I kept getting errors when trying to use pyTivo to stream shows to my Tivo HD.
Unsupported codec (id=86020) for input stream #0.0

After researching this it seems that this is due to lack of ac3 support in ffmpeg. After examaning ffmpeg it looked like it was compiled correctly, but it still would not work. I uninstalled the rpm and compiled it manually. This made things worse, the shows did not even show up on the Tivo for tranfser. Finally I realized that a52dec and ffmpeg were installed from different repositories. The packages from the livna repository work, but packages from atrpms do not work. So in order to fix this, remove ffmpeg and transcode and all their dependancies with rpm -e. Then install ffmpeg and transcode with yum while disabling the atrpms repository.

yum --disablerepo=atrpms install ffmpeg transcode

Now if I could just increase the transfer speed.

P.S. I’m working on a python script that will download, decode and play shows from the tivo all at once, so shows play instantly.

This is just a reminder to myself to look into Hyperic

Occasionally I have the need to reboot a windows box from Linux. Here is the command I use to do this.
net -I {IP Address} -U Administrator rpc shutdown -r -f

The net command is part of the samba package and can be used for much more than rebooting, like adding or deleteing users, etc.  Read the man file for more info.

Someone was asking how to convert PDFs to JPGs and I thought to myself, surely there is a Linux utility to do this. Well ImageMagick comes with a utility called convert and the syntax is really easy.

convert test.pdf test.jpg

This will create a jpeg for each page of the pdf.  Simple right?  Plus it supports many input and output formats.

Need to access a MSSQL database from php on Linux? The remi repository has php-mssql and all the dependencies.  Look for the yum configuration link on the home page.  Very easy.

http://remi.collet.free.fr/

They also have a link to an IT asset management program called GPLI, I haven’t used it but the demo looks pretty nice.  The functionality seems to be there, but interface could use a little polishing, IMHO.

I ran across a great utility called puppet to help manage Linux servers today written in Ruby. I hope to give it a try sometime soon.

http://reductivelabs.com/trac/puppet

Because sitting in front of a computer and installing with media is so 90s, I provide these two links. There are many other places that describe the same thing.

http://www.ioncannon.net/system-administration/99/upgrade-fc5-to-fc6-with-yum/
http://www.ioncannon.net/linux/68/upgrading-from-fc6-to-fedora7-with-yum/

If you haven’t used screen yet, then you should really check it out. It’s great for running those long jobs (or bittorrent, for legit purposes of course) and coming back to it at a later time. Anyway I always wished that I could share a screen session with another user. Well I should have read the man file because it is already there.

screen -x Attach to a not detached screen. (Multi display mode).

Now if they would just allow scrolling back through the history with <shift><pgup>.

What is the deal with power supplies? This makes my second power supply that has died on my mythbox in the last year. I guess that is what I get for buying a store brand. I think I’ll go with a higher wattage on this time and see if it makes a difference.