Grumbel's questions

I am looking for a tool to write disk image to SDcard or USBstick safely. I have the following requirements:

• graphical user interface (i.e. no clonezilla or dd)
• tool is specialized for removable storage (i.e. no gparted)
• tool is self contained and small (i.e. not integrated in a big file manager)
• checks if disks are mounted before writing
• deals with the auto-mounter and prevents from starting while read/write is in progress
• checks and displays the current content of the disk before overwriting it

I am aware of cloneziller, dd, gparted and Co., none of them are satisfactory. I am not looking for a way to just write a disk, but specifically for a tool that is specialized for this task and that handles all the footguns safely. Does anything like this exist for Linux?

Edit: Closest matches I have found so far (none directly available in Ubuntu):

• https://community.kde.org/ISOImageWriter
• https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/burn.html
• https://www.balena.io/etcher/

Im running Ubuntu 16.04 (dev branch), XFCE as desktop environment.

My computer is connected to two monitors. One via regular VGA cable and the other is connected to a HDMI Switcher. That setup works fine, but every time I temporarily change the HDMI Switcher to another HDMI connection Xorg detects that the monitor has been disconnected and reconfigures Xorg to only use a single monitor, switching the HDMI Switcher back to my computer doesn't reactivate dual monitor use either, I have to manually trigger that with xrandr

How can I prevent this kind of automatic monitor detection and reconfiguration from happening? I'd like to be able to switch the HDMI Switcher without the computer doing anything.

Command used to restore the multi-monitor setup:

xrandr \
 --output HDMI-1 \
   --mode "1920x1080" \
   --panning "1920x1080+1280+0/0x0+0+0" \
 --output DVI-1-I \
   --mode "1280x1024" \
   --panning "1280x1024/0x0+0+0"

xrandr output on regular use:

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 3200 x 1080, maximum 8192 x 8192
DP-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-1 connected 1920x1080+1280+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 443mm x 249mm panning 1920x1080+1280+0
   1920x1080     60.00*+  60.00    50.00    59.94    59.93  
   1920x1080i    60.00    50.00    59.94  
   1680x1050     59.95    59.88  
   1600x1024     60.17  
   1400x1050     74.76    70.00    59.98  
   1280x1024     75.02    60.02  
   1440x900      59.89    59.90  
   1280x960      60.00  
   1360x768      59.80    59.96  
   1280x800      59.91  
   1152x864      75.00    75.00    70.00    60.00  
   1280x720      60.00    50.00    59.94  
   1024x768      60.04    75.03    70.07    60.00  
   960x720       75.00    60.00  
   928x696       75.00    60.05  
   896x672       75.05    60.01  
   960x600       60.00  
   832x624       74.55  
   960x540       59.99  
   800x600       75.00    70.00    65.00    60.00    72.19    75.00    60.32    56.25  
   840x525       74.96    69.88    60.01    59.88  
   720x576       50.00  
   800x512       60.17  
   700x525       74.76    70.06    59.98  
   720x480       60.00    59.94  
   640x512       75.02    60.02  
   720x450       59.89  
   640x480       60.00    72.81    75.00    66.67    60.00    59.94  
   720x400       70.08  
   680x384       59.80    59.96  
   576x432       75.00    75.00    70.00    60.06  
   512x384       75.03    70.07    60.00  
   416x312       74.66  
   400x300       72.19    75.12    60.32    56.34  
   320x240       72.81    75.00    60.05  
DVI-I-1 connected 1280x1024+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 359mm x 287mm
   1280x1024     60.02*+  75.02  
   1280x960      60.00  
   1280x800      74.93    59.81  
   1152x864      75.00  
   1280x768      74.89    59.87  
   1280x720      60.00  
   1024x768      75.08    75.03    70.07    60.00  
   1024x576      59.97  
   832x624       74.55  
   800x600       72.19    75.00    70.01    60.32    56.25  
   848x480       60.00  
   640x480       75.00    72.81    66.67    60.00  
   720x400       70.08  

xrandr output when HDMI switcher is switched to a different connection:

