Do many desktop environments slow down the system?

My compliments for the desire to try out alternatives, and not stick to 'out of the box' -- that's the FOSS attitude!

Unless you have concurrent users running different desktops at the same time, the other desktop environments will not slow down the system. They are mainly sitting statically on the disk.

In fact, you are likely to find out that some lightweight desktop environments will provide a snappier user experience overall, notably on lower end machines. If you particularly like one, you could even consider replacing the ubuntu-desktop package by the desktop environment of your choice.

If you want blazingly fast (and completely austere), try running only X with a window manager. Ah, the good old days ...


I found the fix for my problem. I'm posting it here in case of other people encounter the same issue.

I updated the BIOS of my laptop to the latest version and the problem was gone.


Assuming you are rather new to Linux world, I would recommend reinstalling the system to get the most out of your SSD and HDD.

Bear in mind,  that ''/ '' is the place where the system files and directories are located. Applications are installed inside this directory.

'' / home'' is the place where your personal data (documents, images, video, configuration files, etc.) are.

While installing Ubuntu,

mount ''/'' directory on your SSD and
''/home'' on HDD. Thus programs will run faster and you will have more space for keeping data.
(  I think your HDD is bigger than SSD, right? )

See here for more info:
 Manual disk partitioning guide

You can resize partitions and move them without reinstalling the system, also. You should use Gparted software for this purpose.

See here: HTG Site: Resize partitions


echo command echo the blank output instead of Variable value in Ubuntu 18.04

First, basename is located in /usr/bin/basename NOT where you have it coded in your scripting.
Thus, because the basenamecommand has failed (and you have not checked this in your code), the value of the varialble $BASENAME is most likely NULL.

What I usually do in any scripting is place an explicit PATH at the start of the script.  Something like:

 PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/bin
 export PATH

It is not immediately clear what the purpose of the sed command is.

Also try using the command bash -uvx scriptname to examine the expansion and setting of the variables before the command and when the command gets executed.


Perl script error : 'script executable not found'

Your perl script is trying to execute pdb_trans and it is using  "sh"
Likely you've already worked around this issue, but see this answer on U&L.
It appears that the executable, which you reported in comments above as being present can't find the dynamic libraries it needs to load


Where can I find ubuntu 16.04 LTS 64 bit compatible drivers for my Lenovo IP 310 6th gen Core i3 machine?

Everything's likely to just work after a Ubuntu 16 install.

Software updater supports many hardware, and you can find some extra propietary ones under "Additional drivers" (an app that comes with Ubuntu).

Your manufacturer might also have some Linux drivers in their official page. You can also query your hardware manufacturers one by one to see if they have got any specific proprietary (or not) drivers published on their pages.


Cannot install Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Dual Boot with Windows 8.1)

Since you don't have any data on your drive, try to start from scratch, meaning with no partitions at all.

Install Windows at first (it will install a EFI Partition as well)
Boot into the Ubuntu installation (via Stick or DVD)
Choose custom installation
Shrink the windows partition to the wished size
Define your Ubuntu partitions
Install

That should be it. You should be able to boot into both systems from the EFI menu during startup.


X fails to start with five displays multi-desktop fglrx

I contacted AMD support, and I'm happy to report the "Not enough video memory to allocate primary surface (frame buffer)" issue is fixed as of Catalyst 12.11.


The themes are now in binary files gresource, you would need to either unpack the gresource file, make your change and put it back together.
mkdir ~/shell-theme and create extractgst.sh inside this directory and paste the following to that file.

#! /bin/sh

workdir="${HOME}/shell-theme"
gst="/usr/share/gnome-shell/gnome-shell-theme.gresource"
mkdir theme

for r in `gresource list $gst`; do
  gresource extract $gst $r >$workdir${r/#\/org\/gnome\/shell/}
done

Execute above script you will get all source file from gnome-shell-theme.gresource.
Use your editor and edit gnome-shell.css file.
And fix values as the following(You can choose other values).
.icon-grid {
    spacing: 18px;                       /* was 36px */
    -shell-grid-item-size: 35px;         /* was 70px */
}

.all-app .icon-grid {
    -shell-grid-item-size: 59px;         /* was 118px */
}

.all-app .overview-icon {
    icon-size: 48px;                     /* was 96px */
}

Now you have to build new gnome-shell-theme.gresource
Download gnome-shell-theme.gresource.xml from github and put it into your ~/shell-theme/theme directory
cd ./theme
glib-compile-resources gnome-shell-theme.gresource.xml

Then copy the resulting gnome-shell-theme.gresource file to the /usr/share/gnome-shell directory.
Detail: HERE and here and bbs.archlinux.org


Just download the .iso of Ubuntu version you want and create a bootable USB.
After that you go to your BIOS and select the option to boot from the USB device, then Ubuntu will load. Thereafter simply follow the tutorials you'll ever see, selecting the option to install or test without installing because you might want to see how the system and everything, and then leave for the installation process.


How to choose the default gcc and g++ version?

First erase the current update-alternatives setup for gcc and g++:

sudo update-alternatives --remove-all gcc
sudo update-alternatives --remove-all g++

Install Packages

It seems that both gcc-4.3 and gcc-4.4 are installed after install build-essential. However, we can explicitly install the following packages:

sudo apt-get install gcc-4.3 gcc-4.4 g++-4.3 g++-4.4

Install Alternatives

Symbolic links cc and c++ are installed by default. We will install symbol links for gcc and g++, then link cc and c++ to gcc and g++ respectively.  (Note that the 10, 20 and 30 options are the priorities for each alternative, where a bigger number is a higher priority.)

sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-4.3 10
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-4.4 20

sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-4.3 10
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-4.4 20

sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/cc cc /usr/bin/gcc 30
sudo update-alternatives --set cc /usr/bin/gcc

sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/c++ c++ /usr/bin/g++ 30
sudo update-alternatives --set c++ /usr/bin/g++

Configure Alternatives

The last step is configuring the default commands for gcc, g++. It's easy to switch between 4.3 and 4.4 interactively:

sudo update-alternatives --config gcc
sudo update-alternatives --config g++

Or switch using script:

#!/bin/sh

if [ -z "$1" ]; then
    echo "usage: $0 version" 1>&2
    exit 1
fi

if [ ! -f "/usr/bin/gcc-$1" ] || [ ! -f "/usr/bin/g++-$1" ]; then
    echo "no such version gcc/g++ installed" 1>&2
    exit 1
fi

update-alternatives --set gcc "/usr/bin/gcc-$1"
update-alternatives --set g++ "/usr/bin/g++-$1"


When you run su - build -c foo.sh, you are starting a login shell, which then launches foo.sh. The script foo.sh, however, is running in its own subshell (that's how scripts work) and the type of that shell depends on the shebang line of the script. So, su - -c foo.sh is not making foo.sh run in a login shell, it is just running a login shell which then launches foo.sh.

So, edit /home/build/buildAgent/bin/agent.sh and change this:

#!/bin/sh

to this:

#!/bin/sh -l

That will make it run in a login shell and should cause it to read the /etc/profile, and ~/.profile files and bring in your function. Please note that ~/.bash_profile is not relevant here. This is a file that is only read by bash, and not sh which, on Ubuntu, is actually dash.


Issues with Firefox permissions on Ubuntu 18.04

The suggestion made by ajgringo619 in its comment did fix all the issues with permissions (I can now access /usr/bin and run webgl pages). The idea is to install firefox by means of sudo apt install firefox instead of with Ubuntu's Software Center. It's a viable work around, although it would be nice to be able to manage all applications from the same point (i.e. the Software Center).

Another interesting point is that Chromium was installed from the Software Center and runs smoothly, Firefox does not. There must be a proper way to configure permissions for Firefox when installed as a Snap program.

In any case, thanks for your suggestion ajgringo619.


startx and system-wide default gnome session

The thing that gets run is x-session-manager, and this is managed through the alternatives system.

sudo update-alternatives --set x-session-manager /usr/bin/gnome-session-fallback


“serious errors while checking the disk drives for /boot” error while booting

Instaling from inside windows is a secure and user-friendly way of installing ubuntu but it's better to install from a usb/disk. you'll get more performance and resize partition more than wubi can support(30gb).
It's independent from windows and you will not lose boot into windows.
Only drawback is replacing windows boot with grub but that's not big deal.
I encountered same problem in my laptop found solution in post you've  linked your question with but never worked on my pc. don't know why. anyway I installed it via usb and it works superb.
If you want to experience ubuntu in its max performance I recommend installing from USB/CD


You can make find itself print found:

find . -name xac -printf "found\n" -quit

The -quit will make find quit after the first match, so found is only printed at most once.

On a similar thread on Unix & Linux (make find fail when nothing was found), I used grep -qz to return a non-zero exit status if find found nothing:

find /some/path -print0 -quit | grep -qz .

Which you can use to construct compound commands using && or if:

find /some/path -print0 -quit | grep -qz . && echo found


ALX on AR8191 does not appear to be working 15.04

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=70761  this gives the work around

In the networking indicator select Edit Connections
On wired connection 1 change the MTU to 8192
Save this

Reboot working wired connection


Should you not add the proxy URL after d-i     mirror/http/proxy       string, that is if the proxy is need to access the internal mirror

FYI the exact config I use is as follows, the installation clients have no internet access but can reach the mirror:

d-i mirror/country string manual
d-i mirror/http/hostname string mymirror.org
d-i mirror/http/directory string /rep
d-i mirror/http/proxy string
d-i mirror/http/mirror select mymirror.org

Change mymirror.org and /rep for your site...


You can try running:

sudo tlmgr backup --clean --all


Attempting headless boot - GRUB keeps coming up and preventing startup

The variable you have to set in /etc/default/grub is not GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET, but GRUB_TIMEOUT and GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT so use these:

GRUB_TIMEOUT=0
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0


Wrong cursor directions and brackets in right to left languages

Arabic letters are written from right to left so that the brackets,fullstops are displayed in the wrong direction.


