Ubuntu Unleashed

Ever forget what you had installed and find yourself at a fresh ubuntu install thinking to yourself... Damn now I gotta open up synaptic and search for everything I had... Well fortunately you dont need to do that. With this easy howto you can also restore all your packages that were installed by simply creating a package list and uninstalling every application installed after the list was made.

Lets get started shall we?

The following command creates a list of all the installed packages at the present time:
sudo dpkg --get-selections > /etc/package.selections
Now we created our package list and we can copy this list to a new ubuntu computer and install the same packages in the list to the new machine or, restore the packages to the time you created the package list:
sudo dpkg --set-selections < /etc/package.selections && apt-get dselect-upgrade
The above command will uninstall all packages installed after you created your restore list.

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*update* New Verson of Virtualbox Just released! Click Here!
When I last checked Virtualbox did not update their repositories for Hardy Heron, its not a problem, their is a hardy package without a repository. I have created a howto last year on howto setup VirtualBox completely and to seamlessly integrate windows xp into your ubuntu desktop here

So lets install the brand new virtualbox package for Hardy Heron...

Lets Install the essential build utilities so the vbox kernel module builds.
sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`
Install i386 VirtualBox without repository:
wget http://www.virtualbox.org/download/1.5.6/virtualbox_1.5.6-28266_Ubuntu_hardy_i386.deb ; sudo dpkg -i virtualbox_1.5.6-28266_Ubuntu_hardy_i386.deb
Install amd64 Virtualbox without repository:
wget http://www.virtualbox.org/download/1.5.6/virtualbox_1.5.6-28266_Ubuntu_hardy_amd64.deb ; sudo dpkg -i virtualbox_1.5.6-28266_Ubuntu_hardy_amd64.deb

Check Here for updated Virtualbox Packages since the repository isnt added yet

Alternate install with Gutsy repository as some people have suggested works fine, just copy/paste these exact commands into the terminal:
sudo sh -c 'echo "# VirtualBox repository for Ubuntu Gutsy
deb http://www.virtualbox.org/debian gutsy non-free" \
> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gutsy-virtualbox.list'
wget http://www.virtualbox.org/debian/innotek.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y install virtualbox

Now you Must add your self to the vboxusers group:
sudo adduser $USER vboxusers
Adding user `ionstorm' to group `vboxusers' ...
Adding user ionstorm to group vboxusers
Done.

Setup VirtualBox USB Support:
USB is disabled by default, so you'll probably want to enable it. Otherwise you'll get an error when you go into the "Settings" of your virtual machine. To correct this, you'll need to edit the mountdevsubfs.sh file:
sudo gedit /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh
You'll see a block of code that looks like this:
#
# Magic to make /proc/bus/usb work
#
#mkdir -p /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs
#domount usbfs "" /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs -obusmode=0700,devmode=0600,listmode=0644
#ln -s .usbfs/devices /dev/bus/usb/devices
#mount --rbind /dev/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb
Now uncomment the last 4 lines above to look like this:
#
# Magic to make /proc/bus/usb work
#
mkdir -p /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs
domount usbfs "" /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs -obusmode=0700,devmode=0600,listmode=0644
ln -s .usbfs/devices /dev/bus/usb/devices
mount --rbind /dev/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb

Ok now logoff, then log back in so the vbox driver see's you are logged in to the vboxusers group.

If the above doesnt work try rebooting, if that doesnt enable usb you can try this:
Grab the vboxusers group id:
grep vbox /etc/group
vboxusers:x:124:ionstorm
Edit the fstab with the group id # in bold:
sudo gedit /etc/fstab
Append this to the fstab then save/exit:
## usbfs is the USB group in fstab file:
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=124,devmode=664 0 0
Now lets edit the mountkernfs.sh file with the gid in bold:
sudo gedit /etc/init.d/mountkernfs.sh
Paste the 2 lines below above the line: "# Mount spufs, if Cell Broadband processor is detected"
## Mount the usbfs for use with Virtual Box
domount usbfs usbdevfs /proc/bus/usb -onoexec,nosuid,nodev,devgid=124,devmode=664

You may not need to reboot, try doing:
sudo /etc/init.d/mountkernfs.sh

If not, reboot, and virtualbox should detect your usb devices!

You can follow my directions here to learn how to integrate Windows XP into your desktop!

