Convert flv to mp4 using ffmpeg

FFmpeg There are many tools, including free ones that allow for video conversion, however, many of them use GUIs and don't allow for automation of tasks. FFmpeg is a command line based tools which allows to do very neat video manipulations.

We would like to share this small script, which our IT specialists have used for one of our video conversion projects. It parses a directory, finds all flv (Flash video) files and converts them to mp4. This script can be added to a cronjob to run on a scheduled basis. Converted videos can be moved elsewhere upon completion.

As mentioned, we've used ffmpeg to accomplish this task, running under Ubuntu 14.04. FFmpeg doesn't come with Ubuntu 14.04 and a package repository needs to be added manually first.

MailScanner: skip certain email checks

One of our IT Support clients asked us why some emails are coming in with extra HTML content. After some searching, we've discovered that is was due to the MailScanner antispam system: it was parsing emails improperly and adding extra junk characters. We have decided to solve this by skipping the email from that domain from being scanned altogether.

One way to do so is to change the Scan Messages directive in MailScanner.conf from:

Scan Messages = yes

Scan Messages = %rules-dir%/scan.messages.rules

Then, in your rules directory, create a file called scan.messages.rules. In that file, be sure to add the line for scanning all by default:

Setup VNC in Ubuntu

vnc icon You have a server, but want to setup VNC to access the GUI? We use this tutorial for our systems and wanted to share. (ALT is an IT consulting company, offering technical support for Mac, PC and Linux systems). We try to keep things updated, but tutorials have a tendency of exiring, so some steps may be different for newer versions. We've used Ubuntu 16.04 to install, but it should work with others as well.

Install the components

apt-get -y install ubuntu-desktop tightvncserver xfce4 xfce4-goodies autocutsel

Add the vnc user and give it a password:

adduser vnc
passwd vnc

You can add vnc as sudo, so you could run apps as root. Edit the sudoers file:

echo "vnc ALL=(ALL) ALL" >> /etc/sudoers

Bash: determine if the week is odd or even

bash

We regularly post scripts and script snippets that we have found useful in our day-to-day IT support tasks. Here's a quick way to help determine if the week is odd or even using a bash script. You can replace the echo "even" and "odd" with whatever functions you are looking to perform, such as weekly backups for example. Although not tested, this script should also work on any version of Apple's Mac.

Copy and paste this into a file:

Last updated Apr 15, 2024