Adding Windows Truetype Fonts to Linux

Out of the box, modern Linux systems have an adequate number of fonts for any task.  However like all things Linux, they are different from what the user who has just migrated from Windows is used to having, even with the ttf-mscorefonts package installed  This post will be a quick tutorial on how to add those "missing" Windows fonts to your Linux system.

Quick legal disclaimer:  this is a technical how-to article, not a legal interpretation of Microsoft's EULA for Windows or any other software that may have installed Truetype fonts under Windows.  If you have any questions or concerns, read the license agreement for yourself or seek other counsel before proceeding.

The assumption is that Windows is still available in a multi-boot configuration and that the Windows partition can be mounted in Nautilus, the Linux file manager.  If that is not the case, there are many sources of truetype fonts available on the web for free, even including handwriting fonts if you're interested.  The basic steps are:

1. Open the Nautilus file manager and select the correct "nn Gb Filesystem", to mount the Windows partition
2. Open a terminal session and become root via the su command
3. cd /usr/share/fonts/truetype
4. mkdir winxp
5. cp /media/your_mount_point/Windows/Fonts/*.ttf  /usr/share/fonts/truetype/winxp

The above mixes using the UI and terminal to use the easiest of both.  Details of using the mount command can be found quickly elsewhere on the web - both to mount the Windows parition from the terminal or query the mount point Nautilus selected.  It'.s probably the only really long hex number though.  Mounting the partition via the UI and verifying that /Windows/Fonts exists was also much easier to write up.

Lastly, there's nothing unique about the choice of the winxp/ directory name.  If you choose to add additional fonts from other sources, choose any name (ex: myfonts/) for the directories you create, as long as they are all under /usr/share/fonts/truetype.

I just walked a relatively new Linux user through this and so thought a quick post might help someone else too.

Enjoy.

Learning to Love Linux

My entire family has been converted to Linux.  While I drove the adoption as the tech support in residence, the conversion wasn't always met with open arms by all.  In the end the the fear of the unknown was overcome and everyone did learn to (mostly) love Linux.

This post is a summary of the applications that have helped in that adoption.  There are many Windows to Linux application equivalence charts.  This won't be another one.  Nor is this a detailed analysis of the merits of various alternative applications.  Instead, like most posts on this site, is more statement of what worked for us, with minimal explanation.

User Interface

This is the area where adoption begins - initial navigation.  Being able to find, start and stop programs is crucial.  Like it or not, the 800 pound gorilla is Windows and it's navigation paradigm.  Following it has benefits both in home adoption and in transferring skills to systems outside the home, such as at school.  Based primarily on that plus overall out-of-the box functionality, Linux Mint is our main choice, however we have at least one of each below.

• Linux Mint - best Windows equivalent:  start menu, taskbar, min/max/close buttons
• Ubuntu - the foundation for the other two distributions:  inverted UI for Windows users, a lot of "the same only different"
• UNE (was UNR) - Screen optimized for netbooks:  nothing the same here, launcher very unique

Identical - Linux

These applications comprise most of the home computer usage in our family.  Either originally on Windows or once converted to Linux, these are identical.  It should probably be noted that no one is a PC gamer.  Those that enjoy those use dedicated consoles.

• Firefox - customizable web browsing
• Office - word processing, spreadsheet and presentations
• Picasa - photo management
• Google Desktop - desktop, email and web searching
• KeePassX - password manager 

 Office above refers to Open Office, which is cross platform.  Since most home users don't use 3% of the installed function of Office applications, switch the default file type to the Microsoft format (for sharing) and you'll never know the difference.

Alternatives - Linux

These are the native Linux applications that round out the functions wanted by the family.  Note that these links are given for information only.  Applications are installed via the package manager within a Linux system, not via web downloads.

• Banshee - music manager and mp3 sync.  Syncs perfectly to multiple mp3 players and Android.
• Songbird - music manager and iPod sync.  We have only one iPod owner and this works well for him.
• Totem movie player - DVD playback.  VLC has more options and may be use less CPU though.
• apcupsd - software control for APC UPS.  Battery operation options for UPS.
• gnuCash - accounting software.  Amazing software, gave it 14 months of usage, but switched back to Quicken.
• simplescan - multi sheet scanning to PDF.  The 300Mb+ of HP Solution Center is gone.
• Tomboy - cross platform - sticky notes, useful with DropBox. 

