Sensors-Unity is a new lm-sensors GUI for the Unity Desktop. It allows monitoring the output of the sensors CLI utility while integrating with the Unity desktop. This means there is no GPU/ HDD support and no plotting. If you need those you are probably better suited with psensor. However if you just need a overview of the sensor readings and if you appreciate a clean UI you should give it a shot.
In contrast to other applications the interface is designed around being a application. Instead of getting another indicator in the top-right, you get an icon in the launcher:
The user interface
The idea is that you do not need the sensor information all the time. Instead you launch the app when you do. If you want to passively monitor some value you can minimize the app while selecting the value to display in the launcher icon.
To get the data libsensors is used which means that you need to get lm-sensors running before you will see anything.
However once the sensors command line utility works you will see the same results in Sensors-Unity as it shares the configuration in /etc/sensors3.conf.
Configuration
Unfortunately configuring lm-sensors via /etc/sensors3.conf is quite poorly documented, so lets quickly recap the usage.
/etc/sensors3.conf contains the configuration for all sensors known by lm-sensors
however every mainboard can use each chip in a slightly different way
therefore you can override /etc/sensors3.conf by placing your specific configuration in /etc/sensors.d/ (see this for details)
you can find a list of these board specific configurations in the lm-sensors repository
to disable a sensor use the ignore statement
#ignore everything from this chip
chip "acpitz-virtual-0"
ignore temp1
ignore temp2
to change the label use the label statement
chip "coretemp-*"
label temp1 "CPU Package"
Sensors-Unity Specific Configuration
Sensors-Unity allows using the Pango Markup Language for sensor labels. For instance if you want “VAXG” instead of “CPU Graphics” to be displayed, you would write:
label in4 "V<sub>AXG</sub>"
In order not to interfere with other utilities and to allow per-user configuration of the labels/ sensors Sensors-Unity first tries to read ~/.config/sensors3.conf before continuing with the lm-sensors config lookup described above.
If you use your laptop as a desktop replacement, you will at some point get an external display and a mouse/ keyboard for more convenient usage.
At this point the laptop becomes only a small case of non-upgradable components.
Now you could as well replace your laptop by a real case of comparable size. This will make your PC not only easily upgradable, but allow higher-end components while being more silent at the same time.
This article is about how to securely configure the machine where your Nextcloud/ Owncloud instance will be running. Even if you set-up your connection with Owncloud in a secure way, your data still can be compromised by exploiting security flaws in the underlying architecture.
In the following we specifically will cover the underlying software stack and brute-force password hacking attempts.
Probably everyone has encountered a package in Ubuntu which was not the newest released version while one for some reason needed the newest one. The first step is to search for a PPA with the desired version. But what if there is no such PPA or you want to build the version yourself? This is where this guide comes in. Note however that this is not aimed at ordinary users – you need some experience with programming/ compiling to successfully build a package.
Before you start
Before you start make sure that you have source packages enabled in your software sources.
Next you obviously need the upstream source tar-ball of the new program which should look something like <packagename>–<version>.tar.gz.
Download this tar-ball to a new directory <somedir> and extract it there.
Updating Package info
For the following commands I assume you are in the previously created directory <somedir>.
First we need to get the old version of the source package
apt-get source <packagename>
This will download and extract the old source package into <packagename>–<oldversion>.
Now we need some helper scripts to perform the upgrading as well as the build-time dependencies of the package
Next change into the extracted sources of the old package and update the packaging
cd <packagename>-<oldversion>
uupdate -v <newversion> ../<packagename>-<newversion>.tar.gz
# change into the extracted new package
cd ../<packagename>-<newversion>
# update version info
dch -l ~ppa -D $(lsb_release -sc)
To trigger a rebuild of the program simply execute
dpkg-buildpackage
Uploading your version to a PPA
To upload a package to a PPA you first need to sign it to prove that you are the author. To do this you have to execute the following in the <packagename>–<newversion> directory
debuild -S
Furthermore you need the upload tool dput to actually perform the uploading
update 24.04.2017 – include Subject Alternative Name field
update 20.12.2017 – discuss Certbot as an alternative
While the Nextcloud Manual suggests enabling SSL, it unfortunately does not go into detail how to get a secure setup. The core problem is that the default SSL settings of Apache are not sane as in they do not enforce strong encryption. Furthermore the used default certificate will not match your server name and produce errors in the browser.
