GNU/Linux

Testing free Text to Speech engines on Ubuntu GNU/Linux

 in GNU/Linux  tagged bash / espeak / festival / ffmpeg / GNU/Linux / howtos / pico / pico2wave / speech / text to speech / text2wave / ttf / ubuntu by

Recently, we decided to test a few free text to speech engines (TtS) on GNU/Linux. We were curious on what the current capabilities that are available as we wanted to create a few videos. To play a bit, we tested espeak, festival and pico. For this reason, we created a text file (called text.txt) and added the following content to it:

I triple E has a lot of scholarships, awards, and opportunities, but it doesn't have a centralized site where members can quickly identify the right ones.
Many problems arise as a result of the lack of this platform.
One crucial issue is that many people are unaware of specific opportunities until it is too late. Many projects are squandered each year because there is insufficient knowledge about these opportunities, resulting in low participation.
Another critical difficulty is having to start over with each application. Many people find it frustrating, and it prevents them from doing so.
The lack of real-time support to answer issues while an applicant is applying is critical, leading to discouragement and abandonment of the application process.
Providing references is a topic that many individuals are uncomfortable with. They are embarrassed to seek references that need to learn new systems and maybe answer the same questions posed in other ways.

Our solution is utilizing the Collabratec platform and storing all of these opportunities there:
Collabratec already has numerous key capabilities in place, lowering development costs.
Each application may have its own community or working group where an applicant can seek special clarifications or support. Collabratec will save money on development by repurposing existing technology. It will also give such features a new purpose.
Through those working groups, experienced members can share their knowledge and potentially coach applicants during their application process. Many members would be willing to help others attain their objectives, especially after they've gone through the process and understand the frustrations others are experiencing. We could utilize badges to reward individuals who aid others and those who apply for these possibilities, which is a frequent practice in Collabratec to make certain members stand out. This approach will assist members in getting to know one another and expanding their network outside their geographic zones, resulting in a genuinely global I triple E experience.
People who create opportunities can utilize the I triple E profile of a user to pre-populate elements of their application. As a result, the applicants' effort will be reduced because they will only fill in the questions related to that particular opportunity.
Without any additional work, the system may reuse earlier references. Assume that a reference has to be updated or validated to ensure that it is still valid. In that situation, the system may send an automatic notification to that person, asking them to approve, alter, or delete their earlier contribution.
Because users can readily share each application form and the corresponding working group information, Collabratec's capabilities as a social network will significantly enhance each opportunity's reach and all related documents, public comments, and discussions.

espeak

We started off with espeak and we used the following commands to test it:

# Command to install espeak;
sudo apt install espeak;
# Command that reads the text.txt file creates an audio file from its content.
espeak -f text.txt -w espeak.wav;

The result from espeak is below:

espeak definitely does not sound human-like. It is a fun tool if you need to create an audio file that sounds robotic! In our case, it was not a solution as we wanted to use a long text, listening to a robotic voice for a lot of time can be tiring.

festival

After that, we tested the text2wave tool of festival as follows:

sudo apt install festival;
cat text.txt | text2wave -o festival.wav;

The results from festival/text2wave are the following:

festival does sound a bit better than espeak, it’s almost smooth but not quite. You can easily tell that this is a computer-generated voice.

pico

Finally, we tested pico utilities. We set it up and used it as follows:

sudo apt install libttspico-utils;
pico2wave -l en-US -w test.wav "$(cat text.txt)";

The results of pico2wave were pretty good! Not perfect but still good! The voice is nearly human-like and fairly smooth. Below is the result of our test:

From the three utilities, pico was the most human-like and it fit our needs more. With this tool, we will be able to create certain videos with narration without being too annoying.

Other information

To create the videos, we used ffmpeg. As in the following commands, we combined the audio wave files with static images that were looped forever.

ffmpeg -loop 1 -i TtS-pico2wave.png -i test.wav -c:a aac -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -shortest TtS-pico2wave.mp4;
ffmpeg -loop 1 -i TtS-espeak.png -i espeak.wav -c:a aac -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -shortest TtS-espeak.mp4;
ffmpeg -loop 1 -i TtS-festival.png -i festival.wav -c:a aac -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -shortest TtS-festival.mp4;

The most useless piece of code that you will read today!

 in Bash / GNU/Linux  tagged bash / bruteforce / cracking / password / permutations by 
#!/bin/bash

charset=({a..z} {A..Z} {0..9});

permute(){
  (($1 == 0)) && { return; }
  for char in "${charset[@]}"; do
    if echo "$2$char" | sudo -S true; then
      echo "Correct password";
      echo "$2$char" >> "$USER".password.txt;
    fi;
    permute "$((${1} - 1 ))" "$2$char";
  done;
}

permute "$1";

The above code will generate all possible permutations of the alphanumeric characters ({a..z} {A..Z} {0..9}) and then using sudo it will test if the password is the password of the current user. When (and if ever) it finds the password, it will store it in a file in the same folder.