Of course you can. You can install any desktop you want. Maybe, if you install antoher desktop you could have some issues in design for example, maybe the desktop is not exactly like photos. If you want a full integration of Gnome with Ubuntu, try Ubuntu Gnome.

How install Gnome:

sudo apt install ubuntu-gnome-desktop

If you want to try gdm, choose gdm instead of lightdm as the display manager when prompted.

Reboot.

Note:  if it turns out that gdm isn't your cup of tea you can go back to lightdm by issuing the command sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm and you will once again get to choose.


You installed mismatching versions of the same library in different architectures (amd64, i386). This isn't allowed.

To fix this, either run sudo apt-get install -f libvpx1:i386=1.3.0-2 or sudo apt-get install -f libvpx1=1.2.0-2. The former command will bump up libvpx1:i386 to the version in Sid, and the latter command will bump down libvpx1:amd64 to the i386 version (Wheezy? Jessie?).


How do I keep webapps from appearing in launcher?

To put it bluntly, no. I agree that webapp integration is a great idea, however most of the webapp integration is built around the icon showing up in the launcher. The idea (as far as I can tell) is that when you right click the webapp launcher icon, common tasks appear, and when you close the webapp, it is easy to open it again right away.

If you were simply looking for something to launch the webapp, my suggestion would be to create .desktop files instead of using Unity's integration.

THIS IS FOR MODERATELY ADVANCED USERS. if you are new to Linux, a google search on .desktop files would be a good idea before getting started.

For instance, if you wanted to launch Google Calendar from Firefox and the Dash, but did not want it to show up in the launcher, you might create a file that looks like this:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Google Drive
Exec=firefox http://drive.google.com/
Icon=google
Type=Application
Comment=A quick launcher for Google Drive
OnlyShowIn=unity;

This would simply show up as Firefox in the launcher, however in the Dash it would show up as Google Drive. If you are using Ubuntu 12.10 or later, right clicking on this icon would give you the icon, name, and whatever you type as a comment.

Just save the file, then open the preferences dialog after right clicking on it in the file manager. You should see a tab that says "permissions," and a checkbox that says "Allow executing file as program." Check this box, then run sudo nautilus in a terminal. In the new file browser window, navigate to /usr/share/applications. Drag your newly created file from your file manager into the one we created in the terminal. Close the file managers, and log out and back in. You should see the launcher you made in the dash when you search for its name.


How do I modify or disable the HUD's use of the Alt key?

Open the System Settings application either by going to Session Indicator in Unity panel, or by searching for System Settings using the HUD.

Then go to Keyboard > Shortcuts > Launchers.  You can redefine the HUD key with the Key to show the HUD option. Pressing Backspace will disable the HUD shortcut altogether.

If you set it to Alt manually, the setting distinguishes between the left and right Alt key.  So if you want to maintain general behaviour and still use Alt combinations, this may be an alternate solution for you.


If you want to add things to the panel in gnome-classic environment you have to press Alt+Super=Windows key + right click on the panel.


You will have add the PPA ppa:gstreamer-developers/ppa

To do that

Open Update Manager.
Click on Settings.
Go to 'Other Software' Tab.
Click 'Add'
Paste ppa:gstreamer-developers/ppa and click add source.
Click close , Reload when asked.
Install Updates.

Now you can view webm in the default media player(totem) .

Additionally if you want to make it automatically open in totem,right click and select open with other application and select Movie Player and tick 'Remember this application for webm documents'

Source

Same via the command line:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gstreamer-developers/ppa
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
# fixing a weird gstreamer installation error
sudo apt-get -f install

# now "totem <your .webm file>" will do the right thing )

Source


Using NetworkManager (nmcli) to create an hotspot broadcasting an hidden SSID

On recent versions of NetworkManager set wifi.hidden property.

Note that hidden networks don't increase security, but rather require the clients to actively scan for the network (by setting wifi.hidden on their side). That makes the client machine trackable by having rather unique scan requests, not only when you are in rangez but all the time (because NM Scans for the network wherever you are). See man nm-settings about that.


I had a same problem but got a fix. Here are some solutions that might work.

spotify --disable-gpu --disable-software-rasterizer
spotify --no-zygote
sudo spotify
Or a reboot

while true; do spotify && exit; done eventually loads but most probably you will get black screen and if this happens then second one will work for you.


Mute Telegram (maybe other apps as well) notifications programmatically

The thing is already introduced in Ubuntu MATE since 19.10 it is called "Do not disturb":

Ubuntu MATE 19.10 includes a new Indicator that provides a “notification center”  We worked with the upstream developer to add new features to indicator-notifications and integrate it with MATE Notifications Daemon.

(source: ubuntu-mate.org)

We now have a notification center which also offers a “do not disturb”  feature. When do not disturb is enabled, notifications will not be displayed but will be captured in the notification center for review. It’s also possible to blacklist some notifications, so they are never stored by the notification center. I’ve created an icon theme for the notification center so it fits the look and feel of the default Ubuntu MATE theme. Notification hints are also fixed so any notifications supplying additional media, such as sounds or icons, now work.

You have to try porting of this idea to the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. Links to check:

https://packages.ubuntu.com/eoan/indicator-notifications
https://launchpad.net/recent-notifications
https://launchpad.net/~jconti/+archive/ubuntu/recent-notifications?field.series_filter=bionic (looks like the PPA for the 18.04 LTS)


How can I "clean house" so that dpkg -l no longer lists packages I've removed?

Run

sudo dpkg --purge <package>

or

sudo apt-get purge <package>

to uninstall <package> AND its configuration files.


The following simpler expression might be enough:

rename -n 's/Season (\d{2}) Episode 0*(\d{2}).+mp4/Season $1 Episode $2.mp4/'

Use a leading 0* with the second group to catch extra 0s before the two digit episode number.
The last group isn't needed.
You don't need to escape spaces.


Not sure if the issue you describe is caused by those entries, but here is how to revert them:

Open a terminal and type the following command:

pkexec env DISPLAY=$DISPLAY XAUTHORITY=$XAUTHORITY gedit /etc/fstab

(best copy the command and paste it into the command line by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+V). You will be asked for your password.

This will open the file /etc/fstab in a text editor.

Be very careful in the editor, you are running it as root

At the end of the file you will find the following lines

#cdrom 0
/dev/sr0 /media/cdrom/ auto ro,noauto,user,exec 0 0

#cdrom 1
/dev/sr0 /media/cdrom/ auto ro,noauto,user,exec 0 0

insert a # at the beginning of the two lines starting with /dev/sr0, the save the file.

Explanation of the command line

pkexec invokes the commadnd gedit /etc/fstab with root permissions (like sudo would do, but for a GUI-program)
env DISPLAY=$DISPLAY XAUTHORITY=$XAUTHORITY send the current values for DISPLAY (usually :0) and XAUTHORITY into the respective Environment variables for pkexec, thus preventing a permission problem because the display to use does not belong to root

(see How to configure pkexec?)

You should not use sudo to invoke a GUI-program, that might cause the inability to log into your Desktop.


Can I use a USB flash drive as my main OS on the Mac?

Live

You can use a live USB as your main OS, as long as you have enough RAM (+4GB seems very usable, even 2GB should work). Some unique features are:

All new files & changes are in RAM, but are lost with a reboot.
New software sources/PPAs can be tried & packages installed (provided you have the RAM), but are lost with a reboot.
Any accidental errors like this are also lost with a reboot:

uninstalling your desktop or libc
breaking packages
erasing / recursively [excluding changes to the USB itself - mounting it read-only helps]
giving root access to "some helpful pal online" who breaks everything or installs questionable programs.
visiting the wrong website & getting malicious tracking cookies/software or messing with your web browser

This can be great for experimenting with a new OS, it's hard to permanently "break" it. Just remember to store any files you want to keep on a real partition (like a 2nd or 3rd partition of the USB) or online.

You can even update a few packages by installing some .deb files "to ram" after booting, but creating a new live USB / ISO would make the changes permanent. (There should be some tools to create a live ISO from a running live system, other distros like MX-Linux have virtually 1-click tools included).

Upgrading to a new release means just downloading a new ISO & making a new live USB.

A big limitation might be the read speed of your USB drive. USB read speeds could be from 10MB/s to 30MB/s for relatively cheap USBs, or 50-300MB/s for USB2 or USB3 devices which may be comparable to a hard drive. (USB writing speed is generally slower than reading). However, the seek times of a USB are near 1-5ms, so it may "feel" faster sometimes compared to a spinning hard drive (seek times +70ms?).

And the toram boot option could help the speed A LOT if you can spare the 1 or 2GB of ram; then all files are read at your RAM's speed (1GB/s to 10GB/s?) much much faster than a hard drive and almost all SSD's - the whole system could feel lightning fast (you'll really notice if you have a slow internet connection then ;-)

toram can also let you use a USB drive to boot live in ram, then install to / format / overwrite / remove that same USB drive.

Live with Persistence

If you used persistence on your live USB, it would feel & act like a regular fully installed system, with changes saved to the persistent file/partition.

Now you'll have to avoid breaking your system, but even if you did a catastrophic failure, all the changes are kept in the persistent file/partition, and you can boot without persistence & erase the persistent data to start over.

The limited write lifetime of the USB's flash memory might be a concern, using the noatime mount option should avoid some generally useless writes updating inode access times (ex. mount -o remount,noatime <usb>). In practice it could take years to wear out a USB, and they're very cheap & easy to replace; Even an old small 4GB USB is big enough for most live distros.

Full Install to USB

If you're talking about doing a full install directly to a USB drive, that may or may not work. I think it depends on the particular drive, some should work, but some won't (too slow, corrupts files, mystery problems...).

A cheap brand of orange USB's (that rhyme with "Flexar") would be 100% reliable as a live USB for months, but trying a full install would slow to a crawl then crash with permanent filesystem errors. But others report great success.

Making a good backup of your data and OS-X is a pre-requisite, or at least have an install disk & code (or whatever OS-X uses) ready for a clean re-install.

