Category: Tech

  • Audio issues with my Intel NUC running Xubuntu 16.04, problems with pulseaudio

    I had to disable pulseaudio, using ALSA instead. I followed the guide here. In case it’s down, the gist is adding autospawn = no to /etc/pulse/client.conf (uncommenting the line and changing “yes” to “no”).

  • ffmpeg: Convert DCP to consumer-watchable format

    In order to watch a video packaged as DCP, the video generally must be converted to a format that can be read by consumer media players, such as H.265 (HEVC). This post will use Creative Commons-licensed Tears of Steel 4K DCP package as an example. ffmpeg -i tos_version_05/tos_picture.mxf -i tos_version_05/tos_sound.mxf -map 0:0 -c:v libx265 -pix_fmt…

  • Boot directly to UEFI firmware setup from Linux

    This requires root privileges, and only works if you’re using systemd: systemctl reboot –firmware-setup

  • Adding USB 3.0 Drivers to a Windows 7 Installation ISO File

    Copy install.wim and boot.wim from the sources directory in the iso to a temporary place accessible from a Windows machine, as you will need to use DISM, a built-in command-line tool in Windows. From inside Windows, create a directory called mount in the same location as the .wim files. Create a folder called USB3 in…

  • Installing Windows to external drive from Windows

    This has been tested to work with Windows 10. Insert or mount Windows installation disc/iso. Note the drive letter. For the sake of this post, I’m using D: as the iso mount point, and E: as the usb drive letter. From an administrator-level command prompt or powershell, use diskpart to prepare the external drive (replacing…

  • Raspbian Automatic Login

    Create a file at /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.service.d/autologin.conf with the contents: [Service] ExecStart= ExecStart=-/sbin/agetty –autologin bismith –noclear %I 38400 linux And then run: sudo systemctl enable getty@tty1.service

  • Patriot Memory low-level format tool.

    I had to use this to fix a Patriot Tab 32GB flash drive I had. The drive would only mount as read-only. Here’s a copy in case that site ever goes down or changes.

  • Disable Screen Blanking on Raspberry Pi (with kbd)

    sudo nano /etc/kbd/config Change BLANK_TIME and POWERDOWN_TIME to both be zero. Then, to apply changes: sudo /etc/init.d/kbd restart Note that this is different than this method, which should probably work with most other Linux systems.

  • Playing video on Raspberry Pi

    Using omxplayer: omxplayer -r -o hdmi <video file> You may need to use sudo, if you can’t get stuff to work. Or maybe try the first thing from this post. And here is some info on controlling omxplayer.

  • Truecrypt in the Linux Terminal

    Here is the code that will mount a TrueCrypt volume with the specified file system options: sudo truecrypt –mount –fs-options=”users,uid=1000,gid=1000,fmask=0113,dmask=0002″ /path/to/container /path/to/mountpoint