Using OBS Virtual Camera with delayed audio in an external app like Zoom, Skype or Discord
Since version 26 of OBS we have that wonderful built-in Virtual Camera option. This lets us use the OBS video output with external apps that do the streaming for us, like Zoom, Skype and Discord to name a few. Video processing takes a small amount of time, and as a result our audio arrives too early when used directly. To make it look professional we need to add an audio delay There’s currently no built-in way to choose the OBS Audio in our external application, even though OBS itself has the ability to delay the audio and make it...
read moreHow to add a drive to software RAID with mdadm
In my previous article I’ve explained how to setup a software RAID with mdadm. This was a RAID 5 setup with 3 drives, and in this article we’ll take a look how to expand it with a 4th drive, increasing its overall size. Here’s what we’ll do in principle: format the new drivecreate an fd partition on it (Linux auto raid type)add the partition as a sparegrow the array resize the file system Getting the new drive ready Let’s format our new drive first. Let’s assume it’s /dev/sdc for now (you can find out...
read moreSetting up a Software RAID on CentOS and Fedora with mdadm
In this article I’ll explain how to setup a software RAID on Fedora. This will turn any number of attached USB drives into any flavour of RAID without the necessity of a dedicated enclosure. I’m using this setup for internal office data storage with redundancy, together with a Samba share. This works on any Linux distribution, the only difference is the way to install the mdadm package. Here are the steps to make this work in principle: format each drive and add a file systemusing msdos as label and fd as file typecreate a logical...
read moreHow to add the mail command in CentOS and Fedora
I was surprised to find that the mail command doesn’t work out of the box in Fedora, nor in the minimal installation of CentOS 7. Thankfully there’s an easy way to add it by installing the mailx package. yum install mailx That’s not the full story on how to send email from the command line of course, nor is it the only possible way to do so. I might elaborate on these details in a future article. I just wanted to make a note to remind myself of the package name that I keep forgetting. Further Reading...
read moreHow to access files on Linux from Windows 10 with a Samba Share
I like the idea of having a shared drive attached to my always-on Linux system, so that all my computers (Windows and Mac) can access those in a central place. It’s like a NAS without having a NAS box if you know what I mean. The easiest way to accomplish this is by using the Samba Protocol. Essentially we’ll declare a part of our Linux system as a Samba Share, setup credentials in Samba, then let users from other systems access these files. It’s a little complex to get going, but I’ll show you all the relevant steps...
read moreHow to open web server ports in Fedora via the command line
The firewall-cmd tool has a neat feature in that it knows what ports are used for certain services. This is handy for things like web server ports which our tired brains may forget from time to time (hint: it’s 80 for http and 443 for https). Even without knowing those numbers, we can still open those ports from the command line like so: firewall-cmd --add-service http --permanent firewall-cmd --add-service https --permanent systemctl restart firewalld This will open both 80 and 443 on the firewall, and it’ll remain a permanent...
read moreHow to exclude YouTube videos from Google Search Results
Sometimes you google something, and all you get is a huge list of YouTube videos. In many situations, that’s just not what I want. Thankfully there’s an easy way to exclude YouTube videos from your Google Search Results! All we need to do is add ” -youtube” to our search query! That’s without the quotes, but with the leading space to separate -youtube from your search query. Google accepts various parameters within the query string. The often overlooked ones are + to include a search term, and – to exclude...
read moreHow to type a £ British Pound sign on a US keyboard (Windows and Mac)
I no longer have a UK keyboard on most of my everyday computers, so there’s no obvious way for me to press the British Pound £ sign anymore (much like the € Euro sign). Thankfully there are reactively easy ways to make this happen without having to resort to switching keyboard drivers. I’ll undoubtedly forget 10 minutes from now, so I thought I might write it down somewhere sensible. If you fear the same, bookmark this page now macOS On a UK Mac keyboard, SHIFT + 3 brings up the £ British Pound sign. I was excited to see that on a...
read moreHow to activate your PayPal Debit Card (web interface)
I’ve been sent a new PayPal US Business Debit Card. I’ve been using it for many years, and this one was a replacement for the previous one that had expired. PayPal conveniently give you the option to activate it via the web browser (on desktop), and in previous years this was a very easy process. Now, in October 2020, after the interface has been redesigned what feels like every week, I had trouble funding where to do it, and thought I’d share what worked for me. PayPal included a sticker on the card explaining that...
read moreHow to install Unreal Engine 4 on CentOS 7
I usually write about Unreal Engine over on my other website, because it tackles more 3D related topics – but compiling the engine from source is a bit more “blood and gore” thing so I thought it best placed here with all the other Linux topics. Anyway… Today we’re installing Unreal Engine on a CentOS 7 system. The latest version at the time of writing is 4.22.3 to be exact. Linux knowledge and a GitHub account are required, and your GitHub account needs to be linked against your EPIC Games account. While the...
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