Linux: How to read through all files (checking a backup)

After finishing a backup to a USB stick, I like to verify that all is in place by reading through all files. Using the “tar” utility with verbose file output seemed to be a good idea. But… Don’t $ tar -cv . > /dev/null For whatever reason, the files aren’t really read. Only the names [...]

Linux Device Tree: What those status = “okay” are about

There are a lot of “okay” assignments in the kernel’s device tree. For example, arch/arm/boot/dts/zynq-zed.dts starts with /dts-v1/; #include “zynq-7000.dtsi” and later on there’s, among others, &sdhci0 { status = “okay”; }; &uart1 { status = “okay”; }; &usb0 { status = “okay”; dr_mode = “host”; usb-phy = <&usb_phy0>; }; Let’s look on the last [...]

bash: Jots on exiting the script

Trapping Call a function (byebye in this case) just before exiting a script: trap byebye exit Or a command: trap ‘echo “Farewell cruel world!”‘ exit It’s possible to catch various signals with “trap” as well. Quit on error In short: Have a set -e at the beginning of the script. It’s a global on-off feature, [...]

overlayroot (and permission issues) on Linux Mint 18.1

Introduction Wanting my media center computer to maintain consistent behavior and be tolerant to sudden power outages, I looked for a way to have the root filesystem read-only. This can cause problems with programs that expect to write to all kind of files allover, and media related software has this tendency to break when things [...]

Wallpaper / desktop background + other stuff on Linux Mint 18.1 / Cinnamon

Desktop wallpaper setting Get the current one: $ gsettings get org.cinnamon.desktop.background picture-uri ‘file:///usr/share/backgrounds/linuxmint/default_background.jpg’ And set it to another: $ gsettings set org.cinnamon.desktop.background picture-uri ‘file:///usr/share/backgrounds/linuxmint/edesigner_linuxmint.png’ Notes: The “file://” prefix is mandatory. There also an org.gnome.desktop.background attribute. Apparently, org.cinnamon.desktop.background overrides the former. For an effect on the screen, the “set” command must be run on the active [...]

Linux / DVB: Playing with command-line utilities

General Yet another collection of jots as I try out stuff. In this post, I’m playing with a Sin Hon DVB dongle, trying but failing to receive terrestrial TV with it. The OS is Linux Mint 18.1. I had also Kodi and Tvheadend installed on the system, but they aren’t discussed here. There’s no coherent [...]

Linux and DVB: Failing with a Sin Hon TDH 601 / HD809 USB dongle

General These are my jots as I attempted to use an DVB USB dongle to receive digital TV in Haifa, Israel. Spoiler: I never managed to get my dongle working properly. Maybe because it was faulty to begin with, and maybe because I missed something. It seems more like the former. It says “HD809″ and [...]

Linux Mint 18.1 + i915: Updating the Intel Graphics stack

Running Linux Mint 18.1 (kernel 4.4.0-53) on a Gigabyte Brix BACE-3160 (with an i915 graphics controller) , I had all kind of minor graphics artifacts (in particular a sluggish mouse pointer and Kodi felt heavy). So obviously, I went for updating the graphics stack. Intel supplies an tool for doing this automagically on a selected [...]

PCIe: Xilinx’ pipe_clock module and its timing constraints

Introduction In several versions of Xilinx’ wrapper for the integrated PCIe block, it’s the user application logic’s duty to instantiate the module which generates the “pipe clock”. It typically looks something like this: pcie_myblock_pipe_clock # ( .PCIE_ASYNC_EN ( “FALSE” ), // PCIe async enable .PCIE_TXBUF_EN ( “FALSE” ), // PCIe TX buffer enable for Gen1/Gen2 [...]