santner

I have gkrellm on my desktop and every so often I will peek at it and see that my cpu is running at 40+%?!? I then open up a terminal and type top and see that sure enough firefox is the culprit. What is going on here?

I would like to purchase music through my linux box. I know that there are now several sites that allow this for $0.99 per song, however they usually require that you use their software (Windows software). Is there another way to purchase software through linux? How does everyone on this forum download music (just the ones who pay please)? BTW, I have an iPod mini, so any suggestions that go along with that would be great. I am looking for mainly mp3's.

First, a little background. When I first got my dv camcorder, I made vcd's. Some time later I realized that I could make dvd's with some effort, and have higher quality videos. So my motivation is that my first 20 some videos were vcd's that were aging and the rest of my home videos are now dvd's. Anyway, these vcds are very important and so I wanted to convert them to dvd. Here is how I did it. Unfortunately, I had to use some windows tools. Probably could have found similar tools in linux, but I was in a time crunch. 1.) Convert the .dat files on the vcd to mpeg files with VCDGear (Windows) 2.) Demux the mpeg files using dvd-lab Pro 30 day trial edition (Windows) and then resample the audio from 44.1 kHz to 48 kHz (DVD Compatible) 3.) mplex the files back together (Linux) - this is the command I used: mplex -r 10000 -f 8 -S 4400 test.mpv test.mpa -o test.vob 4.) Use dvd-menu to create the menu for the dvd (Linux) 5.) Use dvdauthor to create the dvd filestructure (Linux) 6.) Burn the files to dvd (Linux) - this is the command I used: growisofs -speed=8 -Z /dev/dvd -dvd-video /path/to/VIDEOTS_and_AUDIOTS_directories I hope this is useful to someone else. And if you want to create dvd's staight from your home dv camcorder, then check out my software: http://sourceforge.net/projects/dvd-homevideo/ http://freshmeat.net/projects/dvd-homevideo/ :D :D :D

Thanks for the advice, but what I am looking for is a way to decode the vcd files back into avi files. I think that transcode can do this, but it is such a cryptic command line tool that it would save me a lot of time if someone has already done it.

Unfortunately it is not that easy. VCD files are actually compressed using mpeg4 (I think) so I would need to decompress the files back to avi, then re-encode. Any other ideas?

Anyone know any good software for converting a vcd into an avi file. More specifically, I copied the data from a VCD to my harddrive. The folder structure is this: /cdi /mpegav /segment /vcd /cdi is empty /mpegav contains avseq0?.dat where ? is 1-4 /segment contains item000?.dat where ? is 1-3 /vcd contains entries.vcd info.vcd lot.vcd and psd.vcd I have not worked much with vcd's, I believe it is mpeg4 encoding? Anyway, I am sure that transcode would do the job, but I am not sure how. So advice on transcode would be great or advice on a gui application would be great as well. The reason I am doing this is that I have some home video that I want to convert from vcd to dvd. Once I get the files in avi format, the rest is easy with dvd-homevideo from sourceforge.net. Any help is of course greatly appreciated.

Everyone, This is for a buddy of mine who I have convinced to try linux. He is super excited, but is having trouble migrating due to the difficulties in setting up WiFi access for his dell laptop computer. Although I know my way around linux, I have never setup WiFi access for a laptop before. What he is looking for is a software application to configure the WiFi and/or the necessary drivers that need to be loaded to make it all work. A step by step guide would be very helpful, and remember that he is completely new to linux...he is just now learning the concept of mounting, etc. Any input would be greatly appreciated.... :D

I have incorporated all of your recent suggestions, but I am having trouble returning the array from my functions. For some reason, I get no value returned at all. I know that I must be calling the function incorrectly because it is like it just skips over the function call completely. As you always do, please shed some light on this topic for me. Again, I have attached the latest version. A continued thanks goes out to you for all of your help. dvd_homevideo_revision5.txt

I gave passing and returning arrays a shot, but I just couldn't get it to go. My reference was Steve's link from page one. I could get an 'example' program to work, however in my program something wasn't matching up and the result was a mess of code that didn't work. If you can figure it out (which I am sure you can) and you think it would make the code much better, then feel free to.

I am going to play around with gnome (as opposed to KDE) and I am looking for a 'hotkeys' application for starting programs with keyboard combinations. Anyone know of any applications that do this?

Thanks for the tip on the checkforprog modification. That is much more informative to the user regarding dependencies. I anxiously await what else you have to recommend...

