Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) ships Firefox as a snap, but some people (like me) may prefer installing it from .deb packages to retain control over upgrades or to keep extensions working.
I have been using my raspberry pi 4 to monitor my network and my Synology NAS. So far, I’ve been using a SanDisk MicroSD card for storing all the data which died (remember: MicroSD cards have a limited number of writes)
After doing some research I learned that the Raspberry Pi 4 gained direct boot capabilities from USB Mass Storage (aka SSDs) with a bootloader (eeprom) update in 2020.
I struggled for about 2 nights to make it work despite following various how-tos/tutorials. The method outlined here is what worked for me as of 2021-10-23. It could change in the future. With new updates to the ubuntu image those steps might not be necessary anymore.
Preparation – Upgrade bootloader
The easiest way to upgrade the bootloader on the raspberry pi is to use the raspi-config tool built into the raspian os image. Therefore first write the Raspian OS image to an MicroSD Card to make use of raspi-config. Afterwards, write the Ubuntu Image to the MicroSD card You can use the raspberry image writer. Flash the image to a MicroSD card
Raspberry Image Writer: Choose Raspberry PI OS Lite (32-bit)
Boot the raspberry pi with raspian os, login with the default credentials and run
sudo raspi-config
raspi-config
Choose Advanced Options –> Bootloader Version –> Latest
Select No when asked to restore Default Settings
Exit and Select Yes when asked to reboot
On Reboot the bootloader should be upgraded.
Check in the Terminal that the upgrade was applied
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo rpi-eeprom-update
BOOTLOADER: up to date
CURRENT: Tue Jul 6 10:44:53 UTC 2021 (1625568293)
LATEST: Tue Jul 6 10:44:53 UTC 2021 (1625568293)
RELEASE: stable (/lib/firmware/raspberrypi/bootloader/stable)
Use raspi-config to change the release.
VL805_FW: Dedicated VL805 EEPROM
VL805: up to date
CURRENT: 000138a1
LATEST: 000138a1
Use raspi-config to set the boot-order to USB-Boot by default
Choose: 6 Advanced Options
raspi-config, go to Advanced Options
Next choose: A6: Boot Order
Choose A6 Boot Order to set boot priority
Choose B2 USB Boot
B2 USB Boot
Check in the in the terminal that bootloader order has been modified. Confirm BOOT_ORDER statement is there.
Shutdown the Raspberry PI, unplug the MicroSD Card and plug-in the power again to boot from USB SSD.
If it can’t find the bootloader the raspberry pi will default to PXE boot. In case the raspberry pi is unable to boot from the USB SSD try another USB – Port (e.g. USB 2 instead of 3 etc.)
A list of compatible / tested SSDs can be found here.
It has been quite a while since my last post here due to a number of reasons which I don’t want to go into detail (we all have a personal life as well).
Nevertheless I have a few articles which I have been eager to write about for some time. Most of them are still in “Draft” state and not yet ready. As soon as they are ready they will be published.
Next to my daily driver I also have an Xiaomi Redmi 7 running MIUI 11. The preloaded Xiaomi Applications such as the File Manager contain built-in Ads. It is known that Xiaomi has low-margins to hit certain price points while keeping the components relatively high.
Fortunately, there is a fairly easy work-around to disable the ads by revoking the system permissions that allows the MIUI System Ads daemon (msa) to collect data and push ads to you.
The ads first started appearing with MIUI 9 and with version 10 and now 11 available for the newest handsets the place in the settings menu has shifted multiple times. The following steps apply for MIUI 11 as of December 2019.
Go to Settings –> Password and Security
Select Authorization & revocation and toggle the switch of mda to revoke the authorization. A count-down will appear warning you that this operation might break the application which in this case is actually what we want in order to disable the ads.
The toggle should be disabled after the revocation. Enjoy the ad-free experience.
