POCO C3 Android Phone Factory Reset difficulties.

 I had done Factory reset of my previous Android Phones Coolpad Mega 2.5D and Samsung Galaxy on7 pro without any difficulty. Installation of apps used to take some time (may be an hour or two) but my current phone POCO C3 took several hours even updating preinstalled Google Apps and I could not install essential apps like Paytm, Phonepe, Bigbasket etc.

The main hurdle was updating Google Play Store version 23.10 which I could not do manually. This Play Store version prevented updating preinstalled Google Apps as well as installing other apps.

Actually I should have allowed the phone to update but became restless and tried some tricks like deleting cache and data in Google Play Store and restarting the phone but no result.

Finally all apps updated and I could install other apps and found that Google Play Store was updated to version 27.8.14-21.

I made my Fridge Smart.

 Our old frost free fridge was giving problems and we bought a new conventional fridge which requires defrosting atleast twice a week exchanging the old one.

I used to push the defrost button before going to bed twice a week on Sunday and Wednesday.

Recently I bought a smart plug socket which has built in Wifi. As per instructions I installed Smart Life app on the mobile and could connect the Smart Plug to Wifi Network and set it up to stop at midnight and start at 3 AM every day. I could have set it up to work only on Sunday and Wednesday also as being done by manually pushing the defrost button.

I am switching off my Wifi Network before going to sleep in the night and even then the smart plug works because it has built in clock.

Wonderful Gadget!

Running frugal install of Fossapup64 Puppy Linux 9.5 with Gnucash 4.6 on flatpak and Libreoffice 7.2.

I copied the following files from Fossapup64 iso to Fossapup folder on one partition of Hard Disk:

adrv_fossapup64_9.5.sfs, fdrv_fossapup64_9.5.sfs, puppy_fossapup64_9.5.sfs, zdrv_fossapup64_9.5.sfs, vmlinuz, initrd.gz

Then I created following boot entry in /etc/gub.d/40_custom:

menuentry 'Fossapup64 9.5' {

search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 1e364a7e-9e6d-468a-99a2-404936a14d59

linux /Fossapup/vmlinuz pfix=nocopy pmedia=atahd psubdir=Fossapup 

initrd /Fossapup/initrd.gz 

} 

and updated Grub: 

sudo update-grub 

I could boot into Fossapup64 Puppy Linux 9.5 Desktop. 

I installed flatpak with all its dependencies from Puppy Package Manager

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo 

and installed Gnucash: 

flatpak install flathub org.gnucash.GnuCash

and run it: 

flatpak run org.gnucash.GnuCash 

For Libreoffice there was Menu/Document/Get_Libreoffice_download_and_install_Libreoffice available on the Desktop.

Running Puppy Linux 9.5 fossapup64 from USB on my acer laptop.

I downloaded fossapup64-9.5.iso checked md5sum, copied it to USB and tried booting but it was not bootable on UEFI machine. Then I copied only following files from the iso at the root of USB: vmlinuz, initrd.gz, puppy_fossapup64_9.5.sfs, zdrv_fossapup64_9.5.sfs, adrv_fossapup64_9.5.sfs and fdrv_fossapup64_9.5.sfs I created EFI/boot folder at the root of USB. Downloaded bootx64.efi and grub.cfg files. Copied bootx64.efi in EFI/boot folder and grub.cfg at the root of USB. I could boot into Puppy Linux 9.5 Desktop from the USB:

error: file ‘/boot/vmlinuz-5.12-X86-64’ not found on Manjaro grub after failed update.

 I am running Manjaro Linux since Sep 2020. There was a big update (larger than 1 GB) on 20th May 2021 and I left the Laptop after the update began.

After 30 minutes I found blank screen and could not even open a terminal by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F2. I pressed the power button to shutdown.

After restart I got the error: file ‘/boot/vmlinuz-5.12-X86-64’ not found you need to load the kernel first and could not proceed.

I logged in Ubuntu 20.04 and posted on Manjaro Forum and was asked to boot from Manjaro Live USB open the terminal and type:

[manjaro@manjaro ~]$ sudo su -
[manjaro ~]# manjaro-chroot -a
grub-probe: error: cannot find a GRUB drive for /dev/sdb1.  Check your device.map.
grub-probe: error: cannot find a GRUB drive for /dev/sdb1.  Check your device.map.
==> Detected systems:
 --> 0) Ubuntu
 --> 1) ManjaroLinux
==> Select system to mount [0-1] : 
1
==> Mounting (ManjaroLinux) [/dev/sda7]
 --> mount: [/mnt]
 --> mount: [/mnt/boot/efi]
[manjaro /]# rm -f /var/lib/pacman/db.lck
[manjaro /]# pacman -Syu
:: Synchronizing package databases...
 core is up to date
 extra                1910.3 KiB   498 KiB/s 00:04 [######################] 100%
 community is up to date
 multilib is up to date
:: Starting full system upgrade...
 there is nothing to do
[manjaro /]# 
It did not work.

