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.

My Android one phone got Android Lollipop 5.1 update.

I bought Karbonn Sparkle Android one installed with Android Kitkat version 4.4.4 recently. Yesterday it got Android version 5.1 update which is called Lollipop.
If you click on Settings/About_phone/Android_version_5.1 number of times it opens Lollipop game (Screenshot below)

Installation of Ubuntu 14.04.1 in dual boot with Windows 8.1 on Lenovo Notepad G50-45

There are many visitors to this post through Google Search when they look for suitable Linux Distribution for Lenovo G50-45 but this is an old post and I recommend that anyone looking to install Ubuntu on this Laptop should go for Ubutu 16.04 LTS and not 14.04, however, if you are looking for instructions for Dual Boot with Windows you should read this post but install Ubuntu 16.04 LTS which has no issues.

Lenovo Notepad G50-45 Specifications:
Model Name 80E3
CPU AMD E1-6010 1.35G
RAM 2G
HDD 500 GB
Display 15.6" HD LED
OS Windows 8.1 WB EM

I downloaded 64 Bit Desktop ISO of Ubuntu 14.04.1from Ubuntu and used it to create USB Start up Disk from Ubuntu 12.04 on another machine.

After shutting down the Windows 8.1, I inserted the USB Start up Disk in USB port on the Lenovo Notepad and pressed the NOVO button as shown in the diagram below:

 The display brought the BIOS screen below:

 I selected Boot Menu and selected to Boot from USB, on Grub menu I selected Try Ubuntu and could boot into Live Ubuntu 14.04.

In Live Ubuntu every thing worked well except I could not mount the Windows NTFS partitions getting errors that Windows was not shutdown properly, although I had selected to shutdown while in Windows. After reading about shutdown of Windows 8.1 I decided to shutdown Windows completely by running following command:

Shutdown /s /t 0

Once again I started Ubuntu Live session as above and I could now mount the NTFS partitions. I could have resized NTFS partitions using gparted but decided to do it in Windows.

In Windows I tried to shrink C:/ partition but was not allowed to shrink more than 50%. Once again after reading on the net I did following settings in Windows as advised on this blog:

1.Disable Hibernation
2:Disable Paging in C Drive temporarily
3:Diable System protection in c Drive temporarily

After doing the above settings I could shrink the partition to the extent I desired (48 GB for Windows 8.1). I created new NTFS partition leaving 80 GB unused for Ubuntu installation.

Once again I started Ubuntu Live session and created one EXT4 and one SWAP partition to be used for Ubuntu. Then I decided to check whether Windows 8.1 is accepting these changes or not by booting into Windows. Everything was Ok in Windows. Windows had a Recovery partition on the hard disk which I could copy to a USB disk.

Finally I decided to install Ubuntu on the EXT4 partition. After the installation I could boot into Ubuntu as well as Windows from grub installed on MBR.

The Laptop had Radeon Display Driver and the default ati driver was not working properly. After installing proprietary fglrx driver it is ok. 

Income Tax efiling utility and DSC working on Ubuntu Linux.

I am using Linux since Sep 2004 and Ubuntu since July 2005. I was forced to use Windows for Bank of Baroda Netbanking and efiling of Income Tax Return.

Bank of Baroda changed in 2012 and I could use Chromium Browser with JRE 7 on Ubuntu.

Income Tax efiling utility worked only on Windows besides the Digital Signature upload and signing.

Since last two years my CA prepares the xml file of the Income Tax Return but last year I had to use Windows for uploading the xml file using Digital Signatures.

On going through Downloads on Income Tax efiling website I find that besides Excel utility there is Java utility which is having following instructions in Readme.txt
To run in LINUX
Change the ITR.sh file's permission, provide execution permission by executing the following command
> chmod 755 ITR.sh                
run using the command "sh ITR.sh" or ./ITR.sh


This year I find that I could use Firefox with latest JRE 7 on Ubuntu for uploading and signing the Digital Signatures (DSC).

Thanks to the demise of Windows XP, the Income Tax Department had to switch to latest JRE 7 which works on Windows 7/8 as well as Ubuntu 12.04.

How to deal with Excel (.xlsx) file not opening in Libreoffice?

Long back I discovered that Excel (.xlsx) file not opening in Libreoffice opens in Gnumeric.

Today I noticed that after I save the file opened in Gnumeric in the same format without making any changes it can be opened in Libreoffice.

Running Live Android Jelly Bean in Vitualbox on Ubuntu 12.04

Yesterday I downloaded Android-x86 4.3 20130725 live and installation iso from code.google.com and running now on my HP ProBook 4410s Laptop in Virtualbox as Live. Booting

and running the Browser.