You may never be  able to fully overwrite a Flash memory USB, so if you'll be storing extremely sensitive data then use encryption.


while using os x ??

There is a bug known to do that in Ubuntu .. you can only set brightness to ether 0 or 100 % after suspend ..

but haven't had any problems with OS X ..

It will be better to ask apple's community or their  tech support if you are having problems with OS X


In 14.04 Ubuntu stopped using metacity to draown the windows, and now it's integrated with the gtk css code (located in [theme]/gtk-3.0). You have to find a theme that supports Unity 14.04 windows.

Here's a sample from Zukiwi theme

UnityDecoration.top {
    border: 0px solid shade (@theme_bg_color, 0.5);
    border-bottom-width: 0;
    border-radius: 6px 6px 0 0; /* Corner radius, only the top ones should be */
    padding: 1px 8px 0 8px; /* This padding will be applied to the content of the top layout */
    background-color: @theme_bg_color; /* Decoration background */
    background-image: linear-gradient(to bottom,
        @wm_bg_a,
        @wm_bg_b);
    color: @theme_fg_color; /* The foreground color will be used to paint the text */
    text-shadow: 0 1px @wm_title_shadow;
    box-shadow: inset 0 1px alpha(@theme_base_color, 0.6);
}

You can paste this in the gtk.css file of your theme and tweak as you like.


The program is called pulseaudio-equalizer.  To make sure you really installed it, you can type the command

apt-cache policy pulseaudio-equalizer

On my 14.04 system this returns

pulseaudio-equalizer:
  Installed: 2.7.0.2-4~webupd8~1
  Candidate: 2.7.0.2-4~webupd8~1
  Version table:
 *** 2.7.0.2-4~webupd8~1 0
        500 http://ppa.launchpad.net/nilarimogard/webupd8/ubuntu/ trusty/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Note that I installed it from a ppa.

Once installed, it shows up in the dash as expected.

I suspect you did not install it successfully.


How can I get shockwave flash to work on Ubuntu 12.04

The Flash Player can be installed from the Multiverse repository:  sudo apt-get install flashplugin-installer. You need to make sure that you have the Multiverse repo enabled: System Settings > Software & Updates.

An easy and quick way to get it working though is to just install Google Chrome by going to this link and following the directions: https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/

Chrome builds Flash into the browser itself so it means if you have the browser, you have Flash.


Problem installing Ubuntu on external HDD(Boot Menu)

I suspect that your bootloader is in the internal drive. It can be moved using instructions by @oldfred. Maybe this link can help you.

Otherwise you can unplug or otherwise disable the internal drive and after that install Ubuntu according to this link to get the bootloader in the external drive. (After shutting down you can plug the internal drive back again.)


installing gnome-shell gives me gnome 2 instead of 3

gnome-shell requires some level of 3D hardware-acceleration to work.

It doesn't have to be special hardware - integrated graphics should in almost all cases be fine.  But 3D acceleration must be working.

Gnome 3's window manager, mutter, is a compositing window manager that is OpenGL accelerated.

If gnome-shell doesn't detect that you have the right capabilities, it'll load into a "fallback mode" which means it loads an old-style panel that looks like Gnome 2 and it doesn't use a compositing window manager.

Ubuntu has helpful ways of installing proprietary drivers for graphics - have you tried these?


HP Microserver and upgrade from Ubuntu 12 to 16

The hpvsa driver is no longer supported after 14.04. Your 16.04 uses the standard driver, which then leads to higher fan speed (~13% vs ~6% with hpvsa).


Use the Nautilus file manager (the Files icon in the Unity launcher) to open the folder with the source code. Right-click the mouse pointer anywhere in that window and select Open in Terminal.

Update: If you don't have "Open in Terminal" installed, you'll have to change to the source code folder manually. If (for example) a folder called Petsc is in your Downloads folder... then open a fresh terminal window and type cd ~/Downloads/Petsc (this is case sensitve), then proceed with the installation instructions.

Then proceed with the installation. Understand that the quick instructions you listed are actually two separate commands...

./configure --with-cc=gcc --with-cxx=g++ --with-fc=gfortran --download-fblaslapack --download-mpich

and

make all test


The link above has a suggestion for PDF editors.

I used photoshop for years.  For now I use gimp.  As far as I can see all the features I even needed are done just as easy in Gimp.  Photopshop wasn't a bad learning curb.  But I consider Gimp and upgrade over photoshop.


Evince uses default system fonts when they're specified in the document, and custom ones when they're embedded. This suggests that the problem may be with your font set. If this is the case, I suggest making sure that ttf-mscorefonts is installed and up-to-date.

Another possibility is that the document is using embedded fonts that may be corrupted or just didn't download properly. You can check the fonts by selecting "Properties" from the menu and the "Fonts" tab (I can't post an image because I don't have enough reputation...).

Other discussion of this issue have referenced other PDF readers, the most popular being Okular (KDE), xpdf, and epdfview. You may want to try one of these to see if you prefer them, but I haven't seen any clear solution to the question of why fonts would render better in any of these other applications than in evince.


Ubuntu dvd download not starting in other computer

It depends on the following parts :

Did you choose CD / DVD - Rom as first boot device in your BIOS ON THE OTHER COMPUTER?
Where did you insert the DVD ? You have to put it in the DVD Device! If not --> dead end
Has the "other Computer" any installed OS ? If no ---> dead end
Did you burn a bootable DVD? if not  --> dead end


According to http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/xenial/man8/zramctl.8.html, you can remove and recreate a zram swap like this:

# swapoff /dev/zram0
# zramctl --reset /dev/zram0
# zramctl --find --size 1024M
/dev/zram0
# mkswap /dev/zram0
# swapon /dev/zram0

To permanently change the size, you have to adapt the init script, where the swap files are created. Be aware, that this file may be overridden by future system updates.

To increase the size of the swapfile in Ubunutu 16.04 from 50% to 200% of your total memory size, change this line in /usr/bin/init-zram-swapping

mem=$(((totalmem / 2 / ${NRDEVICES}) * 1024))

to

mem=$(((totalmem * 2 / ${NRDEVICES}) * 1024))


How can share my printer so that I can use it with Airprint?

This has changed since the initial question was asked.

Since Ubuntu 11.04, you can share local printers so they are available via AirPrint.

AirPrint support is either built-in a printer or not. For printers that don't have this support built-in (which is most printers bought before AirPrint was introduced in 2010), AirPrint support can be achieved by configuring such a printer on an intermediary system for local printing, shared on the same network. In this particular context this means any Ubuntu desktop or server with local printing configured. Follow these steps (source):

On your computer start the printer configuration utility via System ->
Administration -> Printing (GNOME Classic) or via Turn-off-button at
the  upper right -> System Settings -> Hardware -> Printing (Unity
Natty) or  via the command line (all systems including Unity
Oneiric): gksudo system-config-printer.
In the printer configuration utility choose Server -> Settings and activate
Publish shared printers connected to this system. Click OK and
then  right-click on the icon of your print queue and choose
Properties in the  pop-up menu. In the Policies section of the
dialog make sure that  Shared is activated.
Make sure your mobile device is accessing your local network using
WLAN and then open an application with printing functionality on it
(like for example the browser or the photo viewer). Print something.
The  print dialog should show your print queue and allow some basic
settings.

  Note: The Description/Info field and not the name of the queue is shown.

This is automatically available in GNU/Linux distributions with CUPS since version 1.4.6 (such as Trisquel 5 and Ubuntu 11.04). AirPrint Activator provides the functionality on Mac OS X. There is also a paid solution offered to Windows users.

Some of this information was adapted from the AirPrint article on Wikipedia (which I updated previously).


How can Iaunch a Windows partition in VirtualBox that already exists on my machine?

Virtualbox.org has a very long answer to this question - it is not always easy, because your existing installation in dependant upon hardware which will not be present in the virtual machine.  The hardware is not missing, but the concept of a virtual machine means that the hardware will be replace with emulations of hardware, probably different than what you machine physically contains.

The answer to how to do this is far to long to type here.  You will need to research this yourself, at https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Migrate_Windows


AMD64 installs will always use more RAM than i386, so if you are low on ram, then i386 will work faster.  Drive failure also causes an OS to run very slowly, and even crash.  If your drive was a little thumb drive, it was probably near burned out by the time you installed the 64-bit version on it. (Those things can't be written to very many times)  Even the flash drives you put in your computer and use as a hard drive have a limited number of writes.  Those things don't last very long, especially when there is an OS on it.  When the OS can't read from the media, apps can't load and such, ergo your computer is "slow".


I've prepared a deb based on How do I install BCM43142 wireless drivers for Dell Vostro 3460/3560?
for ubuntu 12.10 amd64. Tested. Wifi+BT are working for me.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/27868405/wireless-bcm43142-dkms-6.20.55.19_quantal_amd64.deb


External WQHD monitor with NVIDIA NVS 4200M

I solved this problem by following this answer to a similar question on ubuntuforums.org:

Disabling NVIDIA KMS (enabled by default in 390.77) resolves the issue:

Edit /lib/modprobe.d/nvidia-kms.conf file and set modeset to 0:
options nvidia-drm modeset=0

Save, update initramfs and reboot:

sudo update-initramfs -u

reboot


Disable sound in error notifications for Thunderbird

This sound is configured in your System Settings (by default).
You can read https://help.ubuntu.com/stable/ubuntu-help/sound-alert.html for how to mute such sounds within Ubuntu.

Within Thunderbird preferences you have no option to disable or customize the sounds for such alerts.


You can find information on the support for various windows programms under http://www.playonlinux.com/en/supported_apps.html as well as https://appdb.winehq.org/.

Especially regarding the mentioned games:

Fifa 07 ("Have tested it in Xubuntu (xfce) and works flawlessly")
GTA San Andreas ("Everything works and I mean everything.")


My windows pc is not starting, can i use ubuntu to rescue files?

