iceweasel amazon prime flash error

When trying to watch a video on Amazon Prime, I got the following error

Sorry we were unable to stream this video. This is
likely because your flash player needs to be updated.

To fix the error, install the following packages

$dpkg -l \*flash\* \*iceweasel\* \*hal\* | grep ^ii
ii  flashplugin-nonfree                  1:2.8.3                              Adobe Flash Player - browser plugin
ii  flashplugin-nonfree-extrasound       0.0.svn2431-3                        Adobe Flash Player platform support library for Esound and OSS
ii  hal                                  0.5.14-8                             Hardware Abstraction Layer
ii  hal-info                             20091130-1                           Hardware Abstraction Layer - fdi files
ii  iceweasel                            10.0.4esr-2                          Web browser based on Firefox
ii  iceweasel-torbutton                  1.4.5.1-1                            transitional dummy package
ii  libhal-storage1                      0.5.14-8                             Hardware Abstraction Layer - shared library for storage devices
ii  libhal1                              0.5.14-8                             Hardware Abstraction Layer - shared library
ii  libkephal4                           4:4.4.5-9                            API for easier handling of multihead systems
ii  libkephal4abi1                       4:4.7.4-2                            API for easier handling of multihead systems

Note:- Some of the packages might be unnecessary. But they are sufficient.

Make sure that the hal daemon is working.

$ps aux | grep hald
116       5715  0.0  0.4  17108  4584 ?        Ssl  20:15   0:00 /usr/sbin/hald
root      5716  0.0  0.1  13980  1588 ?        Sl   20:15   0:00 hald-runner
root      5751  0.0  0.1   5864  1508 ?        S    20:15   0:00 hald-addon-input: Listening on /dev/input/event0 /dev/input/event2 /dev/input/event1 /dev/input/event6 /dev/input/event5 /dev/input/event3 /dev/input/event4 /dev/input/event10
root      5755  0.0  0.1   5860  1244 ?        S    20:15   0:00 /usr/lib/hal/hald-addon-rfkill-killswitch
root      5759  0.0  0.1   5856  1240 ?        S    20:15   0:00 /usr/lib/hal/hald-addon-generic-backlight
116       5777  0.0  0.1   3816  1176 ?        S    20:15   0:00 hald-addon-acpi: listening on acpid socket /var/run/acpid.socket
root      5778  0.0  0.1   5864  1508 ?        S    20:15   0:00 hald-addon-storage: polling /dev/sr0 (every 2 sec)
1000      5826  0.0  0.0   4048   764 pts/2    S+   20:25   0:00 grep hald

Update the flashplugin

$sudo update-flashplugin-nonfree --install --verbose

Close iceweasel window.  Remove the ~/.adobe , ~/.macromedia directories

mv ~/.adobe ~/.adobe_old_deleteafter
mv ~/.macromedia ~/.macromedia_old_deleteafter

Restart iceweasel. The video (and audio) should be working now.

awk remove quotes in a column

Consider the input file

$cat input.txt 
"k",1.1
"ka",2.2
"kam",3.3
"kama",4.4
"kamar",5.5
"kamara",6.6
"kamaraj",7.7
"kamaraju",8.8

Convert this to

$cat output.txt 
k|1.1
ka|2.2
kam|3.3
kama|4.4
kamar|5.5
kamara|6.6
kamaraj|7.7
kamaraju|8.8

i.e. remove the quotes in the first column, change the delimiter to '|'.

This can be achieved in awk by defining both '"' and ',' as delimiters.

$cat cmd.sh 
cat input.txt | awk -F "[\",]" -v OFS="|" '{print $2,$4}'

Execute the above script as

$./cmd.sh > output.txt 

Tested on Debian Wheezy using GNU awk 4.0.1 version.

keywords: awk remove quotes from string, get rid of quotes, replace the delimiter character

who writes Linux

This is a great article my friend Sasikanth shared with me on facebook: who-writes-linux-2012 . It provides statistics on who actually develops the Linux kernel, the rate of development, companies supporting the developers and lot of other interesting tidbits.