Then I was asked to do:

# mkinitcpio -P

error no presets found

Then I was advised to list the installed kernels:

# mhwd-kernel -li 
and install at least one kernel
# mhwd-kernel -i linux510
I could not install linux510 but could install linux512

# mhwd-kernel -i linux512

After that I could login to installed Manjaro system using linux 5.12

I could reinstall linux510 through the same command on installed system.

Running i3 Window Manager on Ubuntu 20.04 and enjoying it.

 I came to know about i3 Window Manager and decided to try it on Ubuntu 20.04. Installed it through the command:

sudo apt install i3

Logged out of gnome, selected i3 and logged in.

It asked me to configure or accept default, not knowing about configuration I selected default then there was blank screen and I did not know what to do.

I used my Mobile to know how to open Terminal on i3 and got the answer to press  Alt+Enter. On terminal I typed firefox and pressed enter and could open the browser.

Then I googled for how to get menu on i3 and was told to press Alt+d and menu opened on top bar.

I typed sol on menu bar and pressed enter and Aiselriot opened.

Then I googled for i3 User Guide and got the link

i3 User Guide

I learned to maximise a window by pressing Alt+f

In the next session I allowed Ubuntu to configure the i3 Window Manager it changed the Alt key to Win key.

I am learning to use the i3 Window Manager and enjoying it.

I could not open gnome-screenshot utility on i3, therefore I installed scrot

sudo apt install scrot

When I typed scrot and enter on the menu it took the following screenshot:

Which is the screen on Ubuntu configured i3 Window Manager

I added following lines to my i3 config file:

# Added by me to add Indian Keyboard Layout and adjust screen brightness on start up.
exec "setxkbmap -layout us,in"
exec "setxkbmap -option 'grp:alt_shift_toggle'"

exec "xrandr --output eDP --brightness 0.5"

Created Fedora 34 Gnome 40 bootable persistent Live USB and running it.

I wanted to try Gnome 40 and found that newest version of Fedora 32 Workstation has Gnome 40.

I downloaded the iso.

Checked sha256sum found ok.

In order to make persistent Live USB I downloaded

livecd-iso-to-disk script

made the script executable and kept it in the same folder as the iso

sudo ./livecd-iso-to-disk --overlay-size-mb 2048 Fedora-Workstation-Live-x86_64-34-1.2.iso /dev/sdb1

to make Live USB with 2 GB for persistence.

It took lot of time:

Copying LiveOS image to target device...
squashfs.img
  1,896,591,360 100%    1.43MB/s    0:21:03 (xfr#1, to-chk=0/1)

Syncing filesystem writes to disc.
    Please wait, this may take a while...
Setting up /EFI/BOOT
Copying /images directory to the target device.
efiboot.img
     10,430,464 100%   70.83MB/s    0:00:00 (xfr#1, to-chk=0/1)
macboot.img
     21,938,176 100%   77.37MB/s    0:00:00 (xfr#1, to-chk=0/1)
initrd.img
     56,824,284 100%   11.06MB/s    0:00:04 (xfr#1, to-chk=0/1)
vmlinuz
     10,580,240 100%   30.12MB/s    0:00:00 (xfr#1, to-chk=0/1)
Updating boot config files.
Initializing persistent overlay...
2048+0 records in
2048+0 records out
2147483648 bytes (2.1 GB, 2.0 GiB) copied, 2250.09 s, 954 kB/s
Installing boot loader...

        ATTENTION:
        Failed to find /usr/share/syslinux/ldlinux.c32.
        The installed device may not boot.
                Press Enter to continue, or Ctrl C to abort.


        ATTENTION:
        Failed to find /usr/share/syslinux/libcom32.c32.
        The installed device may not boot.
                Press Enter to continue, or Ctrl C to abort.


        ATTENTION:
        Failed to find /usr/share/syslinux/libutil.c32.
        The installed device may not boot.
                Press Enter to continue, or Ctrl C to abort.

Target device is now set up with a Live image!

I changed BIOS Boot to Boot from USB and here is Gnome 40 Desktop:

 

Filing India Income Tax Return for AY 2021-22 on Linux.