Checkout the Official VirtualBox User Manual Here

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The Metasploit Framework is a development platform for creating security tools and exploits. The framework is used by network security professionals to perform penetration tests, system administrators to verify patch installations, product vendors to perform regression testing, and security researchers world-wide. The framework is written in the Ruby programming language and includes components written in C and assembler.

The framework consists of tools, libraries, modules, and user interfaces. The basic function of the framework is a module launcher, allowing the user to configure an exploit module and launch it at a target system. If the exploit succeeds, the payload is executed on the target and the user is provided with a shell to interact with the payload.

This is a tool that I pentest my lan with and can be used to hack remote computers/networks or whatever, I will show you how to get this setup and installed in Ubuntu Hardy very easily:

First lets install the Dependencies:
sudo apt-get install build-essential ruby libruby rdoc libyaml-ruby libzlib-ruby libopenssl-ruby libdl-ruby libreadline-ruby libiconv-ruby rubygems sqlite3 libsqlite3-ruby libsqlite3-dev irb subversion

Lets grab rubygems and install it because the ubuntu package is crap.

wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/11289/rubygems-0.9.0.tgz
tar -xvzf rubygems-0.9.0.tgz
cd rubygems-0.9.0
sudo ruby setup.rb
sudo gem install -v=1.1.6 rails


Now at last we can grab metasploit:
svn co http://metasploit.com/svn/framework3/trunk/ metasploit
Lets load cd to the metasploit dir, and update it, I do this before executing every time.
cd metasploit
Update Metasploit exploits/modules/payloads/package
svn up
Lets Startup Metasploit
./msfconsole

Learn more about metasploit here

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Here is the easiest way to get dvd playback in Ubuntu Hardy Heron!

Open the Terminal and paste these commands:
sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/hardy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring apturl && sudo apt-get update
Click here to install DVD playback from your browser!
If the above does not work simply:
sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2

Now startup your favorite media player and it *should decrypt the dvd* :)

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Tired of lame GOOM! visualizations in Ubuntu and want something pretty tight? Check out projectM!

A week or 2 ago I told people at this post that I would help port over winamp visualizations over to ubuntu and I have finally accomplished that task and created a .deb package for easy installation! Please note that projectm doesnt currently work with amarok or any music player at the moment so you can simply run projectM before/after/during what your listening to and the effects will be amazing, this will work for any sounds and can even be configured to visualize music on the lan/wan!


Howto install:
wget http://ubuntu-debs.googlecode.com/files/projectm_1.1-rev-980-2_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i projectm_1.1-rev-980-2_i386.deb
*recommended but optional* *updated* Download my 475 presets and extract to preset directory
cd ~ ; wget http://ubuntu-debs.googlecode.com/files/projectm_presets.tar.gz
tar zxvf projectm_visuals.tar.gz
When you download a preset package, you will need to extract all the files to a directory where projectM can find it. We put ours in ~/projectM/presets and then we'll create a symbolic link to our preset directory so projectM can see it
cd /usr/share/projectM/presets && sudo ln -s ~/projectm/presets/ others

Howto Run:
Goto: Applications->Sound and Video->projectM-pulseaudio
Usage:
Controls (these are listed in the menu under "hotkeys":

m - brings up a menu
f - toggles fullscreen on/off
l - "locks" to a particular preset
y - toggles shuffle mode
n - next preset
p - previous preset
r - selects random preset

F1 - Help menu
F2 - Toggles song title on/off (doesn't work in libvisual or pulseaudio as far as I can tell)
F3 - Toggle preset name on/off
F4 - Toggle rendering info on/off
F5 - Shows fps

How to load visualizations:
Simply click the load preset button and select the presets in the correct directory you want to see. You can create a visualization playlist as well, its easy.

Other info:

ProjectM uses pulseaudio, it can do everything that pulseaudio can do. In the menu, you can select which pulseaudio source to use as the music input to the visualizations. This includes network sound resources. You CAN use projectM as a visualizer for the music ANOTHER PC is playing!

Adding too many presets may crash projectm, so load only a hundred or so at a time, or experiment on how many can be loaded at once

You can find more visualizations here

Compile from svn src howto here

ProjectM Developers Page here

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Older ATI cards have been blacklisted for Compiz Fusion because of a bug in the driver, but there is an easy workaround for many cards that use the open source ati drivers. Radeon 9500 are the oldest cards to support the restricted "fglrx" drivers, so everything older requires the open source drivers to function properly.

