HowTo convert ogg to avi with mencoder

If I screencast something, than most of the time I do it with recordMyDesktop which produces .ogg-Videos. If you need to convert it so you can show it to your friend or upload it to a video hosting page like youtube or so you have to convert it into another format. I chose avi as format.

Simply fire up this command to convert your file:

mencoder out.ogg -o out.avi -oac mp3lame -ovc lavc

• out.ogg is the .ogg-file you want to convert
• out.avi is the .avi-file you want to create
• mp3lame is the used audio-codec (here mp3)
• lavc is the used video-codec (here libavcodec)

For more information you can look at the MPlayer manual page.

HowTo use Mozilla Thunderbird in Nautilus’ Send To… instead of Evolution (for Attachments)

If you want to send an E-Mail quickly per Mozilla Thunderbird in Nautilus like the Send To Feature you have to write a little script. (I found a .deb for replacing Evolution with Thunderbird, but it did not work. Instead it killed the whole feature. At the end you will get a menu like the one in the screenshot on the right.

1. Because I do not need Evolution in Nautilus I removed the nautilus-sento app. To do this execute the following: sudo apt-get remove nautilus-sendto.
2. Create a file in ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts named sendto.
3. Make it executable with chmod a+x sendto
4. Paste the following one-liner into the file and save it
   thunderbird -compose attachment="file://$NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_FILE_PATHS"
   Note: If you have Thunderbird 1.5 (or minor?) you must replace “thunderbird” with “mozilla-thunderbird”.
5. Restart Nautilus with killall nautilus

Now you can right click on a file and select Scripts -> sendto to send a file as an attachment in Thunderbird.

For more scripts you can goto Nautilus File Manager Scripts.

HowTo Rename a XFS-Filesystem (label it)

Yesterday I bought a new 500GB harddisk 🙂 It was formatted with NTFS but I wanted a linux-filesystem. I thought I should give XFS s shot because ext3 is working for me now.

I formatted the disk with the GParted LiveCD but you can also do it with gparted installed in Ubuntu (use apt-get install gparted to get it.) To format the the device simply choose the correct harddrive on the left top and then right click the partition and choose Format to > xfs.

I wanted to name it “media” because of its future content. So I tried the “Set Disklabel” Function but this seems to be for anything other than a Disk Label. In Windows it was rather easy to change the name of a disk per F2 but in Ubuntu *ouch*.

After some searching I found a Guide for renaming USB Drives. And you know what xfs was missing 😥 Maybe nobody has an USB Drive formatted with xfs but what about a normal harddisk?

So I continued searching and found a tool collection named xfsprogs. I apt-get it and than wrote xfs in the bash and pressed <TAB> to list the tools.

guru@guru-desktop:~$ xfs
xfs_admin    xfs_copy      xfs_growfs    xfs_logprint  xfs_quota
fs_bmap      xfs_db        xfs_info      xfs_mkfile    xfs_repair
fs_check     xfs_freeze    xfs_io        xfs_ncheck    xfs_rtcp

xfs_admin sounded nice so I read its man page. Here my full proceeding: (Note: Change sdb1 to your disk)

1. Get xfstools with sudo apt-get install xfsprogs
2. Unmount the device if it is mounted (sudo umount /dev/sdb1)
3. Label it with xfs_admin -L media /dev/sdb1
4. Mount it.
5. If you formatted it you may have no access to your drive. I solved it by changing the owner to my user instead of root. I do not know if this is the best way, but it worked for me 😉
   sudo chown guru:guru /media/media

Thats it. It would be so easy if it where in the context menu of sdb1 or so.

For other filesystems see: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RenameUSBDrive