Juggling RAM Around (2)

Time for another RAM swapping...
This time took RAM from the T430 and slapped onto the MBP, and vice versa.
The T430 lost 4 and the MBP got 4, both seem to be just fine.

Welcome Back, Global Menu

Giving my old friend the Global Menu a new opportunity.
Installed yesterday, seems to be working just fine.

Linux Chores Are Happy Chores (II)

Well, busy day is busy, or so they say...
The second task from my looooonng withstanding Linux wish list is done!
Today I've been able, squeezing time from here and there while working, to finally install Linux Mint 18 XFCE (64 bits) onto the T430, yeah! It was running LM 17.3 Cinnamon (64 bits of course) and it was a PITA to use.

A bit over a month ago I've finished the first chore, and now onto the last one... That one will be a bit of a ball breaker, since I'm using the Opti as a daily driver or something really close to it...

Linux Chores Are Happy Chores

Or so they say, anyway...
Couple of things I have to do on zhe here boxens:

• T430:

Make the installation on top of an encrypted LVM
Switch to XFCE
Install Linux Mint 18
It currently has an ancient Linux Mint Cinnamon, and that its a shame, since it is starting to show its age.
And even tho it has an encrypted $HOME install, I feel more confident in having the whole enchilada encrypted, specially on a take out of home lappie.

• W530:

Make the installation on top of an encrypted LVM
Switch to XFCE
Right now has Linux MInt 18 Cinnamon, but I'm growing fond of XFCE, so..
Once again, the encrypted $HOME feels unsecure.

• Optiplex 755:

Swtich to a 64 bits install.
It currently has Linux Mint 18 XFCE, but 32 bits, and I want to switch to 64 bits, mostly because of Chrome and then Netflix... Even tho this boxen can only get a hold of 4 GB RAM.

Typical Mid-Friday Mess

Yesterday, around noon...
I've been playing a bit with the Optiplex once again... You know, the usual distro/ hardware hopping here and there...

Finally! ~/Desktop/sync.local.sh

I can't believe I haven't done this before...
I've been doing local backups to a series of external USB drives for ages and ages, I have way too much data to make backups on internet or to a remote server, what I do is that I simply stored on a different location one os those USB drives.
Of course, one of the boxes is the Master, and it pushes to the external USB drives the changes, and the other boxes are the Slaves, getting the changes from the USB drive.
Problem was that, since obviously the function changed, I had to remember which script file was the one I was supposed to execute on each box.
What I finally did was to create an alias on the Desktop of each of the lappies I'm using at the moment, pointing to the correct script for either backing up or restoring to or from the external USB drive.

In The 98th Percentile...

It's been a week with the new battery on the T430 and so far it still charges Ok, and of course, holds a charge... Well, somehow...
I've noticed that even while plugged in, the battery drops a few lines of the 100% charged...
I've never seen such thing on a Thinkpad battery before.

Linux Mint Cinnamon 17.3 On The Thinkpad T430

Well, it was about time, I guess...
Upgraded the Linux Mint release on the T430, it took about 10 minutes, and everything seems to be just fine after the install and a reboot.
After doing the same on the T60 and the T60p without any issue, it was time to take the T430 down the upgrade path... After all, the little lappie that could has a new battery.

New (Power) Juice For The T430

On Friday got me a new (chinese knockoff) battery for my Thinkpad T430.
Was really worried that the little battery from the distant China won't be able to actually charge on the T430, but so far, so good.
It gave me about 4 and half hours of juice...
Will see how it performs...

Updating the BIOS On The Thinkpad T430

Ok, a follow up on the BIOS update on my beloved T430... Yes, the one that wanted a battery no matter what...
Or going from this:

krull > sudo dmidecode -t bios
[sudo] password for hictio:
# dmidecode 2.12
SMBIOS 2.7 present.

