So it was obviously a permissions issue, and here’s what the permissions looked like on that file:

-rwxr----- 1 root svn 0 Aug 12 18:00 txn-current-lock


Oops – I could only read but not write that file. Looking further it turns out the entire repo only had root write permissions, even though it was owned by the ‘svn’ group – I’m not sure how that happened, possibly a stupid mistake on my part. I had already set up a ‘svn’ group and added the users I wanted to have access to the repo to the ‘svn’ group, so I just had to make the repo writable by the group.

The fix was simple:
sudo chmod -R g+w /var/svn/foo/*
(where foo is the name of the repo)

I have an improved solution. I wrote a quick BASH script that scans all the videos it finds in the Matroska (.mkv) format in the current directory as well as any subdirectories it finds, removing all compression from .mkvs it finds and saving a new mkv with “fixed” appended to the filename.

#!/bin/bash
#
# This script will traverse all subdirectories looking for Matroska (.mkv) files
# When an .mkv file is found, it will be checked for compression
# If compression is found, create a new file without compression with "-fixed" added to name
# (e.g. badmovie.mkv -> badmovie-fixed.mkv)
#
# Run from the root directory that you want to begin scanning from (e.g. /home/foo/Videos or /media/USBdrive)
#
#
# 1/22/2012 v2
# better handling for files with spaces; removes all compression, not just track 1
# remove the need for a command line parameter
#
start=`pwd`/
echo $start
find -type d | while read directory
do
cd "$start${directory#"./"}"
for file in *.mkv
do
if mkvinfo "$file" | grep ompress > /dev/null
then
file_length=${#file}
cut_len=$(($file_len - 4))
prefixedfile=${file:0:$cut_len}-fixed.mkv
fixedfile=${prefixedfile// /.}
mkvmerge -o "$fixedfile" --compression -1:none "$file"
if mkvinfo $fixedfile | grep compression > /dev/null
then
echo "$fixedfile still has issues"
exit
fi
fi
done
cd ..
done


Note, I edited this post on 1/22/12 with the current version of this script which handles filenames with spaces and removes all compression, not just the first track.

So to disable it, set StartServer=false in .config/akonadi/akonadiserverrc:

[QMYSQL]
Name=akonadi
......
StartServer=false

It might still load if you use KDE-dependent apps, or it might cause your system to blow up. But that should do the trick.

Anyway, once in a while the WD refuses to play a video in the Matroska “mkv” format, particularly those using the H.264 codec encoded with the mkvmerge utility. When this happens the WD basically shows a black screen and more or less locks up. Once that happens on the WD you can only eject the HD and reboot.

The fix for this is to remove video compression on the mkv in question, which sounds daunting but really is only a one-line command that takes a couple of minutes to execute and doesn’t change the quality of the video. You need the mkvmerge program which is part of the mkvtoolnix package in Ubuntu. mkvtoolnix is also available for Windows if you’re stuck there.

Here’s the command:
mkvmerge -o output.mkv --compression -1:none input.mkv

Where input.mkv is your original file and output is the fixed file.
(Edited: I changed the command to remove /all/ compression in an mkv)

You have chosen to open
foobarbaz.zip
Which is a: BIN file

Firefox 3.x, for whatever reason, greyed out the option for me to tell it not to keep asking me if I wanted to unzip the file, and I’d have to click the “save to file” option every time.

Tired of trying to figure out how to ungrey the greyed-out button, I looked for another solution. I found one in /etc/mime.types, which Firefox, among other things, uses to determine what to do with a file.

sudo vi /etc/mime.types
look for this line:
application/zip zip
change it to:
#application/zip zip

You don’t even need to restart Firefox. Firefox will now just prompt you to save the zip file /only/.