How to test microphone with pulseaudio

How to test that your microphone is working, using pulseaudio:

pactl load-module module-loopback latency_msec=1

To disable it again:

pactl unload-module module-loopback

Thanks to: https://askubuntu.com/a/262297

Set file modification time based on file name (or EXIF data)

This snippet works for the Iphone image/movie files in format: YY-MM-DD HH24-MI-SS NNNN.ext

for f in *mov; do

  echo $f

  touch "$f" -t "20${f:0:2}${f:3:2}${f:6:2}${f:9:2}${f:12:2}.${f:15:2}"

done

Then, to overwrite with EXIF information from JPEG files:

exiv2 -T rename *.jpg

Useful snippet for some of the Iphone files/movies on my disk:

find . -type f -name \*720p.mov | while read LINE; do

  f=$(basename "$LINE")

  echo "$LINE"

  touch "$LINE" -t "20${f:0:2}${f:3:2}${f:6:2}${f:9:2}${f:12:2}.${f:15:2}"

done

Delete broken symlinks

Identify broken symbolic links:

find . -xtype l

To delete as well:

find . -xtype l -delete

Remove duplicate files

Use rdfind tool from Debian repo.

To find duplicate files in directories dir1 (and dir2) with results.txt output file produced:

rdfind dir1 [dir2]

To test:

rdfind -n true -deleteduplicates true dir1 dir2

To delete duplicates:

rdfind -deleteduplicates true dir1 dir2

Eaton 3S disconnect problem

Recently I bought Eaton 3S UPS for my home server. I bought this model because it's supposed to have good Linux support and the size is quite small.

All works fine but after a few days I keep getting disconnects and machine load increases to about 2.0. The messages in syslog are:

Oct 4 06:54:13 atom2 upsmon[1785]: Poll UPS [eaton3s@localhost] failed - Data stale
Oct 4 06:54:16 atom2 kernel: [934148.871714] usb 1-5.2: device descriptor read/64, error -110
Oct 4 06:54:16 atom2 kernel: [934149.047613] usb 1-5.2: new low-speed USB device number 5 using xhci_hcd
Oct 4 06:54:18 atom2 upsmon[1785]: Poll UPS [eaton3s@localhost] failed - Data stale

What I need to do now is not only restart nut but also unload the xhci_hcd module:  

/etc/init.d/nut-client stop
/etc/init.d/nut-server stop

Check and kill all remaining processes:

ps -ef|grep -i -e usb -e hid -e ups -e eaton -e nut

Unload module:

modprobe -r xhci_hcd Load module:
modprobe xhci_hcd

Start nut:

/etc/init.d/nut-server start
/etc/init.d/nut-client start


Lenovo USB Ethernet adapter and Debian

I bought Lenovo USB Ethernet adapter for my home PC that I set up as a router. The problem is Debian stable does not contain driver for this device (USB ID 17ef:7203), I needed to compile my own.
I found some help on the following pages:
Linux asix_devices.c
Case of the Broken Linux Driver (Lenovo USB 2.0 Ethernet 10/100 dongle)
I needed to change &ax88772b_info in the code snippet.

Static IPs and DHCP

Collection of links, that helped me set up static IPs for certain devices in my home network.
Name your home machines using Tomato
DHCP static IP addresses with dnsmasq
How To: Make Sure /etc/resolv.conf Never Get Updated By DHCP Client