files] optin and navigate to your previously stored .amz file and open it, pymazon will then display a list of your purchased tracks and these can then be downloaded using the [Download] button and once downloaded displayed with the [Show Downloads] button.

It’s been a while since I blogged about the Folding@Home Project so as I have moved to Debian Squeeze on my server I thought I’d document the install of the Folding@Home software and move my contributions from the Ubuntu Team to the Debian Team.

The Folding@Home Project can be found at http://folding.stanford.edu/ and their goal is

“to understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases. You can help scientists studying these diseases by simply running a piece of software. Folding@home is a distributed computing project — people from throughout the world download and run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world. Every computer takes the project closer to our goals. Folding@home uses novel computational methods coupled to distributed computing, to simulate problems millions of times more challenging than previously achieved.”

So in other words, whilst you computer is switched on it’s unused capacity can be working away on problem solving for a common cause.

First you need to a name to use, start at http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Download#ntoc2 and enter the name you wish to use and as long as it’s not found in the search you are good to go just make sure you and note it down for later.

Then you need a passkey this is a unique key which binds your donations to your username just in case someone else decided to use the same name get one from http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-passkey and note it down for later.

So my sever is an AMD 64 duel core and I want to run 2 instances of the Folding@Home software 1 on each processor. I start by creating a folder in my home folder called Folding@Home, opening a Terminal I do;

$ mkdir Folding@Home

then moved into it and created 2 more core1 and core2

$ cd Folding@Home

$ mkdir core1 core2

I now downloaded the software from the site download page at http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Download downloading the software for 64 bit PC’s called FAH6.34-Linux64.tgz into my Downloads folder. I then moved into that folder with;

$ cd ~/Downloads

and extracted the fah6 file within the tar archive with

$ tar -xzvf FAH6.34-Linux64.tgz

the copy the fah6 file to both the core folders and making them executable with

$ cp fah6 ~/Folding@Home/core1
$ chmod +x ~/Folding@Home/core1/fah6

and

$ cp fah6 ~/Folding@Home/core2
$ chmod +x ~/Folding@Home/core2/fah6

Then we need to cd back to the core1 folder with.

$ cd ~/Folding@Home/core1

Then run the following;

$ ./fah6

[Note ./fah6 -config can be used later to reconfigure]

This then asks the following questions;

User name [Anonymous]? Type in your username, then press [Enter].

Team Number [0]? Type in the number 2019 for the Debian Team, then press [Enter].

Passkey []? Type your passkey here and, press [Enter].

Ask before fetching/sending work (no/yes) [no]? to make things automatic, leave at no and press [Enter].

Use proxy (yes/no) [no]? I’m not behind a proxy, so I left at no, and pressed [Enter].

Acceptable size of work assignment and work result packets (bigger units may have large memory demands) — ‘small’ is10MB (small/normal/big) [normal]? again I left at the default of normal, and pressed [Enter].

Change advanced options (yes/no) [no]? y
Core Priority (idle/low) [idle]?
Disable highly optimized assembly code (no/yes) [no]?
Interval, in minutes, between checkpoints (3-30) [15]?
Memory, in MB, to indicate (3966 available) [3966]?
Set -advmethods flag always, requesting new advanced
scientific cores and/or work units if available (no/yes) [no]?
Ignore any deadline information (mainly useful if
system clock frequently has errors) (no/yes) [no]?
Machine ID (1-16) [1]? 1 as this is running on core 1 I added a 1 when I do the same actions in the core2 folder I’ll add a 2 here
The following options require you to restart the client before they take effect
Disable CPU affinity lock (no/yes) [no]?
Additional client parameters []?
IP address to bind core to (for viewer) []?

The program then runs, updated, downloads the first batch of work and starts to process…..

The above config info is stored in the core1 folder and named client.cfg, you could just copy this to your core2 folder and open it and change the machineid=1 to 2 resave it then just start up the fah6 process with

$ ./fah6

and it would start processing or you can not complete the same action on the second core.

to stop the process I use;

$ killall fah6

to start I use

$ ./fah6 -verbosity 9
from within each folder

This bash script will run both in one terminal window.

#!/bin/sh
#### Folding@Home ####
## Core 1 ##
cd ~/Folding@Home/core1
./fah6 -verbosity 9 &
## Core 2 ##
cd ~/Folding@Home/core2
./fah6 -verbosity 9

You can check your progress by entering your username at http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=userstats the site updates daily.

