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

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.

IPv6 Neighbor discovery

Discover/list other hosts:
ping6 -I eth0 ff02::1
ip -6 neigh show

To connect to a host using the link-local address you need to specify which interface to use (see "zone index"):
ssh -6 fe80::a00:aaaa:bbbb:cccc%eth0

backuppc "no ping response" when ping works fine

It took me some time to figure this out, maybe it can be useful to someone else...

I kept getting "no ping" error for unknown reasons. It turned out that I had enabled DumpPreUserCmd and UserCmdCheckStatus for that specific host to check for an encrypted partition being mounted.

Due to some changes on the host after an upgrade, the script triggered by DumpPreUserCmd was returning an error... And for some reason this showed as a ping error in the web interface.

I eventually figured it out by checking the last lines of the LOG.** file in the pc/[host] directory, which looked like this:
2018-05-08 19:15:45 Output from DumpPreUserCmd: /[partition] is not mounted
2018-05-08 19:15:45 DumpPreUserCmd returned error status 256... exiting

How to solve Edimax EW-7612UAn v2 (7392:7822) power management issues on Raspberry Pi (Raspbian WiFi disconnect)

  • On Raspbian, you don't need to install the 8192cu driver manually, as it comes with the distribution

  • To avoid disconnection issues, you need however to disable power management. This needs to be done in two places. First, this is what I have in /etc/modprobe.d/8192cu.conf:
    options 8192cu rtw_power_mgnt=0 rtw_enusbss=0

  • This alone did not prevent the issue. I also had to add this entry to /etc/network/interfaces:
    auto wlan0
    allow-hotplug wlan0
    iface wlan0 inet dhcp
    wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
    wireless-power off
    iface default inet dhcp


Sources: https://github.com/xbianonpi/xbian/issues/217, https://www.kuerbis.org/2016/03/raspberry-pi-3-kurztipps-wlan-sleep-mode-verhindern/

Accessing iPhone (iOS 10.2.1) pictures from Ubuntu

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.