Saturday, April 18, 2026

Using chroot to recover a broken Linux system from a USB liveboot

If you want to install or operate a Linux system that won't boot properly you can start the system from a USB and then change root access from the USB system over to the broken system.  It's a bit fiddly, but here's a convenient and quick method all in one line of bash:

sudo mount /dev/mapper/vgmint-root /mnt && for i in /dev /dev/pts /proc /sys /run; do sudo mount -B $i /mnt$i; done && sudo chroot /mnt

This mounts the root drive on the main system, then mounts the main system's various main system directories  (dev, dev/pts, proc, sys, run) and then changes root to the main system's mnt directory.

 

At that point, your command line is talking to the main computer.  Commands are executed on the main machine, not the USB.

 

Presuppositions: Linux Mint with an encrypted SSD drive mounted at /dev/nvme0n1 

 

Note:

nvme<number>n<namespace>  

NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) is a high-performance storage access protocol for solid-state drives (SSDs) that uses the PCIe bus, rather than slower SATA interfaces, to achieve superior speeds, low latency, and high parallelism (up to

queues). It connects directly to the CPU to dramatically improve throughput.


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Friday, March 28, 2025

Online issues of Indological journals

I repeatedly find my self searching for back issues of journals, and between searches I forget what I learned the first time.  Here are some notes to myself, to remind myself what can be found online.  I'm writing this in 2025, so moving walls will have moved in future years.
  • Indo-Iranian Journal
  • Indologica Taurinensia
  • Journal asiatique (with gaps):
  • Journal of the Ganganath Jha Research Institute (now Ganganath Jha Campus)
  • Journal of Indian and Buddhist Studies (Indogaku Bukkyogaku Kenkyu)

  • JIABS: Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 

  • Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal
  • Journal of the Royal Asiatic of Bengal
  • Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bombay
  • Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society
    • 1824-1834 JSTOR (Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland)
    • 1834-1990 JSTOR (The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland
    • 1991-2013 JSTOR (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society)
  • Journal of the Pali Text Society
  • Orientalia Suecana
  • Philosophy East and West 1951-2014
  • The Pandit many issues identified and linked at Shreevatsa's blog.
  • Transactions of the Philological Society  
    • many issues from 1854-1946 identified and linked by U. Penn.
  • Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Süd- und Ostasiens
    • 1991-20?? JSTOR , five-year moving wall.
  • Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft
    • 1847-present (I believe) JSTOR; MLU (1847-five years before the present, moving wall).
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Monday, February 24, 2025

Some OA journals that publish South Asia research

Name and URL online print Fee?* Copyright Licence DOAJ
------- ----- ------ -------- ---------- ----------- ------
Pacific World Journal of the
Institute of Buddhist Studies 		Y N N author ? no
Manuscript and Text Cultures Y Y N author CC-BY-SA 4.0 DOAJ
Journal of Indian and Buddhist
Studies (Indogaku
Bukkyogaku Kenkyu)		 Y Y ? ? "Free" no
Manuscript Studies: A Journal
of the Schoenberg Institute for
Manuscript Studies		 Y Y N
 author
 Diamond OA no
Bhāṣā: Journal of South Asian
Linguistics, Philology and
Grammatical Traditions		 Y N N author CC-BY no
Himalaya Y N US$50 author CC BY-NC-ND
 no
Studia Orientalia Electronica Y N N author Full OA no
वागर्थः (An International
Journal of Sanskrit Research)		 Y Y ₹5900/-
unstated but OA no
KERVAN - International
Journal of Afro-Asiatic Studies		 Y N N author CC-BY no
Social Sciences Y Y N author OA
 DOAJ
Journal of World Philosophies 
(formerly Confluence)		 Y N N journal CC BY no
Journal of Bengali Studies Y N? N author a benign muddle DOAJ
Acta Poética Y N? N journal CC BY-NC DOAJ
Linguistica Y Y? N author CC BY-SA DOAJ
Hiperboreea Y N? N journal CC BY-NC-ND DOAJ
Scripta Instituti
Donneriani Aboensis		 Y ? N journal CC BY-NC-ND DOAJ
Ancient Science of Life Y Y N journal CC BY-NC-SA DOAJ
Asian Studies Y N N author CC BY-SA DOAJ
Acta Linguistica Asiatica Y N N author CC BY-SA DOAJ
South Asia Multidisciplinary
Academic Journal		 Y N N journal CC BY-NC-ND DOAJ
Journal of Ayurveda
and Integrative Medicine		 Y Y N journal CC BY-NC-SA DOAJ
Journal of Ayurveda and
Holistic Medicine		 Y N? ₹1500
for Ind.
nationals		 journal CC BY-NC-SA
History of Science in South Asia Y Y N author CC BY-SA DOAJ
Asian Literature and Translation Y not yet N author CC
Ancient Asia Y N? N? author CC BY DOAJ
Approaching Religion Y N? N?