I just want a black background so produced a black image in GIMP 640×480 pixels called grub.png then copied it from my home to /usr/share/images with

$ sudo cp ~/martin /usr/share/images/grub.png

then I edit grub with;

$ sudo leafpad /etc/default/grub

and add

GRUB_BACKGROUND=/usr/share/images/grub.png

under this section:

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet”
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=”"
GRUB_BACKGROUND=/usr/share/images/grub.png

and uncomment
GRUB_GFXMODE=640×480

then update it with;

$ sudo update-grub

on reboot I now get GRUB with a all black background, changing the GRUB_TIMEOUT=5 number will also change the time GRUB shows on the screen, GRUB_TIMEOUT=0 with prevent it showing at all if you wish.

$ sudo apt-get install qt4-qtconfig

Then you’ll find it in: [Menu], [Settings], Qt 4 Settings on XFCE

If you want qt apps to use the same theme as your other apps open Qt 4 Settings
Then Select [GUI Style:] as GTK+
Then use [File], [ Save] and exit.

$ sudo xorg xfce4 synaptic gdebi wicd lightdm iceweasel dmz-cursor-theme gnome-wise-icon-theme shiki-brave-theme leafpad

This gets me a basic install but no synaptic touchpad.

$ egrep -i ‘synap|alps|etps’ /proc/bus/input/devices
N: Name=”PS/2 Synaptics TouchPad”
shows my Sony laptop VGN_NS11J has a Synaptics Touchpad

$ grep “TouchPad: buttons:” /var/log/Xorg.0.log
[ 21.368] (–) synaptics: SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad: buttons: left right
show is does not support multitouch as there is no double or triple options.

Create a folder in /etc/X11 called xorg.conf.d
$ sudo mkdir /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d
then a file called synaptics.conf in this new folder
$ cd /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d
$ sudo touch synaptics.conf

open the file in leafpad

$ sudo leafpad /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/synaptics.conf

and copy the following into it;

Section “InputClass”

Identifier “Touchpad” # required
MatchIsTouchpad “yes” # required
Driver “synaptics” # required
Option “MinSpeed” “0.5″
Option “MaxSpeed” “1.0″
Option “AccelFactor” “0.075″
Option “TapButton1″ “1″
#Option “TapButton2″ “2″ # multitouch
#Option “TapButton3″ “3″ # multitouch
#Option “VertTwoFingerScroll” “1″ # multitouch
#Option “HorizTwoFingerScroll” “1″ # multitouch
Option “VertEdgeScroll” “1″
Option “CoastingSpeed” “8″
Option “CornerCoasting” “1″
Option “CircularScrolling” “1″
Option “CircScrollTrigger” “7″
Option “EdgeMotionUseAlways” “1″
Option “LBCornerButton” “8″ # browser “back” btn
Option “RBCornerButton” “9″ # browser “forward” btn

EndSection

I’ve commented out the multitouch options as my synaptic touchpad has no multitouch options, the following commands.

$ sudo modprobe -r psmouse
and then
$ sudo modprobe psmouse proto=imps

will make the synaptic pad work immediately.

Install Debian squeeze from the netinst CD image which can be downloaded from http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/ I used the larger of the 2 which was approx 200MB in size.

Insert CD then select install, English, UK, British English.
Enter Hostname, Domain name and root password twice
Full name, username for account and user password.
Select Partitioning method as manual
I usually allow
20GB for Root partition /
50GB for /opt as I store programs there I download source for and don’t re format it every time I install.
2GB swap
and the rest as /home I don’t re format it every time I install to keep my documents safe.

once the install is done and the PC is rebooted you get a console screen asking you to login, so login using your username and password then at the prompt enter;

$ su
and then the root password, then

$ sudo xorg xfce4 synaptic gdebi wicd slim iceweasel dmz-cursor-theme gnome-wise-icon-theme shiki-brave-theme leafpad

This gets you
an X server to run your desktop on
the XFCE desktop
a package manager
a package installer
a network manager
a GDM graphical desktop manager [login screen]
the iceweasel web browser
my favorite theme/icons/cursor
and the leafpad text editor

after these are installed, log out and back in again to your Graphical Desktop.

This is the basic install it just needs a selection of programs and a bit of manual configuration..

[Edit Jan 2012 : the Slim Desktop Manager does not currently work in Debian Wheezy [still in testing] but the new lightdm does]

Tested on Xubunto 11.04, this printer is a combined Printer/copier and scanner and the drivers cannot be found in the Ubuntu repos not at least in the 10.04 version of Xubuntu.

