It should be simple to do this and it is. The hardest part was finding the correct way to do it, so for future reference:

Using the command line, you can use dpkg-reconfigure tzdata.

Follow the instructions to reconfigure the timezone. This was taken from the ubuntu wiki article

Cheers, Mark

There are a number of steps needed to get custom language files working in a nice fashion for asterisk on ubuntu.

For this example I'm going to replace the standard digits of 0 to 10 with files that I've had recorded.

Create files in the correct format:

Starting with files in the format: 0.wav, 1.wav .... 10.wav which are 44.1kHz 16 bit PCM mono wav files.

We can convert them to alaw, ulaw and gsm formats which reduces asterisk transcoding with the following script: (requires sox to be installed)

Move the files to the correct place on the server:

I'm going to use the name 'learnosity' for the language as these are the files that we've recorded. So we need to create the following directory on the asterisk machine:

If you wanted to do more audio files, you can create learnosity directories for the other audio files.

Once this is done, copy the alaw, ulaw and gsm files in but leave the original wav files out.

Tell asterisk to use these files:

The easiest way to use these language files is to set the channel language for the sections you want to use it:

Here's an example from extensions.conf:

If you dial extension 4 you get the digits 1 to 9 in the default language and if you've done everything correctly you will get your newly recorded digits the second time.

Cheers, Mark

I was recently setting up a Ubuntu server and was partitioning it after it had been installed.

There was lots of free space on the drives as the root partition was only using a small portion of the disk. After running fdisk to partition it and mkfs.ext3 on the partitions to format them I couldn't see them in /dev/disk/by-uuid.

A quick google presented the solution:

According to the man page this makes udev request the kernel device uevents, which in essence makes it read the disk info again and show it all up so you can mount it happily.

Cheers, Mark

A current project that we are working on requires us to be able to record sound via a flash plugin. Initially I thought it would be nice and easy as I've seen demos of both video and audio broadcasting - however, the one big problem is that the current flash client only allows you to record video to a netstream, you can't get any access to it in the flash player.

So you need something like Flash Media Server or Red5 to record it.

However, once you record it to the server it is an flv and the audio codec is stored as a NellyMoser encoded audio portion. This codec is not supported by many applications and after a quick google found the nelly2pcm project on google code.

This will convert a flv sound file to a raw pcm file - which you can then do useful stuff with. So here's how to do it on a Ubuntu machine.

• Ensure you have build tools: (apt-get install build-essential)
• Download nelly2pcm from google code
• Extract and Compile it,

You should now have a nelly2pcm executable file in this directory.

You can run it as follows:

This will create a raw sound file with no headers and output the line above which you'll need for the next part.

To play this file back you can use sox (apt-get install sox)

If you've got all the options correct then this will play the file back. Once you got it correct you can then use sox to create a wav file which is essentially the same except that it has a header which contains all the settings (eg bitrate etc)

From a wav you can convert to whatever you like. I'm looking forward to the Flash Player 10 release as this messing will no longer be necessary as it will support encoding with the free Speex codec.

Cheers, Mark

Update:

In the 12 hours since I wrote this post it appears that a DMCA takedown notice has been served on the nelly2pcm site and google have taken it down. I've no idea if it's related to this post or not and no details are available yet on the chillingeffects site but hopefully it will be updated shortly. As I mentioned earlier, I can't wait for flash 10 with the speex codec so we don't have to use Nellymoser, well done Adobe for including it.

I was cleaning up some source code yesterday and wanted to print it all out, however the Mac line endings (we use Mac's and Ubuntu mostly) were messing up the printout on my Ubuntu machine.

A quick google later and I found the solution, a program called 'tr', posting here for next time:

Obviously you could convert from Unix to Mac by reversing it.

Cheers, Mark

While chatting with my friendly local sysadmin the other day about monitoring multiple log files across our cluster of server he pointed me towards multitail.

With a little bit messing about I managed to get it doing exactly what I needed.

I created the following little script which connects to 4 remote servers and monitors the log files (file names and server names have been changed to protect the innocent).

Now with a single command I can monitor the log files across the entire cluster.

Happy days. Cheers, Mark

I've been looking for a while for a way to convert DVD's and other movies that I have into iPod format and have been failing miserably. That is until today, when I came across the unusually named HandBrake.

It does exactly what is says on the tin and makes it very easy to copy dvd's. Initially I used it from my Mac and it worked flawlessly.

I also tried the Linux version on Ubuntu Hardy (8.04) which has no GUI but it is pretty simple when you get the hang of it.

Here's a typical command line:

This reads from /dev/cdrom and uses the handy "iPod Low-Rez" preset which fixes it all up nicely for the iPod.

And here's one that takes the second title:

The wiki has more information on command line usage.

Happy iPodding.

Cheers, Mark

I came across a blog entry today from Mike Morearty about the flex 4 source tree.

It also mentioned the swfdump tool which looked interesting

I downloaded it and went to the bin directory to try swddump but it didn't work straight away complaining about a missing jar file.

I thought this would mean a lot of pain to get it all compiling but I was very surprised. Here were the steps to get it working on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron.

Step 1

Get the code from the repository

This will check out the code to a directory called flex4 under your current directory. I'm assuming you have Subversion installed but if you don't you'll need to run this first.

Get the tools to compile flex

That wasn't hard now was it?

Compile

Go into the correct directory and call "ant" which will use the build.xml to build it all.

Some couple of minutes later you should get the following message

Now you have a build of Flex4. Next step is to figure out how to configure Flex Builder to use the new compiler.

NOTE: This is not a finished version of Flex4 yet. Just the work in progress.

Cheers, Mark

I've just completed setting up a new ColdFusion server on Ubuntu Server (I know it's not a supported config) and ran into the following problem when I went to the admin page:

A bit of googling turned up this Technote from Adobe which mentioned the same problem on RedHat Linux.

The redhat solution is also documented on Talking Tree but it doesn't cover Ubuntu.

For Ubuntu it's very simple - you need to install 3 libraries and you are good to go - one single line.

This will install a dozen or so packages - then restart ColdFusion and you have a shiny working install.

Cheers, Mark Lynch

I came across Mozilla Prism the other day and while I'm still deciding if it's going to be a permanent addition to my machine so far so good.

Prism is a cut down version of Mozilla which is designed to run single sites from icon - what's the use of that you may ask? Well it allows you to have an icon on your desktop for Gmail or Google Calendar or docs or analytics and get to it nice and quickly.

It also free's up some much needed screen real-estate as all the other toolbars relevant for a web-developers browser can get in the way and are not used when you are using you email and calendar.

Additionally - as web developer I tend to restart firefox more often than some - and having my email seperated from that is nice.

Give it a try and see if you like it. On Ubuntu Hardy you can do the following to install it:

On other platforms (windows,mac or other linux versions) you can go to the Prism site and download it.

For the different applications check out the Bundles section or the User contributed bundles section.

Obviously this shares a lot of similarities with the adobe AIR platform albeit not as full featured. It will be interesting to see what further development plans there are for the prism platform.

Cheers, Mark