Goodbye Ubuntu, Welcome AntiX Linux

Although I tried many Linux Distributions as evident from various posts on this blog, I have always used Ubuntu LTS version on my office Laptop and home desktop.

Now I have decided to say Goodbye to Ubuntu and selected AntiX Linux as my OS.

Day before yesterday, I downloaded the latest antiX iso from sourceforge
I installed Unetbootin on Ubuntu Software Centre and created boot-able USB Stick using Unetbootin and the iso image. Windows user can download the Windows exe file and install Unetbootin and create the USB stick.

Yesterday, I tried antiX using the USB stick. I could also create persistent file to save the settings etc.

On my office Laptop, I always keep two versions of Ubuntu in dual boot, the current LTS for use and either retain the old LTS or the latest version for testing. I had old LTS version 10.04, which I deleted and used the partition to install antiX after booting from USB stick.

After installation I added Icedove (which is same as Thunderbird) and copied xxxx.default and profile.ini files from hidden .thunderbird folder from Ubuntu to hidden icedove folder on antiX and I could see all previous mails and address books.

I added the Battery Monitor in Conky.

I have set up the Cannon Image Runner Printer.

I am using antiX now, goodbye Ubuntu.

Yesterday, I was trying to play music on dhingana.com but it was not playing. I found that Iceweasel is having Flashblock extension installed by default. I posted on antiX forum and got a reply. Accordingly, I added www.dhingana.com to whitelist in preferences of Flashblock extension and it works.

Running UZBL Browser on Android Phone

As described in this post I had installed Debian Squeeze LXDE Desktop on my Samsung Galaxy 5 Android Phone. Since the Iceweasel Browser was not very useful I installed UZBL Browser. I could use the Browser to surf. Following are screen-shots:

Access to files on Android Phone from Ubuntu laptop through SSH on Nautilus.

As described in the previous post I have installed Debian which is working side by side with the OS on the Android Phone. Since the Phone has only 186 MB RAM and most of it being used by the processes running on the Phone OS there is hardly anything left for the Debian LXDE. Unless I can manage to kill the unnecessary processes there is not much use of the Debian LXDE installation.

Off course I have found other uses of the Debian installation. I could start the SSH server through the Debian on the phone and could login from my Laptop and browse the files on Nautilus as follows:
Open Nautilus
Go/Location
ssh://Debian_user_on_phone@ipaddress

I could also copy files from the Phone to the laptop and vice versa.

You can see Folders like /bin /boot /etc /home etc which do not exist on the Android OS but have been mounted by the debian installation and when I exit Debian I have to unmount them through a single command. In fact there is nothing inside the /boot folder because the Debian is not controlling the Boot. The folders on Android OS root are as follows:
cache config data dev lib persist proc root sbin sdcard sqlite_stmt_journals sys system
and the files
default.prop EUROPA.rle init init.glodfish.rc init.qcom.rc init.qcom.sh init.rc

Installed Debian on Samsung Galaxy 5 (GT-I5503)

People generally look for installing other ROMs on their phones after getting root access but being Linux user I was looking for installing Linux Distribution without disturbing the original ROM. After googling I got this thread on xdadevelopers site. The idea of installing Debian using the original ROM appealed to me. Accordingly I downloaded the Debian Kit application by Sven-Ola Tuecke from Android Market. You can read about this application here.

Following are the Prerequisites which are easily met by even old Android phones (mine was bought in 2010):

• Root access to your Android device is required. No root, no Debian.
• Kernel supports mounting loop disks or you have at least an external SD card with a spare partition.
• Kernel supports the ext2, ext3, or ext4 file systems.
• CPU architecture is ARM (little endian) or i386 (ia-32 bit).
• 128 Mb of RAM or more, otherwise the launcher app may be killed during installation.
• 512 Mb of free space on SD card (either internal or external).
• Internet connection to download 100-500 Mb of software packages.
• Terminal app installed, alternatively ADB access.
• If you are a noob: command line input and text file editing is a must.

To make it easy the Debian Kit applications checks the above requirements and reports the suitability of the phone.

There are procedures to run Linux in chroot environment on Android Phones but the Debian Kit method works as follows:
The kit does not use the chroot command to make up a separate Debian environment (refer to schroot(1) for a similar technique). Instead, Debian subdirectories and files (such as /lib or /etc/resolv.conf) are added to the Android RAM-disk based file system with symlinks or bind-mounts. With this, e.g. you have access to newly mounted devices such as USB drives and the SD card. Also, can use Debian commands to compile packages that in turn can use a working chroot. This works, because a typical Android device has a file system (e.g. Libraries below /system/lib) that does not overlap the Debian file system (e.g. Libraries below /lib and /usr/lib). However, some files may overlap - which triggers a warning displayed if you start the deb script. For example, the Android /etc/hosts file is replaced by the Debian version while Debian is mounted. Which in turn may influence the inner working of your Android software stack. This is especially true with custom ROMs, because these typically add some Linux stuff that the ROM developer may miss. All changes are reverted if you issue the deb u command or simply by restarting your device.