So we tried the brother Driver installer found here

http://welcome.solutions.brother.com/bsc/public_s/id/linux/en/faq_prn.html#f00091

which seemed to work at first but did not install the correct driver for this Printer and it therefore failed to print. We then decided to start from scratch form here

http://welcome.solutions.brother.com/bsc/public_s/id/linux/en/index.html

and started with the Before the Installation link and in a Terminal running the following commands;

$ sudo apt-get install -y cups
[just in case it's not installed]

$ sudo aa-complain cupsd

$ sudo mkdir /usr/share/cups/model
[don't change this line it should say model at the end]

$ sudo ln -s /etc/init.d/cups /etc/init.d/lpd

$ sudo mkdir /var/spool/lpd

## if your using 64 bit ##
# $ sudo apt-get install -y ia32-libs

$ sudo apt-get install -y csh

$ sudo apt-get install -y sane-utils

$ sudo apt-get install -y psutils

The under Download on the above page we selected Printer Driver then the link for the name of the printer and downloaded the LPR driver and the cupswrapper driver. You need to select each in turn then right click the “I Accept” button and use “Save Link As” option to download the DEB. Both DEB’s are i386 so if you are using 64 bit you need to install them using a Terminal using the following;

$ sudo dpkg -i --force-all /home/user/Downloads/dcp7055lpr-2.1.0-1.i386.deb

and

$ sudo dpkg -i --force-all /home/user/Downloads/cupswrapperDCP7055-2.0.4-2.i386.deb

check the naming of the files as they may be change and also adjust the path to the directory your files are stored in.

If you are using a 32 bit system just double click on the files to install them.

Once the drivers are installed are installed you can use your Printing config option to add the printer, if the driver does not show in the list, try a reboot.

Next the scanning drivers.
Back at the above page under Download we now select Scanner Driver / Scan-Key-Tool link and search for the print model, in our case this leads us to the brscan4 driver and here you can download both 32 and 64 bit drivers and you need the brscan4 and scan-key-tool DEB’s which once downloaded can be installed by double clicking on them.

Notes:
You may find that the Package Manager complains that the DEB’s are faulty but it seems to be just because the package maintainer has not included his or her email address in the package. I just continued on and they installed ok.

You will also probabley find that your scanner software will still not open the scanner hardware. I installed the xsane software;

$ sudo apt-get install -y xsane

then ran it as user from a Terminal;

$ xsane
with no result, so then I ran it as root with;

$ sudo xsane
and all was well.

I’m not sure why this should be the case but it seems to be a /dev access problem, my quick and dirty option was to open the launder [the XFCE launder] command is;

Exec=xsane
and changed it to
Exec gksudo xsane
When the launcher is clicked it then asks the user for the root/sudo password.

Another option is to run the program as root without the system asking for a password [be warned you do this at your own risk as it's a security risk]

open the /etc/sudoers file with;

$ sudo visudo

add this line below these lines

# User privilege specification
root ALL=(ALL) ALL

username ALL = (root) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/xsane

then amend the launcher from;

exec=xsane

to

exec=sudo xsane

you need to substitute username for your own system name and the path and name of the program if different and you may need to reboot

$ ffmpeg -i input.m4v -target pal-dvd output.mpg

This will use various input file extensions just amend the input file.

tsMuxer is a Transport Stream muxer which will convert .mkv video formatted files created in Handbrake to .m2ts files suitable for playback on the Sony Bravia. First convert your video to a .mkv video file using Handbrake making sure you select the Audio codec as AC3 (ffmpeg) in the [Audio] Tab and the [Framerate:] as 25 (PAL Film/Video) or any other option you prefer except the (Same as source) option. Handbrake is available in both Debian and Ubuntu repositories, stMuxeR is available by download from here: http://www.videohelp.com/tools/tsMuxeR Download the Linux version [currently tsMuxeR_1.10.6.tar.gz] into your home directory. Then create a directory in /usr/lib by opening a Terminal and entering the following;

$ sudo mkdir /usr/lib/tsmuxer

move into the tsmuxer directory with;

$ cd /usr/lib/tsmuxer

now extract the archive you downloaded with;

$ sudo tar -xvzf ~/tsMuxeR_1.10.6.tar.gz

if you list the contents with

$ ls
you will have 4 files in the tsmuxer directory including

tsMuxeR
tsMuxerGUI

make sure they are both executable with;

$ sudo chmod +x tsMuxeR

and;

$ sudo chmod +x tsMuxerGUI

now add a shortcut to /usr/bin with;

$ sudo ln -s /usr/lib/tsmuxer/tsMuxerGUI /usr/bin/tsMuxerGUI

now you can run the program by typing tsMuxerGUI in a Terminal or create a menu launcher with tsMuxerGUI as the command.

Open the program and on the Input Tab select [add] to add the .mkv file you have transcoded with Handbrake, in the [General track options] section, select [Change fps:] 25 and [Change level:] 4.0. Then in the [Output] section select M2TS muxing and browse to an output folder if you wish to change the default. Now select the [Start muxing] button. The output file should now play on your TV.

