Make MPlayer play h264 video files faster on multicore machines

You can make MPlayer play h264-encoded video files a lot faster on multicore machines if you graft some libraries from the ffmpeg-mt project into the resulting mplayer binary. We need to recompile for this. First, use Subversion to download the code for MPlayer: svn co svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/mplayer/trunk mplayer Then the code for ff-mpeg svn co svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/mplayer/trunk… Read More »

Make Thunderbird use LibNotify in Jaunty

If you miss the LibNotify functionality in Mozilla Thunderbird and want top have it in Ubuntu Jaunty, all you have to do is install this AddOn. Right click here, select Save As, download the extension and install it through Thunderbird. Restart the application and enjoy the new notification system that will pop up whenever you… Read More »

Know when someone accesses your files in GNOME

Say you want to write a small shell script that locks up your GNOME desktop at specific intervals. What command would you use?In this case, your best bet would be gnome-screensaver-command —lock This has the same effect as you pushing the Lock Screen button in GNOME. You can forge a small shellscript and use this… Read More »

See who’s poking your Linux box

If you’re using SSH and you have your ports wide open to the world, your best bet would be to install fail2ban. If you’re curious though as of whom is trying to get in by bruteforcing your SSH passwords, you might get a clear view with the following command: grep “POSSIBLE BREAK-IN ATTEMPT” /var/log/auth.log This… Read More »