- Roundtable - muug.ca

Re: [RndTbl] burning MP3 blues
by gedetil＠cs.umanitoba.ca 14 May '04

14 May '04

According to Mel Seder: > I tried burning an audio CD using (Fedora CORE 1) Nautilus. By "audio CD", do you mean you want to create an actual audio CD, technically referred to as CDDA (Compact Disc Digital Audio) format? In that case, the mp3's typically have to be decoded into raw or wav format. > I put it a blank CD and a burn/// window popped up. > I copied mp3's to it and did a burn. > It plays in my PC when i open the CD and click on a song's icon (xmms gets > fired up) but the CD player app doesn't play it. What you've likely created that way is an ISO-format CD-ROM, with a bunch of MP3 files in the root directory of the CD. That should play fine in CD players and DVD players that can handle MP3 format, but those tend to be a bit more rare. > As a matter of interest the > following appears on the CD Player Screen. I didn't burn anything that > resembled the following. > ================================ > "Disney's Magic Kingdom" > "SpectroMagic Light Parade" > "1-Spectromagic" > ================================ I'm assuming it did a CDDB lookup, based on the hashed disc ID, and it just happened to match some random title in their database, even though there's no actual match between the two discs. That often happens with data CD's, if an audio player happens to try a CDDB lookup. > It appears as one file/song to my stereo's CD player and no sound is produced. Yes, the ISO file system will be recorded as one "track" on the CD-ROM, so CD players would see one track. But the track is marked as having a mode other than audio, so they won't play. (That's how you can get audio CD's that also have a CD-ROM component that you can read on your computer, such as the "Enhanced CD" format that is used for a lot of pop releases.) > I've burned (burnt?) MP3's before when I was a couple years younger and I don't > know what is going wrong. > > Can anyone give me a command line for burning mp3's in /tmp/burn/ to a CDR > using cdrecord with parameters? As I've said above, it sounds like what you've produced should work fine on players that can handle MP3 discs. But if you want standard CDDA format, you'll need to decode the MP3 files (mplayer or mpg123 can do this for you), then you need to record those audio files, preferably in DAO (disc at once) mode, to a CD-R (cdrecord or cdrdao can do that). You should be able to find a tutorial online to help you do this, just by doing a Google search with enough of the techie buzzwords I've given you here. :) -- Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: <gedetil(a)cs.umanitoba.ca> Dept. of Computer Science Web: http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~gedetil/ University of Manitoba Phone: (204)474-8161 Winnipeg, MB, CANADA R3T 2N2 Fax: (204)474-7609

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Re: [RndTbl] Can I delete all files/directories undere /tmp
by gedetil＠cs.umanitoba.ca 14 May '04

14 May '04

According to Mel Seder: > I want to flash everything from /tmp and put mp3's there to burn to a CD. > > Can that cause any problems? That all depends on what's currently in /tmp, and what's still in use. For example, a lot of sockets used by X11 and the various graphics libraries get set up in /tmp, and removing them while running X might break things. Feel free to get rid of any large regular files in /tmp, as they're likely not needed after their initial use, and don't sweat the small stuff. Put your mp3's into a subdirectory of /tmp, though, so they're not lost in the mess. -- Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: <gedetil(a)cs.umanitoba.ca> Dept. of Computer Science Web: http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~gedetil/ University of Manitoba Phone: (204)474-8161 Winnipeg, MB, CANADA R3T 2N2 Fax: (204)474-7609

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Re: [RndTbl] k3b addition to yum.comf
by gedetil＠cs.umanitoba.ca 14 May '04

14 May '04

According to Mel Seder: > The k3b site said I should add the following to /etc/yum.conf which I did. > > [xcyb-stable] > name=Fedora Core 1 ( xcyborg / stable ) > baseurl=http://rpms.xcyb.org/fedora/1/stable/ > > [xcyb-bleeding] > name=Fedora Core 1 ( xcyborg / bleeding ) > baseurl=http://rpms.xcyb.org/fedora/1/bleeding/ > > My question concerns the [xcyb-bleeding] section. Does bleeding mean the same > as beta or not yet ready for prime time? If so, I'd rather just have the > [xcyb-stable] section in yum.conf. I'm assuming the "bleeding" in this case refers to the humourous euphemism "bleeding edge", which would certainly suggest that its not ready for prime time. Actually, I wouldn't put either of the above xcyb repositories in the default yum.conf if you're running automatic yum updates via cron. I'd put them in an alternative configuration file, and just specify that manually when you want to get something from the xcyb repositories. For example... yum -c /etc/yum-xcyb.conf update Of course, you won't get automatic updates for any packages at those repositories, but they're not likely to be critical anyway. For some sites that provide alternative versions of packages that are part of the base distribution, it might be safer to not have the "updated" automatically. -- Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: <gedetil(a)cs.umanitoba.ca> Dept. of Computer Science Web: http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~gedetil/ University of Manitoba Phone: (204)474-8161 Winnipeg, MB, CANADA R3T 2N2 Fax: (204)474-7609

