Enabling mod_rewrite in Apache under Ubuntu Server

Here's some quick instructions on enabling mod_rewrite in Apache under Ubuntu 10.04 Server.

1. sudo a2enmod rewrite
2. sudo vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/default
3. Change "AllowOverride" from "None" to "all" for the /var/www directory.
4. sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

That's it!

Installing Peerguardian Linux on Ubuntu 10.10

Here are some quick notes on how to install pgl under Ubuntu 10.10.

Checking video codec information via the command-line

Here are a couple of commands to get he information about a video file in Linux (bitrate etc): -

 ffmpeg -i foo.avi 

 mplayer -vo null -ao null -identify -frames 0 foo.avi 

VirtualBox piix4_smbus Error

VirtualBox 3.2.10 gives me the following error message when booting Ubuntu 10.10:-

piix4_smbus 0000.00.07.0: SMBus base address uninitialized - upgrade bios or use force_addr=0xaddr

This error is caused by VM having no smbus but Ubuntu always trying to load the module. It doesn't affect anything but is a bit annoying - to fix...

Installing Torrentflux on the Viglen MPC-L

This is a quick guide to installing Torrentflux on my Viglen MPC-L.

Windows 7 and Samba Shares

This is a quick guide to setting up Samba file sharing on my Viglen MPC-L server which is running Ubuntu 8.04.3 LTS. The client is a Windows 7 machine – no changes to the registry or local security policy were needed. The following applies to the version of samba from the repositories -   smbd version 3.0.28a.

XBMC With VDPAU and iPlayer

There's an interesting article on the How to do something differently... blog about getting VDPAU working with iPlayer under Linux with the SVN build of XBMC. I'll be sure to look into it some more when I install Ubuntu onto my Revo.

List of Media Centre Software for Windows and Linux

Here is a list of free Media Centre Software for Linux and Windows.

Ubuntu Wallpapers

To install some nice wallpapers on Ubuntu, run the following command: -

sudo apt-get install peace-wallpapers tropic-wallpapers ubuntustudio-wallpapers blubuntu-wallpapers

Useful Plugins for Gimp

Gimp is the image editing tool for Linux. To install additional plugins such as drop shadow etc, the easiest way is to install gimp-plugin-registry.

This can be done using the Ubuntu packages: -

sudo apt-get install gimp-plugin-registry

Starting a VM from the Command Line

Starting a VM from the Command Line (or via a shortcut on the desktop) is easy - just use the command: -

VBoxManage startvm name_of_virtual_machine

for example : -

VBoxManage startvm "Windows XP"

USB in VirtualBox

Here are the steps required to get USB working on a Linux host (tested with VirtualBox 2.1.4)

Combining PDF Files

Combining PDF files in Linux is ridiculously easy - its just a matter of installing the PDF Toolkit package (pdftk) and then running the following command: -

pdftk file1.pdf file2.pdf file3.pdf cat output newfile.pdf

Mounting QNAP from Linux

Accessing the QNAP from Ubuntu is fairly easy.

Firefox Backspace Button

For some reason, by default in Ubuntu, pressing the "backspace" key in Firefox doesn't go back. Fortunately this is easy to fix: -

Open your firefox browser and type the following code into the address bar:

about:config

After that in the filter type:

browser.backspace_action

and change it's value to "0".

Fonts in Ubuntu 8.10

By default in Ubuntu 8.10 the fonts aren't great. To fix this, first install the Microsoft Truetype fonts: -

Ubuntu 8.10 Under VirtualBox

Ubuntu 8.10 works great under Sun's Virtual Box. To get everything working perfectly, you need to install "Guest Additions". This is done by selecting "Install Guest Additions" from the VirtualBox Menu, and then entering the following into a terminal: -

rsync on the QNAP TS-101

rsync is a useful application which synchronizes files and folders between devices. The QNAP TS-101 supports this (with a bit of fiddling).

Linux Media Centres

I'm toying with the idea of creating a Media Centre PC running Linux. Here are the main contendors for Linux Media Centres that I can find.

• Boxee
• MythTV
• Freevo
• Elisa
• Geexbox
• Linuxmce

Linksys WRT54GL Super Router

I've recently bought a Linksys WRT54GL Router. This is a great little unit that allows you to upload custom firmware.

After playing around with DD-WRT, OpenWRT, and Tomato, I finally settled on Tomato. The features are too many to list here so here's a link to the Wiki.

There's also a great article on Lifehacker here.