Sync local Music files with my Android phone's Music

I like to keep my local music synchronised with my phone so I can just play Bluetooth music in my car without needing the Internet or paying Spotify to listen to music I already have.

I also keep this music synchronised with NAS but that is another topic already covered in an earlier blog. That is done using Rsync which is easy but under Windows and Android, it's not so easily done.

For Windows I use Filezilla and for Android, I use SFTP Server.

Install SFTP Server on Android.

Connect your phone in "file transfer" mode or use WiFi.

Open SFTP Server. Get the local IP being used from the phone's Settings. This likely starts 192 or 10.

Set Password to something. Username can be anything like anonymous.

Install Filezilla on Windows.

Open Filezilla

Under Edit update the Settings how you would like, paying special attention to the Transfers section.

Enter: 

• Host: "sftp://<Phone IP number>",
• Username: anonymous,
• Password: <whatever you set up>
• Port: 6789.
  

Click the Quickconnect button

Note: You may want to filter out files you don't want to transfer like images.
If so, open View->Directory Listing Filters and add a filter like the following:

The 2 panes update shows the local and remote file systems.

Now you can drag and drop from one file system to the other. 
You can also set the default action should an existing file be found.
This is done under Transfer->Default file exists action

I set Uploads to Skip file

When finished, turn off file transfer mode on Android and stop the SSH server software.

 

 

How to install a PKG or DMG file stuck verifying on a Mac

I have recently been forced to use a Mac as part of my new job.
What a ride! It is comforting to see Linux's commands work in the Mac terminal. This is of course because iOS is basd opn Linux thogh moist have no clue.
As my IT experience is in Windows, DOS, Linux and Android, I am having to learn new tricks.
I will document the tricks here to help others and also myself when I need to do the same thinbg again in the future.

I have discovered that to install a program you typically download a .DMG file and double-click that.
This will then expose a .PKG file to double-click and install the program.
Sometimes you may download a .PKG file directly and run that.
iOS will then verify the .PKG for any corruption. This can get stuck though, meaning the progress bar stops progressing and you can't install.
It is possible to bypass this verification process to install the program. I had to do this with GlobalProtect which is my employer's VPN.

1. From the Finder in Mac OS X, hit Command + Shift + G and enter the following path:

/System/Library/CoreServices/

2. Locate the app named “Installer.app” from this directory and launch it directly



3. Navigate to the .pkg file that is stuck on verifying and select to open it



4. Run through the package installer or update as usual

The package installer should now work.

How to fix the arrow keys not working in Microsoft Teams.

I honestly cannot believe how garbage Microsoft Teams actually is.

1. You can't add words to the dictionary? Seriously?
   
2. It's a major resource hog (Requires a top end PC to work, else use Teams and nothing else at the same time)
3. The arrow keys randomly stop working,
4. No animated background in video calls (OK, not a deal breaker but close).
5. Navigation is mess. Trying to find certain meetings, chats, you name it, it's a chore. If you have a choice, use preferably Slack (or Zoom if you must) as they are superior.
   

Anyway, enough of a rant.

You are here to fix the arrow keys so simple step first, try killing Teams via Task Manager. If that doesn't work then there are many other time-wasting fixes.

Clear the cache, upgrade Teams and of the course, the Windows cure all, reboot.

 

How to fix when GIFS are not displayed in Microsoft Teams

There are many websites that claim to have fixes for when Teams gies not display GIFS. The GIF icon was not displayed in my Windows Program but was displayed in the browser and the mobile app.
None of the fixes worked for me except the following:

In Settings (...) at the top of the Teams client > Privacy , Scroll down to Optional Connected Experiences and turn it on. If it is turned off, it will turn Giphy off and you will not be able to use GIF's

How to move the Linux "Home" folder to another partition or drive

If you have accepted the default option while installing Ubuntu, or that your computer comes with Ubuntu pre-installed, chances are that your Home folder and the system folders all lie in the same partition. This is perfectly fine, but if you want to upgrade your existing Ubuntu version, or reinstall Ubuntu, you won’t be able to preserve your app settings, or even retain your files and documents. One of the good practice is to give the Home folder its own partition, so whatever changes you made to the System folder won’t affect your Home directory, and you can easily upgrade or reinstall Ubuntu with ease.

