eJabberd “Cannot read schema”

Trying to start ejabberd I got errors such as these:

2017-09-01 00:35:06.928 [error] <0.37.0> CRASH REPORT Process <0.37.0> with 0 neighbours exited with reason: {aborted,{“Cannot read schema”,”/var/lib/ejabberd/schema.DAT”,{error,{file_error,”/var/lib/ejabberd/schema.DAT”,eacces}}}} in application_master:init/4 line 133

Turns out I made a very simple mistake; I had attempted to start eJabebrd with “systemctl start ejabberd”. However, ejabberd brings its own control application. The correct way to start it is “ejabberctl start”.

Easy-RSA: “failed to update database”

Attempted to create a new certificate using the EasyRSA suite and got the following error:

“failed to update database”

Unfortunately the script is pretty laconic, but some quick testing showed this was due to trying to re-use the default display name:

Name [EasyRSA]:

Picked a different name and the script committed my certificate correctly.

Geekworker has a new home

Please excuse the mess: We’ve moved!

I got tired of my (self-hosted) wordpress site for several reasons, the main ones being:

  • Having my own hardware in a datacenter is way too expensive
  • WordPress ran way too slowly and I felt like I do not have the time to properly optimise it

So, I’ve migrated the Geekworker blog to blogger.com. Blogger works surprisingly well and I really like the interface. There are some drawbacks too, such as not having a good font for code snippets.

The import – I had to use a third party site for conversion – seems to have worked, too, but expect some font weirdness and broken images until I can go through all posts and fix them. Thanks for your patience!

Update, August 5th: Broken images and the worst formatting problems should now be fixed. Don’t hesitate to report problems, please!

Sony Vegas and Sony Movie Studio: No Audio Tracks In mp4 video filefound

I use OBS Studio to record videos, and would ideally like to record multiple audio tracks (so that I might balance audio levels in post-production). Unfortunately, when I import these MP4 videos into Sony Movie Studio Platinum, it detects no audio tracks.

The problem is a buggy DLL file.

To fix this, go to your program’s install folder (mine resides in D:ApplicationsSonyMovie Studio Platinum 12.0) and find a subdirectory called “FileIO Plug-Inscompoundplug”. In this folder, you will find a file called “compoundplug.dll”. Simply rename this (to “compoundplug.backup”, for example) and your Sony Vegas or Sony Movie Studio should now import mp4 files correctly – even with multiple audio tracks.

Update, 2017-08-03: Never versions of Movie Studio likely do not have this problem. I have upgraded to Vegas Pro 14, and it reads files with multiple audio tracks just fine.