It is good to see that most developers are getting paid for doing what they love. Makes it a more sustainable model.

The quote "As the Linux kernel grows, the rate of change is growing with it." just sums it up. This IMHO, is very hard to achieve with a conventional business model.

take a screenshot on windows 7

To take a snapshot (screenshot) of a window do alt+PRINT and then ctrl-v.

If you do just PRINT, you will get a screenshot of the whole screen.

To take the snapshot as a jpg picture

• start the paint program Start -> run -> mspaint
  
• "Select the window of interest" -> alt+PRINT -> go to mspaint window -> use ctrl-v to paste -> save as .jpg.
  

matlab to excel

Q) what is the excel equivalent of matlab's ismember function
A) vlookup

The syntax is vlookup(lookup_value, table_array, col_index_num, [range_look_up])

It can be used to check if a value exists in a column, compare two columns etc.,

The col_index_num starts from 1.
I usually give the 4th argument as false, so I can get an exact match. See help in excel for more details.

ISNA() - similar to matlab's isnan function, is another function that comes in handy with vlookup. It tells whether a number is #N/A or not.

computable document format

If you've got 20 minutes to spare, this is a great presentation to watch http://www.wolfram.com/broadcast/screencasts/announcing_cdf/ . Here Conrad Wolfram explains about a new file format that he calls "computable document format". IMHO, it is an excellent idea. One that could change the way we think about e-documents like pdf files, presentations, research publications etc.,

cygwin mintty vim output is not to a terminal

Inside the cygwin terminal if you do

$ uname -r
1.7.10(0.259/5/3)

$ mintty.exe

The mintty terminal pops up. However, if you run vim in the mintty terminal, there are warnings such as

$ vim junk1.txt
Vim: Warning: Output is not to a terminal
Vim: Warning: Input is not from a terminal

To get rid of these warnings, start mintty with "mintty.exe -". The .exe is optional. It is the '-' that is more important.

Why bother with the mintty terminal in the first place? Because it has a lot more functionality than the default cygwin terminal. For eg., the mintty terminal can be resized, maximized, minimized in both the directions; copy pasting text from/to the terminal is a breeze.

verizon router dhcp getting a fixed IP address

I am currently using Verizon DSL to connect to the internet. So, I have

laptop -> router -> internet

A minor irritation with this set up is that the router can potentially assign different IP addresses whenever I do a reboot or something akin to /etc/init.d/networking restart. For example today it can be 192.168.1.58, tomorrow it could be 192.168.1.68 etc.,

I currently have

$ifconfig                                                                                                                             
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:15:c5:19:9c:1a  
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
          Interrupt:17 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:6790 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:6790 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:773105 (754.9 KiB)  TX bytes:773105 (754.9 KiB)

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:13:02:9e:cc:1b  
          inet addr:192.168.1.21  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::213:2ff:fe9e:cc1b/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:7486622 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:4833561 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:2650697959 (2.4 GiB)  TX bytes:608573891 (580.3 MiB)

To have the same IP address, say 192.168.1.78, every time the computer is booted

1) Add the following lines to /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf

alias {
  interface "wlan0";
  fixed-address 192.168.1.78;
  option subnet-mask 255.255.255.255;
}

2) restart the network

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

Now you should see

$ifconfig                                                                                                                             
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:15:c5:19:9c:1a  
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
          Interrupt:17 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:6790 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:6790 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:773105 (754.9 KiB)  TX bytes:773105 (754.9 KiB)

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:13:02:9e:cc:1b  
          inet addr:192.168.1.21  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::213:2ff:fe9e:cc1b/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:7486678 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:4833604 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:2650705479 (2.4 GiB)  TX bytes:608589238 (580.3 MiB)

wlan0:0   Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:13:02:9e:cc:1b  
          inet addr:192.168.1.78  Bcast:0.0.0.0  Mask:255.255.255.255
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1

Note the new wlan:0 interface which is always assigned to 192.168.1.78.

extract historical versions of a file tracked by git

Say, I have a file test.txt being tracked by git.