If you want to move your Home folder to another partition, here is how you can do so.

Creating a new partition

Note: You can skip this step if you already has an existing external partition that you can use.

Assuming that your computer has only one hard disk and it contains only one partition. To create a new partition, you have to first obtain a Ubuntu Live CD/USB and boot into it. You can’t partition the hard disk when it is running.

Once you are booted into the Live session, open the app “GParted”. Select the hard disk from the list. It should be labelled something like “sda”.

You should see a number of entries in the list. Select the entry that corresponds to the main partition. It should be the one with the biggest file size and is either in the ext3 or ext4 filesystem format. Right click on it and select “Resize/Move”.

Set the size for the new partition in the “Free Space Following” field. The number is represented in MB, so if you want to set aside 10GB for the new partition, enter “10000”. You will notice that as you enter the number, the number in the “New Size” field will decrease accordingly. My usual practice is to set aside 10GB for the system files and allocate the rest to the Home partition. Click “Resize/Move”.

Back to the GParted main screen, you should now see a new “Unallocated” entry with the file size that you have set earlier. Right click on it and select “New”. Select “ext4” as the filesystem and click “Add”.

Lastly. click the green check button to apply the changes. Depending on your hard disk size, the resizing process might take a long time

After the process is completed, you should see something like the screen below. Record down the new partition number.

Now shut down the live session, remove the live CD/USB and boot up the computer.

Migrating the Home folder

To migrate your current Home folder to an external partition, there are four things that you need to do:

1. Mount the external partition onto a temporary Home location.
2. Copy the files from your current Home folder to this temporary Home folder.
3. Relocate the current Home folder
4. Mount the new Home folder.

1. Create a temporary Home folder

Open a terminal and type the following:

sudo blkid

This will display the UID of all the partitions. Record down the UUID for the partition that you have created earlier.

Next, open the fstab file:

sudo nano /etc/fstab

and add the following line to the end of the file.

UUID=xxx-xxxxx-xxxxx   /media/home    ext4          nodev,nosuid       0       2

Replace the UUID with the UUID value of the external partition.

Save (Ctrl + o) and exit (ctrl + x) the file.

Next, create a mount point:

sudo mkdir /media/home

and reload the updated fstab.

sudo mount -a

You should now see a “home” folder in the Media directory.

2. Copy the files from your current Home folder to the new Home folder

The next thing we are going to do is to copy all the files from the current Home folder to the new Home folder. You can simply do a “Select all”, “Copy” and “Paste” to transfer all the files to the new Home folder. However, you might be missing out the hidden files and some of the file permissions might not be preserved. A more complete method would be using rsync.

sudo rsync -aXS /home/. /media/home/.

3. Relocate the current Home folder

Once we have set up the new Home folder, we need to remove the existing Home folder to make way for the new Home folder in the external partition. To do that, type the following commands in the terminal:

cd /
sudo mv /home /home_backup
sudo mkdir /home

What the above commands do is to move the existing Home folder to Home_backup, and create an empty Home folder for the new Home folder to mount to.

4. Mount the new Home folder

The last step to complete the migration is to mount the new Home folder as “/home”. To do that, we have to revisit the fstab file again.

sudo nano /etc/fstab

All you have to do is to change the “/media/home” to “/home”. Save and exit the file.

Lastly, reload the fstab file:

sudo mount -a

That’s it. You have now migrated your Home folder to an external partition.

Optional: removing the Home_backup folder

Once you are done with the migration, you can either use the old Home folder as a backup, or remove it to release the storage space. To remove it, use the command:

sudo rm -rf /home_backup

Note: The post above was actually copied from a 2013 page here:
https://www.maketecheasier.com/move-home-folder-ubuntu/
A big thank you to the original author.