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1280 x 1024, maximum 8192 x 8192
DP-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DVI-I-1 connected 1280x1024+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 359mm x 287mm
   1280x1024     60.02*+  75.02  
   1280x960      60.00  
   1280x800      74.93    59.81  
   1152x864      75.00  
   1280x768      74.89    59.87  
   1280x720      60.00  
   1024x768      75.08    75.03    70.07    60.00  
   1024x576      59.97  
   832x624       74.55  
   800x600       72.19    75.00    70.01    60.32    56.25  
   848x480       60.00  
   640x480       75.00    72.81    66.67    60.00  
   720x400       70.08  

Some more things I tried:

With the monitor connected find out the modeline:

$ xvidtune -show 
"1920x1080"   148.50   1920 2008 2052 2200   1080 1084 1089 1125 -hsync +vsync

Then with the monitor disconnected:

$ xrandr --newmode "1920x1080-new"   148.50   1920 2008 2052 2200   1080 1084 1089 1125 -hsync +vsync
$ xrandr --addmode HDMI-1 1920x1080-new
$ xrandr --output HDMI-1 --mode 1920x1080-new

This allows me to activate the display when disconnected, which would otherwise fail due to non-existent mode 1920x1080. The problem however remains, if I switch the HDMI Switcher the display gets disabled, even if I have it set to a custom mode.

This are the udev events when disconnecting the display with the HDMI Switcher:

$ udevadm monitor --property
monitor will print the received events for:
UDEV - the event which udev sends out after rule processing
KERNEL - the kernel uevent

KERNEL[41678.571099] change   /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/0000:01:00.0/drm/card0 (drm)
ACTION=change
DEVNAME=/dev/dri/card0
DEVPATH=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/0000:01:00.0/drm/card0
DEVTYPE=drm_minor
HOTPLUG=1
MAJOR=226
MINOR=0
SEQNUM=3248
SUBSYSTEM=drm

UDEV  [41678.573432] change   /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/0000:01:00.0/drm/card0 (drm)
ACTION=change
DEVNAME=/dev/dri/card0
DEVPATH=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/0000:01:00.0/drm/card0
DEVTYPE=drm_minor
HOTPLUG=1
ID_FOR_SEAT=drm-pci-0000_01_00_0
ID_PATH=pci-0000:01:00.0
ID_PATH_TAG=pci-0000_01_00_0
MAJOR=226
MINOR=0
SEQNUM=3248
SUBSYSTEM=drm
TAGS=:uaccess:master-of-seat:seat:
USEC_INITIALIZED=31279519

This are the udev events when reenabling the display with the HDMI Switcher:

$ udevadm monitor --property
monitor will print the received events for:
UDEV - the event which udev sends out after rule processing
KERNEL - the kernel uevent

KERNEL[41696.104481] change   /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/0000:01:00.0/drm/card0 (drm)
ACTION=change
DEVNAME=/dev/dri/card0
DEVPATH=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/0000:01:00.0/drm/card0
DEVTYPE=drm_minor
HOTPLUG=1
MAJOR=226
MINOR=0
SEQNUM=3249
SUBSYSTEM=drm

UDEV  [41696.105685] change   /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/0000:01:00.0/drm/card0 (drm)
ACTION=change
DEVNAME=/dev/dri/card0
DEVPATH=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/0000:01:00.0/drm/card0
DEVTYPE=drm_minor
HOTPLUG=1
ID_FOR_SEAT=drm-pci-0000_01_00_0
ID_PATH=pci-0000:01:00.0
ID_PATH_TAG=pci-0000_01_00_0
MAJOR=226
MINOR=0
SEQNUM=3249
SUBSYSTEM=drm
TAGS=:seat:master-of-seat:uaccess:
USEC_INITIALIZED=31279519

.