I think I may have found a solution...although I won't be able to test it until I get home. It appears that I need to remove the dir_index feature from the ext3 filesystems on these partitions by typing: tune2fs -O ^dir_index /dev/hda5 I think the syntax of that command is correct. Here is the link to the article I found: http://www.mail-archive.com/cooker@linux-m...m/msg85907.html

Here is my setup: 7 partitions on one 40GB Harddrive hda1: FC3 hda2: 10.1 Official hda3: Unused hda4: Extended hda5: /home hda6: /.../Music hda7: /.../Pictures Now the issue is that when I boot into 10.1 Official, the system attempts to mount hda5,6, and 7 as it should, however I receive this error message: fsck.ext3: Filesystem has unsupported feature(s) e2fsck: Get a newer version of e2fsck! First of all, I know very little about fsck.ext3 and e2fsck - they have just always worked. Secondly, any easy fix? Usually clean installs of Mandrake are a breeze...

Thanks for the info, just wanted to check before I did something stupid....although the concept is nice, isn't it.

Can you use the same /usr directory for two different linux distributions? For example, I want to install FC3 on my Mandrake linux box on a seperate partition (and I already have /usr dedicated to its own partition) but I see no reason to have two different /usr directories...can this be done? :D :P

First of all, your suggestions have been extremely helpful. Starting with the question from yesterday, that has actually solved itself. Steve's suggestion worked: The purpose was this: the vmgm.xml file is passed to dvdauthor and it basically tells dvdauthor when you press a button on the menu what vob (video) file to play. Well, depending on how the user sets up their "title" file, instead of button one mapping to vob file one, button two to vob file two etc. you can have button two go to vob file five, and button three to vob file eight etc. I have fixed the "emptystring" issue and have also changed $outdir back to a global variable that is used locally in my functions. I have also 'fixed' it so that I return a 1 from my function upon an error, and then exit from the program in the 'main' code. Now the only thing I didn't understand was this: What I don't understand is why is that method beneficial as opposed to calling dvd-menu in the menu function. I tested it and it does work, I was just wondering why is one better than the other. Which errors are you getting that are still being printed to stdout? Definitely! I use vob[] in both conv() and menu() and I use remove_title[] in both menu() and author()....is this ok? I have attached the latest version of the code. dvd_homevideo_revision3.txt

I've revised my functions to pass arguments - except I don't know how to pass an array or how to return an array. This seems pretty tricky... This version doesn't have many changes, just the functions now receive arguments. Should I return 1 from my functions if my "grep -iq error log/file.log" call fails and then exit from the program, or should I keep it the way it is now and exit from within the function call? Also, I use emptystring="" extensively in most functions, should I pass this as a variable also or keep it as a global? dvd_homevideo_revision2.txt

First of all, thanks for the advice and recommendations. :D Are you talking about the vob and remove_title arrays, or are you also talking about the command line arguments that are passed to the program. Could you illustrate with an example. Most of the code works as it should. My final task is to implement the '-f' option passed to the program which is where a user supplies a text file titles used in the DVD menu. This has been difficult so far. My main issues arise in the author function where I have to delete lines from vmgm.xml. This is where sed comes in. Here is an example vmgm.xml file (the file I want to edit) <dvdauthor dest="DVD/" jumppad="0"> <vmgm> <menus> <pgc entry="title" > <vob file="./menu.vob" pause="inf"/> <button> jump title 1; </button> <button> jump title 2; </button> <button> jump title 3; </button> <button> jump title 4; </button> <button> jump title 5; </button> <button> jump title 6; </button> <button> jump title 7; </button> <button> jump title 8; </button> <button> jump title 9; </button> <button> jump title 10; </button> <button> jump title 11; </button> <button> jump title 12; </button> <button> jump title 13; </button> <button> jump title 14; </button> <post> jump vmgm menu 1; </post> </pgc> </menus> </vmgm> <titleset> <titles> <pgc> <vob file="avifile-001.vob" /> <post> jump title 2; </post> </pgc> <pgc> <vob file="avifile-003.vob" /> <post> jump title 3; </post> </pgc> <pgc> <vob file="avifile-005.vob" /> <post> jump title 4; </post> </pgc> <pgc> <vob file="avifile-004.vob" /> <post> jump title 5; </post> </pgc> <pgc> <vob file="avifile-005.vob" /> <post> jump title 6; </post> </pgc> <pgc> <vob file="avifile-006.vob" /> <post> jump title 7; </post> </pgc> <pgc> <vob file="avifile-007.vob" /> <post> jump title 8; </post> </pgc> <pgc> <vob file="avifile-008.vob" /> <post> jump title 9; </post> </pgc> <pgc> <vob file="avifile-009.vob" /> <post> jump title 10; </post> </pgc> <pgc> <vob file="avifile-010.vob" /> <post> jump title 11; </post> </pgc> <pgc> <vob file="avifile-011.vob" /> <post> jump title 12; </post> </pgc> <pgc> <vob file="avifile-012.vob" /> <post> jump title 13; </post> </pgc> <pgc> <vob file="avifile-013.vob" /> <post> jump title 14; </post> </pgc> <pgc> <vob file="avifile-014.vob" /> <post> call vmgm menu 1; </post> </pgc> </titles> </titleset> </dvdauthor> And here is an example text file passed to the program: 'Mall Santa' blank blank blank 'Christmas Eve' blank blank blank blank blank Christmas_Morning blank blank blank DONE So this is how it works: lines 2,3,4,6,7,8,9,10,12,13 and 14 are all listed as 'blank'. This signals to my program to remove "<button> jump title 2", "<button> jump title 3", "<button> jump title 4", "<button> jump title 6".... from vmgm.xml. However, my sed command does not seem to work correctly. $(sed -e '/<button> jump title '${remove_title[$count]}'/d' vmgm.xml > vmgm.xml.new) Any ideas why it would not work? :unsure: I have attached the latest and greatest with updates you have suggested. :D dvd_homevideo.txt

