Posts Tagged ‘Desktop’

Universal way to configure a static IP address on ethernet lan (eth0) interface in Linux

Friday, April 29th, 2011

One of the most precious commands I ever learned to use in Linux is ifconfig and route .

They have saved my life in configuring the static IP based internet of numerous Desktop Linux computers & notebooks.

Though the usage is very much known by most of the people who are into Linux, I believe it’s likely that the newer people who entered the world of Linux or some Unix system administrators are still lacking the knowledge on how to manually configure their eth0 lan card, thus I thought it might be handy for someone to share it, I know that for most unix users & admins especially the advanced ones this post might be funny, so if you’re an advanced administrator just skip the post and don’t laught at it 😉

Now the universal commands (works on each and every Linux host) to configure manually static IP internet connection on Linux are:

linux:~# /sbin/ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.3 netmask 255.255.255.0
linux:~# /sbin/route add default gw 192.168.0.1
linux:~# echo 'nameserver 192.168.0.1' >> /etc/resolv.conf

I’ve used this simple commands on thousands ot Linux hosts and it’s still handy 🙂

In above example 192.168.0.3 is the static IP address provided by the ISP, netmask is the netmask and the second /sbin/route add default gw would set the default gateway to the example ip 192.168.0.1

The third final line would add up a resolver nameserver the Linux host would use.

Cheers 😉

Best software available today for Linux video Desktop capturing on Debian

Tuesday, April 19th, 2011

I’ve been experimenting since some time in order to understand better what is the current situation with Video Desktop Capturing Software available today for Linux and FreeBSD.

My previous investigations has led me to write an article about xvidcap called How to make Video from your Linux Desktop with xvidcap

Though xvidcap works pretty well, it is currently uncapable of capturing the audio stream of a Linux Desktop env and hence part of the interactivity of the videos is missing when used.

A bit of further investigation on the topic has pointed me to 3 free software programs which are capable to record Desktop environment on Linux with sound embedded

The interesting screen video capturing Desktop tools I’ve found are:

1. recordMyDesktop
2. Istanbul
and
3. vnc2swf

Installing them on a Debian based distribution is pleasable, as there are installable debian packages of each one which I installed easily with apt:

debian:~# apt-get install istanbul recordmydesktop gtk-recordmydesktop vnc2swf

RecordMyDesktop‘s package contains a command line little tool which when started directly starts capturing video and audio of the Linux Desktop. After a Ctrl+C is pressed the program quits, saves and encodes the video in ogg-encapsulated theora-vorbis file format.

Here is the output I got in saving a sample file by launching recordmydesktop without any arguments:

hipo@debian:~/Desktop$ recordmydesktop
Initial recording window is set to:
X:0 Y:0 Width:1024 Height:768
Adjusted recording window is set to:
X:0 Y:0 Width:1024 Height:768
Your window manager appears to be Metacity

Initializing…
Buffer size adjusted to 4096 from 4096 frames.
Opened PCM device hw:0,0
Recording on device hw:0,0 is set to:
2 channels at 22050Hz
Capturing!
Broken pipe: Overrun occurred.
Broken pipe: Overrun occurred.
Broken pipe: Overrun occurred.
^C
*********************************************

Cached 5 MB, from 207 MB that were received.
Average cache compression ratio: 97.3 %

*********************************************
Saved 69 frames in a total of 69 requests
Shutting down..Broken pipe: Overrun occurred.

STATE:ENCODING
Encoding started!
This may take several minutes.
Pressing Ctrl-C will cancel the procedure (resuming will not be possible, but
any portion of the video, which is already encoded won’t be deleted).
Please wait…
Output file: out.ogv
[100%]
Encoding finished!
Wait a moment please…

Done.
Written 692529 bytes
(635547 of which were video data and 56982 audio data)

Cleanning up cache…
Done!!!
Goodbye!