Handle 0x000E, DMI type 0, 24 bytes
BIOS Information
    Vendor: LENOVO
    Version: G1ET45WW (1.20 )
    Release Date: 08/07/2012
    Address: 0xE0000
    Runtime Size: 128 kB
    ROM Size: 12288 kB
    Characteristics:
        PCI is supported
        PNP is supported
        BIOS is upgradeable
        BIOS shadowing is allowed
        Boot from CD is supported
        Selectable boot is supported
        EDD is supported
        3.5"/720 kB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
        Print screen service is supported (int 5h)
        8042 keyboard services are supported (int 9h)
        Serial services are supported (int 14h)
        Printer services are supported (int 17h)
        CGA/mono video services are supported (int 10h)
        ACPI is supported
        USB legacy is supported
        BIOS boot specification is supported
        Targeted content distribution is supported
        UEFI is supported
    BIOS Revision: 1.20
    Firmware Revision: 1.7

Handle 0x002D, DMI type 13, 22 bytes
BIOS Language Information
    Language Description Format: Abbreviated
    Installable Languages: 1
        en-US
    Currently Installed Language: en-US
To this:

SMBIOS 2.7 present.

Handle 0x000C, DMI type 0, 24 bytes
BIOS Information
    Vendor: LENOVO
    Version: G1ETB0WW (2.70 )
    Release Date: 01/21/2016
    Address: 0xE0000
    Runtime Size: 128 kB
    ROM Size: 12288 kB
    Characteristics:
        PCI is supported
        PNP is supported
        BIOS is upgradeable
        BIOS shadowing is allowed
        Boot from CD is supported
        Selectable boot is supported
        EDD is supported
        3.5"/720 kB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
        Print screen service is supported (int 5h)
        8042 keyboard services are supported (int 9h)
        Serial services are supported (int 14h)
        Printer services are supported (int 17h)
        CGA/mono video services are supported (int 10h)
        ACPI is supported
        USB legacy is supported
        BIOS boot specification is supported
        Targeted content distribution is supported
        UEFI is supported
    BIOS Revision: 2.70
    Firmware Revision: 1.13

Handle 0x002B, DMI type 13, 22 bytes
BIOS Language Information
    Language Description Format: Abbreviated
    Installable Languages: 1
        en-US
    Currently Installed Language: en-US

Got the newest BIOS here.

As of today, the current on is the one released on 2/22/2016.
The file named is "g1uj38us.iso" with a size of 37.4 MB.

Instructions on how to install a BIOS on a box without Windows are pretty straight forward:

• Lenovo Thinkpad BIOS Update with Linux and USB

• Updating the BIOS on Lenovo laptops from Linux using a USB flash stick

Here are the steps I did:

cd /tmp/
wget http://userpages.uni-koblenz.de/~krienke/ftp/noarch/geteltorito/geteltorito
chmod +x geteltorito

./geteltorito -o bios.img g1uj38us.iso
Booting catalog starts at sector: 20
Manufacturer of CD: NERO BURNING ROM
Image architecture: x86
Boot media type is: harddisk
El Torito image starts at sector 27 and has 75776 sector(s) of 512 Bytes

Image has been written to file "bios.img".
Then create the booting USB drive:

sudo dd if=bios.img of=/dev/sdb bs=1M

Reboot the T430, booting from the USB drive (doh!), and follow the instructions, it takes less than 20 minutes.

One cool thing about this whole thing is that you can use one of those old 1 GB USB pen drives that you have around, since the BIOS image is really small.

The BIOS Update That Demands a Battery

And if you don't have one, fuck you, dude!
I love Thinkpads, I've been using them with Linux for ages now; but crap like this (and I don't want even start on the sh*t they pull wiht batteries nowadays) really makes me mad.

Ok, so, I wanted to upgrade the BIOS on the T430, in order to try to get a battery, since the one that came with the lappie died...
But, it turns out that:

The battery needs to be charged to avoid an accidental power-off during an update. Turn off the computer and connect the AC adapter to charge the battery.

