Wagonlicious

So, I’ve got a handful of Ubuntu machines.  I also have a bigger handful of DVDs.  I’d like to conver the DVDs to easier-to-store videos which can be accessed by MythTV, XBMC, my mobile devices, and whatever else easily.  The best broadly-supported format to do that in is h264-encoded mp4 files.  And DVD::Rip does a nice job of letting me use all 20 or so CPUs I have laying around, rather than limiting me to just one workstation.

Unfortunately, DVD::Rip uses transcode, which uses ffmpeg to do the encoding.  And Ubuntu’s ffmpeg, for whatever reason, lacks h264 support.  There’s a guid to rebuilding it which has you pull down the latest source for all the utilities from CVS, and make new packages which don’t work right and are a pain to maintain.  I, on the other hand, want to just take the Ubuntu package and add one compile-time option, so it’ll still work like the vendor-provided package.  After all, all I ned to do is build the exact same thing with the “–enable-libx264″ option.  Here’s how.

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So, every time I set up a new Windows system to be backed up with BackupPC, I forget what I need to change.  Thus, a blog entry.

Windows XP:

• Right-click on a folder somewhere in order to share it.  Probably the C drive.  There’ll be something indicating that file sharing is disabled.  Click through the network wizard thingie to enable file sharing.
• Create a backup user.  I prefer to call the user backuppc.  Go to the admin tools and “user and groups” to create the user, and put the user in the Backup Operators group.  Set a password, and set the password to never expire + can’t be changed.  Use the same settings for the machine-specific config inside BackupPC.
• In Administrative Tools, go to the Local Security Policy, and under User Rights Assignments, remove Backup Operators from the “Log On Locally” set (no reason for our remote backup operator to be on the log in screen). Also under Security Options, set “Network Access: Sharing and Security Model for Local Accounts” to “Classic – local users authenticate as themselves”.  The default is to access the machine as a guest after authentication, which is crazy to me (and breaks the ability for backup users to access all files in the C$ share).
• Other minor things – validate that the firewall is set to allow file sharing services in.

Test:

smbclient -U backuppc \\\\yourwindowsmachine\\C\$

This book was written by a friend of mine, so I’m biased – but it really is a good generic computer book.  And I don’t mean “generic” in the negative connotation way; rather, I mean it teaches the skills to figure out how to use a computer, rather than teaching how to use a specific program or even a specific type of computer.  It’s geared mostly toward people who didn’t grow up with a computer, and who could use something to get them a some confidence in both navigating a computer system and experimenting to find out what works.  You know, the way “computer people” probably learned.  If you or someone you know is a computer novice, this would be a good gift to follow up the computer they finally got themselves for Christmas, or whatever. :)

http://explaintechnology.wordpress.com/2011/11/28/gift-pc-primer/

Recently, I had the “this folder cannot be synchronized because it contains one or more folders that are already synchronized” problem on an Ubuntu system (midnight) which was upgraded a few times (most recent clean install was four or five releases ago).  The folder would not allow me to check the “Synchronize this folder” box most of the time, and when it did let me check the box (right-click, Ubuntu One->synchronize this folder), it wouldn’t stick.  I also had problems with the Ubuntu One frontend displaying.  I have four other Linux machines and a Windows system (mostly just for ripping my DVDs, since that software way is easier on Windows) syncing up just fine, but this one simply would not work.

Here’s what the u1sdtool command showed:

sauer@midnight:~$ u1sdtool --list-folders
Folder list:
  id=6fada2b6-4a18-48ca-951f-34092a59e4d6 subscribed=False path=/home/sauer/Documents
  id=80629790-b80b-4200-8b7e-a405842fd2ff subscribed=False path=/home/sauer/Pictures
  id=d23fed2c-042a-4862-81f7-783e9832dc71 subscribed=False path=/home/sauer/Music

Oh.  So, it knows about the folders, but doesn’t want to sync (note the “False”).  So, I just ran u1sdtool --subscribe for each of them, as in:

u1sdtool --subscribe-folder=80629790-b80b-4200-8b7e-a405842fd2ff

and it worked fine. The box in Nautilus became checked, the pop-up dialog indicated that files were being downloaded, and stuff started appearing in the folder.

Since I haven’t seen that particular solution anywhere yet, I figured it was worth tossing up on the blog.  It’s working now, and though the GUI for Ubntu One still isn’t behaving, it’s actually sync’ing files up – which is all that really matters to me on this machine.

sauer@midnight:~$ u1sdtool -s
State: QUEUE_MANAGER
    connection: With User With Network
    description: processing the commands pool
    is_connected: True
    is_error: False
    is_online: True
    queues: WORKING

So, I’ve been considering getting some original-style Chevelle SS wheels for a ’70 Chevelle. Well, technically it’s a ’71, but I like the’70 wheels.  A few companies make 15×7, 15×8 and 15×10 wheels that look like the original 14s, so I can get actual modern tires.  This post on Chevelles.com suggests that a 15×10 with 5.5 inch backspacing can fit a 295/50R15 under the stock rear wheelwell.  That’s an 11.2″ wide tire, which should be adequate. :)  I’d like to find a Firestone Wide Oval or Goodyear Polyglass or similar reproduction tire, but it looks like just running a BFG Radial T/A will be the most likely way to get that size.

