October 2009 Archives

Tools available with Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux for converting CDs to lossless FLAC archives include Sound Juicer, Rhythmbox, and the command line tool abcde. The first two are graphical applications in GNOME that use MusicBrainz for metadata; the latter provides numerous options for converting to FLAC, Vorbis, and MP3 (among other formats), using CDDB for metadata. I wanted something simpler, resulting in a minimal set of metadata (consistent with ID3), and following a stricter Unix model of each tool focused on one job, doing that job well.

The result, flaccda, is a POSIX compliant script for converting CDs to FLAC, and a supporting script for removing MusicBrainz metadata from FLAC archives created by tools such as Sound Juicer.

The source may be downloaded from my website at http://deevans.net/hacking/flaccda.

I've been having a problem with the back light on my T61p (T7500), after a text terminal (runlevel 3) screen blank (stand by, not suspend?), running Fedora 11. After logging off, the text terminal screen goes blank as a power saving feature. However, upon restore the backlight setting is one fifth full luminosity.

After a bit of digging, the acpitool manual claims it can update the brightness setting (with -l x) using the /proc/acpi/ibm/brightness file. However, the file doesn't exist. I did find the brightness file under /proc/acpi/video/VID1/LCD0/. A redirect of the highest setting restores luminosity (the setting is 1 through 100; after the screen blank it had gone down to 28): echo 100 > /proc/acpi/video/VID1/LCD0/brightness

The last problem is one of persistence. For the time being, I've not found a solution. Fedora seems to have made the assumption that GNOME or KDE is all anyone uses.