$git log test.txt
commit 809ebdbd3c44b9310a7a0f67d61897d5d8f9b6d2
Author: rajulocal 
Date:   Sun Aug 7 14:11:31 2011 -0400

    version 15

commit aec45562ad09257ce85eaf00f5a4fa6912e9e51e
Author: rajulocal 
Date:   Sun Aug 7 14:11:21 2011 -0400

    version 14

commit 7fb63da179a2026ba92a8875ff7d3da881ef5854
Author: rajulocal 
Date:   Sun Aug 7 14:11:11 2011 -0400

    version 13

commit 9b3ca5d3d7497e44c012f5ccd5daced2dd90ec12
Author: rajulocal 
Date:   Sun Aug 7 14:10:51 2011 -0400

    version 12

commit d0b5471fa2abce0057cce1d61240e78c09406c04
Author: rajulocal 
Date:   Sun Aug 7 14:10:40 2011 -0400

    version 11

commit e3af4e1a85b4ff07c31c8dcda47eb41c3f3c830b
Author: rajulocal 
Date:   Sun Aug 7 14:10:26 2011 -0400

    version 10

commit be762c0ee45ec6046fa960cace9acae513b80137
Author: rajulocal 
Date:   Sun Aug 7 14:10:18 2011 -0400

    version 9

commit 03ad798434559300cff26f6a238d7b0f05ad53d2
Author: rajulocal 
Date:   Sun Aug 7 14:09:59 2011 -0400

    version 8

commit 94c50cce3b24e572133eeaedc5bfe00aad568aec
Author: rajulocal 
Date:   Sun Aug 7 14:09:52 2011 -0400

    version 7

commit ab63e2bc7b258f702cc8c516c1f16bafc754cf27
Author: rajulocal 
Date:   Sun Aug 7 14:09:44 2011 -0400

    version 6

commit 16c896d19e00267b63537596485074488cd20a85
Author: rajulocal 
Date:   Sun Aug 7 14:09:37 2011 -0400

    version 5

commit 6937331a12209121ba24d111e1ca5128a3c1e836
Author: rajulocal 
Date:   Sun Aug 7 14:09:21 2011 -0400

    version 4

commit 7ec1c7f98a152f6b760ff1561a3b805cc5e374e9
Author: rajulocal 
Date:   Sun Aug 7 14:09:13 2011 -0400

    version 3

commit 5b3788ad1bdef15c1895a6efefcdd1ea96c840e9
Author: rajulocal 
Date:   Sun Aug 7 14:09:01 2011 -0400

    version 2

commit 1306cba057d6cac06ffd39b9234ce72967dc44f8
Author: rajulocal 
Date:   Sun Aug 7 14:08:35 2011 -0400

    version 1

In order to extract the latest 12 versions of test.txt and store each into a different file, I do

$xtract_hist_git 12 test.txt
$ls m??_test.txt            
m00_test.txt  m02_test.txt  m04_test.txt  m06_test.txt  m08_test.txt  m10_test.txt  m12_test.txt
m01_test.txt  m03_test.txt  m05_test.txt  m07_test.txt  m09_test.txt  m11_test.txt

m00_test.txt is the latest copy of test.txt, m01_test.txt is the latest but one copy, m02_test.txt is the latest but two copy etc.,

xtract_hist_git is this little script

$cat ~/bin/xtract_hist_git           
#! /bin/sh
#
# Author               : Kamaraju S. Kusumanchi
# Email                : kamaraju at gmail dot com
# File                 : ~/bin/xtract_hist_git
# Date (last modified) : Sun Aug  7 14:28:14 EDT 2011

revs=$1
file=$2

for i in `seq -w 0 $revs`
do
  git checkout master~$i $file
  mv $file m${i}_$file
done
git checkout master $file

get all the odd lines in a file

sed can be used to get all the odd or even lines in a file. Consider, for example,