In the following a short guide how to manually set-up a secure Apache 2.4 server for Nextcloud will be presented.
update 27.10.2018 – use TWRP instead of CWM (discontinued)
update 14.10.2017 – new instructions to set-up udev rules update 26.02.2016 – instructions for Android 6 Marshmallow
The Big Picture
Android consists of three parts relevant to rooting
the bootloader
recovery system
main system
typically only the main system is running, that is the Linux Kernel, the launcher, the phone app etc.. If we talk about rooting, that means we want to add an additional app to the main system which has access to secured parts of the system and acts as a gatekeeper for other apps that also want to get access.
The problem is the secured parts of the system are locked down – otherwise they would not be secure. This means that we can not simply install that app (e.g. an apk) from within the main system.
Therefore we have to go one level down. This is where the recovery system is. Typically you do not see it, as it is only active when the main system can not run – either because a system update is installed or because you do a factory reset.
As the recovery system can do a full system update, it means that it has also access to the secured parts of the main system – exactly what we need.
The stock recovery system obviously does not allow altering the main system – otherwise everybody could get your private data if you lose your phone.
So we need to replace it as well. But before that we have to talk about the bootloader.
The bootloader is a tiny piece of software which decides whether to start the recovery or the main system (or another main system, like Ubuntu Phone).
In the default configuration in only starts systems that it knows and trusts. In this configuration the bootloader is called locked.
Although this prevents malicious software to change the phone and spy on us, it also prevents us from replacing the recovery system. By the way, this concept is also coming to the PC where it is called UEFI secure-boot.
Here is a graphical overview of the Android components:
So what we need to do in order to get root access is
unlock the bootloader
replace the recovery system
install a superuser app
Note that unlocking the bootloader also allows attackers to circumvent any of the android security features (PIN etc). It becomes possible to access all the files on the device using a different recovery system. (unless userdata is encrypted) Therefore android will wipe all userdata when the bootloader state is changed from locked to unlocked.
So if you lose your unlocked device or it gets stolen, you better hope the thief is not tech savvy.
Preparations
First you need to install the fastboot binary to be able to perform low-level communication with the device
The android-sdk-platform-tools-common package most importantly contains a whitelist (/lib/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules) with devices to which users can send commands over USB, so you do not have to run fastboot as root.
Now you have to reboot into fastboot mode. Usually there is a key combination you have to press on startup.
Remember this key combination as you will need some more times.
Samsung Devices however, like the Galaxy S3, do not support the fastboot mode – instead they have a download mode, which uses a proprietary Samsung protocol. To flash those you have to use the Heimdall tool. While this article does not cover the heimdall CLI calls, the general discussion still applies.
Unlocking the Bootloader
last warning: this will wipe all user data on the device
for google devices, like a Nexus 4 or Nexus 7 it is just do
fastboot oem unlock
if you have a Sony Xperia device, like a Xperia Z, you additionally have to request a unlock key and then do
fastboot oem unlock 0x<KEY>
where <KEY> is the key you obtained.
Using AutoRoot to install SuperSU
There are several superuser apps to choose from for Android 4 and below. However the only superuser app working on Android 5/ Lollipop and above is SuperSU by Chainfire.
As there are devices like the Nexus 5X shipping with Android 6/ Marshmallow, I will describe this method first.
Chainfire created an “installer” called AutoRoot that includes the fastboot utility and will perform the unlocking step described above. However if you have read this far, you probably also want to understand the rest of the process.
the command above will not flash anything on your device, but just upload the image and immediately start it. The image contains a script to modify the main system (change startup to get around SELinux) and install the superuser app.
If everything goes well, you can now just reboot your phone and you are done.
You could lock your bootloader again now to make your device more secure. However the next Android update will remove root again and repeating the rooting procedure will wipe userdata – so you have to balance security update vs. the risk of your device being stolen. For the latter case you still have the option to enable encryption of userdata though.
Installing OTA updates
Android over the air (OTA) updates contain only the changes to the current system. In order to verify that the update succeeded Android computes a checksum of the patched system and reverts to the old state otherwise.
As SuperSU has changed the boot image to start itself, the updates obviously will fail. So to install an OTA update you will have to grab a factory image and restore the boot partition using the included boot.img
fastboot flash boot boot.img
after this you will have to patch the boot partition again using the procedure described above.
