Convert APE to FLAC in Ubuntu 13.04 using Libav

If you have a file in the lossless APE format and want to convert it without installing the MAC codec, you can easily do this in Ubuntu using Libav.

Just install av tools:

sudo apt-get install libav-tools

and convert the your file/s:

avcon -i inputApeFile.ape outputFlacFile.flac

That's one easy of many ways to convert APE files in Ubuntu.

Reset Ubuntu Home Dir Permissions

In case you messed up the permissions of you home dir. Here is a small guide to fix it:

1. Reset the permissions for the directories recursivly:

sudo find /home/user/ -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;

2. and the permissions for all files too:

sudo find /home/user/ -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;

3. Ensure that your GPG directory has the proper permissions:

sudo chmod -R 600 .gnupg/
sudo chmod 700 .gnupg/

If you don't want that other users can read your home folder (which not default in Ubuntu) change it's permission also:

sudo chmod 700 /home/user

That's it. Not that hard, if you know the right commands.

Check MD5 and SHA1 sum for a file in Ubuntu Linux

Imagine you have a file to download with a given checksum and you want to make sure that the file is not corrupted after download.

It's really easy to compute and check the MD5 sum in Ubuntu / Linux using the terminal:

md5sum myFileToCheck

and for SHA1 checksum:

sha1sum myFileToCheck

Both commands compute the corresponding checksum of your file, so you can compare than with the original checksums.