We usually have video files in .wmv .mpg .rmvb or .mkv formats. The iPod, iPhone or iPad only accept a limited number of video file types, such as .mov and .mp4. To play these video files in .wmv .mpg or .rmvb format, we should first convert them to .mov or .mp4 files that can played
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Author: Eric Ma
Eric is a systems guy. Eric is interested in building high-performance and scalable distributed systems and related technologies. The views or opinions expressed here are solely Eric's own and do not necessarily represent those of any third parties.Additional Repositories for Fedora Linux
Posted onFedora’s repositories provide most of the software packages needed when using Linux. However, for various consideration, they do not provide some packages, such as MPlayer, ffmpeg. Fortunately, some community maintained repository provides these software. And they may also package propriety software, such as ATI fglrx dive, NVIDIA driver, into rpm packages. In this post, we
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A Tutorial on Ns-2
Posted onThis is a tutorial on ns-2 which gives a overview of ns-2 and introduces how to define a simple topology and the network flow. This tutorial is based on the slides for Lab session of COMP 4622 at HKUST in the fall semester of 2011. The slides of tutorial on ns-2 can be download from
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How to Upgrade Fedora to Newer Version with Yum
Posted onThe latest tools for upgrading Fedora is FedUp, please check How to upgrade Fedora 19 to Fedora 20 through the network. Please consider PreUpgrade for upgrading Fedora. This is the recommended method. This post makes a list of actions should be done to upgrade Fedora using yum. Please note that this is for experienced users
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How to Set Up and Configure NFS Server and Clients
Posted onNFS is widely deployed and used even after more than twenty year. NFS is easy to set up and easy to use. This introduces how to set up the NFS server and clients. We use the Fedora system as the example. The tutorial here is for RHEL/CentOS/Fedora and derived Linux OSes. Set up an NFS
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Installing ns-2 and ns-3 on Fedora Linux
Posted onns is a discrete-event network simulator targeted primarily for research and educational use. There are two version of ns, ns-2 and ns-3, which are quite different with each other in the implementation and method to use them. In this post, we introduce how to install ns-2 and ns-3 on Fedora Linux 15. Install ns-2.34 on
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Git 101 for New Git Users
Posted onThis post is a tutorial for new users to set up git and clone and use the first repository. This post introduces how to start using git for new users. This post does not introduce details of how to use git commands. Please refer to the git manual or other tutorials for how to commit,
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Vim as Thunderbird’s External Editor in Linux
Posted onVim is an excellent editor which I use every day. Thunderbird is a nice email application. However, Thunderbird’s integrated editor is not efficient enough to a Vim user. Why not use Vim as Thunderbird’s editor? In this tutorial, we will introduce how to integrate Vim with Thunderbird together in Linux. Install the “External Editor” Thunderbird
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How to disable IPv6 on Linux (Old Version Kernels)
Posted onUpdate: this only works on older Linux kernels (e.g. Fedora 12). For newer kernels, please see How to disabling IPv6 on Linux IPv6 is enabled by default on most Linux distros. However, IPv4 is still the mostly used network and IPv6 is not used in many environment. This post introduces how to disable IPv6 support on
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Setting Up Ubuntu DomU on Xen: Ubuntu 10.10 on Fedora Xen Dom0
Posted onSetting up Ubuntu 10.10 DomU on top of Fedora Xen Dom0 is introduced in this post. The process of setting up Ubuntu 10.10 DomU is the same as Setting Up Stable Xen DomU with Fedora: Unmodified Fedora 12 on top of Xenified Fedora 12 Dom0 with Xen 4.0 This post only show the difference which
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Installing the Flash Plugin for 64-bit Firefox in Linux x86-64
Posted onThis post introduces how to install flash plugin to 64-bit firefox on a x86-64 Linux (Fedora as the example). Both 64-bit and 32-bit plugin are available. 64-bit flash plugin for Firefox on Linux First, download Flash Player Release for 64-bit Linux from Adobe Labs. Then, unpack the package: $ tar xf flashplayer.tar.gz Check whether all
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Installing and Configuring 32-bit Firefox on 64-bit Linux (Fedora)
Posted onOn a x86-64 64 bit Linux system, sometimes we may want to use the 32 bit Firefox, although the support to 64 bit Firefox is getting much better. Just for needed ones, this post introduces how to install 32 bit Firefox on 64 bit Linux (Fedora as the example). Install 32-bit firefox First, install firfox.i686
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How to Take Screenshots in MPlayer
Posted onTaking screenshots in mplayer is simple. mplayer can also take continuous snapshots. Enable screenshot filter When we want to take screenshots when playing video, first we need to set the “-vf screenshot” option: $ mplayer -vf screenshot video.file If we want to enable the screenshot filter by default, we may put the option by adding
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Open Source and Portable SSH, SCP, SFTP and VNC Clients for Windows to Remote Control Linux
Posted onssh, scp, sftp and vnc are frequently used tools (both servers and clients) on Linux. We may want to remote control a Linux box from Windows such as when we make demostration in a meeting while our work are done on the Linux box. There are lots open source SSH, SCP, SFTP and VNC clients for
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How to Get System Uptime on Linux and Windows OSes
Posted onHow to find out Linux and Windows uptime is introduced in this post. Linux uptime Linux uptime can be easily found out by the uptime command: $ uptime 22:19:29 up 10 days, 22:26, 5 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00 The system is up for 10 days, 22 hours and 26 minutes. uptime gives a
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How to Revert Changes in Git
Posted onWe make mistakes when developing before or after committing in git. We may revert changes and fix our mistake by using git. Revert entire working tree before committing We can return the entire working tree to the last committed state if we mess up the working tree: $ git reset –hard HEAD Revert changes to
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Improving Font Rendering for Fedora Using Bytecode Interpreter
Posted onFedora’s font rendering isn’t very nice. At least on my laptop with Fedora 12. Bytecode Interpreter (BCI for short) is disabled by default because of patent issues. As the TrueType bytecode patents have expired. We may enable BCI in Fedora now. TrueType announced that BCI is enabled by default from 2.4. Fedora 12’s TrueType version
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Simple Introduction to paravirt_ops for Xen
Posted onThe is a simple introduction to paravirt_ops in Linux kernel for Xen, VMware, etc. We make this introduction from the view of code. We use the function raw_local_irq_disable() and raw_local_irq_enable() functions in Linux kernel to introduce paravirt_ops for Xen and Xenified kernel. Please download the introduction to paravirt_ops pdf file: introduction-to-pv-ops-v3.pdf
pkill and pgrep: Process Management Commands
Posted onThis is a introduction to *nix’s process management tools: pkill and pgrep. As this site’s domain name was pkill.info, a introduction to pkill should exist here. NAME pgrep, pkill – look up or signal processes based on name and other attributes SYNOPSIS pgrep [-flvx] [-d delimiter] [-n|-o] [-P ppid,…] [-g pgrp,…] [-s sid,…] [-u euid,…]
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Setting Up VPN-like Network Between Several Clusters Using iptables
Posted onIt is common to connect servers with only internal IPs from several clusters. VPN is a common technique for this. With iptables, we can implement many functions of VPN with possibly higher performance. The slides here give a brief introduction to how to set up a VPN-like network between 2 clusters which connect to each
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