The Linux Newb

Courtesy of lifehacker.com, I came across an article about the many uses of VLC.  My favorite was the ability to convert any video with a drag and drop batch script.  Here’s some of the article…

“If you regularly convert files to a specific file format—say, for your iPod—you can set up a batch file with VLC that will make video conversions as easy as dragging and dropping the to-be-converted file onto the script.

Create a new text file and save it as VLC Converter.bat. Make sure your filesystem is showing file extensions so you aren’t saving it as a text file (you don’t want to end up with something like VLC Converter.bat.txt). You need to make sure it’s saving with the BAT extension.

If you were building the script from scratch, at this point you’d open up the file you just created and paste “C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe” %1 in the first line. Now you need to get the command line options that describe how VLC should convert the file. For that, you can use the text generated by the Target textbox at the top of the Stream/Save Settings window described in steps two and three of the DVD ripping guide above, which displays the command line options you need for your batch file. Luckily a user at the iPod forums at iLounge already put together a VLC batch conversion script for iPods, so we can just use those settings, which look like this:

“C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe” %1 :sout=#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,vb=1024,scale=1,height=240,width=320,acodec=mp4a,ab=128,channels=2}:duplicate{dst=std{access=file,mux=mp4,dst=%1.mp4}}”

Here is an easy how-to on installing and running the Ultimate Boot CD on a thumb drive.

You have heard of DISA’s Gold Disk as a tool to harden a Windows machine.  Well, Bastille is a program specifically designed to harden a Linux box.  Users can choose to run the program through command line or a GUI.  Bastille is designed for use on Red Hat, Fedora, SuSE, Mandrake, Debian, Gentoo, HP-UX, or Mac OS X.  The web site offers an easy how-to for installation.  On my OpenSuSE 10.3 machine, I had to add Perl-TK and the Curses packages for the GUI to work.

Through the GUI, Bastille asks the user a set of questions, and the user’s answers determine what settings are applied to the system.  One of the best features of Bastille is the ability to revert to previous settings if unwanted settings are applied.

Bastille

Conduit is a synchronization application for GNOME. It allows you to synchronize your files, photos, emails, contacts, notes, calendar data and any other type of personal information and synchronize that data with another computer, an online service, or even another electronic device.

When you are using Nmap to scan ports, you have probably noticed that it takes FOREVER to scan UDP ports.  Well, here’s a port scanner that can scan UDP ports a little faster and it is very handy to have in your arsenal.

I saw where Ubuntu 8.04 Release Candidate was available for download, and as I was reading about what they had added to the distribution, I came across Likewise Open (something new for me). Likewise Open enables Linux, Mac, and Unix authentication on a Microsoft network using Active Directory credentials.

Likewise Open supports 110 Unix, Linux, and Mac platforms, enforces the same password policies for non-Windows users as for Windows users, and users can access any kerberized services.

Likewise Open is an open source community project sponsored by Likewise Software.

Use Google from your phone by talking, not typing…oh yea…and the best part…IT’S FREE!

I was trying to mount a USB thumb drive in Virtualbox on Opensuse 10.3 and I came across this.  I know this does not work on the Open Source Edition, which I do not use.  I use the Binary that is for all platforms, which is why this works for me.  Thanks to all that pointed out my mistake of leaving this bit of information out.

There are those times when anonymous web browsing is needed, and when this time arises, I use Tor. If you don’t know about Tor, go to their website and do some research on it and anonymous browsing. It really helps when you are behind a firewall that won’t allow some sites to be accessed.

I got Tor working using the Torbutton plugin on Firefox, Privoxy, and Tor on Opensuse 10.3. I first had to download Tor and Privoxy; you can get Tor from here and Privoxy from Yast or here.

After installation, Tor might tell you that it cannot access the torrc file from /etc/tor/, so all I did was “touch torrc” into that directory and Tor ran fine. Also, you may have to go into the /etc/privoxy/config file and add “forward-socks4a / 127.0.0.1:9050.” to it (do not forget the “.” at the end of the line).  I was having trouble with it until I did these two steps.  I then set Tor and Privoxy to start at boot by going into Yast and setting them to boot at startup.

I can now click on “Tor Disabled/Enabled” for a quick switch to and from anonymous proxy browsing.

Badge Maker is a website that allows users to create their own badges as a joke or as a temporary free service. There is a simple interface that allows user to customize pictures, titles, expiration dates, and even an official looking barcode.

If you have to create a badge for any reason, then try it out.