As Debian/Ubuntu user, I am spoiled when it comes to update management: apt-get updates most of my software, and apticron notifies me when updates are available. For WordPress however, the packaged versions of Debian/Ubuntu are really old and less adjustable which unfortunately makes a manual installation inevitable. While there are several automated WordPress update mechanisms out there, I couldn’t find a simple notify-on-update tool.

This post introduces the WordPress Update Notifier (WP-UN), a simple script that frequently compares the installed WordPress version with the latest available one. If a new version is available, it sends an e-mail to a given address.

Requirements

WP-UN needs a local mail server such as Sendmail or Postfix to deliver the notification e-mail.

Download & Installation

Download the script, save it to your preferred location and make it executable:

$ wget -O /usr/local/bin/wp-un \
          http://blog.philippheckel.com/uploads/2010/01/wp-un
$ chmod +x /usr/local/bin/wp-un

That’s it for the installation. The script can now be called by simply running wp-un.

Download: WP-UN 0.1, January 2010

Usage

Now you can call the script with the following arguments:

• –test: to test if the notification works, use the –test parameter (optional).
• INSTALL-DIR: the path to your local WordPress installation, for example /var/www/myblog.
• NOTIFY-EMAIL: the e-mail address of the person to notify if a new WordPress version is available.

By default, the script is completely silent so that adding a cronjob doesn’t require output redirections. If, however, the –test option is given, it is more verbose and sends the notification e-mail in any case.

If a new WordPress version is available, the output looks something like this:

$ wp-un --test /var/www/myblog admin@example.com
Checking installed version... WordPress 2.5.1
Checking latest version... WordPress 2.9.1
Update required; Sending notification to admin@example.com... done.

If WordPress is up-to-date, WP-UN would normally not send any notification. If, however, the –test option is enabled, it sends the e-mail no matter what. In this case, the output will look like this:

$ wp-un --test /var/www/myblog admin@example.com
Checking installed version... WordPress 2.9.1
Checking latest version... WordPress 2.9.1
Update not necessary; WordPress is up-to-date.
TEST-flag enabled: sending notfication to admin@example.com... done.

The notification you receive will look like this:

 The WordPress installation on host example.com needs an update:
 
   Installed Version: WordPress 2.5.1
                  at: /var/www/myblog
 
      Latest Version: WordPress 2.9.1
            Download: http://www.wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz

As cronjob

If you want to be notified as soon as a new version comes out, installing a cronjob is a good idea. Simply run crontab -e and add the following line to the file:

0 6 * * * /usr/local/bin/wp-un /var/www/myblog admin@example.com

WP-UN will now run every morning at 6am and notify you if a new WordPress version is out there!

Conclusion

WP-UN is just one of many solutions and it’s only the work of one afternoon. However, it doesn’t need any additional software and keeps it simple. It serves its purpose and keeps my WordPress installation always up-to-date. If you have any suggestions or questions, feel free to comment below.>

1^st step: Copy the flash video files (capture the FLV-files)

Ubuntu (and I guess nearly every Linux distribution) makes it really easy to download the flash videos which can be streamed on platforms like Youtube and all the others. Bad luck for Windows users.

• Just open your browser (Opera in my case, Firefox does it too)
• Go to the website with the video you want to stream
• Hit “Play”, wait a few seconds and push “Pause” so that the video starts to buffer
• Now open the /tmp-folder in a file manager like Nautilus or Konquerer
• You will find a file with a name like “Flashzad23″, in any case something starting with “Flash”
• Rename this file to “my-youtube-video.flv”. This also works when the buffering process has not been finished yet

That’s it.

If you just want to watch the video, it’s possible to just open it with your favourite player such as VLC, Totem, MPlayer, etc. This also works while it is still buffering! But since you want to copy it to the iPod Video, you need to resize/re-encode it to a m4v- or mov-file.

2^nd step: Resize/Re-encode the flv-file for the iPod Video

Unfortunately, I didn’t find a perfect and fast solution to re-encode flv-videos for the iPod. I will demonstrate two ways, the fast one for movies and series you only want to watch once. And the perfect one for videos you want to keep on the iPod for a longer time.

Install “ffmpeg” from the Medibuntu repository

For both ways it is at least necessary to install the packages ffmpeg and libavcodec0 from the Medibuntu Repository instead of the regular Ubuntu reps.