$cat linenums.txt
 line 1
 line 2
 line 3
 line 4
 line 5
 line 6
 line 7
 line 8
 line 9
 line 10

To print all the odd lines

$sed -n '1~2p' linenums.txt 
 line 1
 line 3
 line 5
 line 7
 line 9

$sed -n '2~2p' linenums.txt
 line 2
 line 4
 line 6
 line 8
 line 10

login into a directory after sshing into a machine

To login into a machine via ssh and cd into a particular directory immediately afterwards, use

ssh -t user@machine.name 'cd ~/destination/directory && exec /bin/bash --login -i'

The -t option forces the ssh to open a pseudo-terminal. Without the -t option, ssh does not open the pseudo-terminal when a command is specified.

Commands can also contain variable names. For example,

export DYNAMIC=${PWD#$HOME/}
ssh -t user@machine.name "cd ~/$DYNAMIC && exec bash --login -i"

Other possible uses of the -t option

To see the output of top of a remote machine, use

ssh -t user@remote.machine.name top

Add a number to a variable in shell script

Consider the following shell script

$cat add_variables_02.sh
#! /bin/sh
ov=10;
nv=$((ov+3));      echo $nv
((nv=ov+3));       echo $nv
nv=$ov+3;          echo $nv
nv=`expr $ov+3`;   echo $nv
nv=`expr $ov + 3`; echo $nv

Execute in a shell

$bash add_variables_02.sh 
13
13
10+3
10+3
13

The first two methods nv=$((ov+3)) or ((nv=ov+3)) are faster than the fifth method nv=`expr $ov + 3` as the former uses bash's own feature and the later runs an external command in a subprocess.

Also, note that spaces are needed before and after the '+' character when expr is used.

Tested in Debian Wheezy machine using bash 4.2-1

Further reading

1. info coreutils 'expr invocation'
2. man expr
   

Special thanks to the anon 2011-08-24 5:06 AM for providing the first two methods.

recover an accidentally overwritten partition table

shorter version:

Q. I accidentally overwrote the partition table on my computer. Now it does not boot. Is there any way to restore it back?
A. use the testdisk program. Debian users can install it by doing

# apt-get install testdisk

To run it, use the command

# testdisk

This tool is very powerful, easy to use and interactive. It can be run from a live CD. I used it to recover the ext3, Linux swap partition information.


Long story:

My favorite tool for partitioning is qtparted. I got hooked to it couple of years back when I was trying out a knoppix live CD.

The hard drive of my laptop is /dev/sda. I recently bought a 500 GB external USB hard drive. When I connected the USB hard drive, it was recognized as /dev/sdb. I used the qtparted program to partition the /dev/sdb.



The partitioning process went smoothly. But when I click on the /dev/sdb link in the left tab of qtparted window, there were error messages on my konsole

$sudo qtparted
No Implementation: Support for opening ntfs file systems is not implemented yet.
Error: File system has an incompatible feature enabled.  Compatible features are has_journal, dir_index, filetype, sparse_super and large_file.  Use tune2fs or debugfs to remove features.
Error: File system has an incompatible feature enabled.  Compatible features are has_journal, dir_index, filetype, sparse_super and large_file.  Use tune2fs or debugfs to remove features.

Not sure of what it means, I resorted to cfdisk (a Curses based tool for partitioning).


My intention was to delete all the partitions on /dev/sdb and start afresh. However, I ended up deleting all the ext3, swap partitions on /dev/sda by accident. Notice how cfdisk only lists /dev/sda and nothing about /dev/sdb?

When the changes are committed, it gave an error. It asked me to reboot the machine in order to fix the error.

