The Ubuntu Touch Developer Preview landed today and I was really excited to see it available for my Nexus 7. Following the really simply install instructions, I was ready to go in less than 30 minutes (and most of that time was just waiting for the OS images to download).

Quick note: Please read the known issues with the Nexus 7 build before asking questions in #ubuntu-phone, as they cover some problems you might notice right away.

After restarting the Raspberry Pi and the attached paraphernalia every once in a while, the USB HDD that forms the backbone of my NAS needs to be re-mounted each time. The sensible thing to do here would obviously be to manage the re-mounting in a bootup script, but until I get around to doing that I mount the HDD manually.

Since this HDD is used in an NFS share over the network, I also need to export the mount points again and restart the rpcbind and nfs-kernel-server services. I noticed that every time I did this, the latter service would start up alright, but throw out some odd-looking warnings.

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pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo service nfs-kernel-server restart
[ ok ] Stopping NFS kernel daemon: mountd nfsd.
[ ok ] Unexporting directories for NFS kernel daemon....
[ ok ] Exporting directories for NFS kernel daemon....
[....] Starting NFS kernel daemon: nfsdrpc.nfsd: address family inet6 not supported by protocol UDP
 mountdrpc.mountd: svc_tli_create: could not bind to requested address
rpc.mountd: svc_tli_create: could not bind to requested address
rpc.mountd: svc_tli_create: could not bind to requested address
. ok 
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ 

The solution to this is quite simple - turns out all you need to do is to edit the file /etc/netconfig, which should look something like this:

Just comment out the lines that begin with udp6 and tcp by prefixing each line with a ‘#’, and save the file. (Note that you need to be root or use sudo to do this.)

Now when you restart nfs-kernel-server, the IPv6-related warnings will be gone!

One of the best gifts I’ve ever received to date is the End Of The World Survival Kit from my 2012 Reddit Secret Santa. (As an aside, I was so moved by this, that I felt ashamed of taking the easy route of giving my giftee just a T-shirt, and made amends by signing up for re-matching and sending another gift to someone else.)

The best part of the kit was the Raspberry Pi Model B. Recently unemployed and looking for things to do, it was the perfect way to get started on some reasonably techie hobbyism (that’s a word now). The only hitch was that I had the board, but no peripherals at all.

Or so I thought.