You can find out how to do this on the Ubuntu help pages.

The fast way

The fast way a one big disadvantage: The iPod isn’t able to estimate the length of the video. That means it’s not possible to use the nice diamond control to jump within the video. Regular rewind and fast-forward is still possible anyway.

Luckily, you only need one tool: ffmpeg. Just install it via apt-get:

$ apt-get install ffmpeg

Basically, just use this command to convert a flv-file to a mov-file (readable/playable by the iPod Video):

$ ffmpeg -i "my-youtube-video.flv" -f mp4 -vcodec mpeg4 -maxrate 1000k \
   -b 700k -qmin 3 -qmax 5 -bufsize 4096 -g 300 -acodec aac -ab 192k \
   -s 320x240 -aspect 4:3 "my-youtube-video.mov"

To simplify the mass-conversion, I wrote a tiny script which can be copied to your own “.bin”-directory (cp. this article):

#!/bin/bash
 
for file in $@; do
        ffmpeg -i $file -f mp4 -vcodec mpeg4 -maxrate 1000k -b 700k -qmin 3 -qmax 5 \
           -bufsize 4096 -g 300 -acodec aac -ab 192k -s 320x240 -aspect 4:3 $file.mov
done

The perfect (and slow) way

Well, this way might be the better one since the disadvantage from above doesn’t occur. Unfortunately, it does take a lot longer. A LOT! But just try it out by yourself.

I found an flv-to-iPod (m4v) encoding script on ubuntu.com written by John Dong. Find instructions and installation hints to the script on the Ubuntu Wiki

3^rd and last step: Transfer the video to the iPod

Use gtkpod or your favorite iPod managing software to transfer the video to your iPod.
I hope this helped a little. Please let me know if you have difficulties or found a better (easier) way to do the conversion!

Update Feb/09

Apparently, this can be solved in a really easy way as Mads Buus suggested in the comments-section. The GNOME desktop environment ships with a tool called gnome-open, which can be used for this:

$ gnome-open .

This opens Nautilus in the current working directory. Note: Don’t forget the dot after the command!

You might also want to look how to make a shortcut for this command, cmp. Mads Buus’ comment below. Thanks again for this much easier solution!

The solution

The solution is basically just a one-line command:

$ echo "'`pwd`'" | xargs nautilus --browser

To make it shorter, we can just put these lines in a script called naut. You can either save the script where you like to or put it in your very own .bin-directory (which I will do here).

$ mkdir ~/.bin
$ echo -e '#!/bin/bash\necho "'\''`pwd`'\''" | xargs nautilus --browser' > ~/.bin/naut
$ chmod +x ~/.bin/naut

Make sure to add the .bin-directory to your PATH variable:

$ echo -e '\n# Private binaries\nexport PATH=$PATH:~/.bin' >> ~/.bashrc

Usage of the naut-command

You can now use the naut-command in your console window (make sure to restart the console window before). Here is a small example:

$ cd "/very/long and complicated/path/to/a/very/important/directory"
$ naut

Et voilà , the Nautilus window will pop up.

For the customer interface of Silversun, I wanted to use RC as the internal web mail application and therefore had to embed it into my system. To avoid that the customer has to log in twice (customer interface and Roundcube), I had to simulate the login request with a PHP script.

Update Nov/08:
After the comment of Matias, I reviewed the code and fixed some issues. Now it should work properly even with the newest Roundcube version (0.2-beta). The class file itself contains installation instructions. Please read them carefully.

Update Mar/09:
Just tested the script with version 0.2.1 and it works like a charm, at least for my installation.

Update Dec/09:
Diego just confirmed (via e-mail) that the script also works for 0.3.1 without modification.

Update May/10:
I just tested the scripts with Roundcube 0.4-beta, and it still works without modification. I also added the section Debugging make it easier to figure out what’s wrong.

Prepare RC

To perform the Roundcube login via a web site, it is necessary to turn off the check_ip/ip_check option in the main.inc.php file, because our script (= server IP address) will send the login data and pass it to RC instead of the user’s browser (= user IP address).

The RoundcubeLogin class

This small class only consists of four functions and it shouldn’t be necessary to modify it in order to get the login to work.

• RoundcubeLogin.class.php
  Provides the functionality to login, logout and check the login status.
• rclogin.php
  A small script to test if everything works as expected.

