Deyan's Blog

Easy Config Reloads

2026-04-16T23:20:00+03:00

Since I’m experimenting quite often with my tmux.conf I want to reload the config easily. This is why I have a command to reload my config on r:

# reload config file (change file location to your the tmux.conf you want to use)
bind r source-file ~/.tmux.conf

Intuitive Split Commands

2026-04-16T22:55:00+03:00

Another thing I personally find quite difficult to remember is the pane splitting commands." to split vertically and % to split horizontally just doesn’t work for my brain. I find it helpful to have use characters that resemble a visual representation of the split, so I chose | and - for splitting panes horizontally and vertically:

# split panes using | and -
bind | split-window -h
bind - split-window -v
unbind '"'
unbind %

Upgrade Raspbian Jessie to Stretch

2019-06-06T22:50:00+03:00

How to upgrade Raspbian Jessie to Stretch in a few simple steps.

The upgrade from Jessie to Stretch is an easy and simple task, but is not guaranteed to work in every circumstance. The upgrade process takes some time and therefore requires some patience especially on older Raspberry Pi models. The owners of Raspberry Pi B 1 (like me) may consider rebuilding their system from scratch instead of goint through the time consuming upgrade process.

Important

MariaDB replaces MySQL

Note: that the database binary data file formats are not backwards compatible, so once you have upgraded to MariaDB 10.1 you will not be able to switch back to any previous version of MariaDB or MySQL unless you have a proper database dump. Therefore, before upgrading, please make backups of all important databases with an appropriate tool such as mysqldump.` debian.org

Recommendations

Backup data and configurations
Remove unnecessary or obsolete packages

Check available disk space

Check the available and used disk space on the SD card.

df -h

Fully upgrade the current systen

Update your system's package list:

sudo apt-get update

After that upgrade all your installed packages to their latest version:

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Upgrade any held back packages:

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

System check

Check that all packages are in a state that is suitable for upgrade. Perform database sanity and consistency checks for partially installed, missing and obsolete packages.

sudo dpkg -C

Check for held back packages:

sudo apt-mark showhold

Fix all issues before moving to the next step.

Upgrading from Jessie to Stretch

Modify the files /etc/apt/sources.list and /etc/apt/sources.list.d/raspi.list. In both files, change every occurrence of the word jessie with stretch. Use the following commands to performe the task:

sudo sed -i 's/jessie/stretch/g' /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo sed -i 's/jessie/stretch/g' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/raspi.list

Update local pakage index:

sudo apt-get update

Upgrade the system:

sudo apt-get upgrade -y
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y

Cleaning

Remove unused packages:

sudo apt-get autoremove -y

sudo apt-get autoclean

Reboot the system as finall step.

Notes

Downloaded package files (.deb files) are kept in /var/cache/apt/archives, you can remove these in order to free up space with sudo apt-get clean.

The End

Changing preferences in Pantheon Files (Elementary OS)

2019-04-20T21:11:00+03:00

This note is about how to enable or disable the single-click feature in Elementary OS file manager "Files".

single-click description: Wheather items are activated by single clicks instead of dubble clicks.

There are a few ways to accoplishe the task. Here are two of them.

Method 1

Method one is using GSettings.

To enable single-click use the following command.

gsettings set io.elementary.files.preferences single-click true

and to disable it:

gsettings set io.elementary.files.preferences single-click false

Method 2

Other way to do it is by using dconf Editor.

Note: if dconf Editor is not installed, use the following command to install it.

sudo apt install dconf-editor

Open dconf Editor and navigate to preferences io->elementary->files->preferences, here are all the preferences for "Files" file manager. Now you can turn on and off single-click feature.

Note: Be carefull with changing other settings. Might brake the app

Install Python 3.7 on Raspberry Pi (Raspbian)

2019-03-30T21:30:00+02:00

Currently the newest version that Raspbian incudes is 3.4 That means building from source.

Installing the dependencies needed to build

Some of the packages might be already installed on the system.

List of dependencies:

build-essential
tk-dev
libncurses5-dev
libncursesw5-dev
libreadline6-dev
libdb5.3-dev
libgdbm-dev
libsqlite3-dev
libssl-dev
libbz2-dev
libexpat1-dev
liblzma-dev
zlib1g-dev
libffi-dev

sudo apt-get update -y
sudo apt-get install build-essential tk-dev libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev libreadline6-dev libdb5.3-dev libgdbm-dev libsqlite3-dev libssl-dev libbz2-dev libexpat1-dev liblzma-dev zlib1g-dev libffi-dev -y

Note: If one of the packages cannot be found, try newer version like libdb5.4-dev instead of libdb5.3-dev

Download source

When downloading the source code, select the most recent release available on the official site. You will have to adjust the file names accordingly.

Python-3.7.3

wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.7.3/Python-3.7.3.tgz
tar xf Python-3.7.3.tar.xz; cd Python-3.7.3

Compile and install

Compiling takes some time especialy on older raspberry pi models, be patient :)

./configure
make
sudo make altinstall

Cleaning

Delete source

cd ..
sudo rm -r Python-3.7.3
rm Python-3.7.3.tar.xz

Optional. Uninstall the previously installed packages. When uninstalling the packages, make sure to only remove these that were not previously installed on your system.

sudo apt-get --purge remove build-essential tk-dev -y
sudo apt-get --purge remove libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev libreadline6-dev -y
sudo apt-get --purge remove libdb5.3-dev libgdbm-dev libsqlite3-dev libssl-dev -y
sudo apt-get --purge remove libbz2-dev libexpat1-dev liblzma-dev zlib1g-dev libffi-dev -y
sudo apt-get autoremove -y
sudo apt-get clean