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  • 1 min read

Converting videos to xvid on Linux

I wanted to convert some video files on my Linux system to the xvid codec so that I could see them on my PS3. The solution I found was using the mencoder package.

#!/bin/bash

# this script converts videos given to it to the xvid codec, IN PLACE,
# this means it replaces the original files...

for x in "$@"; do
    echo "$x"
    y="$x.tmp"
    mencoder "$x" -ovc xvid -oac copy -xvidencopts fixed_quant=4 -o "$y"
    ret=$?
    if [[ $ret -eq 0 ]]; then
        mv "$y" "$x"
        ret=$?
        if [[ $ret -ne 0 ]]; then
            echo "problem moving file $x"
            break
        fi
    else
        echo "problem converting file $x"
        break
    fi
done
  • 1 min read

Finding thread info on Solaris

As part of a crusade to find bugs in a C++ program running on a Solaris system I needed to find out information about all the threads belonging to a certain process.

The program is written the way it is because you rarely need thread info about all threads running in a system but rather threads limited to a certain process. A different way to get this info is through the /proc file system but unfortunately (or fortunately ?!?) files in this Solaris file system usually have binary content as opposed to the textual content that one usually finds on a Linux system.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

# Give this script the name of a process and it will show you thread
# infomation about your process...

use strict;
use diagnostics;

if(@ARGV<1) {
    die("usage myps.pl [process names...]");
}

for(my($p)=0;$p<@ARGV;$p++) {
    my($pname)=$ARGV[$p];
    print "showing diagnostics information for process $pname\
";

    # first lets find out the pid of the process
    my($pid)=`pgrep $pname`;
    chop($pid);
    print "The process id of the process is $pid\
";

    # now lets print all the thread info for that process...
    my(@lines)=`ps -eL`;
    for(my($i)=0;$i<@lines;$i++) {
        my($line)=$lines[$i];
        my(@fields)=split(" ",$line);
        if($fields[0] eq $pid) {
            print $line;
            #print(join('-',@fields));
        }
    }
}
  • 1 min read

New blog set up

I have moved my blog from Google to my own machine. This is the new blog. I need to transfer all my old posts from my old machine. Hope you will like this one better than the old but this will assuredly give me more control over my data and the blogs look feel and features.