First edit the launcher for Compiz Fusion:
gksudo gedit /usr/bin/compiz
Near the top, add the line
SKIP_CHECKS="yes"
I added it under VERBOSE="yes"

You may also need to install the Compiz settings manager program that you can access from System->Preferences->Advanced Desktop Effect Settings | 1-click install or:
sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager
You can now load Compiz Fusion with
compiz --replace
and revert to Metacity (the basic window manager) with
metacity --replace
I suggest making launchers in a panel for this.

Remember that this is a workaround and may not work for everybody. If you have further problems, you should consider running a forum search and then posting on one of the main support forums if you still need help.
For the record, my card is an ATI Mobility Radeon 9000.

This Article was found here

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When I installed Hardy, I forgot to copy my awesome xorg.conf which held the configuration to enable all 12 buttons of my Logitech MX1000.

Lo and behold, a new method of configuring it has come about, albeit it was around prior to Gutsy.

btnx is the work of Olli Salonen. The program runs as a daemon, catching mouse events and turning them into either key presses or proper mouse events which the system can interpret. This eases the configuration one must do in order to enjoy the full potential of the high-end Logitech mice—a potential which, in my opinion, Windows cannot reach.

The installation process for btnx is pretty easy.

Read the full article here

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Now is the best time to upgrade, and upgrading is a breeze, sit back relax, and issue the following commands!

Upgrade from 7.10 to 8.04 LTS

1. Press Alt-F2 and type update-manager -d

2. Click the Check button to check for new updates.

3. A message will appear informing you of the availability of the new release.

   • 

4. Click Upgrade.

5. Follow the on-screen instructions.

Command line upgrade:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Download the iso:
http://releases.ubuntu.com/8.04/

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Want to loop a video clip or movie on your desktop? I did and found a nice little tool that does just that! Check out this easy howto

First lets grab some essential building libraries via the terminal: Applications->Accessories->Terminal
sudo apt-get install build-essential libx11-dev x11proto-xext-dev libxrender-dev libxext-dev cvs
Now lets Install xwinwrap:
cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@cvs.freedesktop.org:/cvs/xapps co xwinwrap
cd xwinwrap
make
sudo cp xwinwrap /usr/bin

Now lets start our video/movie as the Desktop Wallpaper!
First find a video/movie you would like to set as your backround and issue this command:
xwinwrap -ni -fs -s -st -sp -b -nf -- mplayer -wid WID -nosound "Steal This Film II.Xvid.avi" -loop 0

Now everything should be working fine, if you would like sound, remove -nosound

You can also display Screensavers as your background:
nice -n 15 ./xwinwrap -ni -o 0.20 -fs -s -sp -st -b -nf -- /usr/lib/xscreensaver/glmatrix -root -window-id WID
Credit for the screen saver hack goes out to wayne@fsckin

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Here I will share some methods on tweaking and optimizing your ubuntu install that I have learned over the years tweaking linux. This is small and sweet, down to the point and can dramatically speed up your system.

First lets tweak our directory structure so our Computer can find/seek files faster:
What we'll need is a Ubuntu Gutsy+ LiveCD and boot it up, and right click unmount all the drives mounted in nautilus via places. Then Open up a Terminal: Applications->Accessories->Terminal
Lets Sudo Root:
sudo -s
Then lets check which drives we got to optimize:
df -h
Example:
/dev/sda3 154G 145G 1.6G 99% /media/sda3
/dev/sda4 99G 61G 39G 62% /media/sda4

Ok great, we got a list of our drives to optimize so lets get to work:
e2fsck -fD /dev/sda3
choose y for yes and optimize your drive, then continue to the next drive once finished
If you need to you can RTFM on e2fsck:

-D Optimize directories in filesystem. This option causes e2fsck
to try to optimize all directories, either by reindexing them if
the filesystem supports directory indexing, or by sorting and
compressing directories for smaller directories, or for filesys‐
tems using traditional linear directories.

Ok now that the drives are optimized the system should be more responsive. So were finished with the liveCD portion of this howto, so reboot, and remove your liveCD.