Relegere: Studies in Religion
and Reception		 Y N N author

Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-
en Volkenkunde		 Y N N journal CC BY-NC DOAJ
Asian Social Science Y Y $300


Studi Linguistici e Filologici Online Y N N


eJIM - eJournal of
Indian Medicine		 Y Y, cost N


Journal of History and Social Sciences Y N N?


Annals of Ayurvedic Medicine Y N N


Rivista di Studi Sudasiatici Y Y N


Himalayan Linguistics Y N N


Journal of South Asian Linguistics Y N N?


Annual of Urdu Studies Y Y, cost N


Pacific World Journal of
the Institute of
Buddhist Studies		 Y Y, free N? journal

Health, Culture and Society Y N N author CC BY DOAJ
Open Journal of Philosophy Y N $400+
$50/page
above 10 pages		 journal

International Journal
of Jaina Studies		 Y Y
 N journal Print copies
from HGK
Asian Ethnology olim
Asian Folklore Studies		 Y Y N journal

Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies Y N N?
restricted
OA policy
Transcultural Studies Y N N



And see the India-related list that used to be maintained by Scholars Without Borders (mostly science and medicine):


Saying that a journal is OA still leaves some critical questions unanswered.  Here are some questions you should ask. 


Is there a "going in" fee, or Article Processing Fee (APF or APC)?

One of the items in the list above charges $300.  Several of the big houses like Brill, Elsevier and Springer will also publish your article as OA, even in an otherwise non-OA journal, if you pay them enough.  Their APF prices are typically $3000 (Springer, Elsevier).  I am not interested in including such journals in the list above, as I consider anything above $300-500 to be profiteering.  APFs of $300-500 are typical of some even very large OA publishers like Hindawi, proving that this is a valid business model. 
Quite apart from my personal view, I do not think APF fees of $3000 meet most people's normal expectation of the meaning of an Open Access journal.  As South Asianists, we are interested in access for both readers and authors in countries where scholars are relatively poor.  A high APF mutes less wealthy authors.  As such, both Gratis OA (also called "Diamond OA") and low or zero APFs are indexes of relevance.

Copyright?

Being OA means that whoever owns the copyright has given permission for the article to be disseminated at zero cost.  But it doesn't say anything about who owns the copyright of the article.  Many OA journals allow the authors to retain copyright, which is the best policy.  There's no justifiable reason for a publisher to take away an author's copyright.

Print or online?

Is the journal online-only, or both online and in print?  Does this matter to you?

Print at cost?

The online version is free by definition, but the print issues would usually cost something.  How much?

Indexing?

Is the journal indexed by the main global indexing services? 

Peer review?

Is the journal peer-reviewed? Strongly or weakly?

 

Read more »
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Tuesday, August 20, 2024

Reformatting footnotes in Libreoffice

 LibreOffice is amazing and I love it and its model of support and free distribution.  

Mostly, functionality is superb.  But as far as I can see, you can't globally select the text of footnotes.  That's weird.

However, it can be done with the help of an extension.  

  1. Download the AltSearch extension by Tomáš Bílek.  It's old, but as of August 2024 it works fine.
  2. Install it by double-clicking the download.  LibreOffice will open a menu for you and after installation you'll have to restart LibreOffice.
  3. With your document loaded, select the new green binoculars icon to open the AltSearch menu.
  4. Select "Properties/Paragraph style/Footnotes" and double click.
  5. Select "Find All" and "yes" to the "do you really want to" popup.
  6. Now all your footnote paragraphs are highlighted.   You can close the AltSearch window and use your normal formatting commands to reformat your footnotes.

Many thanks to manj_k who wrote the post that I am totally copying here.

