Mailman 3 July 2023 - Bit-dev

Remove English variants from translations
by c.buhtz＠posteo.jp 26 Aug '23

26 Aug '23

Hello, I hope some native speakers are around. BIT does offer translation for "Canada" and "United Kingdom" English. I'm not a pro here but would assume with our GUI in mind that there is no difference between "English" (US) and that two variants. When I look into the translation files (temporary link: [1]) there really is no difference. But their translation is not 100% complete; UK is at 64% and Canada at 25%. I would like to remove them because there is no need for a translation from "English" into one of that two variants. What do you think? Kind Christian [1] -- <https://translate.codeberg.org/projects/backintime/common/>

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DistroSea: Virtual machines in a browser
by c.buhtz＠posteo.jp 26 Jul '23

26 Jul '23

Hi Folks, did I mentioned this before? https://distrosea.com/ https://linuxnews.de/distrosea-linux-online-ausprobieren/ This is a service where you can start several different GNU Linux distros inside the browser. Haven't worked with it much. But might be a tool for us doing tests with BIT. Kind Christian

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User opinions about rearrange menu bar and its entries
by c.buhtz＠posteo.jp 25 Jul '23

25 Jul '23

Hello, we think about rearrange the menu bar in BIT's main window. Would be great if we could get some user opinions about it. You can add your comments to the related issue at Microsoft GitHub: <https://github.com/bit-team/backintime/issues/1482> or just answer here on the mailing list. Thanks in advance Christian

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Where to place "Setup language" feature / Rearrange menu bar
by c.buhtz＠posteo.jp 23 Jul '23

23 Jul '23

Hello, I'm very interested in the opinions of our users of Back In Time. So please feel free to comment this. I opened an Issue with better illustrations: https://github.com/bit-team/backintime/issues/1482 I wasn't able to find a good place for a "Setup language" feature to give the user the opportunity to modify the UI language. First I had the idea to add a new "Language" entry in the menu bar. But this menu will have 46 entries (44 translations, 1 english-source, 1 "system default") which is to much for a monitor. Multi column menus are to hacky. Because of that I would like to create a simple modal dialog and place all language options there. Not sure if I would use a list control or radio buttons or something else. A drop down menu in main window might be an option. But I don't like this idea. Because users will setup the language just one time. But this control will stay on the main window (toolbar) for ever. And in a dropdown menu people are not aware of the "great fact" that BIT do over 44 translations. ;) We also don't have an application specific settings dialog. All settings are related to a snapshot profile. In the end I would like to have an application specific submenu in the menu bar and place a "Setup language" entry in there opening the dialog. The linked Issue is about that rearrangement of the menubar. Kind Christian

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How do your syslog/journalctl entries look like?
by c.buhtz＠posteo.jp 23 Jul '23

23 Jul '23

Hello, can someone show me an example of a syslog and/or journalctl entries related to Back In Time please? I want to be sure that I'm not the problem here before opening an Issue. ;) Thanks Christian

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Reliable way to determine working Qt5 without risking a SIGABRT (causing a Python core dump)?
by BiT dev 15 Jul '23

