terminal

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.

Lock-down pro-tip to save the battery of your car

 in Other  tagged battery / car / covid / covid-19 / lockdown / negative / terminal by

Most cars (if not all) consume energy even when they are parked, with the engine off and no visible systems working. Electrical systems including the clock and on-board computer systems drain the battery little by little until they completely empty it.

When the energy level in a battery is low, it might prevent it from being capable to start your car and you will need a boost to get your car running again. In worse scenarios, batteries that are completely drained can get damaged and they need to be replaced.

Therefore, if you do not move your car for a long period (like during the lock-down period), then the extended lack of use might damage the battery and cause it to need replacement.

Simple Solution

Check the operation manual of your car or contact your dealer prior to disconnecting the battery. (We are not sure if there is a car out there that would not like having its battery removed)

Disconnect the battery from you car to stop the energy draining.
To do so remove the cable from the negative port (has the minus sign "-" and is usually black colored).

Do not let the negative and positive cable exposed metal ends touch under any circumstances.

Ubuntu: Headless wireshark (or wireshark from terminal)

 in GNU/Linux  tagged headless / pcap / tcpdump / terminal / tshark / ubuntu / wireshark by

Recently, we wanted to use wireshark on an Ubuntu through ssh and no X-Server forwarding enabled.
After a quick search we found tshark.

TShark is a network protocol analyzer. It lets you capture packet data from a live network, or read packets from a previously saved capture file, either printing a decoded form of those packets to the standard output or writing the packets to a file. TShark‘s native capture file format is pcap format, which is also the format used by tcpdump and various other tools.
Without any options set, TShark will work much like tcpdump. It will use the pcap library to capture traffic from the first available network interface and displays a summary line on stdout for each received packet.
TShark is able to detect, read and write the same capture files that are supported by Wireshark.

From: man tshark

Install tshark on Ubuntu


sudo apt-get install tshark -y;

Using tshark to capture all traffic on eth0 to a pcap file


sudo tshark -i eth0 -w something.pcap;

Note: If you just want to capture network traffic on a network interface and not use the additional features wireshark has to offer, you can also use tcpdumpas follows


#The following command will create a files that has in its name the current date and time using the date function.
sudo tcpdump -i eth0 -w "data.`date +%Y-%m-%d\ %H.%M`.pcap";

Send ALT+CTRL+Delete to QEMU virtual machine 1

 in GNU/Linux / Virtualization  tagged alt+ctrl+del / monitor / qemu / sendkey / terminal by

Recently we wanted to start a Windows virtual machine from a physical hard disk using a Fedora w/ GNOME 3 host machine to change the domain password of a user.
To do so, we used QEMU, QEMU is a generic and open source machine emulator and virtualizer.

To perform the password change, we needed to sent the ALT+CTRL+Delete key combination to the virtual machine to access the system screen and then change the user password.
Pressing ALT+CTRL+Delete on the Fedora/GNOME 3 host machine, it popped up a prompt to shut down the host machine instead of sending the key combination to the active window of the VM. Apparently, we could not sent the key combination directly to the VM and had to find a way around it.

Solution:

We pressed ALT+CTRL+2 while the QEMU window was selected/active to switch to the QEMU terminal/monitor.
In the blank screen that appeared, we typed sendkey alt-ctrl-delete and pressed the Enter key.
This action sent to the virtual machine OS the key combination ALT+CTRL+Delete.
Finally, to switch back  to the guest screen we pressed ALT+CTRL+1.