Ok the next tweak I dont use completely, I only use noatime in my fstab and I dont use writeback mode because I sometimes have power outages and dont want to risk dataloss. So changing to writeback is dangerous but much faster if you do not have to worrie about dataloss, crashes, lockups, forced reboot/shutdowns.
Ok now you can Use data=writeback and noatime when mounting ext3 partitions in /etc/fstab:
sudo gedit /etc/fstab
Here is an example of what I have in my fstab:
UUID=3eb414ba-5198-4c1f-9e3d-e91675329f83 / ext3 defaults,noatime,errors=remount-ro 0 0
Lets change this to:
UUID=3eb414ba-5198-4c1f-9e3d-e91675329f83 / ext3 defaults,data=writeback,noatime,errors=remount-ro 0 0
Ok now lets tune our drive for writeback mode:
sudo tune2fs -o journal_data_writeback /dev/sda1
For reference you can RTFM:

writeback
Data ordering is not preserved - data may be written into
the main file system after its metadata has been commit‐
ted to the journal. This is rumoured to be the highest-
throughput option. It guarantees internal file system
integrity, however it can allow old data to appear in
files after a crash and journal recovery.
noatime
Do not update inode access times on this file system
(e.g, for faster access on the news spool to speed up
news servers).

Ok now lets install preload to optimize bootspeed and application startup time, I have an alternate tutorial here explaining how preload works:
sudo apt-get install preload

Ok you can also tune the swap/memory usage by optimizing swappiness, I have provided a more in depth tutorial explaining what it does here So lets tweak our swappiness:
sudo gedit /etc/sysctl.conf
If you have a lot of memory and succeed in not using swap at all and want swap to be used less then add this line:
vm.swappiness=0
If your computer has little memory and needs to swap add this line instead:
vm.swappiness=100
You may want to experiment with swapiness by changing it between 0 - 100

Last but not least you may want to profile your boot, what this does is, executes the readahead daemon to readahead files that you use every boot like drivers/gdm/kde/X, this is easy, on reboot, press esc to enter grub then find the kernel line:
/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-16-generic root=UUID=3eb414ba-5198-4c1f-9e3d-e91675329f83 ro splash=verbose vga=794
Press e once its selected then append profile after this line like this:
/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-16-generic root=UUID=3eb414ba-5198-4c1f-9e3d-e91675329f83 ro splash=verbose vga=794 profile
Then Press enter then "b" to boot up, what this will do is learn what files load every boot up and read them in advance every boot up. This will temporarily disable preload so once it finishes profiling and you are at a login terminal, reboot again and your system should startup/boot faster, and preload will preload applications and important libraries that you frequently access.

I hope this helps others enjoy Ubuntu Linux more, this took me 5 minutes to create, so let me know if I need to explain this a little better.

Have any other tweaks to add to this list? I'll give you credit.

Tweak Gnome Startup added by defcon @ 10:00 AM
You may also want to remove unnecessary applications starting up that gnome executes by opening Session Preferences via: System->Preferences->Sessions
Click on StartUp Programs
I disabled Bluetooth manager because I do not use bluetooth, you may want to as well.
I have disabled check for new hardware drivers because I do that via synaptic
I have disabled network manager because I use /etc/network/interfaces only and apt-get remove network-manager network-manager-gnome if you do not need it
I have disabled Print Queue Applet because I dont print on this computer
I also disabled Visual Assistance because I do not need assistance
You may find other things you may want to disable as well to speed up gnome startup

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I ran across a nice sysctl.conf file that will help secure your computer and prevent many different attacks on your computer like Man In the Middle Attacks, Syn attacks, source routing scans/attacks, spoofing protection/logging, and many others, read below.

Lets Harden our kernel:
sudo gedit /etc/sysctl.conf
Now lets paste the following example below then ctrl-s save and exit
After you make the changes to the file lets apply the changes without a reboot:
sysctl -p
sysctl -w net.ipv4.route.flush=1

Example:
# Kernel sysctl configuration file for Red Hat Linux
#
# For binary values, 0 is disabled, 1 is enabled. See sysctl(8) and
# sysctl.conf(5) for more details.

# Controls IP packet forwarding
net.ipv4.ip_forward = 0

# Controls source route verification
net.ipv4.conf.default.rp_filter = 1

# Controls the System Request debugging functionality of the kernel
kernel.sysrq = 0

# Controls whether core dumps will append the PID to the core filename.
# Useful for debugging multi-threaded applications.
kernel.core_uses_pid = 1

#Prevent SYN attack
net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies = 1
net.ipv4.tcp_max_syn_backlog = 2048
net.ipv4.tcp_synack_retries = 2

# Disables packet forwarding
net.ipv4.ip_forward=0

# Disables IP source routing
net.ipv4.conf.all.accept_source_route = 0
net.ipv4.conf.lo.accept_source_route = 0
net.ipv4.conf.eth0.accept_source_route = 0
net.ipv4.conf.default.accept_source_route = 0

