Video Concatenation

The problem was that I had made two videos and I needed to merge them into
one. The solution was something like
mencoder -oac pcm -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=msmpeg4 -o a.avi animated_herb.ogg out.ogg

I had tried the non-linear video editing and other approaches, but this was the best solution that I found.

Now to compress it a bit.

heater picked up

The guy who dropped off the space heater just picked it up.

nfs tunneling over ssh

In order to allow nfs mounting to a machine with a dhcp address I'm setting up ssh tunneling to allow the remote machine to connect with a tunnel address and then export the nfs filesystem to the tunneled address.

I mostly followed this web page
http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/539

The main difference is that I didn't set up the routing since it isn't necessary to use it as a gateway.

server/unix upgrades

did dist-upgrades to the servers, the main problem is that they have the lvm filesystems and for some reason do not want to mount the boot directories, which makes the grub install part unhappy.

upgrading the wiki from 1.10 to 1.13, thinking about adding the semantic wiki extension.
Semantic wiki seems ok.

installed mathematica the other day, it seemed to go ok.

More video options

This is what I used last time, and it brought the ~110 MB ogg file to ~58 MB avi file.

I'm not sure how much use each of the video options are, but the output quality seemed fine.

mencoder out.ogg -o ajax_intro.avi -ovc xvid -oac mp3lame -xvidencopts pass=2:bitrate=-50000:bf_threshold=200:curve_compression_high=90:max_key_interval=500 -af volume=30 -lameopts mode=3:highpassfreq=0:lowpassfreq=0 -ofps 15

Videos

In order to compensate for a soft/quiet recording audio volume I used the -af volume=25 flag to add 25 decibels.

I haven't screened the output yet (it is only at 3%, about 30 minutes to go), but I'll update with anything interesting.

mencoder out.ogg -o mvc_catalyst.flv -of lavf -oac mp3lame -lameopts br=192 -af lavcresample=22050 -srate 22050 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=flv:vbitrate=2000:autoaspect:mbd=2:trell:v4mv -af volume=25

update:
audio was a little quiet, so I'll up it to 30, and there was no space saved to speak of, so I'm trying
mencoder out.ogg -o mvc_catalyst.avi -ovc xvid -oac mp3lame -xvidencopts pass=2:bitrate=-30000 -af volume=30

I'll see how the quality is...

more latex papersize

still having trouble with a4
now trying to edit
/etc/texmf/tex/generic/config/pdftexconfig.tex with
\pdfpagewidth=8.5truein
\pdfpageheight=11.0truein

but that didn't seem to help
Then I tried
Additionally in the Vmargin style file ($TEXBASE/texmf/tex/latex/misc/Vmargin.sty) at or around line 225 you should change the following default settings so that they reflect the correct default paper size and margins:
%
% DEFAULTS:
%
\setpapersize{A4}
\setmarginsrb{35mm}{20mm}{25mm}{15mm}{12pt}{11mm}{0pt}{11mm}

For example changing this to read:
%
% DEFAULTS:
%
\setpapersize{USletter}
\setmarginsrb{1in}{1in}{1in}{1in}{0pt}{0mm}{0pt}{0mm}

(btw, these are from http://physics.wm.edu/~norman/latexhints/pdf_papersize.html)


Finally,
texconfig-sys worked, although texconfig does not.

apache authz.conf

Apparently does not like references to non existent groups. I was cleaning up the permission file and it basically failed on everything when I referenced a group that was not there.

fvwm and ivman

need automounting for fvwm
trying to use ivman, but it does not seem to detect removals...
looking at thunar, but that seems old too
autofs doesn't seem appropriate

thunar looks ok, it does not auotmount, but if I pull up the browser it will mount it,
I know it is possible to use pmount, but that is beyond (unfortunately) the realm of usability for most students.

Scratch Installation

For scratch I need to install the squeak package and then run the script, so far it seems ok, but I need to do more testing.

