I needed to extract/generate a public ssh key from a java keystore so that the Java application could SFTP some files using public key authentication.
The problem was that I couldn’t find any way of converting an ssl public key to an ssh public key. It seems that although ssl and ssh private keys are compatible, the public keys are not. Read the rest of this entry »
Like the fool I am, whilst messing about with user privileges in phpMyAdmin I managed to delete the root account. Suddenly I found myself with no access to any of my databases 
It took a while to figure out how to re-create the root@localhost user, so here’s how I did it. Read the rest of this entry »
I recently gave K9COPY a try, it’s supposed to be the Linux equivalent of DVDshrink for Windows. It certainly looked the part, but when I ran it with a disk I wanted to back up it ran for a short while and then crashed
Looking at the output of dmesg revealed that the disk was having trouble reading the encrypted disk:
[235.097347] sr 5:0:0:0: [sr0] Add. Sense: Read of scrambled sector without authentication Read the rest of this entry »
Today saw the release of Xen 4.1. Major changes include support for greater than 255 CPUs, a new credit scheduler and CPU pools.
However, the most significant change to those that use Xen will be the new XL toolstack which replaces XM/XEND and will ultimately replace xcp’s xapi and libvirt. Read the rest of this entry »
I was converting a TV show I’d to DVD format using ffmpeg, but the resulting file had the wrong audio channel. At first I thought it had no audio at all, but then I noticed it had a voice over occasionally explaining what was happening; “so-n-so has just entered the room…”.
It appears that ffmpeg had selected the wrong audio stream. For some reason, it had had selected the second audio stream instead of the first. The fix is simple enough, you can manually set the streams to use with the -map option. The command below works well for UK freeview. Read the rest of this entry »
The XEN developers ad community have been trying fr years to get DOM0 support into the Linux mainline kernel. On January 5th 2011 it finally happened when Linux kernel 2.6.37 was released.
Okay, so it’s only basic support at this stage, but it does represent a significant milestone in the hypervisors history. Read the rest of this entry »
This short guide takes you through the steps needed to install a custom Android 2.1 ROM onto the original T-Mobile Pulse.
The official T-Mobile Android 2.1 ROM was removed from T-Mobiles website because it had a few bugs, the worst of which meant that you’d lose the odd text message. However the latest ‘custom’ ROMS appear to have fixed these problems. Read the rest of this entry »
If you’ve ever had a collection of mp3 files that you want to burn to CD for playback in the car or archiving etc, you’ll likely know how annoying it can be when the collection of mp3 files is just a bit too big to fit on a CD. You end up having to remove a couple of tracks… While this is probably OK for music (there’s always a couple of tracks I’d skip anyway), it’s not so good for audio books and the like.
One answer to the problem is to reduce the size of the mp3 files themselves. Be warned though that Read the rest of this entry »
Okay, so I often hear people (mainly at work) pronouncing Linux incorrectly, with an emphasis on the letter ‘I’, as you would in the word ‘light’ for example. Read the rest of this entry »
After running my MythTV frontend on an old MicroSoft XBOX for a few years as a ‘proof of concept’ I recently got the go ahead from the Missus to replace it with something a little snappier.
The old XBOX did a pretty good job all things considered. But with just 64MB of RAM it was never going to have the most responsive interface in the world, so the time has come to replace it.
After moochas googling for a suitable PC that could live happily in the living room under the telly, I decided to build a fanless mini-itx system in as small a case as I could.