# Enable IP spoofing protection, turn on source route verification
net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter = 1
net.ipv4.conf.lo.rp_filter = 1
net.ipv4.conf.eth0.rp_filter = 1
net.ipv4.conf.default.rp_filter = 1

# Disable ICMP Redirect Acceptance
net.ipv4.conf.all.accept_redirects = 0
net.ipv4.conf.lo.accept_redirects = 0
net.ipv4.conf.eth0.accept_redirects = 0
net.ipv4.conf.default.accept_redirects = 0

# Enable Log Spoofed Packets, Source Routed Packets, Redirect Packets
net.ipv4.conf.all.log_martians = 1
net.ipv4.conf.lo.log_martians = 1
net.ipv4.conf.eth0.log_martians = 1

# Disables IP source routing
net.ipv4.conf.all.accept_source_route = 0
net.ipv4.conf.lo.accept_source_route = 0
net.ipv4.conf.eth0.accept_source_route = 0
net.ipv4.conf.default.accept_source_route = 0

# Enable IP spoofing protection, turn on source route verification
net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter = 1
net.ipv4.conf.lo.rp_filter = 1
net.ipv4.conf.eth0.rp_filter = 1
net.ipv4.conf.default.rp_filter = 1

# Disable ICMP Redirect Acceptance
net.ipv4.conf.all.accept_redirects = 0
net.ipv4.conf.lo.accept_redirects = 0
net.ipv4.conf.eth0.accept_redirects = 0
net.ipv4.conf.default.accept_redirects = 0

# Disables the magic-sysrq key
kernel.sysrq = 0

# Modify system limits for Ensim WEBppliance
fs.file-max = 65000

# Decrease the time default value for tcp_fin_timeout connection
net.ipv4.tcp_fin_timeout = 15

# Decrease the time default value for tcp_keepalive_time connection
net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_time = 1800

# Turn off the tcp_window_scaling
net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling = 0

# Turn off the tcp_sack
net.ipv4.tcp_sack = 0

# Turn off the tcp_timestamps
net.ipv4.tcp_timestamps = 0

# Enable TCP SYN Cookie Protection
net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies = 1

# Enable ignoring broadcasts request
net.ipv4.icmp_echo_ignore_broadcasts = 1

# Enable bad error message Protection
net.ipv4.icmp_ignore_bogus_error_responses = 1

# Log Spoofed Packets, Source Routed Packets, Redirect Packets
net.ipv4.conf.all.log_martians = 1

# Set maximum amount of memory allocated to shm to 256MB
kernel.shmmax = 268435456

# Improve file system performance
vm.bdflush = 100 1200 128 512 15 5000 500 1884 2

# Improve virtual memory performance
vm.buffermem = 90 10 60

# Increases the size of the socket queue (effectively, q0).
net.ipv4.tcp_max_syn_backlog = 1024

# Increase the maximum total TCP buffer-space allocatable
net.ipv4.tcp_mem = 57344 57344 65536

# Increase the maximum TCP write-buffer-space allocatable
net.ipv4.tcp_wmem = 32768 65536 524288

# Increase the maximum TCP read-buffer space allocatable
net.ipv4.tcp_rmem = 98304 196608 1572864

# Increase the maximum and default receive socket buffer size
net.core.rmem_max = 524280
net.core.rmem_default = 524280

# Increase the maximum and default send socket buffer size
net.core.wmem_max = 524280
net.core.wmem_default = 524280

# Increase the tcp-time-wait buckets pool size
net.ipv4.tcp_max_tw_buckets = 1440000

# Allowed local port range
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 16384 65536

# Increase the maximum memory used to reassemble IP fragments
net.ipv4.ipfrag_high_thresh = 512000
net.ipv4.ipfrag_low_thresh = 446464

# Increase the maximum amount of option memory buffers
net.core.optmem_max = 57344

# Increase the maximum number of skb-heads to be cached
net.core.hot_list_length = 1024

## DO NOT REMOVE THE FOLLOWING LINE!
## nsobuild:20051206

The above script was found here

Is there any other sysctl settings worth mentioning for hardening?

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In the past, I've been forced to do ridiculous things like cat a file larger than available RAM to /dev/null and edit gigabyte files which flood my cache with this data. Luckily, Linux kernels 2.6.16 and newer provide a mechanism to clear the inode, page, and dentry caches on demand avoiding all this headache. All you have to do is echo a value to the proc filesystem, and you're done.

To use /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches, just echo a number to it.

