Saturday, October 24, 2015

Transfer files from Android to Ubuntu 15.10 Lenovo G50-45 Laptop using Bluetooth.


I struggled to use Blue-tooth on my Ubuntu 14.04 Lenovo G50-45 and eagerly waiting for Ubuntu 15.10 which has Linux Kernel 4.2 and proper drivers for using Blue-tooth on this Laptop. As soon as Ubuntu 15.10 Development version Kernel was upgraded to 4.2 I installed it and happily using it. Although the Laptop got connected through Blue-tooth to my Android Phone I had to try various things including  obex-data-server etc. to transfer the files.

On 22nd Oct 2015 final version of Ubuntu 15.10 was available I downloaded the ISO and made a USB stick and decided to connect Android phone to the laptop using Blue-tooth on Live Ubuntu 15.10.

I had to install Bluetooth Manager to transfer files to and from Android Phone to the laptop.

Friday, October 16, 2015

Importing ICICI Bank, other Banks and Android Applicaton Transactions in GnuCash.

I posted about the same topic in 2011. I have decided to maintain the Books of Accounts on my own in the Current Financial Year 2015-16 (since the tryst with Steam Turbine is temporarily suspended and tryst with Linux is on which the readers of this Blog would have noticed anyway looking at frequency of my posts). I installed GnuCash 2.6.6 on Ubuntu through Software Centre couple of days ago and started importing the Bank Account Files. ICICI Bank no longer offers QIF/MSMoney Fomat download as stated in comments on the year 2011 post. No problem for me. I downloaded the Excel File and saved as CSV which was accepted by GnuCash in the option "Import Transactions from CSV".

I imported the transactions from Bank Accounts, Credit Card Accounts and the corresponding debit/credit entry went into Imbalance and only task then was to change the imbalance into the correct account.

I have again become my own CA, thanks to GnuCash.

I also installed GnuCash Application on Android Phone, created Expenses Account, entered the Cash transactions while shopping, exported the transactions in QIF File, imported that File on Desktop Application and the Transactions are entered there. Great going.

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Filing Income Tax Return using Java Utility on Ubuntu.

My CA audits my accounts and sends me the XML file of Income Tax Return for uploading it to Income Tax Return e-Filing site. I check the XML file by opening it in the Browser or if I see that a thorough check is necessary I use other tools including Excel Utility for which I need Windows.

This year I decided to use the Java Utility available in Downloads section of e-Filing site. When I opened it typing ./ITR.sh in the Terminal it produced an error. On Googling I found that I need an older version of Java to use it.

I went to Java Oracle site and downloaded the old version jre-8u51-linux-x64.tar.gz and extracted it to /opt/jre (I had to create the directory). Since the latest version of JRE openjdk-8-jre 8u66-b01-5 was installed on my Laptop I removed it and had to use "G Alternatives" to add the path /opt/jre/1.8.0_51/bin/java for Oracle Java.

I could then use the utility by typing ./ITR.sh in the Terminal and open the XML File to view the Income Tax Return.

I made necessary changes in the Return after consulting my CA and could submit it directly through the utility without logging to e-Filing site.

Thursday, October 08, 2015

Upgrading Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 my experience.

Although this is Linux Blog I have decided to write about my upgrade experience from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10.

My LenovoG50-45 came with pre-installed Windows 8.1. I had disabled Automatic Update on Windows 8.1 and use to update once in a while. When MS decided to give free upgrade to Windows 10 I went through the procedure which asked for applying all pending updates to Windows 8.1 to see Get Windows 10 application. When I clicked on the application it asked to wait for my turn. Becoming restless I searched for how to get immediate upgrade and enabled something which did not work. Finally I got permission to download on Get Windows 10 application and started download of about 2.8 GB. After download got finished something happened during preparation to install and it started the download of 2.8 GB once again.

Getting frustrated I decided to re-install Windows 8.1 through one-key recovery. While booting in re-installed Windows 8.1 MS asked whether I was interested in upgrade to Windows 10 and I said yes to it.

Windows 8.1 re-install damaged Grub2 which I corrected using Boot-repair.

After couple of updates to Windows 8.1 (not all) Windows 10 download appeared on Windows update and I finished the download in 6 hrs (I have 1 Mbps connection).
After finishing download it changed to "preparing to install" and I had to wait patiently for this activity since Windows extracts the 2.8 GB file in the background.

Finally it was ready to upgrade after accepting EULA. The upgrade took lot of time and there were three reboots. On the last boot Windows asked several questions and the best one was to go for express install which I declined and chose "Custom".

After booting to the Desktop Windows 10 did not allow to disable automatic updates but I searched in Wi-Fi Settings to declare my connection "metered" which prevented the automatic update.

Fortunately Windows 10 upgrade did not touch grub2 and I could boot to Ubuntu 14.04.3.

From Ubuntu 14.04.3 Grub2 I could not boot Ubuntu 15.10 using systemd and had to use upstart option. I used Boot-repair once again on installed Ubuntu 15.10 to re-install Grub2.

Finally I have Windows 10/Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS/Ubuntu 15.10/android-x86 multi-boot successfully working on my laptop.

Air India direct flight to San Fransisco has flown through China today.

 My sister in law left for San Fransisco by AI 173 flight which flows over North Pole. I tracked that flight on flightstats.com till it land...