blog.crox.net (Entries tagged as ubuntu)

Ensuring the EFI partition is mirrored on an Ubuntu install with root on software RAID 1

nospam@example.com (crox) — Sun, 04 May 2025 19:28:00 +0000

I found a working procedure here:

- Make sure both EFI partitions are mounted from /etc/fstab, eg. using /boot/eficopy in addition to /boot/efi. (Both partitions need to have the proper partition type GUID, i.e. C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B or "EFI System".)

- Run dpkg-reconfigure grub-efi-amd64 and include both partitions when prompted.

Ubuntu Server 24.04, software raid as boot device (with EFI)

nospam@example.com (crox) — Sun, 09 Feb 2025 21:59:00 +0000

Everything you need in this excellent article: https://alexskra.com/blog/ubuntu-20-04-with-software-raid1-and-uefi/.

BackupPC - binary garbage in XferLog.z / XferLog.z getting huge

nospam@example.com (crox) — Fri, 30 Dec 2022 18:32:00 +0000

I run a BackupPC instance that is still on Debian 10 / buster. The latest rsync package for Debian 10 has version number 3.1.3-6.

I recently noticed infrequent issues when backing up hosts that are either on Debian 11 / bullseye, or on Ubuntu 22.04 (which both ship rsync 3.2.3). The symptoms are as follows:

- backups take much longer than usual
- XferLog.z starts "normally", but after a certain point contains a lot of binary garbage, and gets much bigger than usual (hundreds of MB, or even in one case up to 12 GB)

After investigating and looking for information online, I came across these bug reports, which contain the explanation as well as a workaround: Debian Bug report #969463 and BackupPC issue #369.

=> The issue is caused by a combination of a change of default behaviour introduced with rsync 3.2.3, and a bug in File::RsyncP.

The solution that works for me (pending an update to Debian 11 and BackupPC 4) is to add the following line in the individual server config for each of the affected hosts:

$Conf{RsyncArgsExtra} = ['--no-msgs2stderr'];

Add HEIF support to Ubuntu Linux 18.04 (thumbnails / gimp) - preview and open HEIC files from iPhone directly in Ubuntu

nospam@example.com (crox) — Mon, 16 Mar 2020 22:10:00 +0000

Since Apple moved from JPEG to HEIF as default format about two years ago, there has been a lot of progress.

There is a very straightforward way to add minimal HEIC/HEIF support to Ubuntu:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:strukturag/libheif
sudo apt-get install heif-gdk-pixbuf heif-gimp-plugin heif-thumbnailer

That's it! You don't even need to logout or restart, the new functionality is available immediately.

More details here and here.

Accessing iPhone (iOS 10.2.1) pictures from Ubuntu

nospam@example.com (crox) — Sun, 12 Mar 2017 15:40:03 +0000

Recent changes introduced with iOS 10 prevent you from mounting an iPhone on a regular Ubuntu installation.

The PPA by Martin Salbaba used to fix the issue, but it hasn't been updated in a while, and now when I connect my iPhone (running iOS 10.2.1) the pictures are no longer accessible, although the documents are still there.

This solution worked for me (Ubuntu 16.04):

- install libimobiledevice6 + dependencies from this PPA: https://launchpad.net/~martin-salbaba/+archive/ubuntu/ppa+libimobiledevice (follow the instructions there)

- install newer libimobiledevice version according to the "recipe" by A.B. here: http://askubuntu.com/questions/598940/libimobiledevice-1-2-ios-8-support-for-ubuntu-14-04-trusty

- install ifuse according to the same method:

cd ~/src/
git clone https://github.com/libimobiledevice/ifuse.git
cd ifuse/
sudo apt-get install libfuse2 libfuse-dev
./autogen.sh 
make
sudo checkinstall

You can now mount your iPhone like this:

mkdir ~/mnt
ifuse ~/mnt

I assume the same procedure would work for an iPad too.

Add Ubuntu alongside a pre-installed Windows on an HP laptop (convert primary partition to extended/logical)

nospam@example.com (crox) — Sat, 03 Oct 2015 09:49:00 +0000

Recently I wanted to install Ubuntu next to a pre-installed Windows on a brand-new HP EliteBook.

