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Coding a script
by Chris Walker 07 Sep '15

07 Sep '15

Hello, Can anybody help me please with some coding of a script? I regularly download mp3 files using get_iplayer which I then play in my Humax set top box. I find the Humax will display an image for the file if the image is embedded within the mp3 file. So I wrote a script to go through a folder and add the relevant image file. Here's my script :- for FILE in *.mp3 do bname=$(basename "$FILE") extension="${bname##*.}" filenamewoext="${bname%.*}" imagefile="${filenamewoext}.png" echo adding cover image ... eyeD3 --add-image $imagefile:FRONT_COVER:Picture "$FILE" echo Stripping any version 1 tags id3v2 --delete-v1 "$FILE" # Now for a tidy up and delete the original image file # search and add image img=$(id3v2 -l "$FILE" | grep -i "APIC") if $img =""; then echo "Adding the image failed" exit 1 else rm -f $imagefile fi done The problem comes in the tidy up section. I don't want to delete the image file if adding it has failed but even though I'm getting an error "mp3image.sh: line 47: APIC: command not found", the image is still being deleted. I've tried various ways of writing this code and all have failed. Writing code is far from my strong point so would appreciate some pointers as to where I'm going wrong particularly since if I type out the img=.. command in a console, it seems to work and produces a line like this :- APIC (Attached picture): (Picture)[, 3]: image/png, 58900 bytes so adding the image did work. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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Anyone know how to change user on Raspberry Pi GUI login?
by Chris Green 06 Sep '15

06 Sep '15

As per the subject. I have a Raspberry Pi with the latest raspbian installed. I've told it to run the GUI at boot. I want to change the user that it boots into, i.e. I don't want it to boot into the default user 'pi'. How does one do this? Google searching brought up all sorts of things about changing the pi login but not what I wanted to do. -- Chris Green

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hosts.deny
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 05 Sep '15

05 Sep '15

Hi y’all! Could someone enlighten me about hosts.allow & hosts.deny please? I was reading up on linux networking, and it said I should consider the contents of these files. So networking aside, I've read up a bit and am a lot confused. As far as I can find, 1) if there's an match in hosts.allow an address is allowed to contact the machine. 2) if no match in 1), then if there's a match in hosts.deny, then the address is not allowed to contact the machine 3) if no match in 1 or 2, then the address is allowed to contact the machine. Is this right so far? If so, what's typically in hosts.deny? I ask because I've obviously edited this in the past - I have a vague recollection of doing it because I couldn't get anything working and I just stripped it all out - I know - a very very bad idea. All I've got in there is: ALL: ALL: ::1 As far as I can figure out, the first line, ALL: would do nothing. ALL: ::1 I think would block all IPV6 addresses from contacting. Is my interpretation of the above right? What's typically in the hosts.deny for a server? If it's set up to block by default, then what should I enable? Is it sufficient to use netstat to work out what's listening for a conversation and just allow these things if I think they should be allowed. If so what's the correct use of netstat to find out? If I have things running as cron jobs rather than as a daemon to check things, do I have to specifically allow these to contact the outside world, or is hosts.allow/deny just for daemons? Lastly, does this work like a firewall? As I have firewall already set up, is it a good idea to spend time on hosts.allow/deny as well? Any advice appreciated muchly! Steve

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Linux laptops
by samwise 04 Sep '15

04 Sep '15

So my main HP Pavilion laptop recently died ... it looks pretty permanent. It had a fairly good run, so I'm going to have to start looking for a replacement. Just wondered if anyone had any interesting thoughts or suggestions. I'm looking for a main PC. Sort of interested in shared tablet things like the Lenovo Yoga 3, though I'm not sure if it's a mite small. I see there has been some success getting Debian running on it. Peter. -- I ran the London Marathon 2015 in aid of the PSP Association. All sponsorship gratefully received. :) http://www.bagshot-row.org/marathonformum

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Cambridge Beer?
by Brett Parker 03 Sep '15

03 Sep '15

This probably more belongs on alug-social, but as we've not had a post on there in, like, totally forever... Anyone around the Cambridge area fancy a beer or 3 tomorrow? I recommend the Haymakers, but am happy to be convinced of the merits of other pubs... Cheers! -- Brett Parker

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2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 4th September.
by Viperfang 03 Sep '15

03 Sep '15

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

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Disc Errors
by Chris Walker 02 Sep '15

02 Sep '15

Hello, I have 3 SATA discs on my machine. One has Windows on it, another has Mageia 5 and the third is designated as Disc_Swap_Space to allow me to swap files between Windows and Mageia. It's formatted to NTFS. I prefer that to allowing Windows to write to any linux drives. But even though the swap drive functions perfectly under Windows, Mageia won't mount it. It complains 'non-zero exit status 14' and say that the file system is unclean. But I've run all the checks under Windows and that thinks it is clean. So how can I persuade Mageia to use it again? -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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update-alternatives --config java
by Paul Grenyer 02 Sep '15

02 Sep '15

Hi All I've installed Java 8 on my Linux Mint machine here: /usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.8.0_60 and I want to be able to switch between it and currently installed Java version with: sudo update-alternatives --config java However, I can't find how to add Java 8 to one of the update alternatives options. Can someone help me out, please? -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com t: pjgrenyer Have you thought what Naked Element could do for you? http://nakedelement.co.uk/ It's time to get technical: http://norfolkdevelopers.com

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Want an application for scanning and maximising WiFi signals
by Chris Green 30 Aug '15

30 Aug '15

I'm currently playing with an Alpha Networks external/outdoor USB WiFi device. It's essentially just a WiFi dongle with an aerial in a waterproof box on the end of a long USB cable. Thus you can position it in a window or up a pole outside to get a connection to a fairly distant WiFi source. I need a way to find and then maximise WiFi signals, you can't really just use Network Manager as there no easy way to monitor a signal while waving the aerial around. I have found wpa_gui which isn't very good, I can't get it to scan repeatedly at any reasonable rate. I have also tried iwScanner which is better but is no longer maintained and crashes at intervals, it would be nice if it could scan faster too. Can anyone recommend a good tool for this job, just needs to allow one to select a WiFi signal and then show its signal strength as a bar which is refreshed reasonably frequently. -- Chris Green

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Sort of OT (off Linux) but still - outdoor router that supports EAP-SIM authentication
by Chris Green 16 Aug '15

16 Aug '15

It's not really specifically Linux but it's computery. Does anyone know of an outdoor WiFi client box (i.e. something similar to the TP-Link TL-WA7210) that supports EAP-SIM authentication? EAP-SIM is authentication using data from a SIM but authenticates a WiFi connection. There are descriptions of how to do EAP-SIM authentication via wpa_supplicant in a Linux box but that requires the WiFi hardware to be in (or directly connected to) the Linux box. I'm after a way of doing it in a remote outdoor router connected by ethernet to my Linux box. I'm already investigating the alternative way of doing this with an outdoor USB WiFi adapter plugged into the Linux box. This is possibly the way to go but it's not all that straightforward getting USB WiFi adapters to work with Linux so the above external router method might be easier. -- Chris Green

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