HackNBlog @ Salamanteri Server

Advanced users (and some regular desktop users too) have a need for process viewer (for those who don’t know what I mean, it’s equivalent of process lister that you get with ctrl-alt-del in windows) - and while some are happy or even insist on using nothing but graphical application for this (’gnome-system-monitor‘ in Gnome), some of us prefer to use one that is console based or prefer having both depending on situation so there is a big demand for a good console based process viewer for *nix systems.

The old ‘top’ and way more advanced alternative

Many people know ‘top‘ to be such tool - unfortunately many don’t know other interactive ones - there is non-interactive ‘ps‘ for getting process list, but it just prints process list (with information and formatting according to parameters) while interactive process lister lets you view the list, send signals to processes (ie. to kill a process) or to change their priority (’nice’ value). There however is much more advanced application than ‘top‘, yet very much like ‘top‘ in having all that is good in ‘top‘, but replacing many UI parts with better functionality. The app is called ‘htop‘.

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You have a DVB card (Digital Video Broadcasting, for digital TV that is)? You want to use your computer as a telly for watching and recording? Yet MythTV is a bit of a too much bloat, too hard to set up, sumtin like that?

Me-TV offers a light and easy solution providing automatical scanning of the available channels, watching telly, EPG (Electronic Program Guide) and on top of everything, allows you to scedule programs to record on hard disk.

I used to watch TV via xine. I had to manually scan channels from the command line before that worked, xine supports DVB but no electronic program guide and other nice features. One of the main reasons to get jiggy with Me-TV was of course the possibility to schedule programs to record (which I have already used couple times and I only installed it like three days ago).

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I just got some new video files but instead of divx packed inside .avi they came in .mvb files unknown to me. Trying to view them with xine I was surprised that I did not have a correct codec installed and revealed that the format was RealVideo (RV40).

I was so blinded by the thought that I should have almost any possible commonly known codec installed that I spent several apt-cache searches by looking for something else and completely missing on packet - which I then spotted and was humbled by the fact I had forgotten to install it. The command I needed to get it work was simply:
apt-get install w32codecs So never fool yourself, even though your guru mind should know all the switches and gears to make a steampunk computer tick, you might still miss the most obvious package for whatever problem you bump into :)

I found out just now that Debian, along with couple other major distributions, have decided to drop support for XMMS audio player (See: Considerations for ‘xmms’ removal from Debian). I was really badly surprised when I noticed that apparently dist-upgrading my Debian from Etch to Lenny, the new stable, the old XMMS package had disapeared! I can live with Debian dropping XMMS but I think that it’s a bit shameless to put an upgrade out that drops the already installed package from my system too! So I had to get it back…

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There are many reasons why a user might want to use OpenDNS quality dns nameservers instead of service providers dns servers. Maybe the providers nameserver does not work that well, or maybe your country and/or provider is one of those who have set up domain name based internet content filtering that you want to pass - this is the case here in Finland where the claimed use is to prevent access to child porn sites but most of the sites filtered are not of that sort at all, many not even regular porn sites and sometimes there have been really bad mistakes (like w3c site ending on the list).

On opendns.org there is a simple guide on how to set Linux (there is one for Windows too) to use OpenDNS - all you have to do, according to the site, is to edit /etc/resolv.conf and replace IP’s on nameserver lines with ones of OpenDNS. While this works at least on Fedora (and supposedly on most other flawors of Linux), at least with Debian and Ubuntu there is an extra step. This one is for those using cable connection with DHCP:

1st. edit /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf and add followind line to end of file:
prepend domain-name-servers 208.67.222.222,208.67.220.220;
…then find the line starting with “request” that lists the information to read ask from DHCP server and remove the option “domain-name-servers“.

2nd. edit /etc/resolv.conf like instructed on opendns.org. Replace the nameserver lines with these:
nameserver 208.67.222.222
nameserver 208.67.220.220
edit: I’m not sure if the second step is needed or even effective on debian.

3rd. Now you could just wait until the information from DHCP gets renewed or to make the changes work instantly you can run:
/etc/init.d/networking restart

Notes: You need to get root access to edit the files and to restart networking.

Was: “The Ur-Quan Masters for Debian (problem & solution)”

The Ur-Quan Masters is a 100% free implementation of original 3DO console version of Star Control II and there is also aditional optional speech package, package with original 3DO music and tree add-on remix packs for download. I ran into a problem not finding the game executable when I had installed The Ur-Quan Masters (on my Debian Etch stable/Lenny), a fantatic game I had come upon years ago originally. “…far journey, a space odyssey encompassing the realms of science-fiction and role-playing.“. It had both, fantastic single player adventure and a 2 player dualing game that really got me addicted before even trying the single player. (more…)

This package is obsolete unless you still use Debian Etch

Edit: This release of Worker file manager is obsolete since February 14, 2009 when Lenny became the current stable Debian version - unless you have configure your APT to stay at Etch or have not ran apt-get dist-upgrade or some other packet managers update routine since by default it upgrades automatically to current stable. Lenny currently has this same version of Worker in Debian repository.

Ok, I’ve added a software download archive here some days ago already. Software page lists software I’ve made available with download links to them and Download archives just plainly lists the packages/files available for public. In future I will also provide, among other files, my own software creations, but lets start with Debian package of something not yet available on stable/etch:

Worker 2.16.5 for Debian etch/stable (i386)

I made this package when I noticed that the version of Worker available for stable branch of Debian is dated back in 2005 - and among other things lacks the support for UTF-8 encoding. There was more fresh package available for testing-branch (lenny) but installing that would require installing other library dependencies from “testing”. I did not like the idea of that so I compiled my own deb-binary package that does not depend on anything not available for current stable branch of debian (as side note, it propably runs fine on ubuntu too, please confirm if you try it).

Here’s copy of original package description of this software (because I’m too lazy to describe with my own words):

highly configurable two-paned file manager for X

Worker is a file manager much like the Amiga’s DirOpus. It can be controlled with mouse or keyboard. There is no restriction on the number or type of button functions. Files are recognized by both extension and content, content by recognizing common bytes in the sample files you show it. Drag & Drop is supported.

If xli or imagemagick is installed, it quickly previews pictures in the opposite pane. If x11-utils is installed, xmessage is used to display some informative messages.

If at all interested read the rest of this post or just head to the software download page for binary .deb and source files for building your own package or if you just want the binary, just down it right here:

  worker_2.16.5-1_i386.deb (1.1 MiB, 254 hits)