Yes, Ubuntu Live CD/DVD/USB is often used as a rescue disk. You have to simply use the option Try Ubuntu while booting from Live CD/DVD/USB.

Once Ubuntu opened you have to open/mount the hard drive to get you data back or to save it to any other storage.


Not really. If the file has been copied using a command line, then chances are that you can find the information in $HOME/.bash_history. But then again, not necessarily, bash history is not a logfile.

Kernel logs contain information about attaching usb devices, so they can be monitored for inserting a pen drive, for example.

If you really need to do such a thing, then you have to set up monitoring the selected devices by yourself.


Open /var/lib/dpkg/status with the following commands in terminal:

sudo -i    #  to grant access as root
gedit /var/lib/dpkg/status

When it opens, search through the file for kingsoft-office package and delete that entry (delete everything from the line Package: kingsoft-office until next line that starts with Package: ...). Don't delete anything else. Save the file and close it. And in terminal type Ctrl+D to logout from root account.

Then, again in terminal:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gnome-screensaver


What's the best way to optimize power management?

Try powertop.

Install it.
Open a terminal and run it.

See http://tombuntu.com/index.php/2008/09/09/reduce-power-usage-with-powertop/ for details.


MAAS node install shutdown error when installing from CD-ROM

I deployed both physical servers (successfully) and on VirtualBox (failing).
The immediate shut down is the intended behavior. The problem with VirtualBox is that, once the installation process of the server is complete, the server should be able to wake-on-lan (optional), and PXE boot (required). I haven't figured out how to PXE boot in VirtualBox, unfortunately.
Anyway, your failure is not in the installation process. It's the PXE booting.


Purging an application removes everything regarding it on your computer. Since lots of the OS is based on Python, removing it can harm the OS. You should never have a need to purge, instead, I always recommend remove instead. Unlike purge, remove will not remove the configuration files of the program, only the program itself.

For example: sudo apt-get purge <packagename> becomes sudo apt-get remove <packagename>.

The first answer of this question further explains the differences between purge and remove if you need more clarification :).

In order to fix your potentially broken system, I recommend reinstalling Python3. Run sudo apt-get install --install-recommends python3 to reinstall Python3 and dependencies that could have also been removed. If it says that it is already installed, then sudo apt-get install --reinstall python3.

Hopefully this helps you :).


Why are some 7digital songs not available in the Ubuntu One Music Store?

Unfortunately, running the Ubuntu One Music Store is not quite as simple as reselling the entire 7digital catalogue: you will only see a particular song in the U1MS if we have permission to sell it in your region, and our set of licenses is not as extensive as 7digital's.

The music industry is still breaks up the world into separate regions for the purpose of marketing and licensing, so the selection of songs we offer differs from country to country too.  The following FAQ entry describes which labels we have distribution agreements with in the different regions:

https://one.ubuntu.com/help/faq/what-regions-of-the-world-are-able-to-purchase-songs/

So presumably the song you are after is outside of any of the existing distribution agreements.


Fatal Error: GLES2/gl2.h: No such file or directory

I got similar error when I compiled other project. As @steeldriver suggested, I solved this issue by installing the library:

sudo apt-get install libgles2-mesa-dev


I accidently cancelled the upgrade (20.10), what can I do? what's the risk

Aborting a release-upgrade is among the worst things you can do to your system. During a release-upgrade, your system is highly vulnerable to damage or corruption.
It's possible that you now have an incompatible mix of different-version packages that causes your frankensystem to crash unexpectedly ("internal error"). It might be fixable...or it might not.

Check your sources: Make sure you have only 20.10 sources. No older sources, no PPAs, and no non-Ubuntu sources.
Run sudo apt update and sudo apt dist-upgrade. Fix all errors. Your package system must be clean. If instructed to run sudo apt install --fix-missing, do so...but it's a bad sign.
Run sudo dpkg configure --all. Fix all errors.
Run sudo apt autoremove only after your package system is clean and error-free.
Run sudo snap refresh
WARNING: These are not magical incantations, and this is not a guaranteed recipe for success. You are expected to understand each command (and it's consequences) before you run it.

It might work. It might not. If you have the time and skills, it might be worth trying. If you don't know how to check your sources or how to read apt error output, then it's time to back up your data and reinstall.
If you run into an unfixable error, then backup your data and reinstall.


I finally found a way to get it working on Ubuntu 20.04. Here are the steps you need to do. Maybe this will help someone in the future:
Install the needed packages to build and use the plugin:
sudo apt install wireguard git dh-autoreconf libglib2.0-dev intltool build-essential libgtk-3-dev libnma-dev libsecret-1-dev network-manager-dev resolvconf

Clone the plugin from github, compile and install it:
git clone https://github.com/max-moser/network-manager-wireguard
cd network-manager-wireguard
./autogen.sh --without-libnm-glib

./configure --without-libnm-glib --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --libdir=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu --libexecdir=/usr/lib/NetworkManager --localstatedir=/var

make
sudo make install


I have resolved this issue by removing one of the RAM during install.

Now I am attempting to get the ASUS HD7850 properly working.


HDMI not Working on Ubuntu 18.04 with Dual Graphics

I had the same issue and resolved it by disabling Secure Boot in my UEFI settings. Then I opened NVIDIA X Server, changed the prime profile to Intel (Power Saving), restarted my laptop and then switched it back to NVIDIA (performance)


Download ubuntu updates via a windows computer

For keeping your Ubuntu up-to-date, you need to look at its current package versions and identify the ones that need to be updated -- then, get that list of packages to be downloaded for the update.

Once you have the list of packages (and their version numbers) for the download, the actual download can be done from any place which has an Internet link and can do simple downloads.

Take the Synaptic example,
You can do the regular 'reload', 'mark all update' sequence and then instead of 'applying' the updates -- which will cause the download to start, you could 'Generate Package Download Script'.

This is a simple shell script which will 'get' the individual 'deb' files required for your update. This can be run from a 'Cygwin' terminal or with some tweaks from any other download manager too (just look at the download script once and you'll know).

This Ubuntu page on Synaptic Package Download Script will give you the juice on Downloading in Windows.


Debian undid that modification as fix for this bug.

You can either build from source, disabling NSUPDATE or use at least 4.3.6, since that's the fixed upstream version.

Note that those ports are used for ddns, so if you have mentions to ddns in your config file, those ports will still be opened.


When should I use pkexec and when sudo -i?

The basic use is the same - the programs in question allow you to run other programs as another user, usually root. The difference, however, between sudo variants and pkexec is that sudo gives a program total control over everything, while with pkexec you have a much more fine grained control by defining a policy for each program.

If you trust the programs that you run, sudo is perfectly fine. If you want to really lock down everything and permit programs to do only what you allow them to, then use pkexec that comes along with polkit.

While the idea behind pkexec is nice, I wouldn't go as far as calling it the next gksu, due to the complex set up needed.

Reference: the difference between sudo and pkexec on Quora.


After login using Ctrl+Alt+F1 getting only wallpaper

First it asks for your username, not your password. If you type your username, then it will ask for password. Type your password there. Also you can type Alt+F7 to get a graphical interface.


Can’t add Mediainfo to Open With list (using Nemo or mimeopen)

I've done some research and created what I believe is the proper Nemo-specific solution: create a file ~/.local/share/nemo/actions/mediainfo.nemo_action with the content

[Nemo Action]

Name=MediaInfo

Quote=double

Icon-Name=mediainfo

Exec=mediainfo-gui %F

Selection=notnone

Mimetypes=audio/*;video/*;

This will make it show up in the context menu the way it does with most other file managers. Of course a more generic way would be to add those two mimetypes to the .desktop file, which puts it in the Open With list.


Error while compiling linuxsampler in Ubuntu 19.10

To solve this error, just open the source code main folder and run:

make parser

this will solve the dependency and allow the compiling process to finish.


What is INFO @wlcfg_80211_attach message while booting?

I would certainly try the other available driver for your Broadcom. Please open a terminal and do:

sudo apt-get remove --purge bcmwl-kernel-source
sudo apt-get install -- reinstall linux-firmware
sudo modprobe -r wl
sudo modprobe brcmsmac

It may take a reboot. Does it boot faster now? Does the wireless work as expected?


Is there a way to change the "Application", "Places" and "System" menus texts with 3 icons?

No, that's not possible.

As an alternative, you can right click the panel, select "Add to Panel" and choose "Main Menu" to get a single icon, containing the Applications menu as well as places and system:


Use different username on CUPS remote printing

According to the man page https://www.cups.org/doc/man-client.conf.html, a User directive could be placed in /etc/cups/client.conf or ~/.cups/client.conf

However, this didn't work for me in Kubuntu Trusty.
What worked, was to export the CUPS_USER environment variable by adding the following line in ~/.profile:

export CUPS_USER=vangelis

Needless to say (but I say), that you need to change vangelis to the username you would like to use.

You also need to restart your system so that the changes take effect in the desktop environment!

This information can be found at CUPS 1.6b1 release notes here: https://www.cups.org/blog.html (search for CUPS_USER)


I want to redirect my site trafic on another port from a subdomain

You cannot enter DNS names in "VirtualHost". Try the following:

<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerName somesite.com
        ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
        DocumentRoot /var/www/somesite.com/httpdocs/

        ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
        CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName blog.somesite.com
    ServerAlias www.blog.somesite.com

    ProxyPass /  http://somesite.com:3000/
    ProxyPassReverse / http://somesite.com:3000/
</VirtualHost>


Accessing shared folder between Windows 7 and Ubuntu VM from the VM?

If you are facing trouble in accessing your shared folder, you can try following.

First install Guest Additions.

After installing Guest Addition, go to Devices -> Shared Folder form
VirtualBox's menu and add you folder.
Now make a directory using sudo mkdir /media/windows. This
directory will be used as  mount point of shared folder.
Once mount point has been created, mount your folder using sudo
mount -t vboxsf <folder_name> /media/windows.

It will mount your folder in /media/windows.