Outside the Sprint store tonight, I saw a minivan blocking traffic.  So I walked over, and the kid asked if I owned the parked car he was also blocking (why he didn’t roll into a spot instead of just rolling into everyone’s way, I’ll never know).  I said “no, I’m just here to see if you need any help.”  His van had died, so I started pushing uphill.  He got out to help, because I guess he didn’t think that steering and brakes were important to the rolling vehicle.  I had it pushed back up the hill by the time he got to the back of the van – which, again, I’m not quite following.  I needed to push it backwards first, so it’s unclear what he was going to do out back.  Maybe he thought that I was making it look too easy, and wanted to make it more of a workout for me.  Anyway, I was holding the van from rolling back down the hill, and asked him to get back in, push down the brake, and turn the wheel so he could steer it into the parking spot while I used a little momentum to push it uphill again (he had come to a stop in sort of a valley).  For some reason, his reaction to my telling him three times to “push on the brake and then turn the wheel” was to turn the key to start it.  This was yet another entry in the list of incomprehensible things he did – but strangely, the van started right up.  So, he’d been sitting there confusedly blocking traffic (well, not quick blocking – people could drive around, albeit inconveniently) for at least 10 minutes.  He was occasionally turning his reverse lights on and randomly mashing the brake, but it seemingly hadn’t occurred to him to attempt to turn the key.

Oh well.  He got the car running, I did my good deed, and the people who were annoyed at him would have probably been annoyed at something else later anyway.  So I left and went home.  I don’t know if he got his coffee or if the van started afterwards.  I do know that the Mexican cleaning lady I helped (her brakes went out on her way to work and she stopped the van by ramming into a pile of snow right in front of me) last winter – the one who spoke about four words of English – was better at following directions and explaining her problem…

So, I have Frontier DSL service. Which means I have their ADSL service; they don’t offer a useful thing like SDSL (much like most providers). But what the do offer is DNS servers which respond to any invalid query with the IP address of one of their stupid search servers. I can’t believe that there are still ISPs out there who think it’s cool to return a result for an invalid DNS query, but I guess that’s the kind of logic that leads someone to buy Verizon’s former land line services. :/

Anyway, I run DD-WRT on my router behind the Frontier DSL router, mostly because I don’t trust any of their crap to protect my network. And I like using the embedded device as my DNS server.  Out of the box, the DD-WRT device uses DNSMasq as the DNS server (and DHCP server).  Reading the DNSMasq man page, I found that there’s an option to make it return “failed” when the upstream DNS returns a stupid search page like that.  In my case, the upstream server returns both 8.15.7.110 and 63.251.179.15 for those bad queries.

So, to fix that, you just go into your “services” main tab on the DD-WRT admin page, click on the services sub tab, and scroll down to the text box which says “Additional DNSMasq options”.  In there, paste this (substituting whatever IP you want to have trigger the “not found” response):

bogus-nxdomain=8.15.7.110

on a line by itself (you can put several lines in there, if needed, though for this you just need to pick one of the IPs returned).  Click on apply, and then test a known bad domain to see if it works.  Assuming you get “not found” now, you’ve resolved the problem; lookups which should fail, do fail.  Hooray.

While you’re in there, add a line for your local domain so it will stop asking the public DNS to resolve stuff.  Assuming you use “local.com” in your internal network (which, BTW,  means you do terrible things you should not be doing), add a line (in the same box as before) that says:

local=local.com

Well, I finally tracked down the reason the ABS light was activated in the wagon.  Apparently, battery voltage is one of the tests performed by the Bosch system used in the ’95 Caprice and friends.  Thanks, awesome website!  Anyway, my leaky air shocks were running the battery down and causing the low condition, even though the cool gear-reduction starter GM used on the LT1 (which, as long as you have the bigger flexplate/flywheel, you can also use on a Gen 1 smallblock or any of the big blocks, BTW) was cranking it over just fine.  So, the Battery Tender took care of that.

But I still have a problem with the transmission, and a power steering leak.  The steering leak is easy enough; I just have to replace the lines.  I’m gonna go ahead and put in the cooler return line used in the cop cars, since it has the extra loop of line which works as a steering cooler, and only costs a few bucks more.

The transmission is weird, though.  I blew the pump up a year or so ago, and just fixed it recently.  Now it runs, but what’s happening is that the computer tells the transmission to enter second, the transmission says “hey, I’m in second” – but it stays in first.  And since the shiftpoints are controlled by the road speed (which is annoying when you change tire sizes / gears / etc), you have to continue accelerating to the speed where it would normally do the 2-3 shift – except that you’re actually still in first.  So, the engine’s screaming,but the computer thinks all is fine because you’re supposedly in second.  Once it shift to third, the 3-4 shift happens as normal.

Now, I’m trying to figure out what’s going on.  I’m a tad concerned that I’ll have to pull the transmission back out an rebuild it.  But I don’t want to take it back out.  I’m considering just changing the shiftpoints to just skip second gear.  The thing makes enough torque that, with the better rear gears, I could drive it that way – or probably sell it to someone a little less mechanical.  But that’d be mean, and I’d probably feel bad. :)  So, it’ll get fixed.  Anyone with thoughts on how to do so is welcome to contact me. ;)