Making DVDs

My son's class at school raised and released some salmon this spring, and he had a project to produce a video about it. I offered to edit the raw video together. That spun into a project where I ended up putting together four short videos. Then I put them all on one DVD with a menu. Of course, it wasn't easy. It turned into another episode of all my spare time for two weeks being spent trying to do something useful with a computer.

First I had to find the right tools for Ubuntu (10.04 in my case). It turns out that Kino, the video editor I had used before, is no longer under active development. It looks like everyone is using OpenShot now. It's in the Ubuntu repository, but I found there were sufficient new features with the more recent version that I followed the instructions to get it from their PPA repository.

I found OpenShot to be quite intuitive. There's also pretty good documentation. I think I observed a few random crashes, so it's worthwhile to remember to save your work frequently. There is an autosave feature as well, but you have to find it and turn it on. It isn't on by default.

OpenShot will take your completed video project and turn it into a DVD image ready to burn. That's very slick. My earlier attempts at producing DVDs led to a lot of command line fiddling, and I found it very easy to burn DVDs that didn't actually work. OpenShot made it easy.

The next part of my challenge was to put four videos on the DVD and stick a menu on the front. I found documentation here and here and elsewhere on how to do it (the colour scheme is a killer). However, it turns out that making DVD menus is very picky and error prone, at least for me. I never got anything working consistently.

Finally I found DVD Styler. Again, it's in the Ubuntu repository so it's easy to install. It has a GUI and lets you set up a menu, including automatically doing the typical "Play all or episode selection" scenario if you have multiple videos.

There were a couple of tricks I discovered along the way:

• Some of the original videos were shot in HD. OpenShot can't deal with HD. I had to use ffmpeg to convert the format to ordinary MPEG-2 video ("ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -target ntsc-dvd -y output.mpg" if you're making a DVD for North America)
• OpenShot by default makes a DVD. You don't want that when you're planning to use DVD Styler to make a menu. I had to go back and re-export my videos from OpenShot as "mpeg2" videos
• DVD Styler sets up the DVD menu buttons to use "auto" navigation. That didn't work on my cheap DVD player. I had to go into the properties window for each menu button, and under "focus", change the target of each button to the explicit value I needed (this description will make sense when you look at the properties window for the buttons)

DVD Styler lets you simply preview the menu, create an ISO file, or go straight to burning the DVD. I created the ISO so I could test it with video players (I used VLC and mplayer). Using the players didn't expose the menu button problem I mention in the second bullet above, but otherwise was a worthwhile step.

I didn't try to do anything but the default menu background in DVD Styler. If you've done it, please comment here with your experience.

Unfortunately, I can't post the final product. Since it was done at school, they're very careful not to release anything publicly when they don't have all the parents' permission. Makes sense, of course.

Rhythmbox Wouldn't Rip to .m4a

I had a problem yesterday where Rhythmbox wouldn't rip a CD to .m4a format. I went to the Preferences window to set the format, and it wouldn't appear in the drop-down. Curiously, if I clicked the Add button it would show the existing formats, and .m4a was in that list.

After much flailing, I discovered that you need to have both gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad and gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse installed. I had removed the multiverse one a few weeks ago when I thought I was cleaning up after a previous round of flailing to get something around music working.

Debugging Windows Shares and Samba

I wrote here about a problem I had connecting to a Windows share that was using DFS from my Ubuntu 10.04 laptop. Turns out I was wrong about the issue being related to authentication.

The issue was that my server was sending back a string without the Windows file separator at the end (backslash "\"). I simply patched the code at the relevant place to check if the file separator was missing and put one in if needed. Not the most elegant patch, but probably less likely to impact any other code.

I'm being careful not to call this a bug in Samba. The file server was an EMC NAS implementation. Fairly common, but not a standard Windows server sharing files. Perhaps the EMC is out of spec on this point, or perhaps the spec is ambiguous on trailing file separators. Given the number of devices out there, I think it's reasonable to make the Samba client code handle the case, regardless of what the spec says.

I fed the patch to Ubuntu, because that's where I originally logged the issue. Building Samba was remarkably hassle free, as was getting the source from their git repository, thanks to good documentation for both. My thanks to the Samba team for a great product.