15 Jul '23

I summarize my investigation results here to make it visible and hope, someone can find a solution for this later (beyond the proposed work-around)... Problem description: ------------------- BiT uses the "QApplication" Qt5 class for its GUI. In the context of the new feature "Diagnostics about Qt5 theme" https://github.com/bit-team/backintime/pull/1469/files#r1254526865 and my upcoming PR to fix all systemtray icon issues @buhtz and me could not find a reliable way to determine if a "QApplication" can be instantiated without causing a Python crash (SIGABRT with core dump) in some cases where Qt5 is unable to initalize itself (e.g. on a headless console-only system or if a non-supported Qt5-plugin is configured). Note: A core dump is snapshot of certain memory regions of the process at the time it crashed. It can be analyzed postmortem using debuggers like GDB. Symptoms: -------- Qt5 aborts Python with this output: > python3 qapp_test.py qt.qpa.xcb: could not connect to display qt.qpa.plugin: Could not load the Qt platform plugin "xcb" in "" even though it was found. This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initialized. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem. Available platform plugins are: eglfs, linuxfb, minimal, minimalegl, offscreen, vnc, xcb. Aborted (core dumped) Minimal reproducible code example: --------------------------------- # File: qapp_test.py # try: from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QApplication, QSystemTrayIcon app = QApplication(['']) if QSystemTrayIcon.isSystemTrayAvailable(): print("systrayicon works") except: print(f"Exception {repr(e)}") Reason: ------- Qt5 uses the Macro "qFatal()" if a QApplication class instance cannot be created: https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtglobal.html#qFatal which sends a SIGABRT ("abort") signal on Linux: https://codebrowser.dev/qt5/qtbase/src/corelib/global/qlogging.h.html#168 https://www.qtcentre.org/threads/59684-qFatal-is-killing-my-application-wit… TODO Find the exact Qt5 code for this. I could see the SIGABRT in the core dump... This SIGABRT signal is sent from the Python app process to the parent (Python3 Interpreter) and cannot (!) be handled in Python (e.g. via "signal.signal(signal.SIGABRT, signal.SIG_IGN") because Qt5 seems to exit the process immediately. https://docs.python.org/3/library/signal.html > A Python signal handler does not get executed inside the low-level (C) signal handler. > Instead, the low-level signal handler sets a flag which tells the virtual machine > to execute the corresponding Python signal handler at a later point Possible work-around: -------------------- Proposed by @buhtz: Spawn a sub process with above example code and check for the SIGABRT signal (or perhaps an expected return code or output). Impact: - Lower Performance (GUI startup time, diagnostics creation, systray icon creation) - The behaviour of Qt5 may not be the same as in the parent process (e.g. some missing explicit settings) -> to be investigated later

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Approach to attract translators
by c.buhtz＠posteo.jp 13 Jul '23

13 Jul '23

Hello together, I would like to discuss ways how to approach translators for Back In Time. I opened an Issue about this: https://github.com/bit-team/backintime/issues/1473 Since we migrated to our new platform (https://translate.codeberg.org/engage/backintime) and me asking around on reddit and somewhere else we stepped from 48% to nearly 58% completeness. Kind Christian

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Back In Time in a Docker Container (as possible solution for proprietary NAS devices from Synology, Western Digital & Co)
by c.buhtz＠posteo.jp 07 Jul '23

07 Jul '23

Hello folks, I want to add this piece of information somewhere public so someone can find it via web search. I'm not enough into it's details to add this to our FAQ or somewhere into the manual. There exists a Docker Container using Back In Time [1]. It's Dockerfile do use a forked rep [2]. Just out of interest I contacted the creator and asked him about the use case. He explained that it was easer for him to setup BIT on a Synology NAS this way. So I remembered that we do have Issues with proprietary devices like this mentioned in our FAQ [3]. Maybe this can help someone. If anyone does try it out and can tell something about it please report back. Kind Christian [1] -- <https://hub.docker.com/r/intelliops/backintime> [2] -- <https://github.com/belsander/backintime> [3] -- <https://github.com/bit-team/backintime/blob/dev/FAQ.md#hardware-specific-se…>

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Version 0.9 at YouTube
by c.buhtz＠posteo.jp 06 Jul '23

06 Jul '23

Hello folks, acidentially I found a quite old YouTube video. Looks like a VHS-ripped TV show (named "Category5.tv") or something like this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrsBgfz9xDk They do show version 0.9 of Back In Time. Kind Christian

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How is qt/qtsystrayicon.py invoked?
by c.buhtz＠posteo.jp 06 Jul '23

06 Jul '23

Hello folks, maybe someone can clear me up here. I need some help with an investigation. We have the file "qt/qtsystrayicon.py" in the repo containing "class QtSysTrayIcon" and also a "if __name__ == '__main__':" section. I tried to find out how this class is used but couldn't find something about it. I was using grep and also checked the Makefiles. But I also can say that on my productive system BIT does have an icon in the systray while a backup job is running. But I don't know how it gets there. Thanks for helping out. Kind Christian

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