The Home Plug is a DEVOLO dLAN 200 AVmini Starter Kit 2x Home Plug AV Adapters £79.99 from PC World in the UK

This TV supports images as .jpg, music as .mp3 and video as .mpg or .m2t/m2ts, I’ll blog post how to get the correct settings for the video files later. [ Edit see here tsmuxer-video-conversion-for-sony-bravia/ ]

First I downloaded both the static and src tar files from here http://sourceforge.net/projects/minidlna/files/minidlna/ [go for the latest currently 1.0.22] I wanted the pre-build version as there are a lot of unmet dependencies when I tried building it on Debian Squeeze and a frankly gave up. Download the 2 files [currently minidlna_1.0.22_src.tar.gz and minidlna_1.0.22_static.tar.gz]. Open the static version in your favourite archiver and extract the file minidlna located in /usr/sbin directory within the archive and minidnla.conf located in etc/ directory within the archive to your home directory. Now using your archiver program again to open the src version and extract the minidlna.init.d.script from the /linux/ directory within the archive to your home folder.

you should now have 3 files;

minidnla
minidnla.conf
minidlna.init.d.script

in your home directory

now open the minidlna.conf in your favourite text editor and change the following highlighted text to match the paths to your media, server name and paths to store the database & log files.

***** file extract *****

# set this to the directory you want scanned.
# * if have multiple directories, you can have multiple media_dir= lines
# * if you want to restrict a media_dir to a specific content type, you
# can prepend the type, followed by a comma, to the directory:
# + “A” for audio (eg. media_dir=A,/home/jmaggard/Music)
# + “V” for video (eg. media_dir=V,/home/jmaggard/Videos)
# + “P” for images (eg. media_dir=P,/home/jmaggard/Pictures)
media_dir=A,/home/martin/Musics
media_dir=V,/home/martin/Videos
media_dir=P,/home/martin/Photos

# set this if you want to customize the name that shows up on your clients
friendly_name=Angel

# set this if you would like to specify the directory where you want MiniDLNA to store its database and album art cache
db_dir=/home/martin/.minidlna

# set this if you would like to specify the directory where you want MiniDLNA to store its log file
log_dir=/home/martin/Logs

***** End file extract *****

I left the rest of the config as it was.

Now we need to sore the config and program file and test they work so in a Terminal;

$ mv ~/minidnla.conf ~./minidnla.conf

this moves the file into your home directory as a hidden file by adding the dot at the from of it. I have a seperate partition for the system directory /opt so that I can store user added programs which I don’t want to get removed when I do an upgrade so I’m going to store the minidnla program there in it’s own directory

$ sudo mkdir /opt/minidnla

create the directory

$ sudo mv ~/minidnla /opt/minidnla/minidnla

move the program file into it.

$ sudo chmod +x /opt/minidnla/minidlna

make it executable

You could leave the program in your own home directory or move it into /usr/bin in which case amend the paths in the commands above.

Now we can run the program to see if it works with in my case;

$ /opt/minidlna/minidlna -f /home/martin/.minidlna.conf

so this is the path to the program, followed by -f telling it to look for a file then the path to your config file.

This should now start minidnla building it’s database and then serving up the results, depending on the number of files this may take a while but you can check out the log file for errors on progress.

The only problem I had was that one of the music directories had root permissions on it not my own so if you get error that’s the first thing to check. If all has gone well you should be able to see the results on the TV. If your TV does not see the server which on mine shows up under the name of the server I added in the minidnla.cof and has a Tux penguin icon then check out your Firewall on the PC server.

Next we want to be able to autostart the server if we ever restart our server and be able to start, stop or restart it with easy options. So now open the minidlna.init.d.script in your favorite text editor and amend the highlighted text shown below. Just 2 lines to amend the path to your minidnla program and the path to the monidnla.conf file.

***** file extract *****

# Short-Description: DLNA/UPnP-AV media server
### END INIT INFO

MINIDLNA=/opt/minidlna/minidlna
ARGS=’-f /home/martin/.minidlna.conf’

test -f $MINIDLNA || exit 0

. /lib/lsb/init-functions

case “$1″ in

***** End file extract *****

now move it to /etc/init.d/ with

$ sudo cp /home/martin/minidlna.init.d.script /etc/init.d/minidlna

this changes it’s name to just minidnla and

$ sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/minidlna

make it executable, now reboot the PC and the server should auto start.

$ sudo update-rc.d minidlna defaults

And update, now you can the use the following commands from a Terminal to control the server.

$ sudo /etc/init.d/minidlna stop

$ sudo /etc/init.d/minidlna start

$ sudo /etc/init.d/minidlna restart