[Technology] Duplicity, DejaDup, and monitoring output

Due to another bug in DejaDup, you can only watch progress if you manually start a back-up.  If DejaDup beats you to the punch and automatically starts, you can't follow the progress.



Today, I figured out a way to watch:




$ ps aux | grep duplicity
username  12345 97.2  4.9 878235 345123 ?       Rsl  02:21  15:02 python2 /usr/bin/duplicity --exclude=/run/media/..... --tempdir=/home/username/.cache/deja-dup/tmp --log-fd=18

A-ha, a log fd. 

Go to /proc/PID/fd (/proc/12345/fd) and use cat or grep.

$ cat 18

This shows way too much info for me.  90% of it are my exclude globs. 

$ grep "examining path" 18

works well for seeing which file is being examined.  If you look at the output, you can also focus on when it finds files match (and don't need backing up) or when they're different.

deja-dup 35.5 and difficulty finding drive volumes

At some point, my version of Deja Dup upgraded to 35, and with it came a couple problems.



First, the command deja-dup-preferences is replaced with just deja-dup.  That's fine. 



Second, it could no longer detect my LUKS volume.  It gave me the option of using the partition that the LUKS volume is on, but even after I mounted and decrypted it as usual, I could not see the encrypted LUKS volume from deja-dup.  Normally under "Storage Location" (Speicherort) on mine, I have a drop down where I can select a few different options, Nextcloud, a Network Server, my volumes, or a local directory.  For some reason, it just wouldn't register this time, even after restarting deja-dup or remounting my volume.



I ended up using dconf-editor to manually set it up. 



Path: /org/gnome/deja-dup/drive/



I changed the name to the familiar drive name, and I also had to change the UUID.  I used the command 'blkid' as root to get the correct UUID.  I then restarted deja-dup and it now found it.



Weird.  I should file a bug soon.

[Technology] Firefox and screenshots

https://screenshots.firefox.com/



This is my favourite new feature in Firefox.  GNOME's screenshot tool is already super effective for content on-screen, but doesn't help me if I want to screenshot a full page, including what's outside the visible scrollable area right now.  I've used a couple extensions whose effectiveness and reliability has varied.  And printing to a PDF horribly deforms the page (since it makes choices intended for printing to paper). 

[GNOME] Wilkommen zu Tortola, Kanada

After determining that I couldn't effectively contribute AND do school at the same time, I stopped working on GNOME projects a few years ago.  Tonight I took my first step back in, by filing a bug, 785922, that has bothered me for a while.



In GNOME Control Center, it's been listing Toronto, Canada as "Tortola, Kanada" under the German locale (DE).  I run most of my user interfaces in German for practise.



I then created a simple patch for it.  Hoozah.

[Technology] Google Music and Linux

Today I wanted to listen to the Splatoon soundtrack ("Splatune"), which I own.  I wanted to cast it using my phone to my Chromecast Audio connected to my speakers.  When I searched Google Play Music, I couldn't find it in my library (I own the CD, but I use Google Play Music Manager to sync my music library between Linux and Google Play Music, hmm).



It did find YouTube videos of the soundtrack.  "Good enough," I thought.  I tried to cast that from YouTube to my speakers, but the casting icon was greyed out.  I could not cast to my speakers, let alone my TV.  Is that some DRM?  How obnoxious.



I double checked my Google Play Music library and, yup, it wasn't present.  I then unpacked my computer my shoulder bag, plugged it in, set it up at my desk (what a hassle), and tried to see why it wasn't synced.  Google Play Music Manager was no longer installed (!).  Perhaps it was automatically uninstalled when upgrading to Fedora 26 (or 25, 6 months ago?).  Hmm.



Alright, I'll just reinstall it.  I googled "Google Play Music Linux" and did not find it in the top 10 results.  That's not good.  I searched again with the words sync and manager, and there it was.  Hooray.  Link (this page might detect your OS and present you with something not Linux-y if you're not on Linux).  I clicked to install the RPM for my configuration.  I was concerned that it would just install a package, and not a repository with which to keep it up to date, but lo, it indeed wanted to install an RPM of the repository configuration: hooray!

















And it wants to do it through GNOME Software, rather than the command-line, double-win!



And then after it went through to install, it asked me... if I wanted to install it?  I went through it again, and again, and again.  Great, so it's 2017 and it still sucks to install software on Linux/GNOME.  I would have hoped that if it failed, GNOME Software would have said something, or if it had succeeded, it wouldn't act as though it was uninstalled.



I checked via the command line (ugh) using dnf and, huh, it's installed?  Along with a bunch of dependencies:





That's me removing it.  So I can try again, to see if GNOME Software chokes a second time.



Hooray, this time GNOME Software acts as though it succeeded!







 Then, it gave me a page saying it couldn't find some google music manager beta package, as though after installing the repository, it wanted to install the actual software?  I missed getting that as a screenshot, as in frustration I just repeated the whole process.  3rd time, it worked!







Google Play Music Manager



So, as far as the actual tool goes, I am disappointed that it's proprietary.  However, it seems to work well for now.  Conveniently, and luckily, it respects my music folder hierarchy (~/files/music/ARTIST/ALBUM/TRACK).  Sadly, it does track names as "TRACKNUM TITLE.mp3".  I'd have preferred ARTIST.ALBUM.TRACKNUM.TITLE.ogg, but this is something I could achieve by script.



I don't know exactly how well Google Play Music Manager identifies individual tracks.  Like, if I change a file name of a Grimes' song, that I bought on Google Play Music, from "11 ≈Ω≈Ω≈Ω≈Ω≈Ω≈Ω.mp3" to "Grimes.Halfaxa.11.≈Ω≈Ω≈Ω≈Ω≈Ω≈Ω.mp3", would it known that it's the same file?  E.g. md5sum, or maybe metadata/IDv3 tags?  I wouldn't expect it to recognise it if I changed the format, especially since some people do have multiple copies of the same song, just in different bitrates/encodings. 



But I don't need Google Play Music Manager to be that smart.  I just need it to stay installed, and to continue working in the background, and continue being slim (e.g. some past syncing tools I've had to use (e.g. photo ones) have been HORRIBLE for thrashing my hard drive or hogging the CPU when I'm trying to interact with my computer; it helps that now I have an SSD and 4 cores, compared to half a decade ago when it was 7200RPM HDD and 2 cores, or a decade ago when ... there was ONE core).



I need it to both download music that I purchase on the service, and upload music that appears on my computer (not that I buy many CDs or music outside of Google Play Music anymore; not that I even have a CD (or DVD) player of any kind in my house anymore). And it does it.  And it almost installed cleanly, and eventually did on a third time (only needing to use the command-line to reset the mysterious errors of the first two tries; and I had assumed the universe was deterministic, ha!).