dotfiles

Various dotfiles, associated scripts and cheatsheets as well as installation scripts and notes

Ubuntu installation

0. Make sure we're using UEFI (system setup). This will affect how the installation of third-party stuff goes, so we need to do it first.

1. Run install.sh after updating any explicitly-specified versions

Note that zsh-install.sh & vscode-install-extensions.sh are run automatically after Oh-My-Zsh & VS Code are installed, respectively.

Note also that vim-plug installs fzf, so the latter won't be available until nvim is started for the first time.

Note finally that the iriun deps installation will require some interaction when UEFI is configured. I haven't tested this in the script as of writing.

Manual Steps

Display

After setting up displays, if the login dialog is still on the wrong monitor, run

sudo cp ~/.config/monitors.xml ~gdm/.config/monitors.xml

Turning off network printer discovery

Ubuntu will repeatedly install all network printers on every connect and quite annoyingly inform the user everytime it has done so. Per ask ubuntu, it's possible to turn this off as follows:

sudo systemctl stop cups-browsed
sudo systemctl disable cups-browsed

This isn't included in install.sh in case it's desirable behavior.

Backup via Timeshift

Timeshift is automatically installed but needs to be configured. Open the Timeshift application and set up as appropriate. Boot + monthly/weekly/daily snapshots seem appropriate.

GNOME Tweaks

All tweaks are automatically set via gsettings during installation. If desired, additional customization can be performed via the Tweaks interface or gsettings. Here is a convenient one-liner for listing available settings into a searchable file:

gsettings list-schemas | \
   perl -ne 'print; chomp; $schema = $_; for my $key (`gsettings list-keys $schema`) { \
   print "  $key"; for my $rangeItem (`gsettings range $schema $key`) { \
   print "    $rangeItem" } }' > all-gsettings.txt

Windows dual-boot

If the system is dual boot with windows, run this command to fix windows time going awry every time linux is booted:

timedatectl set-local-rtc 1 --adjust-system-clock

In reverse:

timedatectl set-local-rtc 0 --adjust-system-clock

GNOME extensions

While it's possible to install GNOME extensions programmatically, one has to match the download url with one's shell version, and the maintenance cost just isn't worth it for a small list of extensions. I'm only using a few at the moment, so it's much easier to manually enable it using the GNOME shell integration chrome plugin. A list of install url(s) follows:

• OverviewNavigation (Not compatible with gnome > 42)
• V-Shell
• WSP (Windows Search Provider)
• Dash to Panel. I exported its settings to dash-to-panel.ini
• Hide Cursor (Wayland replacement for unclutter)

Note that the GNOME Shell Integration Chrome extension is supposedly able to sync these, so this may no longer be a manual step. (Untested)

GPG

Needed for Github Credential Manager. The first git action will trigger login.

0. gpg --full-generate-key
1. pass init <gpg-id>

Mounting a partition as /home

This answer is exactly what's needed for a clear drive. For an encrypted drive, rsync per the answer and then use the Disks GUI to set up auto-unlock/mount.

navi

This first time running navi, it will need to load cheat sheet repos. After installing the default, make sure to also run navi add thisisrandy/cheatsheets.

Mounting external RAID member HDDs

The wisdom found collectively in Ubuntu doesn't "see" external USB Hard Disk, mount: unknown filesystem type 'linux_raid_member', and mount unknown filesystem type 'lvm2_member' gets us through to the win. In particular:

• ls /dev/ | grep sd before/after to detect whether the HDD is even seen
• sudo fdisk -l to find the correct device
• mount complains about 'linux_raid_member'
  • mdadm --assemble --run /dev/md0 <DEVICE>, assuming /dev/md0 does not currently exist
• mount complains about 'LVM2_member'
  • sudo apt-get install lvm2 to install the logical volume management tools
  • vgdisplay to get volume group UUID
  • vgrename <VG UUID> new_name to rename it if there's a name conflict
  • modprobe dm-mod to add a device mapping driver
  • vgchange -ay to activate
  • lvscan to list all logical volumes in all volume groups
  • mount /dev/new_name/root /(mnt|media/user)/whereever. May need to create mount location first

GNOME Boxes

Getting files out of a VM

1. Launch the client, then click on the client in the Boxes menu and go to Preferences -> Devices & Shares -> Folder Shares and add a folder
2. On the client, install spice-webdavd, then run sudo spice-webdavd -p 10000. "Spice client folder" should now be available from the "Other Locations" menu in Files
3. Sometimes when attempting to open the Spice client folder, it will error with HTTP error: Could not connect: Connection refused. It seems, per this discussion, that the best way to fix the issue is to manually type dav://localhost:9843 into the Other Locations -> Connect to Server textbox

Migrating a VM to another host

First, get the necessary software using

sudo apt-get install qemu-kvm libvirt-daemon-system

Other notes

• Remember to adjust the power settings on new VMs. Boxes doesn't seem able to recover when the guest blanks its screen

Dump

1. Grab the QCOW disk image(s) in ~/.local/share/gnome-boxes/images
2. Dump the machine config(s) as follows:

sudo apt install qemu-kvm libvirt-daemon-system
virsh -c qemu:///session list --all | awk 'NR>2 { print $2 }' | \
    xargs -I {} sh -c 'virsh -c qemu:///session dumpxml $1 > $1.xml' -- {}

Load

1. Replace the QCOW image(s) in the same location
2. Run virsh create CONFIG.xml for each

Making use of older GPUs

Ubuntu does a pretty good job of automatically installing nouveau, but it uses the on-board graphics by default for everything. We can tell any application to use the Nvidia GPU by specifying DRI_PRIME=1 in its environment. See this answer and also this documentation. There's also an application called switcherooctl that handles this in a more complete way. Note that prime-select from the nvidia-prime functions, but doesn't seem to have any effect.