New OS

The new os installation is going ok
About 1/3 of the machines didn't get their partitions copied correctly, so I'm redoing those and running the migration script. The migration script isn't going great though as it is messing the with eth device, some machines like 0 some like 1, so it looks like I need to login to them all and check them.

korganizer synchronization

Fall 2008 Localization

In order to local the machines after the partition images are copied, I am mounting the new partition and then copying the appropriate files over from the existing image. So far this seems to work well.

Fall 2008 Localization

In order to local the machines after the partition images are copied, I am mounting the new partition and then copying the appropriate files over from the existing image. So far this seems to work well.

Hawkins 053b - 124

I'm reinstalling this machine totally. Last year it had its hard drive replaced, and I tried just copying a disk image over, but it never worked well (error messages about the disk partitions), so I'm just going to have to treat this machine differently. Although, I'll try to set the new partitions up such that they are the same size as the partitions on the other machines.

Copying disk partitions

1. Boot into the other partition or using a cd
2. dd if=/dev/sda2 bs=4k | gzip -c > /local/admin/hawkins053b/labf08.img.gz
3. cat labf08.img.gz | nc -q 1 137.142.101.ABC 3333
3a. Substitute 101, 102, 104-123, 125-140 for ABC
4. Log in as root, to each of the machines, nc -l -p 3333 | gunzip | dd of=/dev/sda2 bs=4k
5. change grub for default
6. change network identity

latex paper size

used texconfig-sys to adjust the paper size created by pdflatex, and it seemed positive, but has not completely removed the A4 bias.

/etc/papersize does not seem to fully resolve it either.

updatedb

modified the updatedb.conf file to explicitly ignore /home and /local It should have been ignoring those anyways since they are nfs based, but it was still indexing them.

The changes to the tcp parameters I tried earlier did not seem to have any noticeable effect.

Another weird thing that I have noticed is that gnome is not always killing all of the user processes upon logout....

server problems

been having more server problems, so trying

trying some tcp tuning based on
http://people.redhat.com/alikins/system_tuning.html

I've doubled the values in /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_rmem and tcp_wmem
I also increased the size of the ip_local_port_range

If this doesn't work, then the next step is to try to increase the size
of the nfs read and write blocks, after that it is back to square one.

kerberos hiccup

For some reason or another kerberos failed on Tuesday morning, at least for server and unix. Strangely it did not fail on the machines in the redcay lab. Taking a look at it today, it seems like it works again on unix and server. Both Symen and Hap did not notice anything strange on their end.

update: I spoke too soon, it isn't resolved yet.

Also, there was another brief problem with the human resource database, but I just added the faculty to the manual database and it worked out fine.

trackerd

It seems that trackerd is part of the nfs problems we have been having.
There was a rogue that I found running today and it was sending about 3Gb/hour and receiving about 800MB/hour with the server. Luckily most everyone has turned them off now, but it is a "feature" that I wish gnome hadn't included.

Testing environment

-Create a guest account
-Configure iptables

Guest account is already enabled: "/etc/group" shows if guest account exists.
username: std
password: std

######################################

Game removal -- Games are in "/usr/games/"

######################################

iptables configuration:

# host -- Gives addresses

Testing rules can be done in terminal:

Ex. # iptables -A(add) -s(source) -p(protocol) -j

Put script in "/etc/init.d/"
After script creation: # update-rc.d multiuser

Script will run at startup from now on

###########################################

To do list: Create a script that allows an instructor to lock a lab computer by denying the specific localhost to communicate with itself...Maybe implement web-based interface? Webpage would show computers in lab and when instructor clicks on specified host SSH connects them to computer creates a temporary rule that drops local packets.

nfs

Changed the number of nfs threads from the default of 8 to 40 in an attempt to resolve the problem that users are having logging into gnome.

Problem machines

cslab-108 beeps on powerup and then the fan runs loud and non stop

unix was not transferring files correctly... not sure if there was some corruption or if there is some other problem that exists

Postfix config

I needed to set the postfix/main.cf with the local machine name for emails to root to be forwarded correctly. Modifyied set_identity.pl to include changes to it

init.d config

Instead of chkconfig you use update-rc.d

For instance, I don't think the dictionary server is going to get heavily used, so to turn it off by default. To do this I run
update-rc.d -f dictd remove
update-rc.d dictd stop 2 3 4 5 .

