Ubuntu on Life

Recovering a LUKS-Encrypted Ubuntu LVM Volume Group on Another System

Mon, 05 May 2014 12:50:00 +0530

I frequently mirror and swap internal hard drives using an external USB/eSATA docking station. However, this creates a tricky issue when mounting on another Ubuntu machine.

During standard installation with LUKS + LVM encryption, Ubuntu names the root volume group ubuntu-vg. If you plug in a secondary drive where Ubuntu was also installed, LVM encounters a name conflict between the host’s volume group and the external disk’s volume group, preventing activation.

Shrinking VMs on virt-manager / KVM

Mon, 13 Jan 2014 18:36:00 +0530

I use rsync to back up my workstation, including virtual machine disk images. Due to a known issue with sparse file handling during backups, rsync would expand sparse files, inflating an 11 GB disk image to its full 64 GB provisioned size on the backup server.

To solve this, I converted the disk images to compressed qcow2 format:

1. Convert Existing Raw Images to qcow2

This also enables live snapshot support in virt-manager:

Windows 7 on KVM: High Host CPU Usage While Guest Is Idle

Sun, 12 Jan 2014 21:00:00 +0530

If you notice unusually high CPU usage on your KVM host while a Windows 7 virtual machine sits completely idle, remove the virtual USB tablet input device from the VM configuration. Once removed, host CPU utilization drops immediately.

Reference: Debian Bug 672720

Unity vs. GNOME Shell: The Small Things – Status Tray

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 10:56:00 +0530

The GNOME Shell status tray is an interesting implementation written in JavaScript. Consequently, it is approachable to learn, write extensions for, and modify. However, one issue that bothered me was focus stealing.

When clicking on a status tray icon and moving the mouse cursor diagonally down toward the open menu, focus would inadvertently switch to the next adjacent tray icon. This was rather jarring, exacerbated by the gap between the panel icon and the popover menu.

Tablets: Unity and GNOME Shell

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 08:17:00 +0530

I have been thinking about writing this down for quite a while: my hands-on experiences testing Ubuntu Unity and GNOME Shell on the WeTab tablet.

Unity

Unity makes a fine netbook interface, but tablet support feels underdeveloped. After configuring auto-login, I was greeted by the standard desktop and launcher. However, launching an application and maximizing it hides the dock launcher entirely, making it awkward to bring back with a finger. Furthermore, scrollbars are difficult to grab, and multi-touch gestures like drag-to-scroll aren’t yet implemented. Aside from those tablet friction points, the interface shows potential.