Connecting to DFS Shares with Ubuntu

See an important update here. The information that follows is still relevant to mount.cifs.

With my current client, when I'm working at home, I have to connect to a CIFS share that uses Microsoft's DFS through their Cisco AnyConnect VPN. It seemed like the mount would work, but I couldn't see any of the files or folders below the share. (This is with Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx.)

Fortunately, some other consultants working on the same project had the same problem, and they found a work-around. The work-around was to connect to the underlying server and folder, rather than through the DFS root.

As my position with this client has evolved, I've needed to get to other folders on their file server, and I've occasionally had problems because I didn't know the underlying server and folder I needed to get to. So I continued to work on the problem. I think I've found the solution.

I already had the keyutils package installed. You'll need it:

sudo apt-get install keyutils

Then I added the following two lines to /etc/request-key.conf:

create cifs.spnego * * /usr/sbin/cifs.upcall %k %d
create      dns_resolver * * /usr/sbin/cifs.upcall %k

Now I can connect to the DFS root if I use a mount command in a Terminal window.


sudo mount -t cifs --verbose -o user=my_domain/my_user_id //my_server/my_share /mnt

It still doesn't work if I try to connect to the share with Nautilus. 

(A quick check of a VM of 11.04 alpha 2 that I had lying around shows the above two lines are already in /etc/request-key.conf.)

I haven't been using the fix for a long time, yet, so I don't know if it's the complete solution. I've noticed so far that sometimes Nautilus times out and doesn't get the file and folder list from the share. When I refresh the view in Nautilus it works fine.

One of the key hints to find the solution was this text in my dmesg log:

CIFS VFS: cifs_compose_mount_options: Failed to resolve server part of...

Note that it turned out to have nothing to do with the VPN. Also, it leaves open the mystery as to why the other consultants, who were using Windows Vista, I think, also had to use the same work-around.

Managing Music on an SD Card for Nintendo DS

I wanted to manage music on an SD card, as that's the way a Nintendo DS gets its music. I wanted my son to have his music on his DS so he didn't have to keep track of and charge an MP3 player and a DS.

First, Rhythmbox on Ubuntu 10.04 wouldn't recognize the SD card. Fortunately, I'd stumbled across the solution to that a few weeks ago: put a file called ".is_audio_player" in the root of the SD card.

However, it still wouldn't copy m4a files over. The DS only plays m4a files, not mp3. I discovered that you can actually put content in the .is_audio_player file to control the behaviour of Rhythmbox. It was still hard to figure out what to put in, but finally I looked up what Rhythmbox uses to manage an iPod, and put this in the .is_audio_player file:

folder_depth=99
output_formats=audio/mpeg,audio/aac,audio/x-wav,audio/x-aiff

Worked a charm after that.

P.S. My son's doing some serious scratch with the Police on his DS right now.

Configuring Bacula Tray Monitor on Ubuntu

I use Bacula to back up my servers and desktop/laptop computers. It's always bugged me that I didn't have a little icon on my Ubuntu desktop showing the status of the backup: whether it was running or not and some indication of progress. Most backup systems have this. In Bacula it's called the tray monitor. The configuration file documentation seemed straightforward, but it took a lot of fiddling to get it right.

I think I have a fairly typical situation:

• A backup server with a direct attached backup storage device (in my case, two: a USB-connected 1 TB hard drive, and a DAT-72 tape drive)
• Several clients being backed up on a regular schedule
• One client is the laptop I use as my normal workstation. This is the one I want to put the tray monitor on
• I'm already successfully backing up this configuration, so all my passwords in my Bacula configuration files are correct, and all my firewalls are configured to allow the backup to work
• The laptop and the backup server are both running Ubuntu 10.04

Here's what I did to get the tray monitor to work (read my notes below before you start cutting and pasting the following into your configuration):

1. I installed the tray monitor software on my laptop:

sudo apt-get install bacula-traymonitor

2. On my laptop I changed the tray monitor configuration file (/etc/bacula/tray-monitor.conf) to look like this:

Monitor {
  Name = backup02-mon
  Password = "Monitor-Password"
  RefreshInterval = 5 seconds
}

