Happily running Ubuntu 15.10 Wily Werewolf on my Lenovo G50-45.

Update on 21/04/2016: Now more happy running Ubuntu 16.04

I purchased Lenovo G50-45 Laptop in December 2014 and installed Ubuntu 14.04 in dual boot with pre-installed Windows 8.1 as per this post.

When you install any Linux Distribution on a new Hardware it works but not 100% and there were following problems:
1. Screen brightness could not be adjusted.
2. Wifi was erratic.
3. Bluetooth did not work.

Screen Brightness worked after installing Realtek Proprietary Driver but it broke on update in April 2015. I removed the Proprietary Driver and upgraded to Kernel 3.16 through Hardware Enablement Stack which installed the Open Source radeon driver and problem 1 was solved.

Wifi problem was solved creating /etc/modprobe.d/rtl8723be file as follows:

 echo "options rtl8723be fwlps=0" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/rtl8723be.conf

 For Bluetooth I had to wait till Ubuntu 14.04.3 was launched with Kernel 3.19 and it worked sometimes but not on every boot (I wonder why?) after adding following ppa and the driver:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:hanipouspilot/rtlwifi
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install rtl8723au-bt-dkms rtlwifi-new-dkms linux-firmware

On questioning I came to know that I had to wait for Linux Kernel 4.2 when Realtek drivers are included.

On 9th Sep 2015 I came to know that Linux Kernel 4.2 was included in Ubuntu 15.10 and I downloaded the ISO and tried it on my Laptop as per this post. I updated the ISO for couple of days through zsync and it was booting properly every day.

Yesterday I decided to install Ubuntu 15.10 on my hard drive and found that installer crashed, however, I used the following workaround to run the installer and installed:

sudo -H bash -c 'ubiquity gtk_ui'

I am happy to report that there is no need to add any rtl8723be file for wifi, radeon driver is perfect and Bluetooth is working on installed Wily Werewolf.

Booting daily-live/current wily-desktop-amd64.iso from Grub2 and updating it using zsync.

Yesterday I downloaded Ubuntu 15.10 Wily Werewolf Live ISO

wget -c http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/wily-desktop-amd64.iso

 and used it booting from Grub2 menu entry as follows:

sudo gedit /etc/grub.d/40_custom

and added the following lines:

menuentry "Wily Desktop iso" {
        set isofile="/home/user/wily-desktop-amd64.iso"
        loopback loop (hd0,X)$isofile
        linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz.efi boot=casper iso-scan/filename=$isofile noprompt noeject
        initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.lz
}

then I updated grub to add the menuentry:

sudo update-grub

I could boot from the ISO and found that Wily has Linux Kernel 4.2 which has Blue tooth driver for my Laptop and it worked well.

Today I decided to keep the ISO updated and installed zsync and used it to update.

sudo apt-get install zsync -y
zsync http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/wily-desktop-amd64.iso.zsync
#################### 100.0% 108.2 kBps DONE   

reading seed file wily-desktop-amd64.iso: **************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************Read wily-desktop-amd64.iso. Target 100.0% complete.    
verifying download...checksum matches OK
used 1257062400 local, fetched 0

Since it is less than 24 hours it says " fetched 0"

If you want to use the method please note that the ISO is on /home folder of the user. Put your username replacing user and X in (hd0,X) as your partition no X.

File sharing via Bluetooth between Lenovo G50-45 Ubuntu Laptop and Android device.

I had installed Ubuntu 14.04 on Lenovo G50-45 Laptop as per this post in December 2014 and solved some problems like screen brightness as reported in this post after enabling LTS/HardwareEnablementStack.

This Laptop has Realtek Wireless Network Adoptor which also works as Bluetooth device. Although the Wireless disconnection problem was solved by setting options rtl8723be fwlps=0 in /etc/modprobe.d/rtl8723be.conf file the Bluetooth did not work.