If this method works perfectly add the last command in /etc/init.d/rc.local file.


upgrade from 16.04 to 18.04, lock screen is stuck

I stumbled into the same issue:
Upgrade from 16.04 to 18.04 (on Kubuntu). Screen automatically locked because I didn't use the PC. Entered password, screen is stuck. Switching to the text console - all screens dark. Switching back, mouse courser appears and is responsive, but everything else black.
I then realized:

switching to text console with Ctrl+Alt+F1, the text console was not empty but just very dark. So I increased screen brightness on the laptop with the function keys.

using top I saw that the upgrade probably still running (heavy load on dpkg).

With sudo loginctl unlock-sessions I could unlock the screen savers. I learned this from this answer (full quote for convenience, I used the ):

sudo loginctl unlock-sessions if your system is using systemd. Note that the above will unlock ALL sessions no matter which user is running the screen saver.
If you only want to unlock your own session, just run loginctl unlock-session (no root required because it's your own session).

After that, I changed with Ctrl+Alt+F7 back to KDE and found myself back to the still running session and upgrade process.


What widget can I use to edit text and highlight parts of it?

The two most-used text widgets are Gnome's native text widget, and Scintilla. Each do rich text but are often used for plain text. I'm sure they both handle highlighting, can be programmed to include annotation and comment text, and are able to incorporate graphic objects.

GTKText is the text widget in PyGTK; see http://www.pygtk.org/pygtktutorial/ch-textwidget.html et al.

Scintilla is used widely in GTK and Windows, at least; here it is: http://www.scintilla.org/ in its own website.

Exactly how this is used with Quickly, I'm not certain -- but if are writing GUI code for a Quickly app, these links will at least give you an idea of what's out there.

Best of luck!


Can't start ubuntu-desktop after upgrade to 18.04

Try logging in to your default desktop environment from the tty virtual console.

Open a text-only virtual console by using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+F3.
At the login: prompt type your username and press Enter.
At the Password: prompt type your user password and press Enter.
Now you are logged in to a virtual console, and you can run terminal commands from the console.

Run the following command:

sudo systemctl start graphical.target

If that doesn't work, switch the login display manager from gdm3 to lightdm.

sudo apt install lightdm
sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm
sudo reboot

sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm will open up a new window allowing you to select lightdm as the default login display manager. Use the arrow keys to select lightdm and press the Tab key to put the focus on <OK> and press Enter. Then reboot by running this command: sudo reboot

If that doesn't work either see if you can at least switch to text mode (for troubleshooting purposes) with no GUI stuff like the X server running.

sudo systemctl start multi-user.target


DISPLAY=:0.0 is "the first configured screen"

DISPLAY=:0.1 is "the second configured screen"

And the EXPORT actually sets the variable to that value. It is used to tell X server to show what is comming next on that display. Example: How to start a GUI software on a remote Linux PC via SSH

And yes, technically it should be possible to run KDE on tty6 and Unity on tty7. I have done it before (as in 2010) but I saw a question a while back about how to set that up and I failed to find a correct answer on how to do this with Unity. It needs to be done with the LightDM config and I can find the setting to change the port it uses (so change tty7 to tty6) but have not seen how to use both at the same time.


Is there a command to factory reset Ubuntu?

Try configuring unconfigured packages:

sudo dpkg --configure -a

Update the contents of the repositories

sudo apt-get update

Try to fix missing dependencies:

sudo apt-get -f install

Update all packages with new versions available:

sudo apt-get full-upgrade

Reinstall Ubuntu desktop:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall ubuntu-desktop

Remove unnecessary packages:

sudo apt-get autoremove

Delete downloaded packages already installed:

sudo apt-get clean

Reboot the system to see if the issue was resolved:

sudo reboot


ubuntu 20.04(gnome) black screen after login for some user

@GunnarHjalmarsson, Yes, you are right, this problem is more than input source in fcitx.
I found that my nvidia-driver dependencies had broken since a apt upgrade, and then the switching among input sources was just a stimulus of the crash of GNOME at that moment, since the configuration of my regular user is associated with complicated nvidia dependencies for ML.
The unity-ubuntu-desktop depends less on the nvidia-dependencies so it works anyway, but the command nvidia-smi still returns error and this remind the issue.
No matter what, thanks, @GunnarHijalmarsson!


Network printing issue on HP LaserJet 4250 from Ubuntu 14.04

The printer had been used in another network previously, where MAC HW address based network authentication mechanism was set up.

Conducting a cold reset on the printer wiped whatever was left of its previous config and solved the problem. That printer is now accessible from Mac, Win and Lx clients on its link with no HW-authentication.

The pbm is solved, although I could not get to the bottom of how in-printer-memory string values left over from a previous configuration could thwart current network printing.


(MPX) Multi Pointer X on 10.04 and beyond?

It is officially supported as of 10.04 so it will be stable and will be rather easy to set up from what I have read on MPX on Ubuntu wiki:

  Starting with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, Ubuntu includes support for
  Multi-Pointer X. This allows the user to use multiple input devices
  simultaneously.

Actions:
xinput list This will show the currect setup.
xinput create-master Second This will create a 2nd pointer.
xinput list This will show the altered setup.

Based on the result of this you need to find all the required id's and do this (change all {}'s by their corresponding id's):

sleep 1&&xinput reattach {mouse0_id} {2nd_pointer_id}&&xinput reattach {keyboard0_id} {2nd_keyboard_id}


To disable LLMNR, add the following to /etc/systemd/resolved.conf:

[Resolve]
LLMNR=false


How to get LibreOffice Writer to use "English (UK)" spell check?

I know you made the changes in Ubuntu, but did you set it in Libre office? Tools, options, language settings, languages.

I know it should seem that you should not have to do this, and maybe it is a bug in Libre Office, but I have found a lot of the time that for some reason a lot of open source software has their own setting for things like this.


Overlay scrollbars in GTK apps under KDE

I got it working:

The only thing i did (if i remember correctly) is to install overlay-scrollbar package.


Ubuntu is not installing on vaio with windows 8

Explanation:

the error message you got means you tried to install Ubuntu inside Windows (via the Wubi installer).
The problem is that Wubi is not compatible with GPT (preinstalled Windows8 are on GPT disks).

Solution:

Install Ubuntu the standard way, on its own partitions, see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GraphicalInstall


Converting physical Ubuntu 11.10 to VMware

I was able to figure out how to do the reverse of this and go from a VirtualDisk to a hard disk (with the help of SuperUser, and the reverse of this should work.

First, DD your hard drive to a file while booted from a separate drive (say, booted in Live mode on your Ubuntu install disk). The file will be the size of the hard disk, but will be smaller later. For now, you need to create it onto a larger drive - sorry. (For instance, DD a 500GB hard disk onto an external hard disk with at least 500GB free). You could also try using GParted to shrink the partition with Ubuntu on it to around the max size you want your virtual drive to be.

For instance, the command would be sudo dd if=/dev/hda of=/media/ExternalHardDisk/rawimage.img or replace /dev/hda with /dev/hda1 for just the partition.This assumes that your hard disk is at /dev/hda (and the partition you want is /dev/hda1), which can be checked using the Disk Utility (palimpsest in the terminal) or in GParted while booted there, and that you mounted your external drive as /media/ExternalHardDisk/ (probably replace ExternalHardDisk.) DO NOT run these commands without first checking what drives are what on your currently booted system - they may change between when you are started in Ubuntu from your hard drive and when you start GParted or your Ubuntu live CD.

From here, our procedures may differ slightly. I use Sun (Oracle) VirtualBox, so I would use the VBoxManage command in the terminal to clone rawimage.img to a vdi image with VBoxManage convertfromraw /media/ExternalHardDisk/rawimage.img ~/virtualbox_image.vdi --format VDI. You could also try formatting to VMDK or VHD and changing the extension accordingly if any of these will work better for you. I can't help you from here, sadly, but VMWare should at least be able to import one of these or the raw image we created earlier. Or, "Just create a new virtual machine, and when the wizard gets to the step for hard drive(s), just say "use existing" instead of "create new", and point to the vmdk file you have."


Auto-start service on bootup that depend on network

Forget about upstart. There are much easier ways to do this.
Put a script that launches Openfire here:

 /etc/network/if-up.d/

If openfire has to run as your user, so something like:

#!/bin/sh
su -c "openfire" myUserName

Make sure you mark it as executable:

sudo chmod +x /etc/network/if-up.d/openfire

Likewise you can close openfire, when you loose your network connection, by putting a script in /etc/network/if-down.d/ that kills it:

#!/bin/sh
killall openfire


Play all audio files in a directory from the command line ignoring non-audio files

You can use the following command to play only MP3s

vlc folder/*.mp3 (GUI)

cvlc folder/*.mp3 (CLI)

You can specify additional formats using *.ogg etc.

If there are subfolders -

vlc folder/*/./*.mp3 (GUI)

cvlc folder/*/./*.mp3 (CLI)


Ubuntu Live USB - Finding files that were stored on my flash drive

If the files are still present in your USB drive, then just plug in the usb when you are in windows or in linux, and a file-manager window showing the existing files will appear... (ie, pretty normally)

If you want to see the files of the USB while running from the Live USB then, you will need to:

find out what is your USB drive dev directory (ex: /dev/sda1). Try looking with df -h (I'm not sure if the usb drive will appear there while running from a live image...try it)
create a mount-directory: cd && mkdir my_usb
mount the usb device into the mount-directory: sudo mount /dev/sda1 my_usb (replace /dev/sda1 with your usb-dev-directory)
see the usb-drive files by looking inside the directory my_usb

From this moment untill you turnoff the pc, you can access (read and write) the files of your USB which will appear inside the my_usb directory

Tell if you got it working - cheers


Are you able to see if your USB stick is a valid boot option in your BIOS?

