Upgrading to Ubuntu 13.04

Ubuntu 13.04

It's that time of the year! Well, the first one... A new Ubuntu version comes out every April and October.


Ubuntu 13.04, Raring Ringtail, has been released.


Time to do a direct upgrade from my 12.10 installation.


The upgrade process was quite simple. I upgraded some packages normally using Update Manager, and when everything was up to date:

After rebooting, the only thing I had to do was going to "Software & Updates" and in the "Other Software" tab re-add my 3rd party PPAs.

Unity seems faster and everything is running smooth.

Google Play Music

Google Play Music

Google Play Music is finally available in Portugal!

I will show how to set up upload your music in Ubuntu using the Google Music Manager.






Installing Google Play Music Manager in Ubuntu

$ wget -q -O - https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | sudo apt-key add -
$ sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://dl.google.com/linux/musicmanager/deb/ stable main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google.list'
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install google-musicmanager-beta

I had trouble with the version installed via ppa, it was always crashing after opening up. I found a working version here.

To download and install this version:

$ wget -O google-musicmanager-beta_1.0.55.7425-r0_amd64.deb http://ubuntuone.com/63gYDtAAJow4nWizbZqM6U
$ sudo dkpg -i google-musicmanager-beta_1.0.55.7425-r0_amd64.deb

Nexus 4 bootloader unlocking, rooting and installing a new ROM

Nexus 4 (mako)

I just got a Nexus 4 :)

Time to unlock the bootloader, install a new recovery, get root and install a new ROM.


Android SDK

Download the Android SDK from here and uncompress the zip file. I will be using the Linux version.

$ mkdir ~/Android
$ cd ~/Android
$ unzip adt-bundle-linux-x86_64-20130219.zip

USB Debugging

In Android go to Settings>About>Build Number and click seven times to unlock the Developer Options.
Then go to Settings>Developer Options and check USB Debugging.

Moving your /home partition to a new disk

A couple of weeks ago my hard drive started to fail. The boot time started degrading and a scan to the /home partition would run in every boot. Also sometimes it would return i/o errors.

A look at the disk's SMART data confirmed a number of bad sectors.

So I bought a new disk and migrated my /home partition.


The setup

I have a SSD drive with my root (/) partition and a HDD drive with my /home partition.
I bought a new HDD drive to replace the old one and connected both at the same time for the migration process.

Startup Disk Creator

Booting into a live environment

I installed Ubuntu into a pen drive using the Startup Disk Creator. This allowed me to boot into a full Ubuntu environment without booting from my actual system.


Discover the UUIDs of the drives

Before starting the process we need to identify the drives by UUID.

$ sudo blkid

Install atom422 in Galaxy Nexus

I've been using atom422 ROM with Ak Kernel for a week now, and I must say this is the best ROM/kernel combo I had in my Galaxy Nexus. And it's underclocked!

I will be using atom422 v9 and Ak Kernel 731.


Backing up your device

• Backup using Titanium Backup
• Backup Nova Launcher settings
• Backup SMS using SMS Backup & Restore
• Reboot into recovery (I have ClockworkMod Recovery v6.0.2.3)
• Backup (backup and restore > backup)
• Go into "install zip from sdcard > choose zip from sdcard" just to guarantee that ClockworkMod Recovery is accessing the storage
• Plug the phone into a computer (I'm using Ubuntu 12.10, and have already android-sdk)
• Go into your android-sdk tools folder

$ cd Android/android-sdk-linux_86/tools/

• Go into adb shell and list the directories in your "sdcard" to decide what to backup

$ sudo ./adb shell
# ls /data/media/0
# exit

• Pull all the directories you want to backup

$ sudo ./adb pull /data/media/0/examplefolder sdcard/examplefolder

• The previous example will create a sdcard folder in your tools folder with the data folder pulled from your phone
• Change the owner of the pulled folders

$ sudo chown -R youruser:youruser sdcard

You can also backup using FTP for example. I normally use WellFTP Server.

Don't forget to backup at least your "clockwork" and "TitaniumBackup" folders!

Note: clockwork backups are located in "/data/media/clockworkmod" and not in "/data/media/0/clockworkmod", at least at my system.

Check in what folder you have the following folders: "backup" and "blobs". That will be the correct clockwork backup folder.