Productivity - Linux

Many people create written content either to send (email), print (documents) or remember (sticky notes).  Those that make a discipline out of creating content, in the hope they'll be more productive, might be interested in these.

• Nevernote - an open source, cross platform (near) clone of Evernote, focused on creating the "missing" Linux client
• Rednotebook - an open source, cross platform (including Windows portable version) journal and calendar application

Alternatives - Cloud

A switch in operating systems might also be a good time to look at cloud, or web based services.  Consider your access, storage and security needs.  You may find this is a good time to move to a computer anywhere model.

• Springpad - cross platform, web and mobile. Social and email linkage.  If I ever switched from Evernote, this would be it.  Maybe when I upgrade to Android 2.1, hmmm.
• Mint - Owned by Intuit, "Quicken Lite" - limited to pulling 3 months history when starting, relatively inflexible categories, very coarse grained tax designations.  But, like GnuCash, great for a free application.
• Google Docs - All office type applications and data are web based.  The performance lag, plus existing critical mass keep me from this, but there is a lot of positives if starting fresh.
• Dropbox - cross platform, web and mobile.  Synchronized file access for all your computers via the web.  Allows access from any web browser.

Identical - Wine

This section gives me a deja vu from my time as a OS/2 Version 3 (aka Warp) support engineer.  The Win 3.x compatibility and IBM's inability to market small systems led to OS/2s downfall, but I digress.  In any event, while trying alternatives I did test the following two 32bit Windows applications, which worked perfectly for everything I tested under Wine 1.2 (Windows emulator):

• Quicken 2009 - personal finance management
• Evernote 3.1 - tagged note taking, cross platform (except Linux), web and mobile

Don't Need

A short list of some of the things you'll no longer need to have bogging down your system, keeping updated or having to spend.

• Anti-Virus
• Anti-Spyware
• Disk Defrag
• Adobe Reader
• PDF Writer
• Proprietary Scanner
• Validation
• Upgrade $$$

Problems

Linux is not Utopian computing.  At the end of the day there are still some computer "they're all like that" issues - see the "mostly" comment at the start.  This is our short list of items that I haven't solved due to time, expertise or interest.  One of our Linux Mint systems loses X-Windows only occasionally when two users are logged in.  The UNE system uses a launcher that removed Places which makes local file sharing more inconvenient than it should be.  Our lowest end system (1.8Ghz/512Mb) runs movies better on WinXP, although everything else runs better under Linux Mint.  If none of these situations apply (or make sense to you), have no worries.

Still not sure?  Try one of the Live CD distributions.  While the actual boot is about 20 times slower than off a hard drive, you'll have full functionality once its up and running.  It will even allow installations (for that session) of additional software.

Hopefully this can be a small additional resource to those considering the move to Linux or just starting out.  Net:  the benefits far outweigh the small learning curve to be climbed.  You just might end up loving it.

Enjoy.

Keep Your Eyes Open

Often after a Windows cleanup or conversion to Linux the question comes up - "Is my PC secure/safe now?"  What is usually meant is "Am I safe to surf the web now?"  There is a distinction.  The short answer is no.

A relatively short and excellent example of why, written in layman's terms, was posted by Jeremiah Grossman.   Note that (at the time of this writing) visiting this site will put a harmless link in your Google history by way of demonstration, if you're logged in.

No operating system (Linux, OS X, Windows), full patched, loaded down with watchdog applications like anti virus, anti spyware, ad blockers, firewalls, etc will protect from browser based exploits.  No browser (Firefox, Safari, IE) or combination of plugins (NoScript, AdBlock) will make surfing totally secure either.  Content filtering and reputation based services (OpenDNS, SiteAdvisor) don't close the door.  Browser based exploits rely on vulnerabilities in the web sites you visit.

There are valid analogies between owning a computer and owning a car such as both requiring maintenance.  The key is that where and how you drive both can make a real difference in how safe you and your assets are.  Knowing what website to trust is very difficult, even for security professionals.  How do you make the selection - company size, market share, revenue?  Remember the exploit above - it was on Google - which ranks pretty high in each of those categories.

There is no easy single answer.  I've listed some suggestions previously for safe PC usage.  Secured operating systems, browsers and addons can help.  They just don't make things completely safe so you can close your eyes while driving web surfing.