Prior to AY 2013-14 it was necessary to have Windows on your PC to use offline utility (Excel File with Macros) to prepare the Income Tax Return and I was using Windows just to file the return.

In AY 2013-14 a Java Utility was introduced and I wrote about it on the blog post:

Income Tax efiling utility and DSC working on Ubuntu Linux.

For AY 2021-22 the department has switched to JSON but providing only Windows exe file so far. I have already raised a Help Desk request to provide Linux Utility which has been replied as:

Currently the team is analyzing the request; we will get back to you shortly. 

I installed the Utility in Wine(Version 5.0) on Ubuntu 20.04 but it did not work.

On Manjaro I had Wine Version 6.5 on which the Utility worked but it was not accepting Keyboard input. So there was hope.

Then on Ubuntu 20.04 I added Winehq repo and installed
wine-6.6 (Staging).

The Utility is working.

The procedure to install this wine version as follows:

download and add repository key:

wget -qO - https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key | sudo apt-key add -After importing the key, proceed to add repository.
sudo apt-add-repository 'deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ focal main'

To install Staging Version:

sudo apt update 

sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-staging

After installing confirm Wine Version:

wine --version

 should be 6.6

You can now install the exe file of JSON utility and run it by clicking the shortcut on Desktop.

NB: I could fill up the Income Tax Return completely, verify it but at last stage when the output JSON file is supposed to be downloaded it does not work. It says "Download Failed".

 

Watching free IPTV Live channels on Ubuntu 20.04

 I came to know that Linux Mint has developed IPTV app called Hypnotix. I downloaded the .deb file from github and installed it on Ubuntu 20.04.2.

There are many news channels like Zee News Aaj Tak India TV, DD News on this app.

 

Signal messaging app on Mobile and Desktop/Laptop.

 As WhatsAppp is updating its Privacy Policy the downloads of other apps like Telegram, Signal etc have increased and people are trying these apps.

I had downloaded Signal app on Mobile and found that many of my contacts are doing the same. I had nice video calls with couple of them.

Today I installed Signal Desktop app on Laptop and imported the Contacts from the Mobile.

If I send a message through the Desktop app unlike WhatsApp there is no need to keep the Mobile app working which is a great feature. 

Enjoying Xubuntu Live persistent on Dell Inspiron N4010 P11G

I came to Hyderabad to spend winter. I borrowed Dell Inspiron N4010 3 GB model with Windows 7 Professional for personal use. Before leaving home I had uploaded required Gnucash Files and Libreoffice files to Drive.

I downloaded Xubuntu 20.04 64 bit ISO while working on Windows 7 and installed Rufus to make Live USB with persistence. Making Live USB on Rufus was smooth.

I changed the Boot sequence in BIOS to bring USB drive on top and and booted to Try Ubuntu Install Ubuntu Desktop and choose Try Ubuntu. To remove the Try Ubiuntu/Install Ubuntu option I removed Ubiquity.

After shutdown the system asked for removal of USB. I wanted to remove this irritant and posted on Ubuntuforums. I got the following solution

xubuntu@xubuntu:~$ sudo mousepad /etc/systemd/system/casper-no-prompt.service

I wrote the file and saved it

# see /sbin/casper-stop
[Unit]
Description=Casper no-prompt

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=touch /run/casper-no-prompt

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

xubuntu@xubuntu:~$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload
xubuntu@xubuntu:~$ sudo systemctl enable casper-no-prompt
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/casper-no-prompt.service → /etc/systemd/system/casper-no-prompt.service.
xubuntu@xubuntu:~$ sudo systemctl start casper-no-prompt
xubuntu@xubuntu:~$ sudo systemctl status casper-no-prompt
● casper-no-prompt.service - Casper no-prompt
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/casper-no-prompt.service; enabled; ven>
     Active: inactive (dead) since Sun 2021-01-17 15:04:41 IST; 20s ago
    Process: 23020 ExecStart=/usr/bin/touch /run/casper-no-prompt (code=exited,>
   Main PID: 23020 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

Jan 17 15:04:41 xubuntu systemd[1]: Starting Casper no-prompt...
Jan 17 15:04:41 xubuntu systemd[1]: casper-no-prompt.service: Succeeded.
Jan 17 15:04:41 xubuntu systemd[1]: Finished Casper no-prompt.
xubuntu@xubuntu:~$ ls -l /run/casper-no-prompt
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jan 17 15:04 /run/casper-no-prompt

Now I can shutdown safely without removing USB.

I installed Gnucash and Libreoffice was already present.

Live Xubuntu 20.04 is very fast on this 3 GB machine.

Enjoying it.