GIMP 3.0 plug-in for exporting JBIG2-encoded PDF files

JBIG2 is an efficient image compression format for bi-level (bi-tonal) images, which is supported by the PDF file format and common PDF viewers, but which lacks widely available tooling for its generation. GIMP is an open-source image editing suite, which has the capacity to output… »

LMMS MIDI percussion base note table

The table below shows LMMS instrument ‘base notes’ such that setting the base note will cause A4 (the default ‘percussion’ note) to play the corresponding General MIDI percussion sound. This is of particular relevance to soundfont synthesiers set to the percussion bank.

Using apitrace with GStreamer 1.x to convert OpenGL captures to video

Background

apitrace is a set of tools to trace and replay OpenGL API calls. Using it, we can capture the output of applications like glava (an OpenGL-based audio visualiser), and later replay it or save it to a video file.

To do this, the apitrace… »

Forwarding game controllers and other input over SSH

Various systems exist for remotely controlling Linux systems, such as VNC, Synergy/Barrier and other protocols like SPICE and NX. These systems, however, tend to operate at a high level, and are consequently limited in scope. For example, none of these systems support relative mouse… »

Relative mouse and keyboard input over SSH (or: I just want to play Minecraft)

Background

VNC allows viewing and control of a host computer over a network. However, VNC's mouse support uses absolute mouse positions, and is ineffective when the host computer's mouse cursor is programmatically repositioned. This poses a challenge for use cases such as 3D video gaming,… »

Guide: cURL in an initramfs environment (with HTTPS and DNS)

I recently found myself wishing to be able to remotely unlock my LUKS partitions on (re)boot. The Arch Linux wiki has some information on this, but this was not sufficient for my case, as my network assigns dynamic IP addresses, which I normally push to… »

GIF scrolling text marquee with ImageMagick (or: DIY X'trapolis PIDs)

#!/bin/bash

IMWIDTH=336
IMHEIGHT=24
STEP=2 #pixels per frame
FRAMERATE=50 #frames per second

OUTPUT="scroll.gif"
FONT_PATH=/usr/share/fonts/TTF/LiberationSans-Bold.ttf

MESSAGE="Hello World!"

BACKGROUND="#000000"
FILL="#ff9c10"

# Make a "unique" prefix for this run
PREFIX=

Hacking a cheap fitness tracker – Setting the time

The cast

The Mambo HR is a no-name $30 fitness tracker from Chinese manufacturer Lifesense, and I recently acquired one as a gift. Let's look this horse in the mouth, shall we?

Oof, it's not pretty. The Mambo HR has no buttons or touch functionality,… »

GUIDE: A DIY dynamic DNS server for Linux with BIND

With last month seeing a 100% increase in the number of computers I own, I found it useful to be able to determine the IP address of my various devices, with a lightweight Linux-compatible solution. My initial solution was to use Syncthing and interface with… »

Fix: Allow Kodi to power down and reboot Raspbian

The default settings for Raspbian seem to prevent Kodi from accessing the power-related functions it requires to shut down or reboot the system, causing its power menu to display only the ‘Exit’ option. This is particularly frustrating, as the default setup of Kodi is generally… »

Guide: Launching EmulationStation/RetroPie from within Kodi on Raspbian (The XBone, part 2)

So you've got your Raspberry Pi to display a glorious ‘XBone’ splash screen, but what kind of bone would it be if it couldn't play games? Kodi looks kind of like a console UI, and with RetroPie, we can launch games, but how… »

Guide: A custom splash screen on the Raspberry Pi, for Raspbian Jessie (The XBone, part 1)

There are many guides on the internet for creating a custom splash screen on Linux, but most for Raspbian are based on SysV init, and don't interface well with systemd, which is now used by Raspbian. Those that do support systemd make use of Plymouth… »

Decentralised open-source self-hosted encrypted cloud services

A number of years ago, after reflecting on how dependent I was on Google's cloud services, I began to migrate to open-source self-hosted solutions, primarily through ownCloud. After a recent server outage left me without service for a substantial period, however, I began the search… »

FIX: Systemd services fail with code 228/SECCOMP

Symptoms

Services like systemd-journald and systemd-logind show a failed state with error code 228/SECCOMP, and return an error message when attempted to be started using systemctl. This also caused journald logs to not be created or updated for any services.

Problem

The problem on my… »

FIX: Steam crashes when using radeon driver

Symptoms

Evil Bash Scripts: Sudo Impersonator

[runassudo@NEXUS tmp]$ cat awesomeprogram
#!/bin/bash
if [[ $EUID -ne 0 ]]; then
   echo "This script must be run as root"
else
   echo "Sorry, try again."
   echo -n "[sudo] password for $SUDO_USER: "
   read -s tmp
   echo ""
   echo "PASSWORD IS $tmp"
   # Do evil things

FIX: LoL errors on (PlayOn) Linux

Problem

Solution

127.0.0.1   localhost.localdomain   localhost

Adventures in Arch: Part 3 - What the GNOME?

A Choice

GUIDE: Easier League of Legends Installation Using PlayOnLinux

Preamble

Adventures in Arch: Part 2 - Is It Working Yet?

Let's Get Some Hybrid Graphics Up In Here!

if [ ! -f /etc/X11/xorg.conf ]; then
        sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf.fglrx /etc/X11/xorg.conf
fi
startx /usr/bin/openbox-session -- :1

Adventures in Arch: Part 1 - Goodbyee Ubuntu!

Introduction

GUIDE: Exporting Encrypted bitcoin-qt Wallets into MultiBit

Introduction

Hand-Crafting a Linux Computer Virus… in Java!

It's a computer virus… for Linux… in Java. That's right, I've broken the Internet.

Disclaimer

GUIDE: Dota 2 Dedicated Server on Linux (from Scratch)

GUIDE: Directly Executable JAR File

Java is great, but having to type java -jar program.jar gets annoying. Why can't you run it like any other program, with ./program.jar? Well, you can, and it's incredibly simple!

echo '#!/usr/bin/java -jar' | cat - Program.jar>Program
chmod +x Program

Tada! That's it! Program.jar… »

Non-linear video editing with FFmpeg

... like AviSynth, but less shit, and more Linux support.

GUIDE: Restoring Windows Vista/7 backup files under Linux

If you've recently upgraded from Windows to Linux but now need to restore the backup files you made with Windows Backup (or need to restore someone else's), you've come to the right place!

The Windows Backup Format

GUIDE: Downloading MMS/RTSP/HTTP/etc streams with VLC

We all know that if you use YouTube, you can download the video from Keepvid or something. But what if your content provider uses some crazy streaming system? For example, one website (which shall remain nameless) that I use uses MMS to serve videos.

Disclaimer

GUIDE: Kdenlive on Windows, Properly!

Introduction

GUIDE: ‘Stereo Mix’ without PulseAudio

Introduction