Client {
  Name = pacal-mon
  Address = pacal.pender.jadesystems.ca
  FDPort = 9102
  Password = "Monitor-Password"
}

3. Still on the laptop, I added the following to the file daemon, aka backup client, configuration file (/etc/bacula/bacula-fd.conf):

# Restricted Director, used by tray-monitor to get the
#   status of the file daemon

Director {
  Name = backup02-mon
  Password = "Monitor-Password"
  Monitor = yes
}

4. I restarted the file daemon on the laptop (don't forget this or you'll confuse yourself horribly):

sudo service bacula-fd restart

5. On the backup server, I added the following to the director configuration file (/etc/bacula/bacula-dir.conf):

# Restricted console used by tray-monitor to get the status of the director
Console {
  Name = backup02-mon
  Password = "Monitor-Password"
  CommandACL = status, .status
}

6. Finally, I reloaded the configuration file on the backup server:

sudo bconsole 
reload 
exit 

Now all I had to do is start the tray monitor. The command line is:

bacula-tray-monitor -c /etc/bacula/tray-monitor.conf

Then I made a menu item for it. I put it in Applications-> System Tools.

1. Select System-> Preferences-> Main Menu
2. Select "System Tools" on the left side of the window
3. Click on the "New Item" button on the right side of the window
4. Fill in the "Name:" box with "Bacula Tray Monitor" and the "Command:" box with the command line above
5. Click "OK"
6. Click "Close" in the "Main Menu" window

Notes:

• I used a separate password specifically for the monitor. The tray monitor's configuration file has to be readable by an ordinary user without special privileges. So anyone can see the password. Don't use the same password for the monitor as you use for the director or the file daemons, or you'll be making it easy for anyone who gets access to your computer to read all the files on your network.
• You have to change to above bits of configuration file to match your particular configuration. Change: "laptop.example.com" to the fully qualified domain name of the computer on which you're installing the tray monitor. Change "Monitor-Password" to something else more secure that everyone who reads this blog doesn't know about. 
• "backup02-mon" and "laptop-mon" are both names you can change to be anything you want them to be. In my case, "backup02-mon" means the monitor on the backup server (hostname: backup02), and "laptop-mon" means the monitor on the laptop (hostname: laptop)

Google Chrome, Ubuntu, and Cisco AnyConnect

I need to use Cisco's AnyConnect VPN client. It's worked quite well with FireFox on Ubuntu, although I had to forgo the upgrade to 9.10 because the VPN client wouldn't work with the kernels that came with 9.10. (That wasn't the only reason I didn't go to 9.10, so I wasn't really bothered by it.)

I've been using Google Chrome for the last few weeks instead of FireFox. It is noticeably faster on my Lenovo x300. Going back to FireFox seems excruciatingly slow. I decided to try Chrome with the Cisco VPN client. It's not officially supported, but both FireFox and Chrome are supposed to support standards, so what could be the problem?

It worked on my Lenovo with Ubuntu 10.04, but when I tried it on my netbook with Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.04, it didn't work. It would get to the point where the client is supposed to actually start, and then nothing would happen.

I finally noticed that on the Lenovo, I had the IcedTea plugin installed, whereas on the netbook I was trying to do exactly what was supported by Cisco (Sun Java and some fiddling to get the plugin working). So I installed IcedTea on the netbook, and it worked just fine.

To install IcedTea, start System-> Adminstration-> Synaptic Package Manager, enter your password, then put "icedtea" in the "Search" field. Right click on "icedtea6-plugin", select "Mark for installation" and then click on the "Apply" button. Or, if you like the Terminal, type "sudo apt-get install icedtea6-plugin" in a terminal.

(Update for Ubuntu 11.04: the package to install is called "icedtea-plugin" now. No version number.)

It's always fun when you try to do something exactly by the book and it doesn't work, and then you do it the way you think should work, and it does.

Unfortunately, Exchange 2010 Outlook Web Access doesn't support Chrome, so I'm forced to use the crippled "Lite" interface. So I'll probably end up using FireFox anyway.