Installing multimedia codecs in linux

Codecs, is an important element when we are talking about playing and watching multimedia files. To install codecs on linux box, it is an easy task. Just follow the below instructions :-) :

1. Download the codecs source from here. Thank you to the mplayer team for this magnificent codecs source.
2. Login as superuser
• # su -
3. Extract the downloaded archive
• # tar -xvjf all-20061022.tar.bz2
4. Make 2 directories if they are not already exist.
• # mkdir /usr/local/lib/codecs
• # mkdir /usr/lib/win32
5. Copy the content of the extracted directory to the newly created directory
• # cp all-20061022/* /usr/local/lib/codecs
• # cp all-20061022/* /usr/lib/win32
6. Change the permission of the directories to 755
• # chmod 755 /usr/local/lib/codecs
• # chmod 755 /usr/lib/win32
7. Finish. Congratulations, you have managed to install multimedia codecs into your linux box. You can test it by playing any video with your favorite media player.
   

Backup using tar and ssh

Doing backup is important. You do not want to store your backup at the same machine where the data is stored. It is to avoid data loss when the machine broke down. To do this job, you can use tar paired with ssh to archive your important data and transfer it through network to another machine. Below are the steps:

1. Make sure the backup machine is installed with ssh server and the service is running
# yum install openssh-server
# service sshd start

2. Go to the folder where you want to backup. Use tar to archive and send it though network to backup machine
# tar -cvjf - /path/to/backup | ssh user@backupmachine "cat > /home/backup.tar.bz2"

3. Finish. Congatulations, your backup file is now safely kept in the backup machine