The thing is, the T430 battery is wiped dead... I was screwed...
Luckily, the battery from the W530 worked A Ok...

Get Back To Synergy, You Fool!

One of those things, you know... You stop one day, and then you don't use it for a while...
And then, you forget completely about it...
A senior moment, no doubt about it...
Anyways, I'm back onto Synergy, big time.
Here is the synergy.conf file from Colossus, as I'm using Synergy at least right now, with Krull & Colossus, as usual, tunnelling the whole thing thru SSH...


## /etc/synergy.conf

section: screens
        colossus:
                switchCorners = none
                switchCornerSize = 0
        krull:
                switchCorners = none
                switchCornerSize = 0
end

section: aliases
        krull:
                10.120.10.3
end

section: links
        colossus:
                left = krull
        krull:
                right = colossus
end

section: options
        switchDelay                             = 500
        screenSaverSync                         = false
        keystroke(shift+control+left)           = switchToScreen(krull)
        keystroke(shift+control+right)          = switchToScreen(colossus)
end

ffmpeg: From (soundless) mp4 to mp4

Used this to transcode a video file (an mp4, but nevertheless)  that played on the Roku3 without sound:

./ffmpeg -i My.Movie.mp4 -c:v copy -strict experimental -c:a aac -ac 2 -ab 256k My.Movie.2.mp4

It took less than 15 minutes to process the file on the T430.

The Optimess

Last Thursday, installing Ubuntu Server 14.04 on the Optiplex...
Made a mess of the working table during the duration.
The idea is to, eventually, get this server, via Plex, to work as a media server at home.
Will see..

Making a New Musical Home..

So, I moved to Spotify a couple of days ago, now that Rdio.com is dead.
I've been re-creating my play-lists, taking the time to delete some crud on the way.
More or less the music I used to listen to on Rdio.com (and Grooveshark before that) is there, so no biggies on that regard...
Two things raised a few concerns, tho, first, the Last.fm scrobbling (on the Spotify's web player, if that matters) is far from perfect... I've missed quite a bunch of plays while listening.
The other one is that somehow (and only on the T430's Firefox, maybe is related to the resolution?) the play-list look like shit; the same thing doesn't happen on the W530, go figure...

Skype: Esoteric, Quasi-medieval Icons

Got this strange icons on Skype the other day...
I swear I wasn't looking to mix iron onto gold while using Skye...

Death Of A Thinkpad Battery

The battery of my beloved T430 died yesterday...

It was performing A Ok last week, giving between 3 to 5 hours of juice, but yesterday it wouldn’t "charge" beyond 52%, and I say "charge" because it really doesn't charge at all, if I unplug it, the lappie shuts off...

 No matter what trick or tweak I've try, the thing is just dead...
Anyways, I have this little baby since April 2013, it had to happen someday, the only surprise is just how sudden the whole thing of dying was...
This is the second laptop battery that goes South on me...

Gotta Love Technology! ;)

Linux Mint 17: gvfs update wants to delete Cinnamon

Don't get this...
The Linux Mint's update process (I'm guessing that specifically the gvfs package is the responsible) wants to delete Cinnamon (and the Cinnamon Screen saver, as well)?
For the moment, I'm putting a hold on that particular update.

The Fonts Of Youth

Last Thursday found out by chance a nice tip on how to get fonts on Linux the "right way".
I remember hacks like go back for something like a decade or so, always with mixed results, but this one seems to work rather well.

• How to get gorgeous looking fonts on Linux Mint

I've tested this on most of my lappies so far, they work A Ok, but they look specially amazing on the Thinkpad T430's screen.

The current Linux Mint desktop

Quite a bit of changes since the last one.. The Cinnamon theme is New Minty, a classic around here, but the Window theme, the Metacity one, its a new one, a border-less theme called Adwaita-borderless.
The wallpaper, actually hoping for brutal autumn just around the corner, it is called "Summer Greets Autumn".