Eating My Own Dog Food

I've written about "needs based computing" before as part of the decision process in buy vs clean in the Cleaning an Infected PC post.  This last week I had an opportunity to eat my own dog food when the integrated video failed on our home desktop.

This desktop is over six years old.  The power supply failed first a few years ago, which I replaced.  Then the integrated NIC failed a year later, which I disabled and added a 3Com PCI card to restore.  Lately the power supply has been running warm and I'd started to think that the over 52K hours that this machine has been in service had taken its toll.  When the video failed I was sure of it.

So what were the family computing needs?  Had they changed?  Increased?  Not really.  Basic web surfing, document creation, money and photo management, podcasts and music.  Pretty pedestrian stuff that the old 3.0Ghz system handled well.  Given the chance, I'd like to swap the desktop for a laptop, but this isn't the time to spend the significant money it would require to get comparable laptop performance.

Therefore, I decided to find a used system compatible with the known good components from my current system.  While there was some risk of transferring age related problems to the next machine, the immediate value equation seemed balanced.

So began checking Craigslist and the local computer shops for systems with comparable performance and compatable hardware to my current system.  The memory would be the biggest concern and the detailed specs at MemoryStock really helped speed the identification process.  The third leg the stool was insuring that the new target system was hardware compatible with my OS of choice - Linux Mint.  The Linux HCL is the definitive single source, plus Googling never hurts.

In the end, I purchased a Dell mid tower system from a local computer shop (Best Tek Support) and added in the working parts from the old machine.  Besides offering a 30 day warranty, they were incredibly flexible in configuring and pricing the system with only what I needed in it.

There's probably a "never say never" lesson for me in here too.  I stated when I bought the last desktop new, that I'd never build another custom system, piece by piece.  This came close, but I had a little fun with it too.  It has every kitchen sink media component I own installed (3.5", 250M Zip, 6-in-1 media reader, CD-RW/DVD-RW, IDE, SATA and more USB ports than I can count).

All in all a good value.  So far, we're enjoying it.  It meets our needs.

Windows XP Security - Linux Alternatives

This is the fourth and (intended) final article in a series on Windows XP security. The first three focused on cleaning malware, preventing malware with software and preventing malware with defensive computing habits. This article will identify how to prevent operating system level malware by switching operating systems.

There are a lot of reasons why Windows in all its versions, has the predominant market share in desktop computing. Discussion of those reasons would branch into the depths of marketing practices and technical merits. Without going there, I'd submit that at the end of the day it is due to preloading. Virtually every retail PC sold has Windows preloaded. Not many consumers will take time to research alternatives, learn new skills, potentially spend additional dollars - when they have something that works. As long as it works for you, I agree. For those that find it not working, at whatever threshold that is for you, continue reading.

For the vast majority of home users, at least those that I deal with that don't make their living in some form of technical field, it doesn't matter what they're running. Any device that allows web surfing, web mail, plays video and handles file attachments (documents and spreadsheets) will do just fine. With that market segment in mind, major PC manufacturers have started offering alternatives such as Dell does with Ubuntu (a distribution of Linux), often at reduced fees - because most all distributions of Linux are free.

The good news is that PC owners don't have to buy a new system to try a new operating system. It can be downloaded for free, tried without any risk or changes to the current operating system, then installed in a variety of co-existent or replacement modes. All at your own pace and comfort level.

Many choices exist for free and open source operating systems. Most will be some base form of Linux assembled into a bundle of applications called a distribution. The selection of which distribution is "best" or "right" is subjective, however all will offer security advantages over *a default* Windows XP installation. This is primarily because Linux distributions, like all Unix variants, are designed to work with the principle of "least privilege". Users do not run as system adminstrators. If elevated level of access is required, the user is prompted for their password, the task is completed then the default level of privilege is restored. All applications will run within this security model without additional steps. As described in earlier articles, it can be implemented in Windows XP, but not all applications will run seamlessly with this change. There have been modifications to the architecture of later versions of Windows, but this series focuses on XP.

For the majority of Windows users looking for alternatives, I believe Linux Mint will make for an extremely smooth transition. Linux purists will howl at this statement, but it is the most "Windows like" right out of the box. What it means to the "average" PC user is that it provides full multimedia support without any extra effort, meaning that you can listen to MP3's watch DVD's and view web pages that require Flash technology right after install. Wireless internet connectivity and printing will work seamlessly as well.