To free pagecache:
echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

To free dentries and inodes:

echo 2 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

To free pagecache, dentries and inodes:

echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

As this is a non-destructive operation and dirty objects are not freeable, the user should run "sync" first!

This was originally found @ http://www.linuxinsight.com/proc_sys_vm_drop_caches.html

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Here I will provide you with some information to help you decide exactly how you would like to tweak your system. I have seen many sites with the swappiness tweak for linux without any documentation on what it does, so I'll try my best to explain this in a simple way.

If you want linux to use as little memory as possible for caching files, and as much memory as possible for processes, and only swap when the memory used by processes is more than the physical memory set swappiness to 0, instead of 60. Users who would like to never see application memory swapped out can set swappiness to zero. This setting uses ram efficently and pretty much ignores using swap until it absolutely needs to like if your running 10 openoffice's and a few firefox windows and some multimedia applications, it will be forced to swap, thats the only way it will. Unfortunately it flushes the applications from memory when you load a new one so you will notice a slower restart time when reloading the application

If you run allot of memory intensive applications like firefox, amarok, and openoffice all the time, you may want to set swappiness to 100 because it will swap more to disk when your current processes run out of physical memory. I noticed that everything was a bit more responsive with this running many programs at once, like when I close firefox and load up xChat then re-open firefox, it loaded a bit quicker since it was swapped. You can take advantage of this setting if you have a fast extra hard drive or a fast usb flash drive which you can use as swap. I have provided a readyboost for linux howto here

Lets get to tweak'n
sudo gedit /etc/sysctl.conf
To disable swapping application memory add the line:
vm.swappiness=0
To Swap more application data to disk when ram is exhausted
vm.swappiness=100

Basically what I would do is experiment with this setting and see what works best when you load up plenty of applications you use daily because leaving it at the default, 0, or 100 may not be the best option.

Please let us all know your specs and what setting works best for you.

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What is PyTube?
PyTube is a another kick-ass application that hasnt gotten enough spotlight, it completely rocks, check out some of its features:

Search & Leech Videos From Youtube
Leech Videos from Other Video sites
Re-Encode Videos to iPhone/iPod/3gp/mp4/ogm/mpg/gif/amv
Insert Audio into Video
Generate Ringtones
Merge multiple Videos together
Resize Videos for Ipods->High Definition
Rotate videos
Construct a List of all your Videos to share with friends

Easy Interface

Integrated Search

Multimedia Tools

Unlimited Downloads

Local Multimedia Encoding

How to install PyTube:
Click System->Administration and then open up software sources
Click Add and add:
deb http://www.bashterritory.com/pytube/releases /
Reload then click here to install
or sudo apt-get install pytube
Once installed access PyTube via Applications->Sound & Video->PyTube Multimedia Converter

Have fun
More information from the elite authors site here

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1. Copy the url of the streaming video mms://etc... or http://...
2. Open up a terminal.
3. mplayer -dumpstream -dumpfile stream_video_name.wmv mms://etc...
4. Wait for the stream dump.

Have any others tools worth mentioning?
Original Content found here

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Project fprint homepage: http://reactivated.net/fprint/wiki/Main_Page
Packages for fprint: http://www.madman2k.net/comments/105

The fprint project aims to plug a gap in the Linux desktop: support for consumer fingerprint reader devices.

Previously, Linux support for such devices has been scattered amongst different projects (many incomplete) and inconsistent in that application developers would have to implement support for each type of fingerprint reader separately. For more information on where we came from, see the project history page.

We're trying to change that by providing a central system to support all the fingerprint readers we can get our hands on. The software is open source and in the long term we're shooting for adoption by distributions, integration into common desktop environments, etc.
Note: These instructions are intended for Ubuntu Hardy. I have not personally tried this on Gutsy, but if it works, let me know.

First off, remember that fprint is not entirely stable, and may not work all the time. A list of supported devices is here, and the list of unsupported devices is here.

1. First thing to do is add the [third-party] fprint repository to your sources file:
echo -e "# Fingerprint reader support (fprint)\ndeb http://ppa.launchpad.net/madman2k/ubuntu hardy main restricted universe multiverse" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list

2. Next, update your sources and install fprint:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install fprint-demo libfprint-dev libfprint0 libpam-fprint
3. Now you can enroll your fingers using either the terminal or a graphical user interface.
Terminal:
pam_fprint_enroll
GUI:
fprint_demo
4. Last thing to do is configure PAM so that the fingerprint reader can be useful. Open up your PAM authentication file and edit it:
sudo gedit /etc/pam.d/common-auth
5. Edit it to contain:
auth sufficient pam_fprint.so
auth required pam_unix.so nullok_secure
6. Enjoy your fingerprint reader support!