$ sudo lshw -c display
  *-display                 
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: Redwood XT [Radeon HD 5670/5690/5730]
       vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
       version: 00
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=radeon latency=0
       resources: irq:55 memory:c0000000-cfffffff memory:fea20000-fea3ffff ioport:e000(size=256) memory:c0000-dffff

How can I find out the size of a filesystem in Linux? By that I mean the exact number of bytes that are used from the partition, not just the output of df, as that can differ from the true size when compression or deduplication is used on the filesystem.

The size of the partition itself can be printed with:

$ lsblk -b

or

$ blockdev --getsize64 /dev/sda

I am looking for something similar for the filesystem.

PS: This is for LVM grow/shrink stuff. I am mostly interested in ext2/3/4 and btrfs, but any other filesystem info is appreciated as well.

How can one encrypt/decrypt a single file ecryptfs-style without mounting the whole filesystem? I am basically looking for a gpg -e/gpg -d analogue that produces output that can be understood by ecryptfs and used in userspace.

I am looking for an alternative to the standard cp and mv command line tools, specifically I am looking for features such as:

• detailed progress bar/reports
• dry-run support
• support for merging directories
• no overwrite warning when source and destination files are identical
• conflict resolution on overwrite (i.e. rename one of the files)
• copying to multiple targets at once
• multi-threading (i.e. continue copying in the background while I handle conflict resolution in the foreground)

So basically a feature set similar to what the Windows 8 Explorer can do when copying or moving files around.

PS: rsync with --progress --recursive --remove-source-files --checksum --backup is somewhat usable for merging directories, but still far from perfect, as it only removes source files, not directories and it doesn't really have much in terms of interactively resolving conflicts.

How can I trigger an automount from the command line? By "automount" I don't mean fully automatic mounting, but getting a list of available devices and then selecting one and having it end up as /media/{user}/{diskid}. This functionality is provided by Nautilus or Thunar for example, but I can't seem to find a command line tool to trigger this kind of semi automatic mount.

pmount is the closest I have found, but seems to work by completely different mechanics underneath and makes devices show up as /media/sdf or something along the lines.

What is the state of partitioning tools in Linux? Which tools are recommend and which should I stay away from? Namely I am interested in fdisk, cfdisk, sfdisk and the fdisk and cfdisk variants that come in the gnu-fdisk package. The "go to" solution these days would be parted I assume?

I am asking this because I used to use cfdisk years ago, but now I am sitting here with a new 3TB disk and cfdisk is displaying completely wrong information, it's displaying a partition as 375GB in size and free space available even so there is a single partition of 3TB and no free space. If I switch over to cfdisk from the gnu-fdisk package, it will display correct information, but now fdisk.gnu-fdisk won't display anything. Meanwhile the regular fdisk that comes by default with Ubuntu would display things correctly. sfdisk seems to work, but is lacking support for the newer GPT partition tables.

Essentially half of those tools don't seem to work properly. So should I just forget them and do everything with parted from now on? Are the gdisk tools ready for prime time or are there any drawbacks to using GPT? Are there other tools I should be aware of?

Ubuntu 12.10 ships Weston and Wayland. What are the basic steps I need to take to make them usable? Trying to start Weston gives this and then drops back to the command prompt:

$ weston
Date: 2012-12-06 CET
[10:53:58.368] weston 0.95.0
               http://wayland.freedesktop.org/
               Bug reports to: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=weston
               Build:  
[10:53:58.368] OS: Linux, 3.5.0-19-generic, #30-Ubuntu SMP Tue Nov 13 17:49:53 UTC 2012, i686
couldn't open /home/ingo/.config/weston.ini
[10:53:58.368] Loading module '/usr/lib/weston/x11-backend.so'
[10:53:58.370] initializing x11 backend
couldn't open /home/ingo/.config/weston.ini
libEGL warning: unsupported platform Windows
libEGL warning: DRI2: failed to authenticate
libEGL warning: DRI2: failed to open swrast (search paths /usr/lib/fglrx/dri)
libEGL warning: unsupported platform Windows
libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast
libGL error: Try again with LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose for more details.
[10:53:58.389] failed to choose config: 0
[10:53:58.389] failed to create compositor
$ 

PS: I know that they aren't ready for prime-time yet, anything basic like opening a terminal or hello-world type thing in Weston would be enough.