The first removes all links, and the second puts only stop links in. The second is not strictly necessary.

Config List

The biggest things for configuration are

1. Filesystems - modify /etc/fstab
2. LDAP - modify /etc/ldap, pam.d


Interesting, the cdrom device changed from hda to scd0

After mounting the filesystems, it is easier to access the configuration files to change

3. Update mail for root. I changed the /etc/aliases file to forward root mail to me
4. Check hosts and resolv.conf files
resolv.conf was ok, but I added an extra line to search the plattsburgh domain also
in hosts I added aliases for server, unix and www

5. verify email works
it does not, need to change main.cf in postfix to have the right relay host
TODO: need to modify identity script to modify mydestination, /etc/mailname

6. Check later to see if emacs22 config files need to be recompiled

Migrating fromLVM to ext3

I'm not sure if this will work, but I'm trying to image the old version of the OS by doing a dd off of the

Migrating fromLVM to ext3

I'm not sure if this will work, but I'm trying to image the old version of the OS by doing a dd off of the LVM physical volume. This is what I'm trying

dd if=/dev/Ubuntu/roo bs=4k | gzip -c | nc -q 1 addr 3333
on the client side, on the target side I'm using
nc -l -p 3333 | gunzip | dd of=/dev/sda3 bs=4k

I'm not sure if the differences in the file system will mess it up, or if it will work out ok.
I suspect that it won't.

Yup, it doesn't.

Next attempt is to use tar
bin/tar cf - . | bin/gzip -c | bin/nc -q 1 addr 3333
then
nc -l -p 3333 | tar zxf -

the bins are necessary on the sending side because I am in rescue mode and the busy box app does not support all of the features. Technically I probably should not have it mounted at all, although in this case I need to have it mounted for tar to work.

Results: tar had problems with sockets, and ordering. Ordering I can fix, sockets, I'm not sure...

Thinking about it some more, this may not be feasible. The problem is that the old image thinks it has 40GB, when it is only going to have 10GB. I could probably resize the physical volume it is on, but then I still have the problem of changing it. For now I will just leave it as it is and keep an old image of it around for later.

I need to finalize the image build so I can get them distributed.

catalyst database updating

Catalyst is cool in that there is a helper module that will update the database class tables for you, the problem is that I keep forgetting the syntax, so here it is

script/quiz_create.pl model DB DBIC::Schema QuizDB create=static "dbi:Pg:dbname=academic;host=server.cs.plattsburgh.edu" hartdr password

DB is the name of the class in the lib/quiz/Model/ directory that represents the database in catalyst

QuizDB is the file in lib which the DB class uses to implement it.

Emacs22

Setting up emacs22 is a pain, so far for it to work, the
cedet-common speedbar eieio
must be installed first

then
cedet-contrib
which will bring in a couple more extensions

then
jde
which will pull more extensions in

Which didn't work, so I edited /usr/share/doc-base/jde and copied the second line above the first line, so the first line began with Document, and it finished configuring.

Server emacs

Updatated server, and emacs went to version 22.

There were two addons that did not make the transition well, which were eieio and speedbar.

Subversion rss feed

I want to set up a rss feed for the subversion repository since I will be using it more heavily this semester.

My initial attempt will be using svn2feed.py

While reading the comments for a tutorial on svn2feed.py, I started looking into WebSVN,
the initial problem though is with access control. It appears that it only handles per
repository access control, which is not good enough for us.
Insurrection is not mature enough.

Another one that I have used in the past is trac, but I had problems when I upgraded it and did not bother. I'm going to take another look.

I think I found the problem in trac, but it appears to be fixed in gutsy, but I should wait to install gutsy until later. (csc 359 is currently using the machine). So, I'll defer this issue for now.