Take a look at this article
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/tipstricks/ht/bootusbflash.htm


Kernel Panic while installing Ubuntu 14.04

Official Workaround for 14.04 upgrade kernel panic

As listed in LaunchPad, response #32
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/upstart/+bug/1269731

1) Disable upstart re-exec whilst running the upgrade:

    $ sudo su -
    # mkdir /root/bin
    # ln -s /bin/true /root/bin/telinit
    # chmod 755 /root/bin/telinit
    # export PATH=/root/bin:$PATH
    # dpkg --configure -a && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

With many thanks to James Hunt for the answer.

Old Answer

I was able to reboot, log back in and type

sudo dpkg --configure -a

to get the package manager in a stable state.  If I saw it doing anything to DKMS or kernel modules, I hit Ctrl-C.  Once that completed, I then typed this:

sudo apt-get purge dkms

That should remove DKMS and the associated modules that are causing the crash.  For me, it was the wl-broadcom drivers (when I was supposed to be using b43 + firmwarecutter)

If it doesn't happen at the same point in the upgrade process, (e.g. before a dkms kernel module), then you may have some type of hardware failure.  Typically it is disk, but it could be RAM.  Run an old version of PartedMagic or SystemRescueCd, and check out the SMART values on your disk.  Remember, there's a failure bathtub curve - lots of failures when the drive is ew, levels off a bit, and then spikes back up as the drive ages.  Used to be drive failure MTBF (mean time between failures) started to pick up at 40,000 - or about 4.5 years.  However, this was the 90s, when drives were meant to last 5 years.  Judging by the average warranty these days, drives are meant to last 2 - 3 years. If you get anything more than that, you are lucky.

So, good luck, and I hope a drive failure is not what you are observing.  Hopefully you configured your /home directories on another partition so that you can wipe / without wiping home (or can transplant it to another drive).  I wonder why distros don't suggest this by default?


How to delete an item from the update manager

You can not delete any updates from Update Manager unless it is not from third party sources.

Only you can do is to untick it i,e not to install while upgrading/updating your system. But be careful it would break your system and your system would become unstable. So do it only when you are fully determined what you're you going to do or you know what would be the result as an experienced user.

Edit

Be specific while asking a question that any one can understand. It seems that you've added 3rd party repositories which causing the trouble.

You first remove any third party repository before doing a update to your system. Follow these steps to remove all repositories except the original one which is provided by Ubuntu.

Open Software Sources by executing:

sudo software-properties-gtk

Once opened go to Other Software tab and Remove all repositories except first 4.
Close the window and update repository by:

sudo apt-get -f update

Now again try to update your system. If you get again any error then try to update using terminal this time and paste the error message you get.


The frequency the CPU is running at could be called the heartbeat. The faster the frequency the more the CPU is getting done. As a consequence just as you tend to sweat when your heartbeat is higher, the CPU gets hotter when the frequency increases.

Your powertop screen snapshot shows what percentage of time is spent at different frequencies. Look at the part that says 3,21 GHz 22,2%. It appears your processor has a peek speed of 3.2 Gigahertz which is equivalent to 3200 Megahertz. In simple terms we can say 3.2 billion heartbeats per second for 22.2 percent of the time.

Look at the line below that says 1500 MHz 3,3%. The Core is running at 1500 Megahertz (1.5 Gigahertz) for 3.3 percent of the time.

Although these values can be interesting to look at, generally they are only studied when something goes wrong such as CPU overheating (running at too high a frequency for too long) or system lock-up (one or more CPUs stuck in an infinite loop causing system to be unresponsive to input and/or screen turning grey).

A better test for your YouTube video is to load it up in one window and in another window open a few chrome tabs and scroll through websites. Is the Chrome scrolling fast enough for you? Note that internet speed can cause a slow down too when videos are playing and pictures in websites are downloaded concurrently.

Conky Display

If you are interested you can use use a Conky display that always appear on your screen (I have mine on the right side) to show you CPU frequencies in real time along with temperature and average load factor. Average load factor summarizes frequencies and percentage of time at each frequency over 1 minute, 5 minute and 15 minute periods. As the screen below shows:

The processor speed of 1200 MHz is misleading because it was for that second the picture was taken. It fluctuates from 1200 MHz to 2400 MHz with Intel turbo boost turned off (Intel pstate disabled in the last grub boot) and peeks to 3400 Mhz (3.4 Gigahertz) with turbo boost turned on.


No sound in Ubuntu 14.04, though Intel and Nvidia cards are detected

in a Terminal launch alsamixer and be sure that:

your speaker volume is above 0
and Auto-mute is Disabled

Run an application making noise ( a web radio for example )
Open pulseaudio,

in the 1st tab set your application making noise to Internal Audio (something like that)

in the 3rd tab, set your Internal Audio to Speaker (even if they are marked as unavailable)

and set this device as the default one by ticking the green icon

in last tab, set your Internal Audio to Stereo Duplex

save these settings  for next session

alsactl --file ~/.config/asound.state store
to be sure to get these settings, add this command in your starting application

alsactl --file ~/.config/asound.state restore


Please see this thread and note the answer by JeanFI.

Basically it amounts to needing to review the hardware specification which will tell you the output that relates to the CPU.

To add the display to conky once you are aware of the value (using k10temp-pci-00c3 in this example) you would insert:

$ exec sensors | grep 'k10temp-pci-00c3' | awk '{print $3}'}

The grep pipe is used to search the output of sensors and display only information that matches.

The awk pipe is used to select the correct field from the output of sensors/grep.  This means that you can substitute $3 for another value if it is not displaying the correct part (i.e $1,$2,$all).


I would suggest that you shrink the D drive and free up the space in which you want to install ubuntu, go into device manager - disk management and shrink the D drive, then unallocate the space where you want to install ubuntu & you can safely install linux.
This way you will also have some part of D drive to store data and some part which will be utilized by linux.
But make sure that you leave sufficient space for ubuntu installation.

Good luck Dual booting.


Dock bar, maximize, and minimize buttons disappeared after doing a "reset to defaults" in CCSM

Press Ctrl + Alt + F1 to access a command line only session, login with your usual username and password, and run the command unity --reset to reset all your Unity related settings. You can then get back to the usual graphical session by pressing Ctrl + Alt + F7.


Short answer is very likely yes.
Long answer; see this question for an explanation of one attack vector for the vulnerability:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/157477/how-can-shellshock-be-exploited-over-ssh

Unless you have a defense in depth with multiple layers of security protecting access to the shell system (e.g. require a VPN connection before you SSH) you are likely vulnerable.

Tim


KDE announces program name when I open an Emacs window

Perhaps it's some accessibility setting meant as an aid to visually impaired people...


Can only install some R-Packages (Ubuntu 14.04 server)

Following along the instructions at http://cran.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu/README.

I added a the file /etc/apt/sources.list.d/r.list with the following contents:

deb http://cran.cnr.Berkeley.edu/bin/linux/ubuntu trusty/

ran:

gpg --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys E084DAB9
gpg -a --export E084DAB9 | sudo apt-key add -

then:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install r-base

Finally running R as root (sudo R) I installed FastRWeb with install.packages() by picking it from the list.


Optimal way to resize root partition of a running ubuntu VM?

Since your root partition is on LVM, you can always add a new disk to your VM and extend your root partition online.

Create a new partition on your newly added disk with parted or similar tool.

Create LVM Physical Volume as (assuming your new partition is /dev/sdb1):

sudo pvcreate /dev/sdb1

Extend the Volume Group (replace ubuntu--vg with your VG name, check under vgs command):

sudo vgextend ubuntu--vg /dev/sdb1

Extend the Logical Volume:

sudo lvextend -l +100%FREE /dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-ubuntu--lv

Finally resize the ext based filesystem (for xfs filesystem use xfs_growfs command):

sudo resize2fs /dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-ubuntu--lv


How do I remove Ubuntu's password requirement?

For the administrative password using sudo and sparing any lectures on why one would not want this...

Edit the sudoers file:

sudo visudo

Find this line:

%sudo ALL=(ALL) ALL

Change the line:

%sudo ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

Save and Exit. Voila! (Dont' shoot yourself in the foot, now. ;)

By the way, you can become root and just type the password once.

sudo su -

Now you ARE the root user, seeing no more password prompts. When you see guides referring to commands such as sudo some_command, just remove the "sudo" portion. In this way, you can choose to leave the security intact yet bypass it as you see fit.

If you are writing about your user account:

Open System Settings. Click on the User Accounts tile. Click the Unlock button and enter your password. Set the auto-login slider to the "on" position by dragging it to the right. Then click "Lock" to apply your changes.


There will be no benefit unless you have an application that is capable of using multiple GPU's.  Some possible ways to use multiple GPUs:

Running displays on multiple monitors
Running a game that is capable of using multiple GPUs
Running an application such as folding@home or BitCoin mining on each GPU


Right button working as left button on Acer laptop touchpad

This command solved the problem

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad click-method areas

I found it here on AskUbuntu, but I lost the link. Anyways I hope it helped


Is there a config file that controls the microphone?

You can use "pulseaudo" to achieve this purpose:

amixer -D pulse set Capture nocap

turns your mic off.

You can simply put it anywhere which will be run at start up, e.g: .profile.

If you want to turn it "on" again use:

amixer -D pulse set Capture cap

and for toggling between on and off:

amixer -D pulse set Capture toggle


Ubuntu 18.04 server install onto RAID1 with GPT/UEFI

This answer has all the information you need to get Ubuntu installed with RAID-1 and EFI / UEFI.

The critical pieces you may be missing are:

Download and use the "alternate" Ubuntu server installer ISO.
Ensure the installer boots through EFI rather than the standard BIOS.  When the installer has booted through EFI, there will be an "EFI" partition type option when defining the disk partitions.


Note: Always keep in mind that when dealing with anything to do with partitions, make sure that you have a current backup, in case something goes wrong.

Gdisk is a disk partitioning tool, and it can erase your disk if not careful.  It is designed to create, modify, and erase partitions.  As far as converting MBR to GPT and GPT to MBR, keep reading.

One of the more unusual features of gdisk is its ability to read an MBR partition table and convert it to GPT format without damaging the contents of the partitions on the disk.

