blog.crox.net

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'];

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.

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.

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".

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

The solution:

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

Found here.