Andrew Ferrier's questions

I have several versions of Ubuntu installed, including 14.04 and 10.04. When I build packages using equivs-build on 14.04, it generates .debs that contain .xz-compressed data. The version of dpkg on 10.04 cannot understand or install these packages, and so I see errors like this:

dpkg-deb: file `/var/cache/apt/archives/mypackage.deb' contains ununderstood data member data.tar.xz

This answer gives an approach for building Debian packages in general, but it doesn't appear equivs-build gives that level of control; unless I've missed an obvious option?

I have various Apple products which sync with iCloud.

Are there any ways to access iCloud documents with Ubuntu (for clarity, I'm not asking about email, calendaring, etc.) apart from the web-based access at https://www.icloud.com/?

The ideal option would be a daemon that syncs with iCloud in a similar way to how Dropbox does. However, a programmable API or GUI-based solution would be good too.

Essentially I'm looking to investigate the options; I appreciate they are likely to be reverse-engineered and not 100% official or supported.

I'd like to use mlocate on my Ubuntu server, but only to index certain directories (e.g. /home and /data, but not everything under /). However, mlocate's standard configuration works the opposite way; you specify the paths you want to remove (with PRUNE_PATHS).

Is there any easy way to achieve this, or any similar utility that will do what I want? (note: it should maintain an index like mlocate, so find is not acceptable, for example) Thanks.

What functionality of an iPad can I use with Ubuntu? I'm thinking about buying an iPad, but I only have Ubuntu PCs these days (no Windows, no Mac), and I'm nervous that it may be too reliant on the existence of iTunes. I'm less concerned about getting media onto and off it (and I have read that I can do this with libimobiledevice), but will I be able to activate it with iTunes? Does it need to be USB synced on a regular basis, or can I do most anything I want through the cloud (i.e. over wifi)?

Edit: In answer to jrgifford's question, in theory, I'd like to do everything I would want to do with it were I using Windows/Mac. But more specifically, I think I'd want to:

• "Activate" it, if that's necessary
• Copy music / video onto it
• Install apps

How much of this can I do without a Windows/Mac PC? Is it necessary to activate it?

I don't think I'm that interested in backing it up (what would I back up?), but then again, maybe I'm confused as to how easy it is to get data on and off. Can I get a regular SFTP app for the iPad to copy data to my Ubuntu machine over wi-fi, for example?