q. I've just downloaded the latest HVSC archive. I want to file the songs under my usual mixed audio collection that is sorted in artist-name/title format but I don't wish to disrupt the HVSC directory structure. I think creating symlinks from the C64Music/letter/lastname_firstname directories to audio/lastname, firstname might do it. However this, as you appreciate, would be a massive headache to do manually. So how could I automate it? With a script I assume, but what should I put in it? I'm a bloody stump with scripts.


a. ???

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q. Help. I've just installed/repaired Procmail. It's filtering incoming mail correctly but how can I run it on an established mailbox/maildir?


a. Try: cat * | formail -s procmail inside the maildir if you are using one. Or if you use mailbox (mbox) format use: formail -s procmail < path/mbox.


Personally I've found this takes forever (give or take a few minutes). The process possibly runs at a low priority. If there is a way to speed it up, then let me know.

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q. I don't know what to do to configure my linux setup. I'm a novice and all these rc's and dotfiles look so intimidating. Should I give up now?


a. Nah, it's a learning experience and it takes a while. No-one is born with the knowledge to use Linux no matter what some people might profess. Try Webmin which I find to be quite reliable and easy(ish) to use. It runs as a web server on your syste that you can connect to in a browser. Though it's best not to make it public or you'll have any old Tom, Dick or Harry messing about with your setup. DON'T use linuxconf as it's shite and has caused me many many stressful hours of fixing stuff it's screwed up. Ideally I recommend being patient and exploring the many how-tos that exist online and learning how things work beneath the hood. It pays dividends in the long run.

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q. I want to rename a dir of mp3s to add a 1 to the start of each filename. What's the best/easiest way to go about it?


a. Either of the following solutions should do it:


ls *.mp3 | (while read; do mv "$REPLY" "1${REPLY}"; done) (ta: petemc)


rename 's/(.*)/1$1/' * (ta: dw)

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q. How do I convert streaming real audio to mp3?


a. If possible download the .ram file by right-clicking on the audio link and selecting save-as, and open it in a text editor of some kind. Even less from the command line should do. eg: less stream.ram. Then paste the full contents (which should be an address beginning with rtsp://) to mplayer. eg: mplayer -ao pcm:file=output.wav rtsp://input.address/file . mplayer should then just play the stream silently and output the sound to a wave file called output.wav. This may take a while depending on the length of the audio stream. There may be a way to speed this up I don't know about yet.

Once it is done you should be able to run: lame output.wav to make an mp3. You can also stipulate the bitrate on the command line eg: lame -b64 output.wav if you want a lower bitrate file since real-audio streams are usually of low quality anyway encoding at 128 or higher is usually just a waste of diskspace. Ultimately you'll want an mp3 the same size or smaller than the source RealMedia file.

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q. How do I easily convert realaudio to mp3 on linux?


a. I've found the following works quite well. You need to have mplayer installed with the correct win32 codecs on your system (On my system they are kept in /usr/lib/win32/). You likely won't get these with your distro for licensing reasons but http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/ will have them. For realaudio you really only need those codecs but you might want to grab the 'all' or 'essential' package if you use mplayer regularly. Then it's a case of: mplayer -ao pcm -aofile output.wav input.ra to change the file to a wave., and then lame output.wav to encode to mp3. This should work with ra or rm. In the case of some audio streams like the BBC's listen again streams you may find you need to edit the wave file using a wave editor of some kind to remove excess chatter from the start and end of the file. The BBC automate these recordings so there is usually the end of the previous program or the start of the next on the streams.

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q. I'm trying to get Amarok to import my mp3 collection on a samba share but it keeps freezing in the middle of a scan. what should I do?


a. The only solution I've found so far is to check the amarok collection log to see it has really halted with tail -f .kde/share/apps/amarok/collection_scan.log and then unmount the share with sudo umount -l /mnt/sharemount/ and then immediately sudo mount /mnt/sharemount/


I'm fairly sure there is a better way than this but I so far haven't found it. Plus this doesn't always work. It depends how choked up the samba mount has become.

It should be noted that if you are only doing linux to linux network file-sharing that NFS is probably a better option than samba.

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q. I can't get Quake 3 to run with sound? What do I do!!!?? It says it can't open /dev/dsp. Help ME!!!!


a. One reason for this could be that something else is using your sound card. Possibly the ARTS (KDE) or ESD (gnome/Enlightenment) sound daemons. Try to quit them before running quake3, either by opening the sound control centre settings and disabling or switching off the sound server. Or you can type killall esd or killall artsd from a terminal window.

Also, unfortunately some onboard (AC97) motherboard sound hardware doesn't support all the functions Quake 3 requires and may give the /dev/dsp error. Some people have got around this by running quake3 with artsdsp -m quake3 or esdsp -m quake3 from a terminal. This unfortunately results in some noticeable sound lag in game. The real solution for this is to go to ebay and buy an old SB Live! pci card if you really want to play Quake3 in Linux. You can get them for less than a fiver.

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q. How do I pronounce "linux"?


a. As with everything else in the world of Linux there is some debate over this. Is it pronounced Lin-ux, lie-nux or lee-nux? The name is taken from that of it's original creator Linus Torvalds. The argument for Lie-nus is that Linus is pronounced Lie-nus in most English speaking countries. However in Swedish it is mainly pronounced Lee-nus. Some argue that it should be pronounced in the way its creator pronounces it. Others say that the "Lin" part of "Linux" should be pronounced however a regions dialect would pronounced the "lin" part of "Linus". Ultimately I don't think it really matters much and is mainly symbolic of the Linux communities penchant for pedantry and procrastination.


I think of all the time wasted on this argument that could be spent writing better documentation...

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