This script is useless because whenever sudo fails to authenticate, it creates some artificial delay. That delay makes testing to be less than one password per second. For this reason, cracking any good password with this method is pretty much pointless.

We posted this code

  1. for the fun it,
  2. to show the code that creates all permutations of a group of characters,
  3. to demostrate the use of the parameter -S in sudo that allows us to pass the password via a pipe ,
  4. to show a recursive function bash.

To execute this code, save it to a file and call it with one line parameter, which must be the length of the permutations you want to create.

How to Start/Stop or Enable/Disable firewalld on CentOS 8

 in GNU/Linux  tagged CentOS / centos 8 / firewall / firewalld / GNU/Linux by

firewalld (Dynamic Firewall Manager) tool provides a dynamically managed firewall. The tool enables network/firewall zones to define the trust level of network connections and/or interfaces. It has support both for IPv4 and IPv6 firewall settings. Also, it supports Ethernet bridges and allow you to separate between runtime and permanent configuration options. Finally, it supports an interface for services or applications to add firewall rules directly.

Disable firewalld

To disable firewalld, execute the following command as root or using sudo:

systemctl disable firewalld

Enable firewalld

To enable firewalld, execute the following command as root or using sudo:

systemctl enable firewalld

Stop firewalld

To stop (or deactivate) firewalld,execute the following command as root or using sudo:

systemctl stop firewalld

Start firewalld

To start (or activate) firewalld, execute the following command as root or using sudo:

systemctl start firewalld

Status of firewalld

To check the status of firewalld, execute the following command as root or using sudo:

systemctl status firewalld

CONCEPTS

systemd provides a dependency system between various entities called “units” of 12 different types. Units encapsulate various objects that are relevant for system boot-up and maintenance. The majority of units are configured in unit configuration files, whose syntax and basic set of options is described in systemd.unit(5), however some are created automatically from other configuration, dynamically from system state or programmatically at runtime. Units may be “active” (meaning started, bound, plugged in, …, depending on the unit type, see below), or “inactive” (meaning stopped, unbound, unplugged, …), as well as in the process of being activated or deactivated, i.e. between the two states (these states are called “activating”, “deactivating”). A special “failed” state is available as well, which is very similar to “inactive” and is entered when the service failed in some way (process returned error code on exit, or crashed, or an operation timed out). If this state is entered, the cause will be logged, for later reference. Note that the various unit types may have a number of additional substates, which are mapped to the five generalized unit states described here.
— From man systemd

The above, in a nutshell:

  • enabled is a service that is configured to start when the system boots
  • disabled is a service that is configured to not start when the system boots
  • active is a service that is currently running
  • inactive is a service that is currently stopped and may be disabled, but it can be started and become active

Some notes on how to record audio from a terminal in Ubuntu 20.04LTS

 in Bash / GNU/Linux  tagged audio / bash / ffmpeg / GNU/Linux / linux / pactl / record / terminal / ubuntu / ubuntu 20.04LTS by

Recently, we were trying to record the audio that was played on the system speakers using an Ubuntu 20.04LTS desktop. In the installation, there was no dedicated audio recorder installed and we did not want to install any. To record, we used the following command to get the list of all audio sources available to the system:

pactl list short sources;

The pactl command produced results like so:

3	alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3.analog-stereo.monitor	module-alsa-card.c	s16le 2ch 44100Hz	SUSPENDED
4	alsa_input.pci-0000_00_1f.3.analog-stereo	module-alsa-card.c	s16le 2ch 44100Hz	SUSPENDED
10	alsa_input.usb-Dell_DELL_PROFESSIONAL_SOUND_BAR_AE515-00.iec958-stereo	module-alsa-card.c	s16le 2ch 44100Hz	SUSPENDED
12	alsa_output.usb-Dell_DELL_PROFESSIONAL_SOUND_BAR_AE515-00.analog-stereo.monitor	module-alsa-card.c	s16le 2ch 44100Hz	IDLE

We knew that the system was using the Dell soundbar in analog mode to play the music (as we could see in the Settings under the Sound category, which is depicted below), so we copied the following name from the line that starts with the number 12:

alsa_output.usb-Dell_DELL_PROFESSIONAL_SOUND_BAR_AE515-00.analog-stereo.monitor

Then we used that monitor name as an input device for FFmpeg like so:

ffmpeg -f pulse -i alsa_output.usb-Dell_DELL_PROFESSIONAL_SOUND_BAR_AE515-00.analog-stereo.monitor test.mp3;

When we were done recording, we pressed CTRL+C to stop the recording.