Month: September 2014

Link: Short introduction into grub internals

There are lot of grub questions lately and I was just about to answer one but somehow my answer turned out a bit long so I decided the change it into a more general post about grub and bootloaders. ….. I am going into a lot of details here about how a grub installation works. Please don’t take this a suggestion you should do it like this. Your distro will set this all up for you. I write about it because I think it helps to understand how grub works and because it allows repairing grub if it was damaged.

Full article here:
Short introduction into grub internals (reddit – linux4noobs)

Link: Edit your crontab file with crontab -e

Linux crontab FAQ: How do I edit my Unix/Linux crontab file?

I was working with an experienced Linux sysadmin a few days ago, and when we needed to make a change to the root user crontab file, I was really surprised to watch him cd to the root user’s cron folder, make changes to the file, then do a kill -HUP on the crontab process.

Thinking he knew something I didn’t know, I asked him why he did all of that work instead of just entering this:

crontab -e

Full article here:
Edit your crontab file with crontab -e (Alvin Alexander)

Link: Mac Gems: Recovery Partition Creator adds OS X Recovery to any drive

To use OS X’s handy OS X Recovery feature, or to enable FileVault on an external drive, you need a special recovery partition on your drive. This utility can add it if the OS X installer didn’t.

Full article here:
Mac Gems: Recovery Partition Creator adds OS X Recovery to any drive (Macworld)

Link: Beginner’s Guide to Mastering the Netstat Command on Linux

The netstat command is an essential tool for network administration. It displays information about the Linux networking subsystem including data on open network connections, routing tables and statistics about the installed network interfaces.

Full article here:
Beginner’s Guide to Mastering the Netstat Command on Linux (Make Tech Easier)

Link: Sysstat – All-in-One System Performance and Usage Activity Monitoring Tool For Linux

Sysstat is really a handy tool which comes with number of utilities to monitor system resources, their performance and usage activities. Number of utilities that we all use in our daily bases comes with sysstat package. It also provide the tool which can be scheduled using cron to collect all performance and activity data.

Full article here:
Sysstat – All-in-One System Performance and Usage Activity Monitoring Tool For Linux (Tecmint)

Link: How To Install Wine to Run Windows Software on Ubuntu

Wine is a free and open source application that aims to allow applications designed for Microsoft Windows to run on Unix-like operating systems. Wine also provides a software library, known as Winelib, against which developers can compile Windows applications to help port them to Unix-like systems.

Wine is a compatibility layer. It duplicates functions of Windows by providing alternative implementations of the DLLs that Windows programs call and a process to substitute for the Windows NT kernel. This method of duplication differs from other methods that might also be considered emulation, where Windows programs run in a virtual machine. In this article we are installing wine 1.7.25 version on Ubuntu 14.04.

Full article here:
How To Install Wine to Run Windows Software on Ubuntu (LinOxide)

Link: How to Encode H.265 Video Using ffmpeg on Linux

After H.264 came H.265. It also has a few other names, most commonly High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) or MPEG-H. H.265 doubles the data compression ratio compared to H.264 and can support resolutions up to 8192×4320. This means that video at the same quality needs only half of the bandwidth (or file size). Alternately, it means that the quality of the video can be substantially improved at the same bit rate, something very important for very high definition (i.e. 4K and 8K) displays.

Full article here:
How to Encode H.265 Video Using ffmpeg on Linux (Make Tech Easier)

Link: Review of the TBS MOI+ DVB S/S2 Satellite TV Linux Server – a bit like a HDHomeRun, but for Free-To-Air satellite signals

A couple of years ago, I acquired a HDHomeRun Dual device, and discovered how nice it was to be able to stream terrestrial TV signals to anywhere in my home via my local network. I set up a backend system so that I could record programs and enjoy watching them at my convenience. I wondered if it was also possible to do the same thing with the signals I received off my satellite dishes. So earlier this year I attempted to build a backend system that could receive free-to-air satellite signals and stream them to the various computers around my home, including the home theater PC’s that are connected to my HDTV receivers. Let’s just say that the first attempts didn’t work as well as I’d hoped. There is a huge learning curve, particularly if you’re not a programmer nor otherwise particularly geeky, and sometimes the hardware and the backend software just won’t cooperate.

Then I stumbled across a page on the TBS MOI+. I suspected that it might be able to accomplish what I’d been trying to do, and in a lot smaller package. So, I went online in an attempt to find some reviews on this device. To my surprise, little has been written about it, particularly in English. So, hoping to fill that gap, I contacted TBS and asked if they might be interested in providing a unit for review purposes. They graciously consented, and this review is the result. Just so you know, I did not promise to write only nice things about the unit, and I’m not getting paid anything for this review, beyond receiving the MOI+. So, this will be as honest of a review as I can make it.

Full article here:
Review of the TBS MOI+ DVB S/S2 Satellite TV Linux Server – a bit like a HDHomeRun, but for Free-To-Air satellite signals (Free To Air America)