Also note that if you use apps that change the system partition (like AdAway that changes the hosts file), you will have to revert those changes as well in order for the OTA update to succeed.
Optional: Replacing the Recovery System
If you want some advanced features, like backing up all your installed apks, you can permanently replace the recovery image on your device. However this will most likely prevent you from installing OTA updates.
There are two prominent alternative recovery systems with the ability to install apps
I would recommend getting Superuser by CWM, as it is open source and also nag-free as there is no “pro” version of it. There is even a pull-request which might make it also work with Android 5 in the future.
To install the app we need to get this zip archive and copy it to the device. Then we need to reboot into fastboot mode and then select “Recovery Mode” to get to the recovery system. Once in Recovery mode select
install zip -> choose zip from /sdcard
then browse and select the “superuser.zip” you just copied.
Once installed select
Go Back -> reboot system now
Once the system has started you should have a “Superuser” App on your device. Congratulations, you are done.
I recently ran into this problem and could not find any good solution on the Internet. So next comes a small summary of the problem with hopefully enough buzzwords, so Google can lead you here.
If you want to do C++ development on Android, you need the NDK for cross compilation. It comes by default with its own build system called ndk-build, which basically is a bunch of custom makefiles. But if you are sharing code between the Android Platform and lets say plain Linux, you have likely already a build system installed. For C/C++ CMake is quite popular as it supports different platforms and compilers. Fortunately there is already a project which adds Android support to CMake. I will not cover that – instead I assume you are using it already.
Unfortunately you cant use the ndk-gdb script supplied with the NDK to debug your application as it relies on the behaviour of ndk-build. But as said earlier, ndk-build is no wizardy, but just a bunch of scripts. So it is possible to emulate the behaviour using CMake, as following:
Add the following macro to your CMakeLists.txt file
You should now be able to use ndk-gdb with CMake, just as if you would have used ndk-build.
Note that steps 4 and 5 are optional for debugging. They just reduce the size of the library that has to be transferred to the device. If you dont care, you can just leave them out. But then the solib search path from step 2 must be set to:
When I first read about GNOME dropping support for BSD and Solaris, my impression was that this is a good idea to aiming to unify limit resources and get the work done. I was also excited about the idea of the GNOME OS. I think it is necessary to keep the big picture in mind when developing the different components. Previously Ubuntu was the only project that did this and it was also the reason why I started using Ubuntu. Because it made the different parts of Linux work together to achieve the big goal of a great overall system.
But then things started to go wrong. Instead of picking existing components and giving them the final polish like Ubuntu did before, the GNOME project started developing things from scratch without any apparent reason to do so. And even worse: incompatible to existing solutions. It started with the rejection of the appindicator specification implemented by Ubuntu and KDE. At that point it was not clear to me whether the specification was broken or whether the responsible people at GNOME were just ignorant.
Then came systemd. And it started to be apparent that unfortunately it was the latter. To my knowledge Ubuntu is the biggest deployment of GNOME and it is based around the Linux ecosystem. So dropping support for Ubuntu has nothing to do with unifying limited resources. Ubuntu is your target audience, so if you should try to collaborate with a project you should collaborate with Ubuntu. My opinion on that is that some Fedora developers were pissed that the Unity interface was exclusive for Ubuntu and instead of packaging it for Fedora they started making GNOME Shell exclusive for Fedora.
But first lets take a step back. Lets take a look at the core of GNOME. By this I mean the programming language it is written in. It is C/GObject; plain C extended with naming conventions and libraries to allow modern paradigms such as object oriented programming and events/ observer pattern. From today’s perspective one might wonder why one should choose this over C++, which integrates most of the features at the language level. But back when the GNOME project started C++ was not mature yet which meant that your program might break with the next compiler update or even the next STL update.
Therefore basing your project on plain C was a good idea. But a few years back it became obvious that programming in C/GObject seriosly lacked behind more modern programming languages like C++, Java and C# for application development.
Unfortunately instead of moving the straightforward route from C to C++, which most of C developers took when C++ matured(that was about 10 years ago), Vala was born.
So instead of using a proven and mature foundation, a new layer of indirection was created to essentially provide the same feature set. Commonly this is referred to as the “not invented here” symptom. A more derogative phrase would be reinventing the wheel..