The notebook came with four primary partitions, with Windows installed on the biggest one:

- sda1 (1 GB, NTFS, label=SYSTEM)
- sda2 (457 GB, NTFS)
- sda3 (16 GB, NTFS, label=HP_RECOVERY)
- sda4 (2 GB, FAT32)

In order to install Ubuntu it's not enough to resize the Windows partition, as you cannot have more than four primary partitions. Removing one of the other partitions is a bad idea according to several reports, as it might render the system unable to start, or prevent BIOS updates. So the idea is to convert the Windows partition to a logical one in addition to resizing it. Fortunately everything you need to do that is already included on the Ubuntu installation image.

1. Use gparted to resize and move the Windows partition. I resized it to 100 GB and added 10 MB free space before it (to leave some space to create the extended partition later on). This will take a while, depending on the performance of your hard drive.

2. Use fixparts to convert sda2 to a logical partition:

# fixparts /dev/sda

Type l then 2, write the changes to the disk with w.

3. Restart the computer without the Ubuntu install media so that Windows fixes itself. This will take even longer than the partition resize, be patient. Restart once more to make sure the Windows install is fine.

4. Proceed with installing Ubuntu, choose the option to "install Ubuntu alongside Windows".

Keyboard does not work properly in Virtualbox remote desktop session (fixing rdesktop-vrdp "Failed to open keymap" error)

nospam@example.com (crox) — Mon, 13 Jan 2014 22:52:17 +0000

This has been bugging me for quite some time...

The solution:

$ sudo ln -s /usr/share/virtualbox /opt/VirtualBox

Found here.

vim instead of nano (Ubuntu / Debian)

nospam@example.com (crox) — Sun, 19 May 2013 20:52:22 +0000

apt-get install vim
update-alternatives --config editor

Getting the Trust 18187 Bluetooth 4.0 USB adapter (0a5c:21e8) to work with Linux

nospam@example.com (crox) — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 22:57:51 +0000

This is how I got a Bluetooth low energy (BLE) adapter to work on a Linux laptop running Ubuntu 12.04.

First, as suggested by several websites, I created the file /etc/modprobe.d/trust-btusb.conf with the following contents:

install usb:v0A5Cp21E8d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip* /sbin/modprobe btusb; echo 0a5c 21e8 > /sys/bus/usb/drivers/btusb/new_id

After having restarted the computer and inserted the adapter, dmesg told me the following:

Bluetooth: can't load firmware, may not work correctly

To get the proper firmware, I downloaded the Windows 8 driver (18187_02.exe) from http://www.trust.com/18187. The driver files can be extracted from the .exe with "unrar x 18187_02.exe".

Then I looked for the vendor id (0x0a5c) and product id (0x21e8) in the various .inf files, and found this in 18187_02/Win32/bcbtums-win7x86-brcm.inf:

%BRCM20702.DeviceDesc%=RAMUSB21E8,      USB\VID_0A5C&PID_21E8                                   ; 20702A1 dongles

Further down in the inf file there is a RAMUSB21E8 section which contains the following line:

HKR,,%RAMPatchFileName%,0x00000, "BCM20702A1_001.002.014.0187.0188.hex"

The .hex "RAM Patch" file can be found in 18187_02/Win32/. Before it can be used with btusb, it needs to be converted to hcd format. This can be done with hex2hcd. Finally, the hcd file needs to be moved/copied to /lib/firmware/fw-0a5c_21e8.hcd. Here are the steps to get and compile hex2hcd:

$ git clone https://github.com/jessesung/hex2hcd.git
$ cd hex2hcd/
$ make

The resulting executable can be used to convert the .hex firmware file to .hcd, which is then copied to the right destination:

$ ./hex2hcd BCM20702A1_001.002.014.0187.0188.hex BCM20702A1_001.002.014.0187.0188.hcd
$ sudo cp -p BCM20702A1_001.002.014.0187.0188.hcd /lib/firmware/fw-0a5c_21e8.hcd
$ sudo chown root:root /lib/firmware/fw-0a5c_21e8.hcd