Firefox in Ubuntu 12.10 pops up messages such as (similar messages for Reddit, Facebook, etc.):

"Would you like to install Twitter for extra features and quicker access?"

What do they mean? What exactly gets installed and where?

After a recent tour through Gnome3, KDE and Unity my font anti-aliasing in XFCE4 has changed in a subtle way (not sure if it was any of the DEs that changed the setting or any of the dependencies that got install when installing the DEs):

The font, Verdana 8, looks almost exactly the same, except in the old one subpixels where used to make the lines a little wider in the new one they are just one-pixel.

Which setting does cause this effect and how can I set it back? It's neither the hinting nor the subpixel ordering, which are the only settings reachable from XFCE4.

Edit: When I create a new account without any existing configuration I get the old subpixel rendering back.

I have a few gigabyte of old mail, mostly unsorted as nnml format (i.e. Gnus, with one file per mail). How can I turn that mail into something useful, i.e. something I can search and browse easily and fast (i.e. grep takes far to long). I have no need for a full mail client, just the archive management part of it.

I am looking for a MP3/Ogg player that has the ability to playback a file at a higher speed, preferably without affecting the pitch. What players allow that? The only one I know right now is alsaplayer, but it can't do it without affecting the pitch and also has currently a bug that causes it to use 100% of the CPU at all times, so that renders it kind of unusable. What alternatives are out there?

I am currently using Rhythmbox for my podcasts (around 50 feeds) and I am looking for an alternative due to it's numerous short comings and bugs, among other things:

• it crashes every now and then
• lacks ability to redownload failed downloads
• you can delete episodes, but you have no way to see deleted episodes
• you can't see podcast that don't have any new episodes, they are completely invisible in the GUI
• since after the Ubuntu 11.10 upgrade it has started to convert MP3 before copying them to the MP3 player, however not all, just some random ones for no obvious reason
• doesn't support parallel download from multiple hosts
• doesn't give control over which feeds are auto downloaded
• doesn't keep track of last listening position
• ...

However I am actually quite happy with the overall user-interface of Rhythmbox, a simple listview with all the podcast titles, track length and release date that I can sort is exactly what I want. I would however like to have more control, ability to group multiple feeds would be nice and in general just features that make it easy to track large number of podcasts.

Alternatives I have looked at so far:

gpodder: Doesn't look bad, but its focused on download only, not playing podcasts, it gets very slow with large number of podcasts, it makes downloading a big issue with pop-ups and stuff, instead of a thing that happens mostly transparent in the background

banshee: Might be a good alternative if it wouldn't be for the lack of simple listview, it only has this awkward iconview that allows no way to sort the podcast episodes

amarok: extremely ugly interface, podcasts seem to be an afterthought, hidden on the left pane with most of the interface being useless, no way to sort episodes after release date, etc.

liferea: good: support for the whole RSS feed, not just podcasts, bad: support for the actual MP3 is extremely awkward with it being just an attachment

miro: doesn't support syncing to MP3 player devices

I have a bunch of packages in my PPA and a reasonable knowledge on how to build Debian/Ubuntu packages, so far so good. My issue is that I don't really have an idea how to properly maintain them for different versions of Ubuntu and how to handle Ubuntu upgrades. Right now I am doing all of these things manually, which for most part simply means updating the version number in debian/changelog and reuploading them, which sounds easy enough, however when having to do that for a dozen packages, across numerous versions of Ubuntu, things can get a little tiresome and error prone.

When there are small changes needed to be done to the debian/control files, debian/rules or the source things get of course even more complicated. While I can maintain those changes in git-buildpackage fine, getting constant merge conflicts in the debian/control file, due to backports having different version number then the current package, kind of throws me of the rails and makes things even more complicated.