Steps 4 and 5 tell Ubuntu to check your fingerprint, and if that fails, then ask your password. This rule has some exceptions, one that I have encountered is on the login screen. I have to scan my fingerprint before typing my password. One thing I did notice is that when you use sudo in the terminal, it asks for your fingerprint, which I thought was pretty cool. One disadvantage is that anything using gksu does not seem to work properly, specifically because it does not tell you to scan your finger when needed.

Troubleshooting:
The one problem I ran into when using fprint was that I could not run fprint_demo without sudo. It failed with the error message below:

uru4000:error [dev_init] interface claim failed
fp:error [fp_dev_open] device initialisation failed, driver=uru4000

I decided to post my problem here on the forums.
Here is the solution. You have to add yourself to the plugdev group and then change the permissions of the usb folder to allow access to the plugdev group. You can verify you are in the plugdev group by using groups:
sudo usermod -a -G plugdev $USER
groups | grep plugdev # Make sure there is output from this
sudo chgrp -R plugdev /dev/bus/usb/
Then try running fprint_demo, and hopefully it will work:
fprint_demo

This content was found on the Ubuntu forums, please see here for updates

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I recently wanted to create a seperate /home partition since I installed home on / and didnt want the hassle of waiting for the livecd to boot, so here is an easy tutorial that will explain how to setup a seperate /home partition with an existing empty drive or partition you already have without using a livecd.

Ok I have almost always had a seperate home partition, excluding the 3 times I have completely crashed my system and had to redo it all.

Reasons you should use a seperate home partition:
1. Easy backup/restore.
2. You can simply rm -rf / and pop in a livecd and be able to mount your home partition as /home without deleting users home directories and files.
3. You can use multiple linux Distro's with the /home partition
4. You dont have to worrie about the hassle of re-installing or upgrading ubuntu because everything you need is in your /home directory, you can simply backup all your apt packages via aptoncd.
5. You will get better performance accessing files in your /home directory since it is seperate from the filesystem.

First we sudo root then open/edit our /etc/fstab:
sudo -s
sudo gedit /etc/fstab
Now this is the line my fstab contained that we will comment out by putting a "#" symbol in front of the UUID of the empty drive
# /dev/sdb1
UUID=ffa4a03e-116f-4c41-8bb6-4f60bca8f7f9 /media/sdb1 ext3 defaults,noatime,errors=remount-ro 0 0
It will then look like this:
# /dev/sdb1
# UUID=ffa4a03e-116f-4c41-8bb6-4f60bca8f7f9 /media/sdb1 ext3 defaults,noatime,errors=remount-ro 0 0

Now lets scroll down to the bottom of the file and Create a new Line to make our empty disk be mounted as /home
# /dev/sdb1
UUID=ffa4a03e-116f-4c41-8bb6-4f60bca8f7f9 /home ext3 defaults,noatime,errors=remount-ro 0 0

Ok the Hard stuff is done, so we Save /etc/fstab with ctrl-s and exit, lets go back to the terminal and cd to /home:
cd /home
Ok now that we are in home we can issue our copy command to copy the contents of /home to our existing partition in /media/sdb1 as an example:
find . -depth -print0 | sudo cpio --null --sparse -pvd /media/sdb1/
Once this completes which will take a while if you have allot of data we mv the contents of our existing /home to a backup directory:
mkdir /oldhome
mv -R * /oldhome
Ok we are done, simply reboot and everything should be successful, if for some reason this doesn't work all you do is uncomment the fstab line we first edited and comment out the newest line or completely remove it, then umount /dev/"yourdrive" if it mounted, and cd /oldhome/ mv -R * /home and everything should be back to what it was when you rebooted

This took me 5 min to create and is very dangerous if you dont know what you are doing, do not attempt this.

