Autarchy of the Private Cave

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    Archive for March, 2008

    SystemRescueCD

    15th March 2008

    Earlier, I wrote about Universal boot CD , which is targeted primarily at the hardware testing/diagnosing.

    If not hardware, but “only” software is malfunctioning – try SystemRescueCD, a Linux-based recovery CD/DVD/Flash stick (it all depends on how you burn/install the downloaded file – manuals and how-to’s are available).

    As always, Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with SystemRescueCD, and gain no profit from this post. Any advice I give is provided AS IS, with no guarantees of fitness to your exact case.

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    Posted in *nix, Links, Notepad | 4 Comments »

    How to end (an official) letter

    15th March 2008

    Found useful list and discussion of the complimentary closings.

    It’s the “complimentary close” or “complimentary closing” that business writers are wondering about, those phrases that come before the signature in a letter:

    1. Very truly yours,
    2. Respectfully,
    3. Yours truly,
    4. Sincerely yours,
    5. Sincerely,
    6. Best regards,
    7. Regards,
    8. Cordially,
    9. With many thanks,
    10. Warm wishes,

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    Posted in Links, Notepad | 1 Comment »

    Instructions on installing libmp3lame-enabled ffmpeg on shared linux hosting

    12th March 2008

    Note: this post is based on the comment by Simon, who generously shared his experience.

    Step-by-step:

    • Download the compiled ffmpeg with libmp3lame support (direct download links: older version ffmpeg.with.lame and newer version ffmpeg.2007-10-28.with-libmp3lame-support).
    • Rename the downloaded executable file to “ffmpeg” (no extension), upload it to the directory on your server (in this example /home/myusername/).
    • Download libmp3lame.so.0.
    • Upload libmp3lame.so.0 to the same directory where you placed ffmpeg in.
    • Create a php file with the following code (remember to change the paths to your own, where you actually uploaded binaries in previous steps):
      1. <?php
      2. exec("export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/myusername/");
      3. echo passthru("/home/myusername/ffmpeg -formats");
      4. ?>
    • If you access that PHP file with your browser, you should be able to see a list of formats which are supported by ffmpeg, and if you find “EA libmp3lame” somewhere in the output, then it means you now can Encode Audio in libmp3lame!
    • If that doesn’t work for you: LD_LIBRARY_PATH can be a protected variable in PHP (you can check for this by searching for the “safe_mode_protected_env_vars” value in phpinfo() output). The workaround here can be to write your commands to a file from php, then chmod that file with 0755 permissions (rwx-rx-rx), and run the file through exec(). In this way, PHP is not changing the LD_LIBRARY_PATH, but telling the server to run a file, which tells the server to change it. This method worked for the original author of these instructions.

    For passing arguments to the PHP wrapper script – check out PHP’s $argv variable (more on this here). If you decided to use shell-script as a wrapper for “export LD_LIBRARY_PATH”, then using $1, $2 etc will allow you to pass parameters to the shell script, e.g. in the example below

    1. #!/bin/bash
    2. export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/myusername/
    3. /home/myusername/ffmpeg -i /home/myusername/$1 $2 /home/myusername/$3

    you could pass “input file” as first argument, “parameters” as second and “output file” as third to make such a wrapper script work.

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    Posted in *nix, PHP, Programming, Software, Web | 19 Comments »

    International Women’s Day

    8th March 2008

    Warmest greetings to ladies!

    March, 8th
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    Posted in Life, Society | No Comments »

    How to improve MySQL application performance

    6th March 2008

    Juicy presentation, even for seasoned MySQL developers.

    SlideShare | View

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    Posted in Links, Programming, Web | No Comments »