After rooting my phone as described in previous post I have installed Andromized version of Debian on my phone and presently downloading andromized-lxde.

Following is the screenshot of my phone:

and on right side is the screen-shot running Bash shell on Debian and downloading required files for andromized-lxde desktop.

The internet speed is slow on the mobile using GPRS 2G and I will upload the image of andromized-lxde desktop later on when it gets installed on the phone.

Update on 26th July 2013
I am posting the screen shots of LXDE Desktop and the Leafpad running on it. When I tried Iceweasel the mobile crashed but it used to crash otherwise also before installing Debian.

After two days struggle successfully rooted my Samsung Galaxy 5 Android Phone.

After trying z4root and Superoneclick and getting frustrated I could successfully root my Samsung Galaxy 5 Phone running Android 2.1 using Universal Androot.

Now watch my blog! I am going to run Debian on this mobile phone.

I could get a blog post specifically for my mobile and do it.

How to resume an unresponsive Ubuntu Desktop.

I am using Ubuntu 12.04 LTS with 3.5.0 Kernel. Sometimes the Desktop becomes unresponsive to mouse clicks and key presses.

Earlier I use to press Ctrl+alt+F1 login to terminal and reboot.

Then I read somewhere that I can kill all processes and re-login. The suggested command was:

kill -9 -1

Today I had the opportunity to use this command and it worked. The manual describes this command as follows:
EXAMPLES
       kill -9 -1
              Kill all processes you can kill.

I could re-login to the Desktop without reboot.

Ubuntu OCR Solution.

Since I am transferred to NOIDA office of the company there is mostly office work for me except occasional visit to a power station.

I was looking for OCR solution to convert scanned PDF documents to text files. Initially I tried pdfocr and tesseract command line tools but not much success.

Then I converted one page online at ABBYY FineReader The site allowed me to convert 3 pages for free and afterwards I had to pay.

I discovered this page about Linux OCR solution. I downloaded the .deb file and installed on Ubuntu 12.04. It installed without any dependency problem since I had tesseract already installed.

Actually Lios is a GUI using cuneiform/tesseract engine in the background. I had already tried pdfocr which uses cuneiform and tesseract through command line and not hoping to get good results but Lios worked much better.

I used cuneiform engine for normal scanned page and tesseract engine if there was a table on the page. It takes time if there is a table but tesseract extracts the text correctly.

How to install Gnumeric 1.12.0 on Ubuntu from Debian Sid.

I have become fan of Gnumeric.

Earlier I was unable to open one .xlsx file (which I use to get daily as MIS) in Libre Office 3.5.4 but I could open it in Gnumeric. In fact I had submitted a bug for Libre Office on Launchpad.

As soon I knew about release of Libre Office 4.0 I installed it as indicated in this post. The file opens quickly in this version of Libre Office.

Afterwards I found that Excel file locked i.e. main sheet protected by password but I could open the lock in Gnumeric as indicated in this post.

As a fan of Gnumeric I decided to install the latest version and downloaded gnumeric_1.12.0-1_i386.deb from Debian Sid.

When I clicked on the .deb file Software Centre complained of following dependencies one by one:
libgsf-1-114_1.14.25-2_i386
libgsf-1-common_1.14.25-2_all
libgoffice-0.10-10-common_0.10.0-1_all
libgoffice-0.10-10_0.10.0-1_i386
gnumeric-common_1.12.0-1_all

I downloaded all the above packages from Debin Sid. Before installing Gnumeric 1.12, I had to remove installed gnumeric-common and gnumeric packages.

At last Software Centre complained broken cache but installed gnumeric on second attempt.

How to edit protected Excel Sheet using Gnuneric.

I am getting an MIS Report every day in Microsoft Excel. Although there is no need to change the contents of the file I clicked out of curiosity on one of the cells and found that I could not read the formula. When I right clicked on Sheet Tab I found the sheet protected with a password.

Since I use Libreoffice I searched about how to crack the password and found a couple of lengthy solutions.

I also keep Gnumeric on my machine. I opened the file in Gnumeric, right clicked on Sheet Tab, selected Manage Sheets and clicked on Lock icon. I was surprised to find that the lock opened without any password. After saving I could edit that file in Libreoffice.

I suppose this is possible in Gnumeric on Windows as well.

Gnumeric is a fantastic software.