Updating LM17 & Encryption FUBAR

A holiday around here, summer is coming, winter is dead.
Ideal time to upgrade Linux Mint on the T410, from LM13 to LM17, both the Cinnamon edition.

Of course, the damn lappie gave a "fan error" message, so I had to disassembly it force a bit of motion onto the god damn fan.

While doing so, and before closing it up, tested the whole thing... It runs, as the picture shows.

After that, a normal installation on the 128 GB SSD HD, updates plus all the shit I normally use on my boxes...

Only problem, and the first time I had one of these, was that after finishing the installation, I've changed my password, as I always do, but, somehow the sync between the password file and the encryption key of my $HOME lost sync, so I wasn't able to login via X Window/ Desktop, after I type my username/ password, and a 15/20 seconds delay, I got the error message:

Could not update ICEauthority file

So, I've tried login in thru a virtual console, no problem there, but got a warning message:

Signature not found in user keyring

If then I type:

ecryptfs-mount-private

Typing my old password, BTW... And then switch back to the X Window login console, I was albe to login without any problem at all.
But it was a major PITA.
Solution, reboot then switch to a virtual console and type:

ecryptfs-rewrap-passphrase /home/.ecryptfs/$USER/.ecryptfs/wrapped-passphrase

It'll ask the old password, and then new (the actual you are using!!!) twice.
After that, everything went A Ok.

Kernel Crud Delete Mode for Tango

And it looks like I haven't done so in ages...
Sayonara to nearly 800 MB of old kernels.

Forgetting The Password Is The Solution!

From the section, Incredible Simple Solutions For Stupid People comes this...
My problems sync'ng the Google Calendar to my Evolution are gone, after trying evey conceibable shit I could thought.
After the freaking dreaded Heartbleed I've changed my Google password, only to find out that Evolution's Calendar, paired with my Gmail Calendar, refused to accept, no matter what, the new password.
The solution, after dangling and searching hidden config files, was as simple as clicking on:

File > Forget Passwords

Ditto, after that it prompted me for the password, typed the new one, end of history.

No More Double Lock For You!

Happy to say that I've found a way to correct one of the most annoying things I've "got" after enabling the backports on Cinnamon, that is the dreaded Double Lock...
It turns out that the problem lies on the fact that there are actually two screen-savers running on the system, the GNOME and the Cinnamon one, side by side...

So, all you have to do is kill the one you don't need:

killall gnome-screensaver

And that's it. No more eventual double password prompting and typing when resuming from Suspend.

Kernel Crud Delete Mode for Stilgar

The never ending battle against old kernels goes on and on and on...
This time on my beloved T60p, Stilgar.

Somehow...

...this doesn't seem right...
Specially on a very, very old T60p.
But who am I to argue?

The current Linux Mint desktop

Time for (yet another) minimalist Linux Mint wallpaper...
This one has a very, very finely textured background, something resembling leather, I would say.
Found the pic on DeviantArt.

Kernel Crud Delete Mode for Usul

Not many, that's true...
But every MB counts on SSD drives...

The current Linux Mint desktop

Forget everything about the Fuzzy Ecological Wallpaper, I'll give one of my favorite movies a shot...
Saw it last night on FHD... Still remember seeing it on Black & White TV when I was a kid.

Not a nice backport

It was about a month and a half since I've backported both my MATE as well as my Cinnamon setup (on the T430).

Looking back, it doesn't seem like a such a good idea.

Both of the desktop environments have issues ever since, not big ones, but really, really annoying ones, specially on Cinnamon (Double Lock anyone?)

MATE too has its share of little bugs, the biggest one being not able to add Bookmarks (for remote servers) onto Nautlius, therefore forcing you to type the remote IP address or hostname, along with the username every single time you have to connect to a box on the LAN.

Chromium password management hell

Yesterday's Chromium updates seem to really, really fucked thing up on my setup...
Chromium is driving me crazy with the user/ password prompt.
Not only wiped every single password I had stored, but also is offering to store (or not) every single page that has authentication, and of course, it is not storing nor the preference not to save the password, but also fails to store the password if I choose to type it.
And yes, I am aware of the way that Chrome/ Chromium used to store passwords, that is -among other reasons- why I have an encrypted $HOME.

The current Linux Mint desktop

As predicted, the previous wallpaper didn't last very much...
The edge fall-off really, really pays.

Evolution hates Heartbleed

Forced to change my Gmail/ Google password, thanks to this whole thing...
And now the Evolution Calendar fails miresably to sync with my Gmail Calendar...
Impossible to delete the calendar on Evolution, so I Guess I'll be forced to edit the file:

~/.gconf/apps/evolution/calendar/%gconf.xml

And then proceed to re-create the Google Calendar once again.

The current Linux Mint desktop

Another minimalist one.
This one with a custom wallpaper.
I have the feeling this one won't last very long...

Kernel Crud Delete Mode for Stilgar

Another instance of the never ending battle in the cause for the deletion of old kernels.
Stilgar gets back a hundred plus MB for stuff.

The current Linux Mint desktop

Say goodbye to the Fuzzy Ecological Wallpaper, it's back to minimalism...
With a light grey Cinnamon theme go figure.

The current Linux Mint desktop

Been a while since the last desktop post or...
The Return Of The Fuzzy Ecological Wallpaper!
After backporting Mint (Cinnamon in particular), used the default wallpaper for a while, mostly due to understanding how the hell MDM handled its configuration; but, as expected, time come to go back to nature.

Double Lock

One little annoyance I've found pretty often since the Cinnamon backport is that there is a double screensaver lock, that is, you have to type your password twice,  in two different instances, in order to regain access to the desktop.
The thing seems to start after coming back from a suspend.

Composite but not stupid

A little feature that comes really, really handy surfaced after the backporting/ updating of MATE the other day.
There is an option to enable the composite manager, and be able to, for instance, have my beloved drop shadow effect, but ITOH, to disable the dreadful creation of thumbnails when you circle thru windows with Alt + Tab, something that slowed the whole thing dramatically, to the point that, in the old GNOME 2, it became useless...
I was looking for an option to do this nearly five years ago...

• Metacity composite: can I disable thumbnails on Alt+Tab?

So, I guess, change -and new- is good!

More and More Backporting

But this time, it was Cinnamon's turn...
Upgraded to the latest -on LTS Linux Mint Maya- version of Cinnamon this afternoon.
Things seem to be great, only trouble at the moment, is that I can't find a way to disable the username on the login page, something like what I did for lightgdm waaay back on GNOME.
Will keep testing stuff, what I tested so far did nothing at all.