The adapter can now be used:

$ sudo hcitool -i hci1 lescan

Update, 2014-09-08:

The first step is no longer necessary with Ubuntu 14.04, I directly receive the "may not work" message.
I was able to extract the firmware from 18187_05.exe (latest W8 driver) using this command: "7z x 18187_05.exe"
The correct .hex file is BCM20702A1_001.002.014.0449.0515.hex

Enabling IPv6 Privacy Extensions on all interfaces (Ubuntu Linux, may work for other distros too)

nospam@example.com (crox) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 23:22:01 +0000

According to the Wikipedia IPv6 article, Privacy extensions are, except for the Windows platform and Mac OS X since 10.7 as well as iOS since version 4.3, not enabled by default.

In theory, one can enable the IPv6 Privacy Extensions on all interfaces at once using sysctl like this:

sudo sysctl net.ipv6.conf.all.use_tempaddr=2

However, this currently doesn't work as expected, so I'm using this one-liner in /etc/rc.local:

for IF in `/bin/ls /proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/*/use_tempaddr` ; do echo 2 > $IF ; done

This also sets "use_tempaddr" for "default", which means it should also apply to interfaces added to the system afterwards.

A simple check to verify that the new configuration is working: ipv6-test.com will print your MAC address when available...

See also: Linux Kernel Bug 11655

VaudTax 2010 avec Ubuntu linux 64-bit

nospam@example.com (crox) — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 15:07:21 +0000

Les instructions pour Linux fournies sur le site officiel ne fonctionnent pas pour moi (Maverick / Ubuntu 10.10 desktop amd64).

Il semble qu'il ne soit toujours pas possible d'importer des fichiers sauvegardés dans une version 32 bit de VaudTax avec la version 64 bits, et vice-versa (crash de VaudTax avec une erreur cryptique [1]). Deux options, soit recommencer sa déclaration sans importer les données de l'année précédente, soit faire tourner VaudTax avec une JVM 32-bits ([2]). Pour l'instant j'ai toujours opté pour la deuxième variante. Jusqu'à l'année passée (VaudTax2009), on pouvait télécharger une version incluant une JVM (32-bits), cette option n'est plus disponible mais il est toujours possible d'arriver au même résultat :

1ère étape, avant de commencer le processus d'installation :

$ sudo update-alternatives --config java
There are 3 choices for the alternative java (providing /usr/bin/java).

  Selection    Path                                       Priority   Status
------------------------------------------------------------
* 0            /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre/bin/java    1061      auto mode
  1            /usr/lib/jvm/ia32-java-6-sun/jre/bin/java   63        manual mode
  2            /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre/bin/java    1061      manual mode
  3            /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/bin/java        63        manual mode

Press enter to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number: 1
update-alternatives: using /usr/lib/jvm/ia32-java-6-sun/jre/bin/java to provide /usr/bin/java (java) in manual mode.

(si l'option JVM 32-bits n'apparaît pas, il faut d'abord installer le paquet ia32-sun-java6-bin)

Une fois VaudTax installé, il faut télécharger et décompacter xulrunner :

$ cd $HOME/VaudTax2010
$ wget http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/xulrunner/releases/1.9.2.16/runtimes/xulrunner-1.9.2.16.en-US.linux-i686.tar.bz2
$ tar -xpf xulrunner-*

Finalement, il faut encore modifier le fichier VaudTax2010 en ajoutant ces deux lignes juste après `VM_SEARCH_PATH="$PATH"' :

export MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME=$HOME/VaudTax2010/xulrunner
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}:${MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME}

Note : une fois VaudTax2010 installé, on peut exécuter à nouveau "sudo update-alternatives --config java" pour rétablir la configuration initiale - les paramètres sont en effet enregistrés dans le fichier VaudTax2010.lax

[1]

The program 'SWT' received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was 'RenderBadPicture (invalid Picture parameter)'.
  (Details: serial 5455 error_code 161 request_code 149 minor_code 7)
  (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
   that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
   To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line
   option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
   backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)

[2] la troisième variante serait d'étudier le format de fichier produit par chacune des versions pour créer un outil de conversion