This feature exists to enable upgrading to GPT in case the limitations of MBRs.

In addition to converting to GPT format, GPT fdisk supports converting from GPT format to MBR format. This feature, though, comes with some caveats: Depending on how the disk was originally partitioned, it may not be possible to convert all the original partitions. Even if converting all the partitions is possible, there may be restrictions on which partitions can be turned into logical partitions, which may in turn result in some odd or undesirable assignments to primary vs. logical partitions in the final MBR partition table.

Unfortunately, a complete conversion from GPT to MBR is tricky.Gdisk

Note: Always keep in mind that when dealing with anything to do with partitions, make sure that you have a current backup, in case something goes wrong.


Kworker process going crazy! CPU at 100%

Fix: unplugged monitor from system. Perhaps a video driver going crazy?


Touchpad not working after connecting hdmi cable

By mistake I had pressed Fn+F5, which enables and disables the touchpad.

Now I pressed Fn+F5 again and now my touchpad is working as before.


Try nautilus -q or sudo nautilus -q. Logging out and back in should also restart nautilus.


Chrome - DevToolsActivePort file doesn't exist

browser.capabilities = {"goog:chromeOptions": {"args": ["--headless", "--no-sandbox", "--disable-dev-shm-usage"]}}

This helped!


How to run a script when a specific flash-drive is mounted?

There's much nicer solution with systemd now. You create a service which depends and is wanted by you media e.g.: /etc/systemd/system/your.service

[Unit]
Description=My flashdrive script trigger
Requires=media-YourMediaLabel.mount
After=media-YourMediaLabel.mount

[Service]
ExecStart=/home/you/bin/triggerScript.sh

[Install]
WantedBy=media-YourMediaLabel.mount

Then you have to start/enable the service:

sudo systemctl start your.service
sudo systemctl enable your.service

After mount, systemd fires your trigger script. The advantage over udev rule is that the script really fires after mount, not after adding system device.

Use case: I have an encrypted partition which I want to backup automatically. After adding the device I have to type in the password. If I hooked the backup script to udev, the script attempts to run at the time when I'm typing password, which will fail.

Resource: Scripting with udev

Note: You can find your device unit with:

systemctl list-units -t mount


If you are planning to install and frequently reinstall [you do that with Windows? Not so common with Linux :))] Ubuntu, you wont have a problem with the second drive. But you might not want to do automatic partitioning. Although in the recent versions of the installer Ubuntu detects older installs and asks you what to do with it.

Installation on the second harddrive is no problem, just select it during the process. You can just reinstall afterwards and before you put anything else on that drive if you want to see how it works. Once you know what it does its easy to gain confidence :)

Just make sure you read the screens carefully when it comes to what drives and partitions to use.

If you can run virtual machines on your Windows try it in a virtual machine. Then you could even compare different distributions without the risk of breaking anything.


How do I install MS SQL for ubuntu 18.04 LTS?

Microsoft does not provide official mssql-server for 18.04 yet (05-12-2018), for testing only you may try this workaround(from me).

  Workaround for installing Microsoft's SQL Server (mssql) on Ubuntu

  WARNING: FOR TESTING ONLY

  Download latest package mssql-server_14.0.3025.34-3_amd64.deb from https://packages.microsoft.com/ubuntu/16.04/mssql-server-2017/pool/main/m/mssql-server/
  Change directories

cd ${HOME} && mkdir -p tmp/mssql/newpkg/DEBIAN/ && cd tmp/mssql
wget https://packages.microsoft.com/ubuntu/16.04/mssql-server-2017/pool/main/m/mssql-server/mssql-server_14.0.3025.34-3_amd64.deb

  Unpack

dpkg-deb -x mssql-server_14.0.3025.34-3_amd64.deb newpkg/
dpkg-deb -e mssql-server_14.0.3025.34-3_amd64.deb newpkg/DEBIAN/

  Modify

sed -i -e 's#openssl (<= 1.1.0)#openssl (<= 1.1.1)#g' newpkg/DEBIAN/control
cat newpkg/DEBIAN/control | grep openssl

  Repackage

dpkg-deb -b newpkg/ 18.04-mssql-server_14.0.3025.34-3_amd64_.deb

  First try, this will fail for dependencies

sudo dpkg -i 18.04-mssql-server_14.0.3025.34-3_amd64_.deb

  Install dependencies

sudo apt install -f

  Second try, this should be done

sudo dpkg -i 18.04-mssql-server_14.0.3025.34-3_amd64_.deb

  Follow the messages from package to setup the mssql server

  Troubleshooting

  The database directory /var/opt/mssql should not put on zfs dataset,
  if you are using zfs, create a zvol and format as ext4/xfs for it.

  Error: "Dump collecting thread [4404] hit exception [6]. Exiting."
  Fix: sudo usermod -a -G disk mssql
  Reason: mssql user can not access zvol.

  References:

  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/quickstart-install-connect-ubuntu?view=sql-server-linux-2017
  https://gist.github.com/shamil/3140558


You never have. apt update only updates the package lists from the Ubuntu repositories. apt upgrade then upgrades the packages.


Edit>Preferences>Window management>Hints for docks and toolbox gives your three choices:

Normal window: plain windows (can be minimized, etc...)
Utility window: like plain windows, but no "Minimize" button, have to use [Tab] to hide.
Keep above: keep these windows above the image window

So you would be currently using the third setting.

See the doc


You can close the highlighted application from the Super+W "spread window" display using Alt+F4.


Unable to enumerate USB device under virtualbox

What kind of port are you plugging the USB-stick into? VirtualBox can't handle stuff plugged into USB 3.0 ports in my experience (running VirtualBox 5.0.26 with extentions). Trying to attach USB 3 devices in a USB 3 port throws an error, connecting the same device into a USB 2 port (or into a USB 3 port via a USB 2 hub) works just fine.


Cannot access Samba share from windows 7 using hostname

Hi a couple of thoughts,

you don't need name for windows share to access. \\<desktop_ip_address>\nicholas_share works just as fine.
as other pointed out, you don't have a DNS server to resolve name to IP. If your router acts as a DNS server, since it does DHCP, check if it has any options to add names to IPs, or register host names on DHCP. It all depends on the router.
how do you keep the current IP for the desktop. If the desktop acts as a server, then it should have a reserved lease IP address or a static IP address. Once a name is cached to the IP, sometimes it remains cached, and when the IP changes, wondrous things can happen.
Have you checked that your windows has network discovery enabled for the home network? It should otherwise windows smb client acts weird and quirky.


Why are my launcher icons missing/not working on a fresh install?

If you are talking about icons on launch bar, probably you have to find them yourself. Search for example 'firefox' using unity button left and up. Then drag the icon you want to launch bar.


How do I use the GUI to search for files in GNOME?

There are several ways you can do this.

Open Files and click the Search button. This is the easiest and recommended choice since it's installed by default.
Or you can install gnome-search-tool
Or you can install tracker-gui


KPackageKit stuck with ttf-mscorefonts-installer package

This package is part of kubuntu-restricted-extras so in case you have that installed, ttf-mscorefonts-installer will be installed. And this package is not a stand-alone package, so during installation, it downloads the restricted Microsoft fonts from the SourceForge servers, so you got to have network connection to install the package even if it is already in your package cache.

While you've mentioned that this package messes up fonts appearance of your Wine apps, I haven't used Wine lately, but this thread appears to have a solution to change fonts used for Wine applications, while it has solution targeted for Ubuntu, it should be applicable for Kubuntu as well.


USB wifi authenticates, mini PCI wifi does not

Try sudo apt-get install bcmwl-kernel-source if uname -a shows a 3.13 kernel, if it shows a 3.16 kernel then download from http://packages.ubuntu.com/utopic/bcmwl-kernel-source as the ubuntu forums broadcom sticky
shows that bcmwl-kernel-source as the correct driver for your chipset


How to configure dhcp to always assign from the lowest unused ip?

As suggested by Melebius, the dhcp server in my scenario is not actually in the Ubuntu instance (vm guest) - it was simply a virtualized component (or "part of the virtualization program") on the host machine, with some configurable options. Even if I could configure it, it would have been independent of Ubuntu.

Hence, the workaround using dhcp-requested-address with dhclient seems to be the best option in this situation, with minimal change to a default installation.


percona-server-server-5.7 not available anymore?

It's been raised as an issue in their Jira see here https://jira.percona.com/browse/PS-5615

Apparently someone is looking into it.

I guess you just need a bit of patience now.


This solution is courtesy of edwinksl

sudo apt install zlib1g-dev


No sounds from headphone jack Ubuntu 16.04.1

Well,this counld be an harware problem.Does your laptop detects headphone?

Try this :-

Open the terminal and enter the following commands:

cd /usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/paths/
sudo cp analog-output-headphones.conf analog-output-headphones.bak
sudo nano analog-output-headphones.conf

Look for the section called [Element Speaker] and change it so that it looks like this:

[Element Speaker]
switch = on
volume = ignore

Save the changes and exit nano.

Create a backup of the corrected analog-output-headphones.conf:

sudo cp analog-output-headphones.conf analog-output-headphones.fixed

Now you can restore the fix if a future installation or update overwrites it.

Reboot.

After rebooting, you may need to remove and reinsert the headphone plug to get it to work. After it's working, though, you will be able to remove and insert the plug, and behavior will be as expected.


wifi "network DISABLED" device not ready

This is a known bug with the 4.15.0-33 kernel and the rtl8723be wireless device.

See this bug report here or here.

Also, no matter which driver you use, dkms status should show it as installed, not added.


How do I install PrusaSlicer from github?

There are two preconditions if you want to update a software package via apt. First, the software's publisher needs to build and release the software as debian packages, which can be recognized by the file ending deb. Secondly, the publisher needs to operate a repository. That's basically a url from where you can download deb packages, plus some metadata like which version is the newest and so forth.

apt update and apt upgrade (or apt full-upgrade) basically walk through the list of repositories you have configured on your system. For each, they check whether there are newer versions of deb packages you have installed, and offer to install those newer versions.