After Ubuntu 14.04.3 update I got Linux Kernel 3.19 and the Bluetooth could be used after installing the driver as follows:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:hanipouspilot/rtlwifi
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install rtl8723au-bt-dkms rtlwifi-new-dkms linux-firmware

I could send file via Bluetooth from the Laptop to Android Device but Android device failed to send the file. This could be corrected after searching for Personal File Sharing on Dash and checking the boxes Receive the files in download folder over Bluetooth and Notify about received files.

Mate Desktop 1.10.2 on Debian Testing.

As written in this post I installed Mate Desktop version 1.8.1 on Debian 8.1 and got hooked to it.

In order to run the latest version I edited the /etc/apt/sources.list file and replaced "jessie" by "stretch". Stretch is the codename of next stable version of Debian which is under testing.

After pointing the sources.list to "stretch" I did apt-get update && upgrade && dist-upgrade.

Debian Stretch with linux kernel 4.1.0 is running fine on Mate Desktop 1.10.2

Ubuntu Phone Emulator on Ubuntu 14.04.3.

When I herd about launch of BQ Aquaris Ubuntu Phone in India and its availability by Aug 2015 end on snapdeal I decided to try the Phone in emulator on Ubuntu 14.04.3 on my Laptop.

Since the emulator was launched in Jan 2015 most of the instructions I got to install the emulator did not work. Finally I installed Ubuntu SDK through PPA as follows:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-sdk-team/ppa

sudo apt update && sudo apt install ubuntu-sdk

Then I installed the emulator through the sdk.

Since running emulator required memory I switched to gnome-fallback session and started the emulator through following command:

ubuntu-emulator run ubuntutouch --scale=0.5 --memory=1024

After waiting for 15 minutes I got the login screen:

I added some applications through Ubuntu Store and could use them.

Running facebook below:

facebook detecting it as Chrome on LG Nexus 5 

Playing H-265 Videos on Ubuntu 14.04.

While installing Ubuntu 14.04 if you check for installation of proprietary codecs  most videos could be played on Videos application but those having H-265 won't play. For playing them you need to install gstreamer1.0-libde265 as follows.
Open a terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:strukturag/libde265
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gstreamer1.0-libde265

Enjoy!

Using antiX live usb on Lenovo Ideapad S100.

I am presently at Bhopal and the family has Lenovo Ideapad S100 Netbook with Windows 7. I had made usb stick with latest antiX-15 which I decided to try on this netbook.

On this Netbook pressing F12 on boot is supposed to bring Boot Menu but it did not work (may be because F12 is actually Fn+F11 and Fn key may not be working on boot).

Pressing F2 however brings the BIOS Set up. In BIOS Set up Boot Tag I could see the USB Stick but there is no provision to bring it up and make it first boot device.

But I could disable booting from Hard Disk (first boot device) by putting a "x" by pressing "x" key and save settings.

Then I could boot from USB and  now posting this on Iceweasel (Open Source Firefox) on antiX-15.

This machine has 2 GB RAM and antiX is very fast.

Review of antiX-15 USB persist on UEFI Secure Boot.

On 30th June 2015 new version of antiX called antiX-15 (Killah P) was released. I was impressed with the announcement "Want to run live on a box with UEFI bootloader? antiX can do this", and immediately wanted to test this.

I downloaded antiX-15-V_64-full.iso from souceforge. The announcement recommended Unetbbotin to make live usb but unfortunately Unetbootin crashed while selecting the iso file. I used dd command to copy the iso to usb but it allowed me to boot only in Legacy mode of BIOS.

I posted on antiX Forum and was advised to mount the iso and simply copy the contents (same like what I recommend for Ubuntu 14.04 for UEFI)

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/iso
sudo mount -o loop,ro  antiX-15-V_64-full.iso /mnt/iso
cp -a /mnt/iso/. /media/USB_mount_point/

 After selecting boot from usb in BIOS Boot Menu I could boot into antiX default Desktop with secure boot on since antiX has Microsoft signed kernel image.

Then I wanted to make the usb persistent. I used the cheat-code "persist=root!,home" in grub boot line but was getting blank screen.