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Friday, August 02, 2024

TeXstudio under Ubuntu and equivs

Environment: Linux Mint and Ubuntu; separate TeXlive installation

The author of TeXstudio used to distribute deb files for each Linux distribution.  Understandably, that is laborious.  So now, only the PPA is given.  But if you add the PPA to your Linux "software sources" list and try to install TeXstudio, it had dependency links to the whole TeXlive system in the synaptic package library and tries to install all that too.  

The way round this is to create a dummy "TeXlive" installation without these dependencies using the "equivs" system.  (see here and here).

Steps:

  1. sudo apt-get install equivs
  2. Create a control file with this content:
    Section: tex
Package: texlive-dummy
Provides: tex-common, texlive-common, texlive-latex-base, texlive-metapost, texlive-xetex, texlive-base-bin, texlive-base-bin-doc, tex-common, tex-gyre, texlive-base, texlive-binaries, texlive-fonts-recommended, texlive-latex-base, texlive-latex-extra, texlive-latex-recommended, texlive-pictures
    Description: texlive dummy package
 This package provides dpkg with the information that
 there the texlive packages are already installed.
  3. Run the following:
    equivs-build texlive.ctl
    That produces the file texlive-dummy_1.0_all.deb  This is asudo dpkg -i texlive-dummy_1.0_all.deb "pretend" TeXlive (texlive-latex-base) package that contains no dependencies.
  4. Run
    sudo dpkg -i texlive-dummy_1.0_all.deb
    Now, your system believes it has installed texlive-latex-base, so dependencies on that will be satisfied.
  5. You can now install the TeXstudio PPA and install the TeXstudio program in the normal way.
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Wednesday, May 29, 2024

Making your own Saktumiva server using Ubuntu

The following are instructions for using the command-line interface to set up your own instance of Charles Li’s Saktumiva (Upama) on your own Ubuntu-type server.* You’re going to be working in /var/www a lot, so you need to use sudo for almost all commands. Unless otherwise stated, you’ll do all these commands in the /var/www directory. I’m assuming that you sit in /var/www and to download files to that location, etc., using sudo all the time. (or just becoming root for a while sudo su).

  1. Install apache2 (not nginx; it probably works, but we’re doing apache2 here). 

     sudo apt-get install apache2  

    You will then have a directory /var/www/html which is where all your later files for Dokuwiki and Upama will go. Next, create a file  

    /etc/apache2/sites-available/dokuwiki.conf  

    with the contents

    <VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerAdmin <a href="/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection" class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="b1d0d5dcd8dff1d4c9d0dcc1ddd49fd2dedc">[email protected]</a>
        DocumentRoot /var/www/html/
        ServerName your_domain_or_IP
        ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
        CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
    </VirtualHost>

    Replace "your_domain_or_IP" with the public IP number of your server. (I got the above from /etc/apache2/sites-available/dokuwiki.conf and I’m not certain it is necessary.) 

  2. Install php and extras:

    sudo apt install php php-xml php8.1-mbstring

  3. Install Dokuwiki by following the instructions at https://www.dokuwiki.org/install. Broadly, you fetch the file dokuwiki-stable.tgz by saying

    cd /var/www sudo wget https://download.dokuwiki.org/src/dokuwiki/dokuwiki-stable.tgz

    And then you’ll unpack the tgz file into /var/www/html using the commands

    cd /var/www/html sudo tar xvf /var/www/dokuwiki-stable.tgz -C /var/www/html 

    The -C arguments above tell tar to unpack the archive to the /var/www/html directory. You should then have a directory called something like /var/www/html/dokuwiki-2024-02-06a. Rename it to just ./dokuwiki:

    sudo mv  /var/www/html/dokuwiki-2024-02-06a /var/www/html/dokuwiki

  4. Now fetch the Upama plugin from Github:

    cd /var/www sudo git clone https://github.com/chchch/upama.git

  5. Install Upama. Charles explains what to do at the bottom of this page: https://github.com/chchch/upama . There’s no installation as such; all you do is copy the files to the right dokuwiki directories.