The class provides four public methods:

• login($username, $password)
  Perform a login to the Roundcube mail system.
  Note: If the client is already logged in, the script will re-login the user (logout/login). To prevent this behaviour, use the isLoggedIn()-function.
  Returns: TRUE if the login suceeds, FALSE if the user/pass-combination is wrong
  Throws: May throw a RoundcubeLoginException if Roundcube sends an unexpected answer (that might happen if a new Roundcube version behaves differently)
• isLoggedIn()
  Checks whether the client/browser is logged in and has a valid Roundcube session.
  Returns: TRUE if the user is logged in, FALSE otherwise.
  Throws: May also throw a RoundcubeLoginException (see above).
• logout()
  Performs a logout on the current Roundcube session.
  Returns: TRUE if the logout was a success, FALSE otherwise.
  Throws: May also throw a RoundcubeLoginException (see above).
• redirect()
  Simply redirects to Roundcube.

Sample usage

The script below demonstrates how the class can be used. If the client is already logged in, it simply redirects the browser to the Roundcube application. If not, it performs a login and then redirects to Roundcube.

<?php
 
include "RoundcubeLogin.class.php";	
 
# Create RC login object.
# Note: The first parameter is the URL-path of the RC inst.,
#       NOT the file-system path
# e.g. http://host.com/path/to/roundcube/ --> "/path/to/roundcube"
$rcl = new RoundcubeLogin("/roundcube/", $debug);
 
try {
   # If we are already logged in, simply redirect
   if ($rcl->isLoggedIn())
      $rcl->redirect();
 
   # If not, try to login and simply redirect on success
   $rcl->login("some-email-address", "plain-text-password");
 
   if ($rcl->isLoggedIn())
      $rcl->redirect();
 
   # If the login fails, display an error message
   die("ERROR: Login failed due to a wrong user/pass combination.");
}
catch (RoundcubeLoginException $ex) {
   echo "ERROR: Technical problem, ".$ex->getMessage();
   $rcl->dumpDebugStack(); exit;
}
 
?>

Debugging

If you’re having problems with the RoundcubeLogin.class.php class itself, try using the rclogin.php-file for debugging: open the file in your browser (http://myhost/roundcube/rclogin.php), and take a look at the output. The RoundcubeLogin-class performs a series of request/response cycles and parses the output to figure out if you’re logged in.

Known issues:

1. No Roundcube installation found at ‘…’
   This error message is thrown if the path-value in the RoundcubeLogin constructur was not set correctly. It must be set to the part of the URL that represents the path, e.g. in case of http://myhost/roundcube/ you must create the object like this:

   $rcl = new RoundcubeLogin("/roundcube/");

2. Unable to determine login-status due to technical problems.
   This error can occur in the methods login(), logout() and isLoggedIn(). The RoundcubeLogin-class expects Roundcube to send certain headers in response to the login/logout-requests. If those headers could not be found, this error is thrown. Possible reasons are:
   • New RC version
   • Cookies must be enabled
   • ip_check/check_ip option in the main.inc.php must be false
3. Unable to determine the login status. Unable to continue due to technical problems.
   This error occurs if the script cannot determine if you are logged in or not, because the returned HTML code neither contains the login-form (= logged out) nor the message DIV (= logged in). This might happen if Roundcube changed the HTML-code.

I’m open for suggestions

Please feel free to post your comment or suggestions. That’s the only way to ensure that it works with all versions.

Preparation: Create a short mute-script

Create your custom .bin-directory, add it to your .bashrc, create a mute-script and make it executable.

 $ mkdir ~/.bin
 $ echo -e '\n# Private binaries\nexport PATH=$PATH:~/.bin' >> ~/.bashrc
 $ echo -e '#!/bin/bash\namixer set Master mute' > ~/.bin/mute
 $ chmod +x ~/.bin/mute

Avoid the embarrassment: Use the script

You can now use the script by simply typing mute in your console window. To use it before logging into GNOME/KDE, follow these steps.

• Switch to a different tty by pressing CTRL+ALT+F1
• Log in with your username and password
• Run the script by typing mute
• And finally switch back to the graphical login window: CTRL+ALT+F7

Well, I hope this helps a little. Of course you don’t have to use the script but can just type:

$ amixer set Master mute

.