As many Linux distributions do, Linux Mint combines both the installation CD with a Live CD that will run the full operating system straight from the CD, without modifying the hard drive. Download the "Live CD, 32 bit, The standard version" from http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php The filetype of .iso you've downloaded is a CD image, meaning it must be opened by a CD burning program that can use it to make a CD. This is different than simply burning a file to CD. If you need a CD burning program for Windows, a good free one is CDBurnerXP from http://cdburnerxp.se/ The same site describes how to burn an ISO image to CD at http://cdburnerxp.se/help/Data/burn-iso

Boot from the CD for a couple of sessions and see how things work.  Recognize that the boot from the CD will be much slower than from an operating system installed to the hard drive because of the orders of magnitude speed difference in the two different disk technologies.  When you're ready to install to the hard drive, for the speed improvement and ability to save your customizations - backup your data!  Then you have several options:  installing under windows as any other application; installing in dual boot mode; completely replacing Windows XP as the sole operating system on the hard drive.  There are advantages to each.  Booted from the CD, selecting the Install icon on the Desktop and installing in dual boot mode may be the most comfortable choice for those starting out.

Additional information is available in the excellent Introduction to Linux Mint document, the Ubuntu (on which Mint is based) community documentation and many sites with guides to getting started using Linux for persons whose only experience is Windows.  If you want a system that runs clean and fast - and stays that way - it may be worth your time do do a little reading.  Don't be afraid to experiment either, with computers it can be the best way to learn.

In this series, I've attempted to cover the short course on tools and techniques I use when pressed into service to assist someone with a malware problem on Windows XP.   The articles have covered cleanup, two types of prevention and my recommended alternative to almost everyone (especially anyone I've helped more than once).  There are other similar articles around, written for there own purposes.  This series provides the answer for when I'm asked "what would you do?".

Now you know.  Enjoy.

Edited 2010.10.04 - Added Ubuntu community documentation reference.

Windows XP Security - Cleaning An Infected PC

Every so often I'm asked for advice on PC's. Usually running Windows XP. Typically running so slow that the owner is ready to buy a new one. The question then usually comes in one of the following two flavors: "What computer should I buy?" or "What would you do?". To avoid keeping anyone in suspense, my two answers are "The computer you can afford, which you can test running all the applications you want to use." and "Backup all data, reload an operating system, prevent it from happening again." respectively.

So for those adventurous souls that want to remain on Windows XP and control their own PC destiny, I've decided to write what will likely be an article series on my recommendations for the following Windows XP Security topics: Cleaning an Infected PC; Protecting a Clean PC; Safe PC Usage; Linux Alternatives.

The series will cover malware software issues on marginally running machines. Not software boot errors. Not hardware problems. Not Windows versions other than XP.  Not using tools I personally haven't had some measure of success with.  Let's get started.

Like most who find themselves in their circle of family and friends as the designated "computer expert" I have my own answers to both questions in the first paragraph, using my own set of preferred tools and techniques. While this is not part of my current professional role, in the past I have been part of infrastructure support teams. That experience guides some of my choices but really isn't reflected directly in the tools and techniques chosen. Mostly because I've chosen to focus on tool availability and comprehension for the "average" Windows PC user. For this reason as well, some tools and techniques might not be the choice of the experienced technorati, but should be well with the grasp of most and still provide good results.

If you're unsure if this is what you want to do, those with virtually unusable PC's have the following options:

• Pay a computer tech to fix the problem. The well known Geek Squad charges fees that start at $149 for in store service.  I've personally known friends that have paid close to $300 when everything was said and done. Too expensive for me.
• Buy a new computer. A decent laptop will still set you back around $600.  This is the most expensive option, and does have advantage of temporarily having a new machine. If the problem machine still exceeds specs for the applications you need to run, I'd rather make sure its truly hopeless before going this route.
• Fix it yourself. Obviously where this article comes in. The financial cost of this route is minimal, limited to a blank CD or two and possibly a USB flash drive. It's likely that most people already own both. The real cost here is time, potentially lots of it.

