Blog: Example

How to clone a harddrive (with Clonezilla)

The clonezilla software https://clonezilla.org/downloads.php is about 500mb now. I have an old version which was like 250mb or something.

You write this like any .iso to a flash drive and stick it in the machine you want to clone the harddrive from, and also plug in the harddrive you want to clone to. Note size is big enough.

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Yt-dlp commands

To download a single video or a playlist as mp3

yt-dlp --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" https://www.youtube.com/etcetcetcetc

yt-dlp playlist

yt-dlp -x --audio-format mp3 --audio-quality 0 --embed-thumbnail --add-metadata --ppa "EmbedThumbnail+ffmpeg_o:-c:v mjpeg -vf crop=\"'if(gt(ih,iw),iw,ih)':'if(gt(iw,ih),ih,iw)'\"" -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" "PLAYLIST_URL"

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INSTALL OsTIrus (dsp56300 software) on Windows7 (didn't work for me)

For this software (2 things actually) to work, it seems (from successfully installing on Linux with Wine for the Virus software), you need to install the Virus software (anywhere) and then either install the OsTIrus vst or just put the vst in the right folder and find it inside BItwig (I already had it in that folder, so even though I did install it from anther deb, maybe I didn't need to).

Then you go into the Program Files/Access Music/Virus TI/Common folder and copy the firmware.bin file and paste it beside the OsTIrus vst you're finding in Bitwig. Then it will work (ie it worked before, the vst loaded before, but it didn't have any sounds, and now it should have all the TI sounds. I guess the firmware.bin directs it to find where all that is on your harddrive?

You can read the next post here to see how I got it to work on AVlinux.

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INSTALL OsTIrus (dsp56300 software) on Linux

On Linux (AVlinux or any linux with Wine, which is required not for the OsTIrus emulator (which comes as a linux VST3 as well as a Windows one (but I couldn't get the WIndows VST3 nor VST2 to work on Windows7, despite serious effort and GPT style trying), but for the virus.info software, which carries all the TI sounds.

  1. Download the Windows 64 bit software from https://www.virus.info/downloads
  2. Download the linux VST3 from https://dsp56300.wordpress.com/ostirus-downloads/
  3. Open Terminal in AVlinux and type wine uninstaller
  4. When the Wine installer/uninstaller opens, add something, and find your .msi file from virus.info and install it (it will open the Virus installer and you go through the steps, where you can deselect the 32bit version from the install list, and also you can just click OK when it tries to search for a hardware AV (not sure if it just connects automatically or you need to reinstall if/when you connect the hardware AV).
  5. Install your .deb file from dsp... (However, I'm not sure if you need to do this. I did it this time, but I already had the vst in my VSTs for Bitwig folder, and it already opened fine (just didn't have any sounds). ... Anyway, you get to the point where the OsTIrus vst will open in Bitwig.
  6. Go into user/.wine/driveC/program Files/Access Music/Virus TI/Common and copy the firmware.bin file and paste that into the VSTs for Bitwig folder (it has to be beside the OsTIrus vst (I actually don't know which particular file this is but in Bitwig it appears in the VSTs for Bitwig main folder so I pasted it there and it worked).
  7. Reload OsTIrus in Bitwig and it should have all the sounds now.
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How to make a Windows 7 install USB flash drive using a Linux computer

Making a USB flashdrive Windows7 installer doesn't work easily when you make it with a Linux computer. It seems like it works fine, but when you try to install it, the flash drive appears empty, and doesn't boot to it. You've already made sure BIOS has ‘both UEFI and Legacy’ and has ‘Secure Boot’ disabled, and you've tested your Windows7 iso on a VM like Qemu and it starts the install, so it should work.

The reason probably (most commonly) is that whatever you're using to try to write to your flash drive creates an ISO9660 filesystem that Windows bootloaders don't handle well for installation. It doesn't matter if you try to use Gnome Disk Writer or dd or what. It will seem to write fine, but then in the target computer it isn't detected as anything. You might try NTFS or FAT (the internet will tell you one or the other is the correct way), but it's the same result.

This means that (computer jargon here) after clearing the MBR and setting up the partition, you'll need to install a Windows-compatible MBR boot code to make the drive bootable on BIOS systems. Without it, the drive may still appear "empty" or non-bootable, as you've experienced.

This script worked. As long as your linux machine has the software installed that it depends on (all is FOSS and not compromised, it seems, because I wouldn't use it otherwise, but if you're a tech guardian please re vet it), which includes ms-sys (and I forget if there's anything else, but you'll get error messages to tell you what things if there is).

So I got ms-sys from their https://ms-sys.sourceforge.net/ as a tar.gz and installed it with their instructions (which did give an error message while opening the GUI but worked anyway so you can probably ignore the error message). Ask Grok how to install this if you don't know how. Then our script here should work.

HOW TO USE THE SCRIPT

Open a text editor (like Mousepad or any other), save it as ‘makeaWin7USB.sh’ Note that you're saving it as a .sh not as a .txt or something. That's because it's a script.

Paste our script here into that file and make the necessary changes (there are 2 things you might need to change, the path to your Windows7 iso and your flash drive mount point, and if you don't have the right drive mount point it can erase your system so double check that). Once you've saved this and closed it, Rclick it and go to Properties and checkmark Permissions > Allow this to run as a program. Then open Terminal in the same folder where you have your ‘makeaWin7USB.sh’ and do

sudo ./script.sh

The script will run then, and when it's done it will say so, and you can just pull the flash drive out and put it in your target computer and boot and it should load the Windows 7 install.

...

HERE IS THE SCRIPT

#!/bin/bash
# Script to create a bootable Windows 7 USB on Kali Linux
set -e
ISO_PATH="/path/to/win7.iso"  # REPLACE WITH YOUR ISO PATH
USB_DEV="/dev/sda"  # REPLACE IF USB IS NOT /dev/sda
echo "WARNING: This will WIPE $USB_DEV. Confirm $USB_DEV is your USB (check with lsblk)."
read -p "Type 'yes' to continue, anything else to abort: " CONFIRM
if [ "$CONFIRM" != "yes" ]; then echo "Aborted."; exit 1; fi
if ! command -v ms-sys >/dev/null || ! command -v rsync >/dev/null || ! command -v parted >/dev/null || ! command -v mkfs.ntfs >/dev/null; then
    echo "Error: Install ms-sys, rsync, parted, and ntfs-3g first."; exit 1
fi
if [ ! -f "$ISO_PATH" ]; then echo "Error: ISO file $ISO_PATH not found."; exit 1; fi
sudo umount ${USB_DEV}* 2>/dev/null || true
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=$USB_DEV bs=446 count=1 status=progress
sudo parted -s $USB_DEV mklabel msdos
sudo parted -s $USB_DEV mkpart primary ntfs 1MiB 100%
sudo parted -s $USB_DEV set 1 boot on
sudo mkfs.ntfs -Q ${USB_DEV}1
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/iso /mnt/usb
sudo mount -o loop "$ISO_PATH" /mnt/iso
sudo mount ${USB_DEV}1 /mnt/usb
sudo rsync -av --progress /mnt/iso/ /mnt/usb/
sync
sudo umount /mnt/iso /mnt/usb
sudo ms-sys -7 $USB_DEV
sudo ms-sys -n ${USB_DEV}1
sudo eject $USB_DEV
echo "Bootable Windows 7 USB created on $USB_DEV. Insert into x230, boot via F12 (Legacy Boot)."
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