So essentially: What are some best practices for building and maintaining Ubuntu packages, so that it's easy to make them available across multiple version of Ubuntu?

I am looking for a theme that replicates the look of the classic Clearlooks theme from Gtk2 or something that at least looks similar, i.e. something basic, with rounded corners that doesn't overdo it with distracting color gradients. Having the arrows on the scrollbar would also be nice. Suggestions?

I am running gnome-session-fallback and I want my panel to have a height of 24 pixel, that can be easily configured, except for one problem maker, the user menu:

Unlike all other applets, the user menu has a minimum size of around 30 pixel, which make the panel to ignore my 24 pixel setting and forces it to 30 pixel.

How can I either shrink the user menu or get back the old system menu, so that I don't need the user menu?

I already tried to change the icons (i.e. user-available-symbolic.svg, ...), but even without the icons the thing stays up at 30px.

I want to batch convert images (jpg, png, etc.) to PDF. Converting them directly to PDF is easy with:

convert in.jpg out.pdf

However I need some more options, such as setting the output page size, margins and rotation between landscape and portrait format. After some trial and error I have come up with:

convert -rotate "90>" -page A4+0+0  -gravity center in.jpg  out.pdf

This centers the image on an A4 page and automatically rotates between landscape and portrait, however it only works with small images below 595x842. Larger images break, as 595x842 seems to be the resolution in pixel that is assigned to an A4 page. Reading around on the net, -density option might be a potential solution to increase the pixel count on an A4 page, but I couldn't make it work.

Solutions outside of Imagemagick are of course welcome as well.

I have the issue that sometimes when I burn an iso image to a CD-R with:

sudo wodim -v driveropts=burnfree -data dev=/dev/scd0 input.iso

And then read it back out again with:

sudo dd if=/dev/cdrom of=output.iso
dd: reading `/dev/cdrom': Input/output error
...

That I end up with two iso images that are not identical, namely the output.iso is missing 2048 bytes at the end. When I however mount the iso image or CD-R and compare the actual files on the mountpoint, both are identical.

Is that expected behavior or is that an actually incorrect burn of the data? And if its expected, how can I verify that the burn process was successful?

The reason why I ask in the first place is that it seems to be reproducible behavior, certain iso images come out 2048 bytes short, even on repeated burns, but all burned CD-Rs are under themselves identical.

Also what is the reason behind the:

dd: reading `/dev/cdrom': Input/output error

As it happens always, I assume it is normal, but what is the technical reason behind it? I assume CDs don't allow the device to detect the size directly, so dd reads till it encounters the end the hard way.

Edit: User karol on superusers.com mentioned that both the size issue and the read error are the result of using -tao (default) in wodim instead of -dao mode. I couldn't yet test it, but it sounds like the most plausible explanation so far.

I installed miredo and have IPv6 up and running it seems. I can ping6 hosts and download webpages with wget or my webbrowser when I specify IPv6 addresses, however whenever I specify a hostname that is offered over both IPv4 and IPv6 the browser picks the IPv4 address for the connection.

How can I change that and let the browser use IPv6 instead of IPv4 if available?

Googling around I found a hint that browsers will prefer IPv4 over IPv6 for 6to4/teredo tunnels, but so far I haven't found an explanation why or how to change that.

Ubuntu provides some good information on how to enable UFW and on how to enable IPv6 with miredo:

• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UncomplicatedFirewall
• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IPv6

But what is missing is information on how to properly configure UFW to let Miredo work, as as soon as I enable UFW IPv6 stops working:

$ ufw disable
$ ping6 ipv6.google.com
PING ipv6.google.com(2a00:1450:8004::93) 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 2a00:1450:8004::93: icmp_seq=1 ttl=56 time=1886 ms
$ ufw enable
$ ping6 ipv6.google.com
PING ipv6.google.com(2a00:1450:8004::6a) 56 data bytes
ping: sendmsg: Operation not permitted

So how do I properly configure both Miredo and UFW together that basic IPv6 is working, but with all other incoming traffic being blocked?