Realize that in order to save hundreds of dollars in support fees or for a new system, you are becoming your own computer expert.  You don't have to be an expert in every computer domain - that's impossible for anyone. You just have to become enough of an expert this one time to fix this one problem. Another thing that is impossible is for this article to contain enough prescriptive advice to cover every situation and every tool usage scenario. As an aside, its primarily for that reason that I've resisted writing an article like this before now. Therefore, the instructions provided assume some level of computer usage (not support) proficiency and leave it up to the reader to Google specific questions regarding a tool or technique recommended.

Having a cleanly running second computer available to search for information, download utilities, burn CDs and other tasks can make this odyssey a whole lot faster and easier, effectively determining the success of the effort.

Backup Data

Backing up data at this stage, before any changes are attempted has the risk at this stage of potentially backing up infected files, such as malicious macros contained in the above filetypes, but do it anyway. If something goes wrong later, it will be worth every second spent.  You can always make a second known good backup later.

1. Create a bootable CD from a Linux live cd distribution on a working system. Linux Mint is a good choice.
2. Boot the suspect system from the CD. You may need to set the boot order in the BIOS of the system to select the CD ahead of the hard drive.
3. Copy all data to a USB flash drive. USB 8Gb drives under $20 can be found on sale.  Booted using Linux Mint, select Menu then Computer. Those who have used copy and paste file operations with Windows Explorer should be comfortable copying directories to the USB device.
4. Make sure that data for all users is backed up. Look in "C:\Documents and Settings" to see the profiles of each user on the machine. Under each, good starting choices for backup would be "My Documents" and "Favorites".
5. Only backup data files such as documents, spreadsheets, presentations, financial, music, photos, etc. Don't backup the actual applications themselves.
6. Backup your product keys, especially for Microsoft products such as Windows and Office. Product key finders can make this easier. Some applications will list their keys under the menu items Help / About.

Set Limits

Don't skip this step. Even for experienced PC technicians, cleanup can take hours of research, utility execution and experimentation. Professional support teams usually have limits they'll expend in investigation on unknown problems - some as short as 10 minutes for a unusable machine - then they reimage (reload) the operating system on the machine. Its faster (and more enjoyable) to reconfigure a clean, fast machine once reloaded, than to spend more time trying to clean a painfully slow infected one.

Clean Up

Download the tools below on a known good machine. Malware may block and/or infect these as the download and attempt to run. Plus the performance will likely be terrible - why you started this in the first place. Burn to a CD - not a USB flash drive, but a device that malware can't corrupt. Boot the suspect machine in safe mode with networking by pressing F8 once a second or so, after the BIOS spash screen (the first screen of any type) displays. Login as administrator, insert the tools CD you just burned, run or install each one at a time, according to directions on the download site. Some may not run in Safe Mode and will tell you so. Its still best to try first.

1. McAfee Stinger - http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/  Follow the steps on the download site.
2. Ad-Aware - http://www.lavasoft.com/  Install the application and all updates. Run a full scan.
3. Spybot-S&D - http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html  Install the application and all updates. Run a full scan.
4. CCleaner - http://www.ccleaner.com/  Install and run the application. Use the Tools to investigate and Disable any suspected malware that is set to Autostart.  Google Tools you don't recognize by File, initially disabling (vs deleting) ones that are suspect.  Analyze and clean the system with the Cleaner. Scan and clean the Registry.  Reboot after usage.
5. Malicious Software Removal Tool - http://www.microsoft.com/security/malwareremove/default.aspx  Install the application and run a full scan.  Note that the tool itself is updated the second Tuesday of every month, with additional threat removal capabilities.
6. Browser Hijacks - For Internet Explorer, follow the steps at http://www.microsoft.com/security/spyware/browserhijacking.aspx  For Firefox, follow the steps at http://kb.mozillazine.org/Standard_diagnostic_-_Firefox  You may want to have a clean download of Firefox on the CD.

The next set of tools are actually built into the Windows operating system.  No download needed.

1. Task Manager - Ctrl-Alt-Del, choose Task Manager. Choose the process tab and look around. Columns can be sorted by double clicking on the header. Start with Googling "Image Name"s that have high CPU utilization, either constantly or in spikes. Stop any that you believe are malware by Right Clicking, then choosing End Process. Choosing the wrong one may de-stabilize your system.
2. Service Management - Press the Windows Key + R, type services.msc, press ENTER.  Focus initially on items that show Startup Type as Automatic. Google ones you suspect, then Disable by right clicking, selecting Properties... and using the dropdown for Startup Type.