I created the rootfs and homefs files and placed them in /antiX folder on usb even then it did not work:

dd if=/dev/zero of=rootfs bs=1M count=0 seek=1024
mkfs.ext4 -q -m 0 -O ^has_journal -F rootfs
dd if=/dev/zero of=homefs bs=1M count=0 seek=1024
mkfs.ext4 -q -m 0 -O ^has_journal -F homefs 

After struggling for a day I was told to change "gfxpayload=text" to "gfxpayload=keep" in grub.cfg and it worked.

Enjoying old Desktop days with Mate DE 1.8.1 on Debian 8.1

I recently installed Debian 8.1 in triple/quadruple boot with Windows8.1/Ubuntu14.04.2/Ubuntu15.04 on my Lenovo G50-45 Laptop.

Initially I installed LXDE Desktop but yesterday added Mate Desktop and now enjoying good old days of Gnome 2.

How to make back-light Brightness Fn keys work on LXDE.

Back-light Brightness is set on my Laptop by Fn+F11 (down) and Fn+F12 (up) keys. These keys worked on Ubuntu Unity Desktop but not on LXDE Desktop.

I tried xbacklight command but it did not work. Then after googling I discovered that xbacklight does not work on radeon driver.

Then I tried how it works on Ubuntu Unity Desktop and found that following command was executed by USER=root

/usr/lib/unity-settings-daemon/usd-backlight-helper --set-brightness 24

Since the command to be executed required root privileges I created two bash shell files on my desktop:File ~/home/Desktop/Brightness1

#! /bin/bash
# script to set the initial brightness on login
[ "$UID" -eq 0 ] || exec gksu bash "$0" "$@"
/usr/lib/unity-settings-daemon/usd-backlight-helper --set-brightness 12

File ~/home/Desktop/Brightness2

#! /bin/bash
# script to set the initial brightness on login
[ "$UID" -eq 0 ] || exec gksu bash "$0" "$@"
/usr/lib/unity-settings-daemon/usd-backlight-helper --set-brightness 24

I made the files executable and tested them. The script asked for sudo password and set the required brightness.

Then I inserted following Keycodes in ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml

<!-- Keybindings for LCD Backlight -->    <keybind key="XF86MonBrightnessDown">        # decrease screen brightness      <action name="Execute"><command>/home/user/Desktop/Brightness1</command></action>    </keybind>    <keybind key="XF86MonBrightnessUp">        # increase screen brightness      <action name="Execute"><command>/home/user/Desktop/Brightness2</command></action>    </keybind>

and it works by pressing Fn+F11 and Fn+F12 i.e. it asks for sudo password and sets the required brightness. 

How to run Debian with secure boot on.

I am having Lenovo G50-45 Laptop which had Windows 8.1 pre installed and I have installed Ubuntu 14.04 and 15.04 in triple boot with secure boot on.

Today I installed Debian 8.1 on another partition. For installing Debian I had to disable secure boot. After installation if I was booting Debian through its Boot Loader I had to disable the secure boot.

Later on I enabled secure boot and using Ubuntu 15.04 and updated the kernel. After update the grub got updated and it picked up the entry of Debian.

Now I could boot Debian through Ubuntu's Boot Loader without disabling secure boot.

NB: For those who are not familiar with UEFI. Each operating system has its own Boot Loader with entries of other operating systems in the Grub Menu.

Chromixium OS -- Chromebox plus Ubuntu.

I was always fascinated with any OS from Google or something like that. I had tried gOS Desktop in 2007 and Chromium OS on pendrive in 2009.

Google then launched Chrome OS only on Chromeboxes and they have significant market share today.

One developer has combined Ubuntu with Openbox, LXPanel and Google Applications to develops what he calls Chromixium OS.

I downloaded the Chromixium 64 Bit RC ISO, copied it to USB, added casper-rw file and persistent boot parameter in /boot/grub/grub.cfg before "quiet splash" in the menu entry and running it now on my Lenovo G50-45 Laptop. The OS has beautiful Desktop:

How to recover lost Grub Menu and Edit Menu entries.

Yesterday I installed Ubuntu 15.04 on USB stick and selected grub install on the USB to keep the Grub on Hard Disk intact. Even then I lost the Grub Menu on the Hard Disk and had to use the grub on the USB to boot into Ubuntu 14.04.2 installed on the hard disk.