What is sad here is that being an open source project, GNOME disregards the biggest advantage of open source software, namely standing on the shoulders of giants. With open source software you can use take an existing solution and improve upon it. This way you get the base functionality as well as the bug fixes that went in it for free. If you would develop it from scratch, you most likely would have to fix the same bugs again yourself.
To sum up here is what GNOME is losing right now
30 years of language and library experience by using Vala instead of C++
5 years of deployment and bug fixing by using systemd instead of extending upstart
1 year of development testing and design if they reimplement overlay-scrollbars
8 years of foundation development that went into Eclipse, by developing Gnome Builder from scratch
but most importantly: the synergy effects by collaborating with others
Do not get me wrong, I am not saying that the GNOME solutions could be replaced by existing solutions – I am saying that by extending existing solutions the GNOME project and the free software landscape would be better off as a whole.
I just have watched the Apple iPad announcement and I have to say that I am quite impressed by the Apple marketing team. Before the film I could not think of a good use case for a oversized iPod, but after the film I have to say that Apple greatly refined the use case of the netbooks as a second PC.
Instead of putting an ordinary OS into a differently shaped device, like Microsoft is seemingly doing with the Slate, Apple adjusted the OS to the new use case.
If you have a much smaller screen and a much smaller keyboard, like you have on netbooks, you don’t want to write long articles or aim for the tiny buttons of ordinary user interfaces. Instead one should of a netbook like a playback device, which only requires rudimentary interaction.
As apple is great at streamlining stuff, they simply left out the keyboard and used a modified version of the iPhone OS, which is optimized for easy usage and – voilla here comes the computer you actually want to use in your living room, to quickly peek on facebook or your mail inbox.
But there are two big disadvantages that come with using the iPhone OS. First it is stripped down to much; there is no multitasking and no system clipboard which takes a lot of the convenience you have when using a real OS.
And second you are again locked-in by apple. If you use the iPad, you are also more or less forced to use iTunes for your music, iBook Store for your eBook and the AppStore if you want new Software.
Of course you might be able to Jailbreak the device and use third-party software but this will be nowhere as convenient as using the defaults. This is Apples Achilles heel and where Maemo can triumph.
With Maemo you basically have a full-fledged Linux with a easy to use UI. You have multitasking, you have a system clipboard and most importantly you have an open software repository – and all of this very well integrated in the UI.
You can freely choose your email provide, your music player and even the format you save your music in. And even though Nokia does not support OGG by default, the open nature of the OS allows it to be just as integrated as everything else.
Actually Nokia only has to build a Internet Tablet with the size of the iPad…
Nearly 4 years ago Jon Smirl, the author of the experimental Xegl server wrote a nice summary about the state of linux graphics. He did that after realizing that it take much more time than he could out into Xegl in order to fix the linux graphics, so it is a realistic summary.
The interesting thing is that in his vision he described an X server which would run without root privileges and use OpenGL for all its drawings. Number one on his todo list though was a memory manager for DRM, which would enable all the nice stuff.
Well it seems that coming with Karmic we will finally see that first step done; most of the users(Intel and AMD) should get a nice in kernel memory manager which will be visible by Kernel Mode Setting. So what can we expect next?
This diagram shows the dependencies of the various features. (Source) Green is what we should get with Karmic. The graphics-memory manager in kernel allows moving mode setting there too, so the resolution is set only once during bootup (flicker-free). Since the graphics card is now controlled from one hand it also allows dynamic power management to be done and does not require root privileges for X, which results in better security. Memory management also allows giving 3D applications their private front buffer, so they dont conflict when rendering. (RDR, Redirected Direct Rendering) Which is basically the core of DRI2. It also allows supporting memory related OpenGL features like VBOs or FBOs(Vertex/Frame Buffer Object) which brings the compliance level of MESA up to OpenGL 1.5.
Theoretically everything up to OpenGL3 could be implemented now, but since of the old design of MESA everything would have to be implemented for each driver over and over again. That is why Gallium3D was created. It is a intermediate level API which abstracts from the hardware by just offering a state tracking interface. On top of that it is possible to implement more sophisticated APIs like OpenGL, OpenCL or a Video Decoding API like VDPAU. These implementations can then be shared across all drivers which are built on the Gallium3D architecture.
Well it is still a way to go until we get these grey boxes, which Windows and Mac basically already had 4 years ago…
