How to add album art to your audio using VLC

1. Start VLC.
2. Goto Tools -----------> Media information
3. Change the metadata
4. Goto the general tab and you will find the logo of VLC or it may have already downloaded the album art for you.
5. Right click the VLC image and select ------> Add cover art from File and click OK.
6. That's it Now you have changed your album art using VLC.

systemd; External hard drive time-out problem during boot.

If you have an external hard drive that is plugged in all the time but on one fine day you boot your system without the external hard  drive and  your system drops to a maintenance shell after looking through the syslog i.e journald  you find out your system got into a loop trying to mount the external hard disk. So what is the solution?
It lies in  the fstab file. In the /dev/sdb line add

nofail,x-systemd.device-timeout=1ms

and do not set it to zero it will go into infinte loop.

for more info check:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/fstab#External_devices

Fixing NTFS partition in Debian using ntfsfix

Today my external hard drive suddenly become RAW meaning i couldn't mount it in windows or even in linux and worse I couldn't even run chkdsk utility in windows then i came across this utily called ntfsfix  while searching  for the solution.

The following is from the ntfsfix manpage:

ntfsfix  is a utility that fixes some common NTFS problems.ntfsfix is NOT a Linux version of chkdsk.  It only repairs some  fundamental  NTFS inconsistencies,  resets  the  NTFS  journal file and schedules an NTFS consistency check for the first boot into Windows. You may run ntfsfix on an NTFS volume if you think it  was  damaged  by Windows or some other way and it cannot be mounted.

so to run ntfsfix become root and give the following command

# ntfsfix -d /dev/sdb1

it will fix the most common errors in the NTFS partition.

sources:
1. http://askubuntu.com/questions/47700/fix-corrupt-ntfs-partition-without-windows
2. http://pclosmag.com/html/Issues/201205/page06.html

Installing Abaqus 6.10 in Debian Gnu/Linux Squeeze 64-bit

  Abaqus is a software application suited for Finite element analysis and computer aided engineering developed by Dassault systemes. It supports windows,Linux,AIX and HP-UX platforms. In the Linux platform it only supports for 64 bit and for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Suse Linux enterprise edition. But it can be installed in Debian by  using
following methods.
Dependencies to be satisfied first:
Install gcc,g++,gfortran,csh,tcsh,libstdc++5,sun java build-essential,make,from the stable repo  
[libmotif3,libmotif-dev---from oldstable repo]
Installation:
abaqus is to be installed in the following order
install abaqus as root
1.documentation
2.flexlm licensing utility
3. abaqus product

run the installation from csh shell
abaqus documentation
run from the documentation DVD file
# /path/setup
Install only PDF documentation only web browser based documentation can't be installed because it needs termcap library and
isn't available in the Debian repo
run from the abaqus setup dvd ‫file
# /path/setup -nosystemchecks
which will initialize the license installer and select " install licensing utility"
then open another tab
#setenv LM_LICENSE_FILE /path/to/licensefile
#setenv LICENSE_FILE 27011@PC-name
add the above two entry in .bashrc file
go to the license folder installed in the csh shell and run
./lmgrd -c $LM_LICENSE_FILE -l /path/to/log file
check weather the license server is running by ./lmutil lmstat -a
abaqus installation
in the server field put 27011@pc-name
then next and finish installation
reboot computer
when i tried to add the abaqus license utility to start on every login in the bashrc file it didn't work so i had to start the license server manually
use the user csh shell to run licensing utility
%setenv LM_LICENSE_FILE /path-to-license
%cd to the abaqus license folder
%./lmgrd -c $LM_LICENSE_FILE -l /path/to/.log file
check license server is running by issuing the following command
./lmutil lmstat -a
it should show some thing like below

lmutil - Copyright (c) 1989-2008 Acresso Software Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Flexible License Manager status on Tue 11/8/2011 19:27
License server status: 27011@debian
License file(s) on debian: /nse.dat:
debian: license server UP (MASTER) v10.8
Vendor daemon status (on debian):
ABAQUSLM: UP v10.8
Feature usage info:
Users of acp: (Total of 2011 licenses issued; Total of 0 licenses in use)
Users of adams: (Total of 2011 licenses issued; Total of 0 licenses in use)
....................
%

now become root
run /path/abq6101.exe cae -mesa
it will give the following output and open the GUI shell
Abaqus License Manager checked out the following license(s):
"cae" release 6.10 from debian
<2010 out of 2011 licenses remain available>.