When the laptop is rebooted, Grub does not load. IIRC, the error code was 17. My computer is now officially in a half baked state with the wrong partition table (all because of my stupidity).

Kumar Appiah suggested me to try testdisk. He used it before to recover some FAT32, NTFS partitions.

So, I popped in an old Ubuntu (hoary) live CD to see if it has testdisk. It does not. The Hoary was released a while back. The official repositories were removed. So a simple

# sudo apt-get update

did not work. I modifed the /etc/apt/sources.list to point to dapper instead of hoary. Then did an apt-get update, apt-get install testdisk.

In order to install testdisk from dapper onto hoary, apt-get wanted to install a new kernal and remove the current kernel. I let the upgrade process run and gave it a 'no' when it wanted to remove the current kernel during the post configure stage. This exited the apt-get process abruptly.

Then, I did a "sudo apt-get -f install" to fix the inconsistent state. I then had to do another "sudo apt-get install testdisk". This time it proceeded without any difficulty.

Once testdisk is installed in the RAM, running it was easy. Just execute

# testdisk

The instructions in testdisk screens are very clear. At the end, I was able to recover my original partition table. Kudos to the authors, Debian maintainers of testdisk and to Kumar for suggesting it.


Useful links:
. websites of testdisk , qtparted
. links to debian packages testdisk, qtparted, e2fsprogs

options in function variables octave

The following octave code shows how to make functions take different paths depending on a user specified choice. It is a little template that comes in handy once in a while.

$cat options_in_function_variables_01.m
# Author : Kamaraju S. Kusumanchi
# Email  : kamaraju at gmail dot com
# Last modified : Tue Jun 15 06:45:15 EDT 2010
function [X] = options_in_function_variables_01(X, choice)

if (strcmp(choice, "square"))
 X = X*X;
elseif (strcmp(choice, "unity"))
 X = X*1;
elseif (strcmp(choice, "cube"))
 X = X*X*X;
else
 printf("choice = %s is not a valid option.\n", choice);
 error("please provide a correct choice");
endif
endfunction

To test it

$octave -qf
octave:1> options_in_function_variables_01(2.2, 'unity')
ans =  2.2000
octave:2> options_in_function_variables_01(2.2, 'square')
ans =  4.8400
octave:3> options_in_function_variables_01(2.2, 'cube')
ans =  10.648
octave:4> 10.648/4.84
ans =  2.2000
octave:5> 4.84/2.2
ans =  2.2000

passing functions as arguments in octave

It is possible to pass functions as arguments to another function in Octave. Consider the following sample code

$ls
cube.m  dynamic.m  script.m  square.m

$cat square.m
function [sq] = square(x)
sq = x**2;
endfunction

$cat cube.m
function [cu] = cube(x)
cu = x**3;
endfunction

$cat dynamic.m
function [ ret ] = dynamic (fh, x)
# fh is a function name passed as a string
# ex:-    b = dynamic("cube", a);
# fh can also be a handle
#         handle = @square;
#         b = dynamic(handle, a);
ret = feval(fh, x);
endfunction

$cat script.m
a=5.0

# bh = b obtained by using handle as arguments
handle=@square;
bh = dynamic( handle, a)

# bs = b obtained by using strings as arguments
bs = dynamic("square", a)

# ch = c obtained by using handle as arguments
handle=@cube;
ch = dynamic( handle, a)

# cs = c obtained by using strings as arguments
cs = dynamic("cube", a)

Run the script.m in octave

$octave3.2 -qf script.m

a =  5
bh =  25
bs =  25
ch =  125
cs =  125

Tested using Debian Lenny (stable), Octave 3.2.4

Further Reading:
1) The section on "Function handles, Inline Functions, and Anonymous Functions" in the octave manual http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Function-Handles-Inline-Functions-and-Anonymous-Functions.html

2) http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Higher-order_functions explains how to do this kind of "calling functions from functions" in various programming languages