How to check Sound Module Installed - Ubuntu

Is the System Recognizing Sound Card in Ubuntu

Open a terminal window, and type "aplay -l". Your output should look something like this:

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: ALC861VD Analog [ALC861VD Analog]
Subdevices: 0/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

If you see aplay: device_list:221: no soundcard found..., Ubuntu is not recognizing your sound card for playback. Check that you have the proper modules installed.

Lock your screen while away - Ubuntu

Lock your screen while away

Locking your screen prevents other people from accessing your computer while you are away from it. All of your applications and work remain open while the screen is locked, and the screensaver is displayed.

You can lock your screen in one of the following ways:

• Press System → Lock Screen.

• Press Control+Alt+L to lock the screen. This keyboard shortcut can be changed in System → Preferences → Keyboard Shortcuts.

	You can add a Lock Screen button to a panel for easy access. Right-click a panel (for example, the panel at the top of the screen), select Add to Panel... and drag the Lock Screen item to the desired location.

To unlock the screen, move the mouse or press a key. Then, type your password and either press the Enter key or press the Unlock button.

If more than one person has a user account on your computer and the screen is locked, other users can press the Switch user... button to use the computer, even while the screen is locked. They will be unable to access your currently-open work, and you will be able to switch back to your locked session when they have finished using the computer.

Cannot patch or upgrade ESX 4.0 hosts with vSphere Host Update Utility

Symptoms

Information similar to the following appears in the Host Details pane in ESX 4.0:

Status: Ready

Info: Patching this host version is not supported by vSphere Host Update Utility.
Upgrading this host version is not supported by vSphere host Update Utility.

Resolution

This information appears because the vSphere Host Update Utility cannot be used to apply Host Updates and Patches to ESX 4.0 hosts.

The vSphere Host Update Utility can only be used to apply Host Updates and Patches to ESXi 4.0 hosts.

For more information, see the About Host Updates and Patches chapter of the vSphere Upgrade Guide and the online Help for the vSphere Host Update Utility.

Additional Information

You can use vSphere Host Update Utility to upgrade ESX 3.x hosts to ESX 4.x.
You can use vSphere Host Update Utility to upgrade ESXi 3.5 hosts to ESXi 4.x.

Determining the number of deployed virtual machines and virtual routers

Purpose

This article provides steps for determining how many virtual machines and virtual routers are deployed in your Lab Manager environment.

Resolution

To determine the number of deployed virtual machines and virtual routers:

1. In the left pane, click Resources.
2. Click the Hosts tab.
3. Look at the column Total VMs. This column lists the number of deployed virtual machines and virtual routers.
   

Virtual machines might not respond sometimes during LUN failovers

Virtual machines might not respond sometimes during LUN failovers

Details

During a disk LUN failover, under certain conditions, virtual machines might stop responding for approximately one minute.
This issue is found in ESX 3.x and 4.x versions.

This issue is design specific. In x86 and x64 architectures, disk subsystems are prone to failures and allows transient failures and retrying, but the architecture does not allow retrying transient failures in the memory subsystem.

When transient failures of the underlying disk occur, the guest is not informed of these failures. Instead, by design, the guest operations are postponed until
the disk subsystem recovers completely.

If you are using a network-based storage to back up the guest physical memory, the response time might be more.

Solution

This issue is design specific.

How to Play HD-DVD / Blu-Ray Disc under Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex

Playing Blu-Ray and HD DVD Video

It's possible (although a little cumbersome) to play HD DVD and Blu-Ray films under Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex.

Audio in some films may not yet be supported.

The AACS 'Digital Rights Management' system in most HD-DVD and all Blu-Ray discs attempts to stop consumers from exercising fair use rights, including:

• Playing purchased Blu-Ray and HD DVD films using Open Source software.
• Playing films using standard digital (DVI) or analog (VGA) cables and monitors, which generally do not support HDCP DRM, without a 75% reduction in resolution.
• Fast forwarding or skipping advertisements.
• Playing imported films, including when local equivalents may be overpriced or not available.

Blu-Ray or HD DVD player applications require their unique player (or 'device') key to play discs. These keys are issued by AACS-LA to approved manufacturers that implement the restrictions above. This player key can decrypt each film's volume key, which in turn can decrypt the film's content to play it.

However the AACS DRM is ineffective and does not successfully prevent any of these things.

• The player key for the xBox 360 HD DVD drive is known publicly, and has around 500,000 results on Google.
• Player keys for all Windows based software players, such as WinDVD and PowerDVD are known publicly. These can be used to find the volume keys for all current discs. While these applications now have new keys (and future HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs won't play with the old keys), it's likely the new key will be discovered too as all players must store their keys in memory at some point.
• The volume keys needed to play nearly all released films are known publicly, due to the above. Even without a licensed player key, Linux HD-DVD and Blu-Ray software can use these to play discs.

Legal Notice Patent and copyright laws operate differently depending on which country you are in. Please obtain legal advice if you are unsure whether a particular patent or restriction applies to a media format you wish to use in your country.

Requirements

None of the software below is supplied or endorsed by Ubuntu.

• An HD DVD drive. The Xbox 360 HD-DVD player works well. Log into Gnome and then plug in the player. DVDs and CDs will work out of the box, HD-DVDs require the additional steps below.

Up to version 8.04 Hardy Heron

• A UDF 2.5 filesystem driver (the UDF driver included up to 8.04 Hardy Heron only supports UDF 2.0). A driver for Feisty Fawn's 2.6.20-15 kernel is attached to this page. Copy it to /lib/modules/2.6.20-15-generic/kernel/fs/udf/udf.ko.

For all versions

• A current subversion release of MPlayer

• A current subversion release of FFMPEG. Try here for .deb files.

Many HD DVD and all Blu-Ray discs use DRM. For these discs, you'll need:

• DumpHD to perform the decryption necessary to play the film.

• The sun-java6-bin package. See Installing Software.

• A current keydb.cfg file, which contains the decryption keys required to your film: keydb.cfg for HD-DVDs, Blu-Rays.

• Around 30GB of temporary disk space for HD-DVDs and 50GB for Blu-Rays.

Playing the Movie

1. Put an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray disc in the drive. The disc should appear on the Gnome desktop.

2. If using HD-DVD, try and play the disc. R&B Films, Fox Pathe/Studio Canal, EMS GmbH and other studios produce HD DVD discs without DRM, allowing them to be played without any of the restrictions mentioned above. The films content is in .EVO files in the 'HDDVD_TS' folder on the disc. Specify the video codec to use:

mplayer -vc ffvc1 /media/KING_KONG/HVDVD_TS/FEATURE*EVO

If you're not watching a movie at this point, the disc needs to be decrypted.

3. DumpHD can decrypt the disc. Ensure you have a large amount of disk space available (around 30GB, and run):

sudo ./dumphd.sh

Select the disc as the source (a directory somewhere beneath /media/Film Name and a directory like /tmp to save the movie content.

You can proceed onto the next step once FEATURE_1.EVO has started decrypting.

4. Play the the film from your hard disk. Specify the video codec to use:

mplayer -vc ffvc1 "/tmp/King Kong/HVDVD_TS/FEATURE*EVO"

If your disc is a Blu-ray and still doesn't work, it might be protected with BD+; it is possible to decrypt it using these tools.