The next tool isn't for downloading and burning to CD, but for execution on a machine that is running to the point where it can reliably bring up a browser to connect to the internet.

1. Trend Micro Online AV Scan - http://housecall.trendmicro.com/
   

Deep Cleaning

Can't get the anti-malware programs to launch from the CD? Perhaps a window or splash screen opens momentarily and then goes away? You no longer own your machine - a malware supervisor program is controlling what loads. Seriously think about reformatting the drive and reloading everything. If you're still in the game, these next two bootable CD's may keep you going. Focus initially on populating only the anti-malware tools. Be sure to have your original Windows CD handy. Building these is another task to perform on a clean machne.

1. BartPE - http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
2. UBCD - http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

A good summary of bootable utility CDs is available on LifeHacker.  Another good summary, including using PhotoRec to recover deleted files, is from CGSecurity.

Investigate

These can be used at any time. Check for high CPU utilization, strange file/process names, listening ports open to sites you don't recognize, etc. This is the truly deep dive territory, but remember - "Google is your friend".

1. Process Explorer - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx  Lists all running processes and open files.
2. CurrPorts - http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/cports.html  Lists all process and applications which have open connections (ports) to the internet, potentially sending out information or waiting for instructions
3. HijackThis - http://download.cnet.com/Trend-Micro-HijackThis/3000-8022_4-10227353.html  Lists all locations on the PC that process are started from.
4. WinDirStat - http://download.cnet.com/WinDirStat/3000-2248_4-10614593.html  Graphically displays disk space utilization

So in closing, manage your time carefully and consider my original advice: "Backup all data, reload an operating system, prevent it from happening again." Backup was covered in this article, we'll get to the rest later.


Disclaimer - no warranty is expressed or implied by this article.  Proceed at your own risk.  Understand all directions and consequences before using any tools or making any system modifications.  I have no affiliation with any product, service, or retail establishment listed above as they are given for illustration purposes only.


Edit 2010.09.28 - Added specific browser hijack advice.  Clarified a few lines.
Edit 2010.10.04 - Added product key backup.
Edit 2010.10.15 - Added bootable CD links

Android App Picks + Playlist Solution

A quick update on life with the Android, specifically a few application picks and one solution to a problem stated back in May. Not exhaustive and excludes the ones auto installed with the phone distribution. There's still a balance to keep in mind, it's not a laptop, but these work for me.

Essential

• Seesmic - If you use Twitter, you need Seesmic. Everywhere.
• Facebook - I know, but its essential to stay connected to dispersed family.
• Advanced Task Killer - One stop application termination to cleanup all the apps you've opened and switched away from.
  

Fun

• Google Sky Map - this has been an fun/impressive app when camping at the beach. Like any astronomy, not so much in the suburbs.
• Barcode Scanner - can be used to scan SKU labels for quick price comparisons
• Guitar Chords Lite - clean, lightweight UI for quick chord reference
• Reversi, Chess, Checkers, MeteroLite - probably haven't played a full game of any, but work well when I hand the phone off on long car trips
  

In Progress

• EverNote - The "Evernote GTD How To" (don't change a thing, trust me) took my favorite desktop app one step up. However, Saved Searches don't translate to the Android app so full GTD is out, but the text and audio notes do allow me to get things out of my mind.
  

Not For Me

• NewsRob - Just not the same as Google Reader
  

Future

• Kindle - My firmware doesn't support it, but this is one I really want to like. Not sure I want to go rogue just to try this either - at least not now.
• Any automated task killer - for the apps that auto restart that I don't (think) I need. Need to learn more about why some auto start first. Edit 2010.09.09 - Task Manager does this well. Ignore and Auto-kill lists, plenty of options, don't have to be an Android internals expert.
  

Playlist Solution

• Banshee pulls down and syncs podcasts plus my music just fine, but it nor any Linux app will transfer playlists. Turns out Android will read any .m3u file with a directory structure as a playlist.
• So mount the SD card, switch to music/ and issue "find . -name "*.mp3" > PlayListName.m3u", then gedit as needed. Once the file is saved and the SD card unmounted, the installed Music app will now automatically find and use the playlist. Not perfect or automatic, but good enough for me.