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k3b addition to yum.comf
by Mel Seder 14 May '04

14 May '04

The k3b site said I should add the following to /etc/yum.conf which I did. [xcyb-stable] name=Fedora Core 1 ( xcyborg / stable ) baseurl=http://rpms.xcyb.org/fedora/1/stable/ [xcyb-bleeding] name=Fedora Core 1 ( xcyborg / bleeding ) baseurl=http://rpms.xcyb.org/fedora/1/bleeding/ My question concerns the [xcyb-bleeding] section. Does bleeding mean the same as beta or not yet ready for prime time? If so, I'd rather just have the [xcyb-stable] section in yum.conf. ===== The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

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burning MP3 blues
by Mel Seder 14 May '04

14 May '04

I tried burning an audio CD using (Fedora CORE 1) Nautilus. I put it a blank CD and a burn/// window popped up. I copied mp3's to it and did a burn. It plays in my PC when i open the CD and click on a song's icon (xmms gets fired up) but the CD player app doesn't play it. As a matter of interest the following appears on the CD Player Screen. I didn't burn anything that resembled the following. ================================ "Disney's Magic Kingdom" "SpectroMagic Light Parade" "1-Spectromagic" ================================ It appears as one file/song to my stereo's CD player and no sound is produced. I've burned (burnt?) MP3's before when I was a couple years younger and I don't know what is going wrong. Can anyone give me a command line for burning mp3's in /tmp/burn/ to a CDR using cdrecord with parameters? ===== The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

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Can I delete all files/directories undere /tmp
by Mel Seder 14 May '04

14 May '04

I want to flash everything from /tmp and put mp3's there to burn to a CD. Can that cause any problems? ===== The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

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Fedora Core 2 coming.... (fwd)
by gedetil＠cs.umanitoba.ca 13 May '04

13 May '04

This is the official word from Red Hat to the Fedora mirror sites: > I am in the process of staging FC2 (i386 and x86_64 coming). I should > have the reference servers synced up sometime this evening (more > likely tomorrow morning). This is just a heads up. The directories > will remain closed until I get all the bits in place, at which point > I'll send out another email letting you know that it's available for > mirrors. We intend to release on Tuesday May 18th at 10am EDT. That corresponds to May 18th at 9am CDT, i.e. Winnipeg local time. I just checked the release schedule at the Fedora web site, and they have indeed updated the official release date from the 17th to the 18th. Of course, whether or not the MUUG server is ready for release at the appointed time will depend on how quickly I can get the files transferred over the weekend and Monday, once they do make them available to us. So, now you know as much about it as I do... Well, almost as much! :) -- Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: <gedetil(a)cs.umanitoba.ca> Dept. of Computer Science Web: http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~gedetil/ University of Manitoba Phone: (204)474-8161 Winnipeg, MB, CANADA R3T 2N2 Fax: (204)474-7609

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Kernel 2.6 Swappiness
by Jeff Green 13 May '04

13 May '04

Just a little heads up about something that kernel 2.6 users may not have noticed. When I installed the 2.6.5 kernel I was poking around '/proc' and noticed a file in '/proc/vm' called 'swappiness' (which had a value of 60). I had some idea about what it was for but there was no mention of it in the kernel docs. Later that day I was looking at http://kerneltrap.org and noticied this article: http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/3000?PHPSESSID=d5c5223a98199bf350e69d77c36c… It says 'swappiness' can be set between 0 and 100 (0 = no swapping, 100 = lotsa swapping) and mentions some recent discussions on the kernel mailing list about what 'swappiness' setting is ideal (i.e., don't swap anything to disk or swap everything to disk or some middle ground). The kernel maintainer, Andrew Morton, sets it 100 to free up as much memory as possible, while others think that desktop users don't want a delay when switching back to their apps so 'swappiness' should be closer to 0. I have it set at 25 now and it seems to work well (with 320 MB RAM) for everyday desktop use. Just for completeness, if you want to set the 'swappiness' value use: sysctl -w vm.swappiness=x [ 'x' being a value from 0-100 ] And put: vm.swappiness=x in '/etc/sysclt.conf' (or wherever 'sysctl.conf' is on you machine) to keep that value on reboot. That's all for now. Jeff Green

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Associating programs to file types
by Mel Seder 13 May '04

13 May '04

When I click on an mp3 "Music Player" fires up. I'd like xmms to run instead. I use CORE 1 and would like to use a GUI to do it. How do I do that? ===== The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

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Prohibiting selected users from booting into Windows
by Mel Seder 13 May '04

13 May '04

Our kids are coming for a few days over the May long weekend. They both are computer users and I don't want them running Windows on my PC. Currently when the computer boots you can select Windows or Linux. Is there some kind of autoexec I can put on windows that requires a password to continue. If the password isn't keyed in I want the PC to either shut down (preferably) or go to grub's boot screen. Any ideas? ===== The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

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