Here is the code. Like I said before, I am open to any feedback. I would like this software to be as robust as possible because I am looking to release it on sourceforge within a week or so. Thanks. :D :P dvd_homevideo.txt

aru, first off thank you very much. eval worked like a champ. Secondly, I never turn down an opportunity to improve my software. Let me give you a brief background on what I am trying to accomplish. The script I am writing will automatically capture video from a dv camcorder, transcode it to mpeg2, make a menu for the dvd, author it and optionally burn it to disc as well. This started as a project written in C, however it just makes more sense to use a shell script. If you want more background, the project is listed under the workbench forum and is on sourceforge.net as dvdhomevid. Let me make a couple of adjustments to the code and I will repost it here tomorrow for your review. Thanks again!!!

In this code I am reading a text file: The goal is to pass anything except 'blank' and 'DONE' to another program. So when I read in 'Mall Santa', I want to literally pass exactly that exact phrase including the single quotes to the external program. Here is the code: titlefile="list.txt" if [ "$titlefile" != "$emptystring" ]; then count=0 j=0 old_IFS=$IFS IFS=$'\n' lines=($(cat $titlefile)) IFS=$old_IFS while [ "${lines[count]}" != "DONE" ] do if [ "${lines[count]}" != "blank" ]; then menu_options=$menu_options" -f "$outdir"/"${vob[count]}".vob -t "${lines[count]} count=$(($count+1)) else count=$(($count+1)) remove_title[j]=$count j=$(($j+1)) fi done fi echo $menu_options dvd-menu $menu_options Now the problem is that the: echo $menu_options prints it correctly. i.e. -t 'Mall Santa' -t 'Christmas Eve' -t Christmas_Morning However, dvd-menu reads in 'Mall Any idea what I am doing wrong?

awesome, exactly what I was looking for. I prefer the array style, very solid code.

Bash is awesome, the only problem I have is that I have yet to find a simple way to read a basic text file from within a bash script one line at a time. For example, say my text file contains: 'Christmas Eve' 'Christmas Morning' 'New Years Eve' So from my bash script I would like to be able to read each entire line, one at a time and save it to a variable within the script. I have googled and still can't find the answers. Please help! :D

Thanks, that does clear up some issues. I believe that the problem is typically between the router and the modem, as I can always access the router web page setup. Just FYI, here is the output of the route command, does it look normal? Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 192.168.1.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0 default 192.168.1.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0 Also, does sbc's dsl service go down frequently, or is it almost always an issue on my end?

I have a simple home network setup between two linux computers. The network cards from both computer connect to a Linksys BEFSX41 firewall/router which then connects to a speedstream 5100 DSL modem from SBC. Most of the time everything works well, however every once in a while for seemingly no reason we lose our connection. After trying a multitude of different things, resetting the router etc. it will come back up. What I would like to know is if anyone else has a similar setup and if so how they have their router configured. SBC uses pppoe, however the only setting that will work for the linksys is to "obtain the ip automatically". Any input would be valuable. Thanks! :D