For recovering Grub of menu I had to install Boot Repair through the ppa. After running Recommended Repair through Boot Repair I got the Grub Menu on the hard disk but with many unnecessary entries.

For removing the unwanted entries on Grub Menu I installed Grub Customizer and used it to remove the entries.

Boot Repair and Grub Customizer are excellent tools.

UEFI Bootable full install of Ubuntu 15.04 on 32 GB USB stick.

Yesterday I posted about Live persistent UEFI Bootable USB stick of Ubuntu 15.04. I could upgrade some packages, save wifi settings and documents and they were available on reboot but when I upgraded linux kernel I could not reboot on using persistent kernel boot parameter and even without this parameter.

Since the 32 GB USB stick could take full install I made full install of Ubuntu 15.04 on the stick with installing bootloader on the stick. The bootloader also picked the Windows 8.1 and Ubuntu 14.04.2 installations on the hard disk.

I think the days of persistent live linux on USB stick are over and full install is the way forward.

Live persistent UEFI Bootable USB stick of Ubuntu 15.04.

I had purchased one 32 GB USB stick to back up Windows 8.1 installation on my Lenovo G50-45 Laptop before installing Ubuntu 14.04 in dual boot. Since the dual boot is working well and Windows recovery partition already exists on the Laptop I decided to have Live persistent Ubuntu 15.04 on the stick.

I created 2 GB Fat32 partition, 4 GB ext4 partition with label casper-rw and another 4 GB ext4 home-rw partition on the USB stick. Then I used start up disk creator to put Ubuntu 15.04 on Fat32 partition.

After booting I found that persistence did not work on UEFI machines since there was a bug in live usb creator. The work around was to edit the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file and put "persistent" before "quiet splash" in the menuentry.

Now my wifi settings and documents are avaiable on reboot.

I will try updating the system later on. Upgrades to packages like Firefox worked but when I upgraded the linux kernel I could not boot with or even without persistent boot parameter.

Today I made full install of Ubuntu 15.04 on the USB stick.

My Karbonn Sparkle V Androidone received Lollipop 5.1.1 update.

We bought Google Chromecast.

After buying latest Android Phones and Tabs the next step was to buy Google Chromecast to connect theses devices to TV for media streaming but it required Wifi at home and our Landline phone and MTNL Broadband was in safe custody since 2010 when we went to Jharsuguda. I was not wiling to spend for Landline Phone and we experimented with Mobile Operators taking advantage of Mobile number portability. Finally we sattled for Idea after trying Reliance CDMA and Airtel. For internet Reliance GSM Data was working in the Tab.

For Broadband also I am experimenting with Tikona Brodband which is Wireless till the terrace of our flat where a CPE is installed from where it is wired to the Wifi router installed at suitable location in the home.

The Chromecast is plugged in the HDMI port of the TV and gets power either through USB port of the TV or mains. The Android Phone is used for Setting up the Chromecast to connect to the Wifi Router. After setting up the Cromecast is directly connected to the Wifi Router like other Android Devices and Laptops.

Now suppose you want to watch the Youtube video on your TV you first open the Video on the Phone/Tab or Crome Browser on the Laptop and connect the device to the Chromecast. After connecting the Youtube video directly plays on the TV.

You can also play the local media on your Android devices on the TV. For Laptop you can do it through Chrome Browser and its add-on extensions.

New Terminal Commands learnt.

Recently I learned some new Terminal commands. Following is the output of these command on my Lenovo G50-45 Laptop.

