Linux Mint 19 Xfce Installed

This is something I should've done last month the moment it came out, I did not like the previous 18.3 KDE environment at all but did give it a good try.

Xfce works for me!

Re-installing all the programs  I cannot live without.

Backup FireFox Bookmarks and Favorite Extensions

Yes this seems to be an obvious option to find, but for years I have been using an extension called FEBE with FireFox which now no longer exists. So I finally used DuckGo to find the solution and here it is :-) So now when I change my hardware everything can easily be moved to the new machine. It's a shame I cannot export FireFox passwords but I guess that is a good thing, I also use Keepass2 which works just as good.

These extensions I cannot live without, especially the NoScript which is my all time favorite.

Installing Arduino IDE on Linux Mint 18.3

I have always had a problem installing this piece of software, you can download the archived file from here https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Software


Once unarchived you need to run the ./install.sh in a terminal to create the desktop icon. Up to this point everything worked fine, until I plugged the USB cable from the computer to the Arduino board.

Loading up the example blink sketch, then sending it to the UNO resulted in an error message which unfortunately I cannot display because I have resolved the problem.

The problem was the UNO was not recognized on any port, so searching DuckGo I needed to find a BASH command that tells me what is connected to the usb ports. lsusb

which was actually pointless, all it told me was the UNO device
Bus 003 Device 006: ID 1a86:7523 QinHeng Electronics HL-340 USB-Serial adapter. I have no idea what to do with that information. So I played around with the Tools/Ports option in the IDE, choosing between /dev0/ttys4 try uploading, /dev/ttys0 try uploading again, same error. These were the only 2 options, until 5mins later, I looked again lo and behold a third option appeared,
/dev/ttyUSB. This has to be it, so tried uploading sketch again and bugger me a new error appeared LoL.

this time access denied. In fact this is something I remember from previous installations so back to DuckGo and find those BASH commands that allows me access.

sudo usermod -a -G dialout <your login name>

sudo chmod a+rw /dev/ttyUSB0

Not sure about the second line (didn't use it)  but all works perfectly now, so expect some Arduino Projects coming up very soon.

Twitch Experience: I Gots Me A Webcam

After 2 weeks on Twitch it was time to hook up a Webcam. I'm not sure how I would feel about this so the obvious thing to do was to quickly get my hands on a cheap webcam. $1.00 from Trademe, even though it was only 480p, perfect for what I want to do for now and in 3 days was on my doorstep.

You would think a simple device like this would work perfectly the moment you inserted the USB plug. Well yes, kind of. I got no indication/alert telling me a new hardware device has become available. So now what. Linux Software Manager opened to find a webcam program which resulted in a program called Cheese. Installed, ran it, it didn't acknowledge the presence of the webcam. For the next hour I was singing a different version of "Oh happy days" until I decided to do a reboot. It works, hallelujah! I see me on screen and go, geez who's this ugly bugga.

So I closed down Cheese, set up my Twitching environment, added a source using the webcam option, and it did not find the webcam. Here we go, another chorus of "Oh happy days" starts. So once again, started up Cheese and yes, once again Cheese didn't acknowledge the webcam. Well the obvious conclusion was, if you wish to use the webcam that day, do not close webcam window because if you do, you have to reboot the computer!

Using Cheese was fine, but I wanted to use the webcam without this program, it has issues and every time it crashes it was reboot time, so it was BASH time:-

ls -ltr /dev/video*

Use this to find what port Linux recognises the webcam

mplayer tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:width=640:height=480:device=/dev/video0 -fps 60

This will bring up a window showing, well your face :-)
It is this window I use as the source for OBS

Yes the quality is awful, and I intend on getting a real webcam like a Logitech 920 after watching and talking to Jade from Twitch.

Kdenlive: Restoring Default Settings For Linux Mint 18

It is unbelievable how easy it is to totally screw up your Kdenlive windows as you edit/create your video content.

Window views after a new install.

This is what it should look like if you have recently installed Kdenlive. After I accidentally shut down a few windows, Kdenlive became unusable. It kept crashing so I removed the application, rebooted the computer, reinstalled Kdenlive only to find the corrupt settings had returned (which means there must be a hidden config file somewhere on my HDD). Researching Youtube I came across this:-

So this tells me there is a hidden file called kdenliverc that needs to be deleted. Where he found his config file as shown in the video, was in a completed different location to mine.

