restoring the firmware to a nslu2 from a linux PC

ok i bought a new nslu2 from ebay, and it had either a corrupt firmware, or i corrupted it trying to reset it to factory default (cause i could not figure out what ip adress it was set to, all i know is, it was not in the common ranges, and was not using dhcp)
sollution.... reflash the firmware
problem: all step by step in one document i could find online assume either windows OR Mac... i wanted to use my desktop (a debian machine) so i wrote it up.


preparation
1. get the original firmware from linksys, or an alternative firmware from where-ever. (with "might be broken" hardware i always prefer to first flash the original firmware, just to check)

2. install upslug2

apt-get install upslug2

3. set your fixed ip to something in the 192.168.0.0/24 range, but NOT 192.168.0.1 (make sure that that's free)


redboot the machine

when the nslu2 boots, for a few seconds you can telnet into it on port 9000
so boot the nslu2, and start executing the following command on your pc

telnet 192.168.0.1 9000

once you'r in you have maybe 2 seconds to press ctrl-c and interrupt the normal boot .. so be prepared

once in redboot, erase the existing bootloader ...

redboot> fis erase -f 0x50040000 -l 0x20000

and put the nslu2 in upgrade mode

redboot> upgrade

you'll see the satus led start flashing orange-green-orange-green



upslug2
run upslug2 without any switch to find your nslu2 you'll get back some info one of witch is the mac-adress (note: upslug has to be rone as root)

next use upslug2 to flash the firmware

upslug2 --target="00:00:00:00" --image="someimage.bin"

go have a coffee or thee or chocolate milk, or whatever .. it'll take 5-10 min

Opening pages documents on Debian

Hi

co-worker mailed himself a pages document from his mac .. wich he could (of course) not open on his MS Office at work
I found out that the pages document is actually a Zip format.. so

unzip document.pages

(this should also work with winzip or winrar http://www.win-rar.com/ )

it unpacked a number of files one of witch was a "preview.pdf"
note that anny images seem to be saved as seperate PDF's

if you need to edit the text you can copy paste it to your favorite editor from here ..

encoding video for ipad with ffmpeg

Hi


I have an ipad at work , but encoding video for it using gaphicla tools is a hassle, and often turns out bad. and itunes (on my mac mini) doesn't reencode the videos... so i made a script

now my debian box can do it
(you need to install libfaac .. on my debian box i folowed the instructions here
for ubuntu users .. i know option C from this post works)

the ffmpeg command i use is

ffmpeg -i input.avi -f mp4 -vcodec libxvid -maxrate 1000 -qmin 3 -qmax 5 -bufsize 4096 -g 300 -acodec libfaac -mbd 2 -s 640x480 -ab 128 -b 400 output.mp4

still meaning everthing has to be done one by one .. still cumbersome
so i made a quick and dirty looping script

so the script becomes

#!/bin/bash

#create a folder for the encodes
mkdir $1/encodedforipad/

#encode away
for i in $(ls $1);
do

ffmpeg -i $dir/$i -f mp4 -vcodec libxvid -maxrate 1000 -qmin 3 -qmax 5 -bufsize 4096 -g 300 -acodec libfaac -mbd 2 -s 640x480 -ab 128 -b 400 $1/encodedforipad/$i.mp4
done

make it executable and call it with the first argument being the folder where you host your video files. (attention: the script is not recursive and does not handle spaces in names well).