I have an alternate tutorial that explains how to do the same thing above with instructions on creating a new partition here

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I absolutely hate microsoft products thats why I love breaking it. This hack, is way too easy. Whatever your reason for changing any users password, this simple howto will surely satisfy that need. The only way to prevent this currently is with full disk encryption. Here is how you change windows password within Ubuntu Hardy Heron.
You can either use your livecd or hdd
sudo apt-get install chntpw
Now its installed, so lets get to work...
Ok I am assuming your using a hardy heron livecd or a Ubuntu Hardy Heron full install
You will now need to mount the windows partition read/write permission then navigate to %systemroot%/system32/config
Once your located in the config directory issue this command to change the password
chntpw -u administrator SAM
- Prompt for password for 'administrator', if found (otherwise do nothing) use * to blank

Now reboot and login to winblows

Optionally you can skip resetting the password and just install Ubuntu

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Why, the hell, another zip cracker? fcrackzip isnt just any other file cracker, it is quiet old (born in 1998) and I believe the last version was from 2004. However it is simple mentioned for being the first open-sourced zip-cracker out there.

fcrackzip searches each zipfile given for encrypted files and tries to guess the password. All files must be encrypted with the same password, the more files you provide, the better.

FCrackZip is The Ultimate password cracker for zip archives
fcrackzip is a fast password cracker partly written in assembler.
It is able to crack password protected zip files with brute
force or dictionary based attacks, optionally testing with
unzip its results.

It can also crack cpmask'ed images.

Homepage: http://www.goof.com/pcg/marc/fcrackzip.html
How to Install:

sudo apt-get install fcrackzip
Install with 1-click if you have apt-url installed and your using firefox!
Examples:
fcrackzip -c a -p aaaaaa sample.zip

checks the encrypted files in sample.zip for all lowercase 6 character passwords (aaaaaa ... abaaba ... ghfgrg ... zzzzzz).

fcrackzip --method cpmask --charset A --init AAAA test.ppm

checks the obscured image test.ppm for all four character passwords. -TP fcrackzip -D -p passwords.txt sample.zip check for every password listed in the file passwords.txt.

More info from the authors site here
Need to crack rar, 7z files? Check here for another tool ive unleashed

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A Brand new Google Earth 4.3 is in Town with Some Hot new features, check out this *HOT* Youtube video while easily installing this with my simple howto!

Easily Install Google Earth 4.3 by opening a terminal and issuing this one command
wget http://dl.google.com/earth/client/current/GoogleEarthLinux.bin ; chmod +x GoogleEarthLinux.bin ; sudo ./GoogleEarthLinux.bin
The above command will auto-install to /opt/google-earth and create a desktop icon for all users. Right after the install Click Start to startup Google Earth

Need a Userguide for all the features? Click here for that

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It looks like google has a little known tool that creates sitemaps with a simple python script, its in the repositories and this could surely be handy for allot of webmasters out there.

The Google Sitemap Generator is a Python script that creates a Sitemap for your site using the Sitemap Protocol. This script can create Sitemaps from URL lists, web server directories, or from access logs. In order to use this script:

• You must be able to connect to and run scripts on your web server.
• Your web server must have Python 2.2 or later installed.
• You must know the command that launches Python. (Generally, this is python, but may vary by installation. For instance, if the web server has two versions of Python installed, the earlier version may be invoked by the command python and the later version may be invoked by the command python2.)
• You must know the directory path to your site. If your web server hosts one site, this may be a path such as var/www/html. If you have a virtual server that hosts multiple sites, this may be a path such as home/virtual/site1/fst/var/www/html.
• You must be able to upload files to your web server (for instance, using FTP).
• If you will be generating a list of URLs based on access logs, you must know the encoding used for those logs and the complete path to them.

If you aren't sure about any of this, you can check with your web hosting company.

Now you’re ready to get started. Here’s an overview of what you’ll need to do.

1. Download the Sitemap Generator program files.
   

sudo apt-get install google-sitemapgen

2. Create a configuration file for your site using the provided example_config.xml file as a template. Modify this file as needed for your site and save it.
3. Upload the necessary files to your web server.
4. Run google-sitemapgen
5. Add the generated Sitemap to your Google webmaster tools account.
6. Set up a recurring script. (optional)

If you are unable to use the Sitemap Generator, you can add a Sitemap to your Google webmaster tools account in another format, such as a simple text file. Third-party programs supporting the Sitemap Protocol.

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Ever wonder where you can get free open images to edit and use without worrying about copyright? Well I have looked everywhere, and I have found a nice collection that you all can use and share. I was recently looking for some clipart online and ran across a simple way to get thousands of updated Clipart .SVG's. This will be 800+ meg's when extracted.
If you want to browse the gallery before downloading check it out here
Download/extraction Instructions:
sudo apt-get install openclipart-svg

I hope you enjoy this clipart, is there any others worth mentioning?

Thank Elkersh for this great tip!

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