The captured file as I you see in the above output is saved in file out.ogv

RecordMyDesktop has also a GUI interface (written in Python) called gtk-recordmydesktop

Below you see a screenshot of the GUI gtk-recordmydesktop:

RecordMyDesktop GTK interface entry screen

gtk-recordmydesktop is a super-easy to use as you already see in the picture, you can either configure it with Advanced button or use Save As button to select where you want the Desktop captured video and audio to be stored.

In Debian Squeeze 6.0, the Advanced GUI button interface button is not working but that’s not such an issue, as the rest of the buttons works fine.
After the recordmydesktop‘s Record button is pressed it will start capturing from your Desktop and the window seen in the above screenshot will disappear/hide in the system tray:

recordmydesktop recording minimized in system tray
When you press over the white little square in the system tray the screen capturing will be interrupted and a window will pop-up informing you that the captured video and audio is being encoded, here is another screenshot of recordmydesktop encoding a saved Desktop video stream:

recordmydesktop saving captured desktop video

After the final .ogv file is encoded and saved to further transfer it into (.flv) I used ffmpeg;

debian:~# ffmpeg -i test.ogv test.flv
...

Now let’s evaluate a bit on the the final results, the produced test.ogv‘s synchronization between sound and video was not good as the sound was starting earlier than the video and therefore even though recordmydesktop used to be highly praised on the net, the proggie developers still needs to do some bug fixing
Further on, I continued and (gave the other Desktop screen capturer) Istanbul a try hoping that at least with it the video and audio of my Linux desktop will be properly captured. But guess what, the results with Istanbul was even more unsatisfactory as the produced videos and sounds, were slow and a lot of frames from the screens were missing completely.
Moreover the sound which was supposed to accompany the video was completely 🙁

Thus I will skip on talking about Istanbul as in my view, this piece of software is far away from being production ready.

I also tested vnc2swf , launched it by: pressing alt+f2 and typing in vnc2swf in GNOME’s run application prompt, just to be surprised by an error …:

vnc2swf error no 111 Connection refused

The reason for this error is caused by the xserver (Xorg) port 5900 is being closed by default on Debian

However this error is easily solvable, by making the Xserver to listen to a the port 5900, to make the Xorg server on Debian to listen on this port you need to edit the file:

/etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc

and change inside it:

exec /usr/bin/X -nolisten tcp "$@"

with:

exec /usr/bin/X "$@"

and either reboot your Linux or restart only the Xorg server by pressing Ctrl+Alt+BackSpace

Now let me conclude, the results from my desktop video screen capturing experiments prooved that vnc2swf is superior (as it is capable of properly saving a movie with sound and video from a Linux Desktop). It appears this soft is actually the best one you can use to make a video of your Linux desktop.

Sadly my testing has proven that Linux is still lacking behind Windows and Mac in even doing the most simple tasks …
Let’s hope that situation will get better soon and Gnome or KDE developers will soon provide us with better software capable to save properly a video and audio captured from the Linux Desktop.

How to turn ordinary Linux to a game station / Best Games to install and play on Debian Linux

Thursday, April 14th, 2011

Linux install best Games logo
Hereby in this article I’ll in short give you a quick way to install a number of my favourite linux games. In my view the games I’m going to suggest for installation are actually among the best existent games you could install and play on a Linux Desktop today.

Many people say/believe Linux does not have games, or the games for Linux/BSD are not fully featured and are not comparable to the ones for Windows, most of this sayings and beliefs are actually a fairy tales.
I should admit of course that Linux is still lacking behind in its gaming capabilities, even quite behind any Windows platform (Don’t get me wrong, I’m trying to be as much realistic as possible here in my estimation).

However little by little year by year as time passes by with time the situation for the coming generation of Linux Gamers is gettings better and better!.
The amount of free and non-free games is rising day by day, wheter
many of the large game producing companies like Blizzard, ID Software etc. are producing ports of their proprietary games for Linux.

Along with that the amount of Linux Enthusiast gamers and hobbyist is constantly increasing.