$ lspci -nnk | grep -i vga -A3 | grep 'in use'
    Kernel driver in use: radeon

 $ /usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -p
OpenGL vendor string:   X.Org
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on AMD MULLINS
OpenGL version string:  3.0 Mesa 10.3.2

Not software rendered:    yes
Not blacklisted:          yes
GLX fbconfig:             yes
GLX texture from pixmap:  yes
GL npot or rect textures: yes
GL vertex program:        yes
GL fragment program:      yes
GL vertex buffer object:  yes
GL framebuffer object:    yes
GL version is 1.4+:       yes

Unity 3D supported:       yes

 $ cat /etc/lsb-release; uname -a
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=14.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=trusty
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS"
Linux Lenovo-G50-45 3.16.0-37-generic #49~14.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Thu Apr 30 10:52:28 UTC 2015 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

$ lspci -nnk | grep -iA2 net
01:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8723BE PCIe Wireless Network Adapter [10ec:b723]
    Subsystem: Lenovo Device [17aa:b736]
    Kernel driver in use: rtl8723be
02:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller [10ec:8168] (rev 10)
    Subsystem: Lenovo Device [17aa:3812]
    Kernel driver in use: r8169

I knew the following command but now the second one to be used.

$ sudo fdisk -l

WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sda'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted.


Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xecf87c27

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1   976773167   488386583+  ee  GPT
Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.

$ sudo gdisk -l /dev/sda
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.8

Partition table scan:
  MBR: protective
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
Disk /dev/sda: 976773168 sectors, 465.8 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): D8108174-FF68-4388-A994-3799AE5B6B2D
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 976773134
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 2029 sectors (1014.5 KiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1            2048         2050047   1000.0 MiB  2700  Basic data partition
   2         2050048         2582527   260.0 MiB   EF00  EFI system partition
   3         2582528         4630527   1000.0 MiB  FFFF  Basic data partition
   4         4630528         4892671   128.0 MiB   0C01  Microsoft reserved part
   5         4892672       104552447   47.5 GiB    0700  Basic data partition
   6       104552448       733698047   300.0 GiB   0700  Basic data partition
   7       898043904       950472703   25.0 GiB    0700  Basic data partition
   8       950472704       976773119   12.5 GiB    2700  Basic data partition
   9       733698048       895946751   77.4 GiB    8300 
  10       895946752       898043903   1024.0 MiB  8200

How to make UEFI Bootable Ubuntu 15.04 USB stick on Windows 8.1?

Since many years we download the Ubuntu ISO and use the installed Ubuntu to make a Start up Disk from the ISO to install on the same or other machines. The Start up disk is a UEFI Bootable USB stick.

Today I faced a question on Ubuntuforums about how to make UEFI Bootable Ubuntu 15.04 USB stick on Windows 8.1. I am doing it now on My Lenovo G50-45 Laptop on Windows 8.1. I have the Ubuntu 15.04 ISO on the drive. I have downloaded and installed md5 Calculator Application from Windows Store. I have checked the md5sum of the ISO and it is same as in this file.

I have downloaded 7-Zip 9.38 .msi file from here.
I have a 2 GB USB stick formatted in FAT32 in the USB slot.
I have extracted the ISO on the USB stick using 7-Zip.
I right click on Start Button and select Disk Management and find that the USB drive is Healthy (Active, Primary Partition)
I right click on Start Button, select Power Options/Choose what the power button does and uncheck Fastboot (if exixts)
I reboot holding the shift key.
On reboot I select use a device and EFI USB device and get options on Grub Menu to run Ubuntu without install.

Ubuntu 14.04 on Lenovo Laptop G50-45 with Kernel 3.16.

As written on this post I installed Ubuntu 14.04 LTS in dual boot with Windows 8.1 in December 2014.

The proprietary driver fglrx worked fine till I updated it to newer version on  12th April 2015. After the update I could not login and had to remove fglrx driver and come back to radeon.

Today I installed Kernel 3.16 (original kernel 3.13) through LTS Enablement Stack with following command:

sudo apt-get install --install-recommends linux-generic-lts-utopic xserver-xorg-lts-utopic libgl1-mesa-glx-lts-utopic libegl1-mesa-drivers-lts-utopic

 The open source driver radeon is working perfectly on Kernel 3.16

This Laptop has Realtek Wireless Network Adapter and its driver rtl8723be was causing disconnections and required reboot to connect again. This is solved by following command:

echo "options rtl8723be fwlps=0" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/rtl8723be.conf

Now Ubuntu 14.04 is working perfectly on this Laptop.