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Open .docx documents in Linux (OpenOffice)

Date: December 15, 2008. Categories: applications, centos, debian, distros, docs, fedora, howtos, links, suse, tips and ubuntu. 5 Comments

Well, as for now it is not a problem anymore to open Microsoft Office 2007 .docx documents in any Linux distribution coming with OpenOffice suit. It may be Ubuntu (Feisty, Gutsy, Interpid whatever), almost any version of Fedora/RedHat/Centos, *SUSE, Mandriva and of course Debian (as per my personal opinion it’s the best one).

What is .docx actually? It’s Microsoft’s file format representing word processor documents and named OpenXML (as an attempt to create open and free international standard). Today .docx is default format for Microsoft’s word processor Word.

There are myriads of online converters between OpenXML and OpenOffice formats including .docx, .xlsx, .odt and many etc but sometimes it’s much more better to just open received .docx file in Linux offline (if there is temporarily no Internet connection or for security/private reasons etc).

So, just download the following package to certain directory like /usr/src, here are the commands to do it:

1. cd /usr/src
2. sudo wget http://blog.mypapit.net/imej/odf_filter.tar.bz2

The next step is to unpack the contents of the archive (.tar.bz2 is definitely well compressed file) and copy 3 files to OpenOffice’s system directories:

3. sudo tar -xvjf odf_filter.tar.bz2
4. sudo cp OdfConverter /usr/lib/openoffice/program/
5. sudo cp MOOXTypeDetection.xcu /usr/lib/openoffice/share/registry/modules/org/openoffice/TypeDetection/Types/
6. sudo cp MOOXFilter_cpp.xcu /usr/lib/openoffice/share/registry/modules/org/openoffice/TypeDetection/Filter/

As you can see from picture below now it’s possible to natively open .docx files in openoffice under Linux. Of course such “native” support may imply some artefacts in opened files due to file formats incompatibility so it’s also a good option to ask your friends to convert .docs into .pdf before sending you :)

openoffice openxml .docx

P.S. Thanks to guys from mypapit.

P.S. Here are several online converters .doc(x) <-> .odf <-> .pdf:

1. ZAMZAR (possibly the best converter), 2. http://docx-converter.com/.

Find location of the program in Ubuntu

Date: December 11, 2008. Categories: linux, tips and ubuntu. 0 Comments

It’s rather trivial task for people who use Ubuntu for a long time but newbies usually have problems with adding program to startup if location of the program is unknown or it is required to specify full path to the program somewhere e.g. when opening attachment in mail client. There are two most popular ways to find this out:

1. which gedit
2. type gedit

Both will show full path to certain program (gnome editor in our example): /usr/bin/gedit:

commands: which and type to locate the programs in Ubuntu

Convert WMA to MP3 in Ubuntu

Date: December 1, 2008. Categories: centos, debian, fedora, howtos, linux, tips and ubuntu. 3 Comments

mplayer logoIn order to convert WMA file into MP3 format in Ubuntu (or Debian) you should install the following requirements first:

1. mplayer (sudo aptitude install mplayer)
2. lame (sudo aptitude install lame)
3. win32 codecs (sudo aptitude install ubuntu-restricted-extras)

and then convert file.wma into file.mp3 using the following console command:

mplayer -vo null -vc dummy -af resample=44100 -ao pcm:waveheader file.wma;lame -m s -V 3 audiodump.wav;mv audiodump.wav.mp3 file.mp3;rm audiodump.wav

This also works for Fedora / Centos / Redhat family Linux distributions (requirements should be installed by yum package manager via third-party software repositories).

FTP port forwarding using Linux router

Date: November 20, 2008. Categories: howtos, linux and tips. 5 Comments

Well, let’s imagine rather trivial situation: you have Linux router connected to Internet via e.g. ADSL modem and some local network comprising several computers and servers connected to that router via switches and/or Wi-Fi access points.

Done? Ok.

There is one public IP assigned to WAN interface of the router while FTP server (of course run by Linux as well) has IP something like 192.168.123.14 or 172.16.*.* or 10.*.*.*. Moreover you want to allow people to access your FTP from every corner of Internet… So, there are several ways how to apply this but let’s talk about how to achieve this by means of using port forwarding feature that is available in any router’s functions list.

So, let’s say we have the following configuration:

Internet <-> [a] router [b] <-> [c] FTP server

[a] is WAN interface with 212.213.214.215 (just an example) IP assigned to it, [b] is NIC with 192.168.0.1 and [c] is server’s interface with IP 192.168.0.2. All what we need is that users from Internet can access FTP server using 212.213.214.215 IP and default 21 TCP port.

One of the main problems is that passive mode of FTP service uses any port from range 1024 to 65535 so it’s not enough to forward 21/20 ports to FTP server and let the ball rolling. So, go to servers’ CLI and open configuration file of an FTP service. It would be vsftpd, proftpd whatever. Let’s say we have vsftpd so we have to add the following lines to /etc/vsftpd.conf:

pasv_min_port=12000
pasv_max_port=13000

When changes are saved restart vsftpd server.

Now access router’s CLI and type the following:

iptables -t nat -I PREROUTING -d 212.213.214.215 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 21 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.0.1
iptables -t nat -I PREROUTING -d 212.213.214.215 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 12000:13000 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.0.1

This will add netfilter port forwarding rules which will redirect traffic coming at routers’ public IP through 21 TCP port to FTP server and will properly handle passive FTP mode.

Wuala – it’s a finish.

FAQ: How to change Duplex and/or Auto-Negotiation NIC settings in Linux?

Date: November 20, 2008. Categories: debian, faq, fedora, howtos, linux, tips and ubuntu. 8 Comments

Q: How to disable auto-negotiation option of my network interface card and set up half/full duplex mode manually from Linux command line (CLI)? By the way, how to see current settings?
A: There are several Linux utilities coming with almost any distribution including Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, RedHat, Mandriva, Centos whatever. See details below.

ethtool

This is rather powerful utility can display and change settings of ethernet network interface card. You can easily disable/enable autonegotiation option for your NIC, also it’s possible to manually set up duplex mode, configure wake-on-lan options, set speed settings. Just look through full manual page for ethtool. Here are several ethtool usage examples:

ethtool eth0 – shows current NIC settings

Settings for eth0:
        Supported ports: [ TP MII ]
        Supported link modes:   10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
                                100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
        Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
        Advertised link modes:  10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
                                100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
        Advertised auto-negotiation: No
        Speed: 10Mb/s
        Duplex: Half
        Port: MII
        PHYAD: 32
        Transceiver: internal
        Auto-negotiation: off
        Supports Wake-on: pumbg
        Wake-on: d
        Current message level: 0x00000007 (7)
        Link detected: yes

ethtool -s eth0 duplex half autoneg off – disables auto-negotiation, enables Half Duplex.
ethtool -s eth1 duplex full speed 1000 autoneg off – disables auto-negotiation, enables Falf Duplex and sets up Speed to 1000 Mb/s.

mii-tool

According to manual it allows to manipulate and see media-independent interface status. Let’s see examples:

bash-3.1# mii-tool eth0
eth0: negotiated 100baseTx-FD, link ok – shows 100 Mbps speed, Full Duplex, Auto-negotiation is on.
bash-3.1# mii-tool eth0 -F 10baseT-HD – enables 10 Mb/s Half Duplex connection.

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 My name is Artem N. (artiomix AT gmail DOT com) and I'm Linux/Unix, Cisco systems engineer. The main idea of Linux Screw is to share relevant knowledge, skills and observations over The Web. Here you can find a lot of information related to different Linux distributions, FreeBSD, IOS as well as a other Open Source around staff. Read more ››