vlc - playlist

unhappy with amarok's memory consumption -amarok 10.5% MEM vs. vlc 1.8%- I switched to VLC.
I'm listening to the same couple of radio stations throughout the day and had to figure out a way how to start vlc with those stations.
I thought the best way would be to save the stations to a playlist, but I didn't find a way how to save a playlist. After each restart the playlist came up empty.

Here's how it works for me now:

Media -> Open Network Stream -> Enter URL of the station's stream
do this for all stations needed
Save playlist to file. I saved it as "vlc-playlist.xspf" to my home directory.
Now you can either start VLC from the CLI with "vlc vlc-playlist.xspf" or add an Icon/Launcher to the GUI with the Command: "/usr/bin/vlc vlc-playlist.xspf" and vlc will start with the x stations saved in that playlist.

fuse - sshfs-fuse

tested on openSUSE 13.1 RC1
downloaded 2.4 at sourceforge.net, unpack and './configure'.

get the following error:

[...] checking pkg-config is at least version 0.9.0... yes
checking for SSHFS... configure: error: Package requirements (fuse >= 2.2 glib-2.0 gthread-2.0) were not met:
No package 'glib-2.0' found
No package 'gthread-2.0' found

Consider adjusting the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable if you
installed software in a non-standard prefix.

Alternatively, you may set the environment variables SSHFS_CFLAGS
and SSHFS_LIBS to avoid the need to call pkg-config.
See the pkg-config man page for more details.

install glib2-devel!

continue: ./configure, make and make install

then:
sshfs username@server:/directory /mountpoint

systemd - boot into emergency shell

when the the grub2 graphic boot screen appears press 'e', the grub text mode "setparams 'OS'" opens. move the error keys down and find the entry "linux".
go to end of the line to the last boot option and enter: systemd.unit=emergency.target
press F10 to boot and the system will boot into emergency mode/shell (just once).

on a side note: if there are more kernel installed find the entry (linux) matching the kernel you want to add the boot option.

permanent entries are added at the end of the line: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="" in the file /etc/default/grub.

(tested on openSUSE 13.1 beta) more infos on systemd: doc.openSUSE: Chapter 8. The systemd daemon

firefox - echofon

loved the app, because it gave me twitter updates in a small pop-up from where I could choose to my liking what to open and what not.
Now I'm getting: Can’t login to Twitter. (410 Gone (account_verify_credentials)) (for quite some time actually).
Today I got the time to look at it and found:Echofon for Firefox dies after Twitter API changes – Here’s how to get it back
I'm going to try it out later.

Update: works like a charm.

kmix high CPU usage

All of a sudden at startup kmix CPU usage spiked. Sometimes up to 70%.

After deleting the files in ~/.kde4/share/apps/kmix/profiles it's back to normal.

In the directory was a large (5MB) "PulseAudio.Playback_Streams.1.default.xml" file.

A forums entry at forums.opensuse.org pointed me to the file.

Searching online for that file will also bring up some Bugs reporting 100% CPU usage.

Nexus 7 - Security Setting

I installed an app VPN one click and for that I had to setup a PIN for "Screen lock".

This page explains how to set the screen lock. However since then I wasn't able to change the Screen lock to "Slide" (None, Slide and Face Unlock were grayed out).  Instead I needed to keep putting in the PIN.

I had to remove the VPN profiles, and that allowed me to see and choose one of the other options again.

Firefox 13.0 - saving incorrect bookmarks

Trying to bookmark a page a complete unrelated URL was saved and even trying to change it in "Show all Bookmarks" - "Location" didn't save the changes.

 To see if any of my extension are causing it I started Firefox without them, per Firefox Troubleshoot suggestions. Still wrong bookmarks were saved.

Then I was pretty sure the bookmarks file was corrupted and thought I'll give it a try and delete the "places.sqlite" file.

On openSUSE I just deleted the: my_home/.mozilla/firefox/_my_profile.default/places.sqlite and restarted Firefox.

Sure enough it was the solution to the problem for now.

Firefox also offers a howto to fix it.

flush swap

Once in a while swap fills up and there's 0 free swap space, so I like to flush it and make room.

swapoff -a
swapon -a

does the trick.

However you have to make sure to close applications consuming a lot of %MEM (see the output of "top") before doing this. In my case free Mem, was less than used Swap and I got:

 # swapoff -a
swapoff: /dev/sda2: swapoff failed: Cannot allocate memory

After closing Firefox which was using 34% of MEM at that time, swapoff and swapon worked well and I got 0 used Swap.

cannot execute binary file

trying to execute a binary file located on a NFS mount and get:

bash: ./_binary_: cannot execute binary file

thought I might miss the "exec" mount option, but no, the answer is here: forums.fedoraforum.org

"This message appears if you e.g. try to execute a 64 bit program on a 32 bit system. Please check with the "file" command whether the program fits your architecture."

"zypper up" error

Installation of _package_ failed:
(with --nodeps --force) Error: Subprocess failed. Error: RPM failed: error: db3 error(-30987) from dbcursor->c_get: DB_PAGE_NOTFOUND: Requested page not found
error: error(-30987) getting "" records from Requireversion index
error: db3 error(-30987) from dbcursor->c_get: DB_PAGE_NOTFOUND: Requested page not found
error: error(-30987) getting "" records from Requireversion index
error: db3 error(-30987) from dbcursor->c_get: DB_PAGE_NOTFOUND: Requested page not found
error: error(-30987) getting "" records from Requireversion index
error: db3 error(-30987) from dbcursor->c_get: DB_PAGE_NOTFOUND: Requested page not found
error: error(-30987) getting "" records from Requireversion index


When I tried to run a rebuild of the rpm database as root:

# rpm -rebuilddb
rpm: arguments to --root (-r) must begin with a /

Try:
user@host:~> su -c 'rpm --rebuilddb'