Home/.config

Instead of deleting the file I renamed it to kdenliverc000 which results in Kdenlive thinking it is a new install and proceeds to create a new kdenliverc.

This did the trick, now I can get back into editing videos..

Kdenlive is not the easiest video editors to use but it is free, and works well on Linux. Without this I would not be able to create any video content I would be prod of.

Linux Mint 18.3 Dual Monitor Problem

Should really add a third monitor, two doesn't cut it anymore.

This has bugged me for a few months now, not being able to use a second monitor that I have been accustomed to for many years is unacceptable. Recently I came across a work-around solution from the Linux Mint forums.

"dpm" support, must be selected at boot (via radeon.dpm=1) and is only supported on R6xx and newer asics.

Which then suggested the following modifications

To test this when the grub menu appears press e (for edit) then replace the nomodeset (if there) with radeon=dpm=1. Press f10 to boot this session with the change.
Of course to make the change stick you must edit, as root, /etc/default/grub and change the
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT= line to include radeon.dpm=1
eg GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="radeon.dpm=1 quiet splash"
Then run sudo update-grub.

Upon doing these changes followed by a reboot it didn't work. The funny thing was I remember a few years ago someone else had this exact same problem, who suggested after the reboot, save the session, log out, then log in.

It worked, both monitors fired up with Linux Mint logo shown on each. Going through the monitor settings each monitor was identified correctly.

Here's the problem:
It's not a permanent solution, if the computer reboots/shutsdown for any reason, you lose the dual monitor display once again, unless you log out, log in again. A minor inconvenience but knowing it's a temporary solution just doesn't sit right with me.


Now from that Forum post it referred to the Radeon website where he found the solution. This suggests to me that this particular Linux Mint distribution didn't compensate for this particular problem on its release for this grapics card. I really don't have a problem with this because with each release there is bound to be bugs/errors. Creating a Linux distribution is huge and involves a lot of time and people, it's just that waiting for the next upgrade can take months.

References:-

Post from the Linux Mint Forums

Mentioned Radeon Link

In the mean time, I'm looking at trying a different distribution called MX Linux, there has been some good reviews on YouTube about this. Check out their homepage: https://mxlinux.org/.

Partitioning Hard Drives GPT or MBR

Apple Hards Drives : JK Hard Drives & 1 Apple.

So it is time to do a clean out from all the PC gear I've accumulated over many years. I have doubts any of these are reliable and even if some do read/write I probably would still throw them out. Hence when it comes to precious data you are going to feel a lot more secure buying new, and even with new you cannot guarantee they don't fail in a short period of time.

Routinely Back Up Everything Everywhere!

So now that I have a more recent Linux Mint OS, the moment I install a new HD and wish to get it ready, I always create new partition tables.

In keeping up with using the newest technology trends, from now on all partition tables are going to be created using the GTP format.

Here is an excellent website that explains the differences between the new GTP against the traditional MBR tables, check then out - How-To-Geek .

Discord & Twitch, What Are These & Can I Use Them ?

Twitch:
So yesterday I installed Twitch, why ? well not really sure but my grandson said he streams on Twitch. And now that it's installed he won't give me his Stream name, which is probably a good thing, I'd hate to see him play because I don't want to see my angelic wonderful grandson turn into a demon right on my monitor.

In the mean time I get to learn what Twitch is, how to buy BITS (not sure what this does but I can cheer streamers with it) example - cheer10 hello. For the curious it costs $2.50NZ for 100 bits.

Thoughts:
I think I can use this platform, not to stream games but to stream me constructing various stages of electronic projects. It may be possible to complete a whole project, I've seen some streamers go well over 5 hours in 1 session. To make this work it would have to be done on a strict schedule; ie 1 stream a week.

Discord:
This one I am really excited about. Long before the WWW era, I lived my life online in the age of IRC, and this Discord claims to be similar. I was extremely pleased this works with Linux Mint and if you've ever had a IRC server with a Channel BOT, you can see how similar discord is.

This image shows the main program running on Linux Mint, briefly create your own channels, user roles etc etc. I've even added a free BOT from

https://www.dynobot.net/

I'm still fine tuning this and fast track learning how to use the setup and so far, I'm impressed. As you can see I've added the Discord widget onto my blog, which displays who's currently online on my Discord Server.

Just in case you haven't noticed, my handle on these platforms is JustABlokeNZ

Thoughts:
Really excited about this!