At the present moment probably there are more than 5000 games for Linux!
Many of that games count still requires heavy testing or are not yet production ready and therefore they don’t make it as a packages in the general Linux distributions repositories. These games are instead published on a various websites across the internet and still needs our (the linux hobbyist and daily users) testing and support
Linux has a number of websites which aims at inform interested users into the Linux games development, the major ones as far as I have found are:

  • http://happypenguin.org
  • http://www.linux-gamers.net

In Debian (Squeeze) Linux currently there are an overall of 1815 free and non-free games packages to available for installation
I have a favourite number of games I do install on each and every computer I use as a desktop workstation.

These Linux games are truly a blessing especially in times I’m too tired of reading, scripting or being too overwhelmed of doing my daily system administration duties.

To install my selected games collection on your Debian, Ubuntu or any other debian based Linux with apt-get use the command:

debian:~# apt-get install open-invaders bsdgames-nonfree scummvm
briquolo abuse abuse-frabs dosbox pingus wesnoth brutalchess
dreamchess gnuchess kamefu frozen-bubble bomberclone
lbreakout2 armagetron defendguin dodgindiamond2
rocksndiamonds blobwars wing xgalaga
extremetuxracer planetpenguin-racer
powermanga sauerbraten supertux tecnoballz torus-trooper
trackballs tumiki-fighters zblast-x11 criticalmass xbill
viruskiller snowballz freedoom wormux bugsquish gtetrinet njam
starfighter prboom bb xsoldier xevil gnome-breakout xarchon
moon-lander trophy lincity-ng alienblaster scorched3d ltris
smc foobillard warsow tremulous glest warzone2100 matanza
ace-of-penguins

I have created a small script containing the same apt-get, so I would advice you if you’re keen on Linux gaming like me to use it for yourself and for all your friends who runs Linux.
Download my turn-linux-into-gamestations.sh script here

If you want to install the Linux games list with the turn-linux-into-gamestation.sh use cmds:


debian:~# wget https://www.pc-freak.net/bshscr/turn-linux-into-gamestation.sh
debian:~# chmod +x turn-linux-into-gamestation.sh
debian:~# ./turn-linux-into-gamestation.sh

If you want to take a look a quick look over the gaes description included in
my best linux games to install compilation

Please see my best games collection linux desciption file here

Along with the game desciptions in my recommended games to install description you are about to find also the size of each of the games and the repository filename of the package that installs a games or relates to the linux game.

To extract the games descriptions I have used apt-cache

Here is the exact apt-cache show comman in combination with a little shellscript loop I have used to generate the games desciption file of my favourite Linux games list:

for i in $(echo open-invaders bsdgames-nonfree scummvm briquolo abuse abuse-frabs dosbox pingus wesnoth brutalchess dreamchess gnuchess kamefu frozen-bubble bomberclone lbreakout2 armagetron defendguin dodgindiamond2 rocksndiamonds blobwars wing xgalaga extremetuxracer planetpenguin-racer powermanga sauerbraten supertux tecnoballz torus-trooper trackballs tumiki-fighters zblast-x11 criticalmass xbill viruskiller snowballz freedoom wormux bugsquish gtetrinet njam starfighter prboom bb xsoldier xevil gnome-breakout xarchon moon-lander trophy lincity-ng alienblaster scorched3d ltris smc foobillard warsow tremulous glest warzone2100); do apt-cache show $i |grep -v "Priority:" |grep -v "Section:" |grep -v "Maintainer:" |grep -v "Depends:" |grep -v "Architecture:"|grep -v "SHA1:" |grep -v "SHA256:"|grep -v "Recommends:"|grep -v "MD5sum:" >>games_description.txt;
done

Note that some of the games will require a properly configured opengl / glx configured and will require a bit more solid system hardware in order be able to play some of the games.

Also some of games from my linux favor game list are space demanding, some of the games will require (up to about 300mb of space).

Nevertheless as I presume nowdays most Linux desktops runs some no more than 3, 4 years old hardware I assume the minimal hardware requirements necessery to be able to run and play all the games from the above list won’t be a problem.

On my system all of my selected linux games collection runs without any performance issues, though some of the games has some minor sound problems (for some weird uknown to me reasons).

