Handbrake batch conversion using CLI shell script

I contributed to a Handbrake forum a while back. Thought you might find it useful too. This is my evolving script for transcoding DVDs from MacTheRipper. 1) Save the file in a logical place (I keep it in the Movies Folder… same place I rip movies to). It will...

Hosts File on Mac

I can never remember the path to the hosts file on my MacBook Pro. So, here it is: sudo nano /private/etc/hosts

Find Large Files in Linux

This doesn’t work perfectly, but I often use it to start tracking down disk hogs: To return the 10 largest items in a given directory: du -cksh * |sort -rn |head -11 Some times it’s helpful to view all du -cksh * |sort -rn If someone has a better approach,...

Find Failed Login Attempts in Logs

Looking for a log to show you failed login attempts to your Linux machine? Look in: /var/log/btmp You can access it by running: /usr/bin/lastb It’s similiar to the wtmp log of user login/logouts and the utmp log showing who is currently logged...

Sync iCal with Google Calendar

Products like Spanning Sync allow you to sync your iCal with your Google calendar. Now Google has a new service called “Google Calendar CalDAV” that allows you to do the same thing. Details at: Enable Google Calendar in iCal I tried it and it works very...

Change Runtime Settings for Linux Servers

I install RHEL on all my production machines and CentOS on all my test/development boxes. Installing the GUI is helpful for configuration, but you sure don’t want to run them that way all the time. So after everything is installed, configured and tested, I make...