Linux: enable encrypted swap (Ubuntu / Debian)

nospam@example.com (crox) — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 21:40:37 +0000

1. create and enable a "regular" swap partition (fdisk / mkswap / swapon)

2. install ecryptfs-utils and run ecryptfs-setup-swap

sudo apt-get install ecryptfs-utils
sudo ecryptfs-setup-swap

Scanner permissions in Ubuntu Karmic (udev libusb saned problem with udev-acl)

nospam@example.com (crox) — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 23:13:00 +0000

In Ubuntu Karmic (and possibly Jaunty ?), when you install libsane, it adds a file /lib/udev/rules.d/40-libsane.rules which contains rules that match on supported scanners and set the environment variable "libsane_matched" to "yes".

This in turn triggers the following in /lib/udev/rules.d/70-acl.rules:

# USB scanners
ENV{libsane_matched}=="yes", ENV{ACL_MANAGE}="1"

<snip>

# apply ACL for all locally logged in users
LABEL="acl_apply", ENV{ACL_MANAGE}=="?*", TEST=="/var/run/ConsoleKit/database", \
  RUN+="udev-acl --action=$env{ACTION} --device=$env{DEVNAME}"

In the end, the result is that an ACL is created for the device, which allows locally logged in users to use it (read/write permission). eg for my scanner:

~# lsusb
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 04b8:011c Seiko Epson Corp. Perfection 3200
~# ls -l /dev/bus/usb/001/005
crw-rw-r--+ 1 root root 189, 4 2009-12-28 00:11 /dev/bus/usb/001/005
~# getfacl /dev/bus/usb/001/005
getfacl: Removing leading '/' from absolute path names
# file: dev/bus/usb/001/005
# owner: root
# group: root
user::rw-
user:crox:rw-
group::rw-
mask::rw-
other::r--
~#

However, I also wanted to allow access to the scanner from other workstations through saned. In older Ubuntu versions, you could just add saned (or whatever user the service runs as) to the scanner group. This no longer works since the device belongs to root:root, and ACLs are added for specific users. The solution that works for me is to create a file /etc/udev/rules.d/99-sane-group.rules with the following contents:

# change group to scanner for sane devices
ENV{libsane_matched}=="yes", GROUP="scanner"

Then you just need to run

sudo udevadm trigger

and the group of the device magically changes to scanner.

Of course you could also add a similar rule specifically for a certain device instead, in my case this would work too:

ATTRS{idVendor}=="1d6b", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0002", GROUP="scanner"

To check that it worked, run the following:

sudo su -s /bin/bash -c 'scanimage -L' saned

Making a Dell computer running Linux silent (Dell Precision noise problem)

nospam@example.com (crox) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:05:09 +0000

Faced with a noisy Dell Precision 490 computer running Ubuntu Karmic, I found an easy way to reduce the noise level to an acceptable threshold. (fancontrol did not help since it seems not to be compatible with the chipset used by Dell at least on this computer.)

Step 1, install i8kutils:

sudo apt-get install i8kutils

Step 2, add i8k to /etc/modules:

sudo sh -c 'echo i8k >> /etc/modules'

Step 3, edit /etc/default/i8kmon so that it looks like this:

# /etc/default/i8kmon



# Change to one enable i8kmon

ENABLED=1

I8KMON_ARGS="--daemon --nouserconfig --auto"

Step 4, reboot and enjoy!

Installing Ubuntu Netbook Remix over the network (UNR netboot - PXE install)

nospam@example.com (crox) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:26:00 +0000

There is actually at least one very straightforward way to install Ubuntu Netbook Remix without a USB key, without even downloading the image, over the network.

Just follow the instructions in my previous article to get a working Ubuntu Installer over PXE. By default this installer will only setup a very minimal Ubuntu system, without any server or desktop packages.

At some point during the installation, you are offered the possibility to install additional software packages. At this stage you can just tick the box in front of "Ubuntu Network Remix" and that's it! You don't need to select any other package (eg Ubuntu Desktop) for a fully working UNR install. Personally I added "OpenSSH Server" because I want to be able to login remotely. Of course you could also add those packages later on.