If it helps someone...Enjoy!

Linux FLV to 3GP Conversion

A short how-to post for Android owners who want to run Adobe Flash video they've saved on their Linux system.

The music player on the Samsung Moment handles WMA, AAC, MP3, WAV, MIDI, and OGG format music files. The video player will handle MPEG4, H.264, and XVID formats. A fairly wide range of choices that have all worked right out of the box. The YouTube application works well for streaming video but doesn't have an option to open archived .flv Flash video. They need to be converted to 3GP to be played in the Gallery app.

The tool of choice to convert flv to 3gp is ffmpeg, however Ubuntu ships a version without the required libfaac codec due to licensing differences. To add the support, install the following packages from the packages.mediabuntu.org/non-free repository:

• libav*-extra-52
• libav*-unstripped-52
• libamrnb3
• libamrwb3
• libavutil-extra-49 (will be added automatically as a dependency)

Once those packages are installed, the following command will produce a video that can be played on the phone:

ffmpeg -i input.flv -s qcif -vcodec h263 -acodec libfaac output.3gp

Valid frame sizes (-s) at 4:3 are 128x96, 176x144, 352x288, 704x576, and 1408x1152. The qcif value is an alias for 176x144, more are listed in the video options linked below. You may want to experiment depending on the ratio of the original source.

Some useful resources if this doesn't work just right for you:

• The ffmpeg docs, particularly the video options
• The ffmpeg faq
• A ffmpeg how-to (very informative on cropping)
  

Like a lot of things, not too difficult in the final analysis. Just took a little time to find the right pieces and assemble them. Hopefully this will save someone some of that time.

Enjoy.

Audio Sync - PC to Samsung Moment

About two months ago I was fully assimilated into all things Google with the purchase of an Android phone, specifically a Samsung Moment. Overall the upgrade has been very smooth, opening up a whole new (to me) world of mobile communication options. One thing that was initially elusive to track down, was how to sync podcasts and music from a PC to the phone. This post contains the key elements of making it work, to maybe save others some time.

Initially, connecting the phone to a PC produced absolutely no action no the PC side. All my home PC's are various Linux distros so I thought that might be a problem, but attempting on a WinXP box produced the same results. While the following steps defy logic at some level, they are the only known - and repeatable - solution I've discovered:

- Select: Menu / Settings / Application settings / Development / USB debugging
- Toggle USB debugging on, then back to off. Reboot the phone. Connect the phone to the PC.
- The notification bar will show "USB Connected". Select the notice, then choose "Mount"
- The phone will now be available as a 2GB removable drive on the PC

At this point the SD card is mounted, but no music player (Rythmbox, Banshee, Windows Media Player, etc.) will recognize the device. The final puzzle piece is to place the a file named .is_audio_file at the root of the mounted drive. I found a site with documentation on the file format, and using it as a guide, created the following configuration which seems to work well.

audio_folders=music/,media/
folder_depth=2
output_formats=audio/mpeg,audio/ogg,audio/x-ms-wma,audio/wav,audio/x-aac
cover_art_file_type=bmp
cover_art_file_name=cover.bmp
cover_art_size=100

The music/ directory was created just to keep it separate from the media/ directory which was present already. Sync will only use the first directory in the list. Additional entries will allow the PC side player to search all supported media on the SD card. One last tech note - make sure to do a software eject / unmount before on the PC, then turn off USB storage on the phone, before disconnecting your phone when all sync'ing is done!

A few caveats though. Rythmbox shows the device simply as "2.0 GB Filesystem" while Banshee identifies it as "SAMSUNG_Android". Also, the cover_art settings above are effectively ignored as cover art transfer is a known problem with Android. There seems to be some online consensus that a paid app named "Album Art Grabber" will correct the problem, but I haven't tried it personally. Lastly playlists will not transfer as such, but must be recreated on the phone itself - not so good.

That sounds like a substantial list, but to stay current with a few podcast subscriptions and have a relatively small music collection for use during commutes, it works well enough. Those wanting to sync a more substantial collection or that would prefer a more complete experience may disagree.

As stated at the start, there is relatively little info available on this specific phone regarding sync features. The tech support for the carrier wasn't particularly helpful either. If anyone has a better configuration or complete solution for the Samsung Moment, particularly in Linux, feel free to post a comment.