Mounting UFS HDD in Linux Mint

I haven't used FreeNAS in a while so I thought I would try and re-use some of the hard drives (HDD) assigned to this setup.

The problem is, the hard drive partitions are formatted using the UFS standard which Linux Mint cannot use. My computer with Linux Mint uses the EXT4 standard.

Thankfully there is a BASH work around, Linux will READ but cannot write to these drives. So here I used a HDD docking station -

Bash command:-

To find out the label of an external hard drive, open up a terminal, and use the following command

lsblk

Result (depends on what you already have connected)

NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0 149.1G  0 disk
└─sda1   8:1    0 149.1G  0 part /
sdc      8:32   0  74.5G  0 disk
└─sdc1   8:33   0  74.5G  0 part
sr0     11:0    1  1024M  0 rom

from this I can see sdc as external drive
(normally linux is installed on sda)

Now we to mount the drive using the following command

 sudo mount -t ufs -o ro,ufstype=ufs2 /dev/sdc1 /mnt/

Now I can read/copy the files to another location before reformatting the drive with ext4 (or FAT32 for windows). Note pay special attention to the error that comes up on the monitor, this tells you the actual mount name you have to use, in this case it is sdc2. Last time I tried another HDD, itcame up as sdc1, all depends on how many usb devices you have connected at the time.

Hindsight ... I really need to rebuild a new NAS setup .. pref with an i5 intel processor and 4x 4TB HDD's.

Creating Sony FDR-X3000 Timelapse in Linux

The Sony FDR-X3000 only produces a series of images in a folder, in order to create a timelapse video these images need to be processed by other means. In my case I exported them from the camera onto my Linux Mint 18 desktop.

Typical Sony FDR-X3000 settings-

• Images 4K
• Frame Interval 2secs
• Image count 600 frames

Linux Setup

• Download this BASH script 3000.sh
• Copy/Move into your root/bin folder
• Make 3000.sh executable, open terminal as ROOT type chmod +x 3000.sh

Highly likely you need to install the following

• sudo apt install mencoder
• sudo apt install imagemagick-6.q16

Running 3000.sh

• open terminal where images are stored
• type 3000.sh
• on error permission denied type sudo 3000.sh 
• just follow the prompts that come up on the screen

Dazzne P2
This was my 1st  action camera which has no stabilization therefore I no longer use this to create videos.  Even though it produces images 4032 x 3024 (4 x 3 ratio: 12.2MP) my script has an 2 options to resize by cropping some of the top and the bottom produce 720p and 1080p compatible video.

Note: you cannot set limits on this so just start it in timed images mode, then turn off maybe 45mins later.

I've actually used the script to create a timelapse from images taken by my Huawei P8 Lite, so I guess it can be used by any device that creates sequential named images.

About the script. There is probably a much more efficient way to create this as I'm not too good at writing these types of code. Feel free to view, modify, or complete rewrite it as you see fit.

GPS Overlay Onto Video Linux Mint 18

I created this post in preparation of changing my OS from KDE to XFCE, I might even go back to Linux Mint 17. The reason being I couldn't get Dual Monitors to work correctly on 18 (after a reboot you had to log out then log back in again), extremely unacceptable.

The Sony FDR-X3000 produces a GPS Log file which allows you to add GPS overlays onto your video's through its Movie Creator Video Software. Unfortunately there is no Linux port, but with a little bit of internet searching someone has recently produced a solution https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOvT8...

Youtube video describing on how to add GPS overlays on to a video https://github.com/peregin/gps-overla... 

Software needed by Peregin http://www.scala-sbt.org/ I think this is used to create the executable, not sure but is definitely needed - it did take a long time to complete (not entirely sure but well over 5mins) - installed using Linux Mint Software Manager

http://www.walkernews.net/2012/07/09/... Help on how to create .gpx from various sources - downloaded, unzipped separate folder, opened terminal in folder as root - took well over 6 hours to render (best to do this over night) - exports as 1080p

https://www.gpsbabel.org/download.html Software to convert SONY .log to .gpx - installed using Linux Mint Software Manager

https://www.endomondo.com/ Use this to generate workout details, map route etc by importing .gpx file, then you can screencapture the map This uses the same footage as the previous cycling video.

This is my favorite cycling App for Android.

This was not an easy task and there is no avoiding it, I have to do this again.