    To be more explicit, do the following:

    cd /var/www (where you now have an upama directory)

    Now copy the folders and files from the upama directory into the dokuwiki directory:

    sudo cp -r /var/www/upama/dokuwiki/* /var/www/html/dokuwiki/

    The folders that get copied are /var/www/upama/dokuwiki/data -> /var/www/html/dokuwiki/data /var/www/upama/dokuwiki/lib -> /var/www/html/dokuwiki/lib  

    One last thing:

    sudo touch /var/www/html/dokuwiki/data/pages/sidebar.txt  

    This creates the empty file /var/www/html/dokuwiki/data/pages/sidebar.txt

  6. Set some file permissions and ownership. This is a bit of a nightmare, and www.dokuwiki.org’s documentation is awful. But all your really need to do is this: sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/dokuwiki/data/ sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/dokuwiki/lib/ sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/dokuwiki/conf/ sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/

  7. Next, some necessary apache stuff I got from https://forum.dokuwiki.org/d/9893-the-datadir-pages-at-data-pages-is-not-found/4 . We’ve already done the stuff up to Step C. Now edit the file apache2.conf. I use the editor vi; pick your favourite non-graphics editor.

    sudo vi /etc/apache2/apache2.conf 

     Find the lines 

    <Directory /var/www/>
    ...
    </Directory>

    and below them add the following two new sections:

    <Directory /var/www/dokuwiki>
      order deny,allow
      allow from all
    </Directory>

    <LocationMatch "/(data|conf|bin|inc)/">
        order allow,deny
        deny from all
        satisfy all
    </LocationMatch>

    Then restart the apache server: sudo service apache2 restart Open a new browser tab and go to the page <my_IP_address>/dokuwiki/install.php This should open a page of dokuwiki settings. This page only appears the first time you invoke it; later, you get instructions on how to change things in a more low-level manner. At your dokuwiki page, log in and go to Admin/Configuration Manager. Amongst the initial “Basic” settings, find the setting for “template” and change it from “dokuwiki” to “saktumiva”. It looks like this:

     

    And go to the bottom of the screen and hit "save". 

  8. Stay with me. We’re almost done. The next thing is to add some TEI files of your edition.They are going to live in this directory:

      cd /var/www/html/dokuwiki/data/pages/wiki/  

    Create a file structure under wiki/ that makes sense to you. For example, sudo mkdir /var/www/html/dokuwiki/data/pages/wiki/sakuntala/

    (The directory name must begin with a lowercase letter.) 

    Copy your TEI files into ../sakuntala/.  

    sudo cp /home/me/Documents/saktutalateifiles/* /var/www/html/dokuwiki/data/pages/wiki/sakuntala

    Remember that the files need the extension .txt, even if they are xml files.

    You can also create a file start.txt in the ../Sakuntala/ directory that contains a nice starting page for your project. This must be written in dokuwiki syntax (cheatsheet).

  9. At this point, you should have a usable system. However, there’s a useful tweak. If you are going to upload your TEI files from your desktop to your new Saktumiva server by ftp, perhaps using Filezilla, you will want to change the ownership of files under ../Sakuntala/ so that your ftp identity can write files to that directory. sudo chown -R <me>:<me> /var/www/html/dokuwiki/data/pages/wiki/Sakuntala/

    where “<me>” is your Filezilla ftp login username. (You can set up users in Dokuwiki under Admin/User Manager).

  10. Other tweaks.
    • If your collation-generation times out, try upping the max execution in /etc/php8.1/apache/php.ini.
    • If your installation can't find symlinked files under directories, try adding the option +FollowSymLinks to  /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf:

      DocumentRoot /var/www/html
              <Directory />
              Options +FollowSymLinks
              AllowOverride None
              </Directory>
    • As a variant of point 9. above, you may prefer to use Saktumiva on your own laptop or desktop, rather than from a remote server.  If you want to link files from somewhere else on your disk into the Dokuwiki data/pages/wiki directory, you need to use hard links, not soft, symbolic links.  In Unix, ln <target> <name> not ln -s <target> <name>.   And if you want to be able to edit them through the Dokuwiki interface, say
      cd /var/www/html/dokuwiki/data/pages/wiki/Sakuntala/
      sudo chown -R <me>:www-data Sakuntala
      so that you are the "owner" but the "group" is still Apache.

-----------------------------------

*This installation guide by Christas Pontikis is very helpful: 

Dominik Wujastyk

June, August 2024
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