I’m using an ordinary Thinkpad R61 notebook with a Debian Squeeze 6.0 installation with Gnome on my desktop.
My basic hardware parameters which runs all the linux games smoothly are as follows:

Notebook Thinkpad R61 with

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8Ghz
Memory: 2GB
HDD: 160GB

To start up and play the games in a Gnome desktop look up for the games in gnome menus:

Application -> Debian -> Games
or
Application -> Games

If you want to only install only the games which will surely run on lower computer hardware let’s say with: CPU Pentium 166~300 Mhz and some lower amount of memory like 128MB of memory or 128 mbytes of system memory, I would suggest you run the apt-get command:



debian:~# apt-get install bsdgames-nonfree
abuse abuse-frabs pingus brutalchess
gnuchess kamefu frozen-bubble bomberclone lbreakout2 armagetron defendguin dodgindiamond2
rocksndiamonds blobwars xgalaga matanza ace-of-penguins
powermanga supertux tecnoballz
zblast-x11 xbill
viruskiller freedoom wormux bugsquish njam
starfighter prboom bb xsoldier xevil gnome-breakout xarchon
moon-lander trophy lincity-ng

All left is to check out the newly installed linux games and to enjoy them.

How to disable or remove completely Adobe (Macromedia) Flash Cookies on Linux

Monday, April 11th, 2011

As I’ve mentioned in my previous post, one of the greatest “evils” which prevents a good internet anonymization whether you surf online is Adobe Flash Player

There are two approaches you might partake to disable the privacy issues which might be related to Adobe Flash cookies saving data about flash banners or websites which stores their cookies to your computer.

To find out if flash websites has already saved their nasty flash cookies on your Linux, issue the commands:

hipo@debian:~$ cd .macromedia
hipo@debian:/home/hipo/.macromedia$ find -iname '*.sol'
./Flash_Player/macromedia.com/support/flashplayer/sys/#s.ytimg.com/settings.sol
./Flash_Player/macromedia.com/support/flashplayer/sys/settings.sol
./Flash_Player/macromedia.com/support/flashplayer/sys/#ip-check.info/settings.sol

The returned output of the above find command clearly reveals the shitty flash has stored already 3 flash cookies on my Linux, 3 cookies which later can be easily requested by other flash banners.
The 3 flash cookies are:
1. Saved by Adobe’s Flash Configuration Manager
2. Saved by the website ip-check.info
3. Saved by s.ytimg.com’s website

Now to deal with the situation and get rid of flash cookies, there are possibly two ways of approach that one can take:

1. One is to use some kind of script like the one clear_flash_cookies.tsch the other one is to completely disable flash cookies.
Using the clear_flash_cookies.tcsh does get rid of flash cookie problems just temporary as it might be set to be executed either once the browser is starting up, or directly via some kind of cron job entry like:

01 11,19 * * * /home/hipo/scripts/clear_flash_cookies.tcsh

eHowever clearing up (removing) the flash cookies, still doesn’t completely proihibit saving up of flash cookies and in the time intervals between the clear ups of the flash cookies, still some websites might save information related to their use on your Linux host and expose this information for other external flash websites to read and retrieve information about your previous websites visits.

Therefore it might be a better solution in terms of browser security to;

2. completely disable the use of adobe flash cookies on your Linux powered desktop.

Disabling adobe flash cookies is possible by either using the online flash Global Storage Settings (Flash Settings Manager) by navigating to the URL:

http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/
en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager03.html

Adobe Flash Player online settings manager unticked option

And by removing the tick which is present to the option:

Allow third party Flash content to store data on your computer

Or by linking the local directory ~/.macromedia -> /dev/null

hipo@debian:~$ mv .macromedia .macromedia-bak
hipo@debian:~$ ln -s /dev/null .macromedia
hipo@debian:~$ ls -ald .macromedia
lrwxrwxrwx 1 hipo hipo 9 2009-03-30 09:56 .macromedia -> /dev/null

That’s all, Farewell nasty Flash cookies!

Few websites to check how anonymous you are on the Internet

Monday, April 11th, 2011

A friend of mine has recommended, few websites which are quite useful in checking what kind of information a remote website could possibly retrieve about your system. I’ve found quite useful as they expose the high level of browser security there is nowdays even on a Linux based systems.
I’ve been stunned that so many information about my Linux desktop could be mined even when I use my browser through a tor network.

Here are the websites you might also like to check and possibly afterwards improve your Browser security:

http://anon.inf.tu-dresden.de/help/jap_help/en/help/security_test.html
http://www.proxy-list.org/en/show-my-ip.php
http://leader.ru/secure/who.html

I was rather shocked that some information that could be retrieved on my Linux host could even reveal fundamental details about my Linux Desktop like a version of my currently running Linux kernel!

In the past I’ve blogged an article which is quite related to the topic of Internet Anonimity and Browser security

You might consider checking my old article How to improve your web browser security and better secure your personal identity privacy on the internet here
I will take some steps further to look on how to further decrease the amount of OS sensitive data revealed by my browser and will further blog when I find ways for better ways to anonimize my surging.

How to make Video from your Linux Desktop with xvidcap / Capture desktop output in a video on Linux

Wednesday, April 6th, 2011

If you have wondered on how to create videos aiming at manuals on how you do certain stuff on Linux, let’s say related to programming or system administration.
Then you should definitely check out

xvidcap

Below is the package description as taken from apt-cache show xvidcap

A screen capture enabling you to capture videos off your X-Window desktop
for illustration or documentation purposes. It is intended to be a
standards-based alternative to tools like Lotus ScreenCam.

On Debian based Linux systems (e.g. Debian Ubuntu) xvidcap is available straight from the package repositories. To install and test it you can straight issue:

linux:~# apt-get install xvidcap
...

To start using xvidcap, either by starting it with alt+f2 in gnome or straight launch it from the applications menu via:

Applications -> Sound & Video -> xvidcap

Here is how the xvidcap program looks like right after you start it;
xvidcap screenshot main menu

As you see in the screenshot xvidcap’s menu interface is extraordinary simple.

As you see it only has a stop, pause, rec, back and forward buttons, a capture selector and movie editor.
Pitily xvidcap does not support music capturing, but at least for me that’s not such an issue.

If you click over the field test-0000.mpeg[0000] with your last mouse button, you will notice a drop down menu with an option for preferences of xvidcap.

Take the time to play with the preferences, since there are quite a few of them.

The most important preference that you might like to straightly adjust in my view is in the:

Preferences -> Multi-Frame tab -> File Name:

The default file that xvidcap uses to store it’s content files as you will see in the preferences is utest-%04d.mpeg

If you want to change the type of the output file format to let’s say flv change the File Name: value to utest-%04d.flv
Next time you record with xvidcap, you will have the file stored in flv format.

The red lines which you see in the above screenshot is the capture area, you will have to also tune the screen capture area before you can proceed with recording a video from your desktop.

The way to capture your Desktop in fullscreen is a bit unusual, you first need to mark up all your visible Desktop and before that you will have to select from xvidcap’s preferences from:

Preferences -> General -> Minimize to System Tray

By selecting this option each time you press the xvidcap’s record button the xvidcap’s controller interface will be minimized to tray and capturing the video of the region previously selected with the capture selector will start up.

Enrich your Gnome Desktop with Screenlets Dashboard

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

Yesterday I’ve tried plugin which provides widgetop to your Linux desktop through plugin
for Screenelts for which I’ve said a couple of words in one of my previous posts.
It’s pretty straight forward to install.

1. Download the Dashboard plugin
2. Start screenlets
3. Choose Install and then select the previously downloaded archive file
4. Go to Screenlets Manager and activate the new plugin

Be prepared that on Debian the Dashboard would seem like it’s not gonna work,a warning will pop-up alarming about a problem with Firefox. Well seems the plugin
dislikes iceweasel which basicly is the same thing in Debian.
However there is a button in which you force the plugin to work with icedove you can click.
That would force it to run with Iceweasel as far as I have seen it works with IceWeasel just as goodas in plain Firefox.
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