The team behind PrusaSlicer does not seem to offer their software as debian packages, and they don't seem to operate a repository. So you can't use apt with that software. There's an issue (which is the Github term for "support ticket" or "bug report") suggesting to basically add a repository, but we'll have to wait and see when or if they're going to do that.

As far as the error message from the AppImage package is concerned, packages (debian packages, AppImage packages, ...) typically don't contain all code necessary to run the program. For example, PrusaSlicer didn't reinvent the wheel and write their own graphics code to draw windows, buttons and the like on the screen. They're using an existing library for that, in this case the graphics toolkit GTK. Obviously, GTK needs to be installed on your machine so PrusaSlicer can use it. That's what the error message is complaining about, "I try to use the library libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0, but I can't find it". pilot6 already mentioned in his answer which debian package from the Ubuntu repositories you need to install to get the library.


I/O errors when trying to copy data off a drive

I/O error means that the Hard Drive can't read a certain location. It can be caused by a bad sector.

You can use ddrescue.

  ddrescue is a data recovery tool. It copies data from one file or
  block device (hard disc, cdrom, etc) to another, trying hard to rescue
  data in case of read errors.1

You can download the latest release Here, or through the Ubuntu Software Center

1Source:Ddrescue


Ubuntu 14.10 booting problems - no login screen

I've listed bellow possible issues. Most likely it is #1.  After going through each procedure remember to reboot with sudo shutdown -r now command.

1. Install different greeter

Occasionally, the default greeter (aka login screen ) won't work properly. I've encountered such issue with Fedora 20, where default gdm greeter would distort the login screen badly, and the persons on this post also said changing greeter (as suggested by myself) helped.

To change a greeter, access tty console (by pressing Ctrl+Alt +F*, where F* is any F1 - F6 key), login, and download a greeter that you would like to have. For instance,

sudo apt-get install lightdm-gtk-greeter

or sudo apt-get install lightdm-kde-greeter

Personally , I keep both of these on my machine.

Next, you need to tell lightdm desktop manager which greeter to choose on boot. To do that, type

sudo nano /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf

Nano is a command-line text editor, IMHO simplest to use. Most likely, this config file will be blank, so you would need to add the following lines:

[SeatDefaults]
greeter-session=lightdm-gtk-greeter

where lightdm-gtk-greeter , would be the name of the greeter you installed. Bellow is the screen shot of my lightdm.conf file.

For more information on lightdm display manager configurations, you can read the following sources, as well as man page for lightdm (man lightdm):

Arch Wiki Lightdm
Ubuntu Help Lightdm

2. Reinstall Unity desktop or install different desktop

Among other problems, it could be your desktop environment.

To reinstall Ubuntu's default desktop, do the following in tty:

apt-get install --reinstall ubuntu-desktop
apt-get install unity

To install a different desktop environment, you can refer to this post

To select different default desktop environment you can edit /usr/share/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/50-ubuntu.conf file. Again, you can do it using nano text editor.

sudo nano /usr/share/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/50-ubuntu.conf

Bellow is screen shot of my file:

Again, the name after = sign should be the name of the desktop environment you've installed, and it should boot by default.

3. Possible graphics card driver issue.

This issue is somewhat beyond my level of knowledge right now, but I can point you to this post on Ubuntu Help page

Small note on nano text editor:

Nano's key's are all listed in the lower part of the screen. ^ is equal to Ctrl button and ^O for instance , refers to Ctrl+O, which is equivalent to "Save file". Ctrl+X (^X) is "Exit with saving/ without saving".


Vim 8 with system clipboard on 16.04 LTS

If after adding the jonathanf/vim PPA you apt install vim, it installs vim.basic. If you instead apt install vim-gtk3, then you get vim.gtk3 which has +clipboard, and thus the system clipboard. Regardless of which one you install, it will get symlinked to /usr/bin/vim

(converted my comment to an answer in case anyone else stumbles into here)


If I resize a windows partition for install will that cause data loss?

Resizing a hard-drive would not cause data loss. But 40GB hard drive is not meant to be shrinked so as to install another OS. I assume you are a Windows XP or Windows 7 user.

Windows would require free space so as to accommodate  new programs, page file changes if any etc.

Hence, I request you to think again before you proceed toward installing Ubuntu.


How to see the address dnsmasq is listening to without netstat

sudo ss -ltup | grep dnsmasq

About your command: ss -ltu, The -p (Show process using socket) parameter is missing and -p requires sudo.


How to run a script when the lid is closed?

First, I created a new file /etc/acpi/events/laptop-lid containing the following:

event=button/lid.*
action=/etc/acpi/laptop-lid.sh

Then I created /etc/acpi/laptop-lid.sh containing this code:

#!/bin/bash

source /home/michael/.Xdbus
grep -q closed /proc/acpi/button/lid/LID/state
if [ $? = 0 ]
then
    # close action
    dm-tool switch-to-greeter
    sleep 5
    systemctl suspend
else
    # open action
fi

In /home/michael/.Xdbus I put the following:

export XDG_SEAT_PATH=/org/freedesktop/DisplayManager/Seat0

And I made /etc/acpi/laptop-lid.sh executable (chmod a+x).

Then I ran
/etc/init.d/acpid restart

Finally, I went into XFCE Power Manager and set it to "Switch off display" when the laptop lid is closed, so as to avoid conflicting with my new, improved functionality.

However, I found there was still a problem - after I came out of suspend, the login screen would be displayed and then the machine would suspend again.  After a bit of searching I think this is due to a bug in Ubuntu that apparently still exists in 18.04.  I worked around it by checking if more than 6 seconds have passed since I tried to sleep 5 seconds, and if so I don't suspend.  It seems like my laptop actually suspends in under 2 seconds, so this is always working for me.  I tried setting Xfce to lock the screen, but it didn't seem to honor that either - in both cases, my machine was suspended in under 2 seconds, whereas my script should be forcing it to wait at least 5.

Update:

After doing all of this, I was still totally unsatisfied.  Because my XFCE Power Manager settings are basically ignored leading the machine to always sleep when I close the lid, this creates a race condition between the sleep process and how far the dm-tool gets towards creating the greeter,  which always results in some delay on resume while that process finishes bringing up the greeter.  So I totally undid all of the above work and instead did the following:

Edit ~/.config/openbox/lubuntu-rc.xml.  Find the key binding to lock the screen and change it to switch to the greeter instead.  The main effect of this seems to be to not turn off the display, which seems important to making the greeter show up instantly on resume:

    <keybind key='W-L'>
        <action name='Execute'>
            <command>dm-tool switch-to-greeter</command>
        </action>
    </keybind>

Now instead of closing the lid, I hit Win+L, and as soon as the greeter appears I then close the lid.

Note: I wanted to have a separate script that first switches to the greeter, then suspends, but it seems like no matter how I try to suspend (systemctl, dbus, etc.) they all refuse to suspend from the lock screen without manual intervention - entering a password from a dialog box - that impossible to satisfy because we are at the lock screen!


New Xubuntu 14.04 installation: The volume keys on my laptop keyboard don't work any more

Everything works perfectly on my Dell laptop, except the function keys.  These should be handled by the hardware but for some reason they are not.  The only ones I normally use are the one that turns off the touchpad, the brightness, and the volume keys.

I wrote a script using xinput to toggle the touchpad.  I used xbacklight to change the brightness.  I used pactl to change the volume and toggle the mute.  I was going to try to bind this to the keys but I couldn't located the keys using xmodmap, so I simply used the XFCE keyboard shortcuts tool which was easier anyway.

Whiskey Menu -> Settings -> Keyboard -> Application Shortcuts

You click Add, then enter the command you want to execute, click OK, and press the key that will execute the command.

To increase the brightness:

xbacklight -inc 10

To decrease the brightness:

xbacklight -dec 10

To decrease the volume:

pactl set-sink-volume alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo -- -10%

To increase the volume:

pactl set-sink-volume alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo -- +10%

To toggle mute:

pactl set-sink-mute alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo toggle

It is possible that your audio device is not the same as mine, alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo.  To get the correct name enter the following:

pactl list | grep "Monitor Source:"


While Python 3.x will be included by default in Quantal, it does not mean it will be the default (/usr/bin/python will remain python2, and without python2 installed will not exist). Also, as you have noticed, all upstreams of python packages have not added support for Python 3 yet.

For all upstreams to be able to support Python 3, it is going to be a very long and arduous journey. Even while Ubuntu may have only python3 installed by default, it doesn't mean python2 won't be used by other applications, or that all packages will support it.


netcat is unable to establish communication

The reason was so simple. The second command should not contain -p.


Create a Shell with Limited access of commands

You don't create a restricted shell to do this. These commands need root access, so start by giving them access to a normal user, without root access. Then, use sudo to grant them access to specific commands. Is it possible to give sudo access to only a particular command?


I also ran the following commands to kill the process and remove the stored metadata.

pkill gvfsd-metadata
rm -rf .local/share/gvfs-metadata


'While Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS has been released, automatic upgrades from Ubuntu 14.04 LTS will not begin until "early next week" according to the Ubuntu Release Team.' https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/4tzgou/ubuntu_16041_lts_released_1404_users_see_upgrade/d5lp6s4


My openvpn clients connects to server with .ovpn+ca.crt files only

In the server configuration you have the following lines:

client-cert-not-required
plugin /usr/lib/openvpn/openvpn-plugin-auth-pam.so login

client-cert-not-required has the following description from man openvpn:

  Don't require client certificate, client will authenticate usingu sername/password only. Be aware that using this directive is less secure than requiring certificates from all clients.

The plugin requires authentication against PAM.

The data is encrypted when it transits the VPN. This is shown by the line cipher AES-128-CBC, which specifies which encryption to use. AES is generally regarded as secure.

If you consider this secure enough depends on what you are attempting to protect, and the quality of the passwords. There's no one-stop answer to this; you have to define the threats you find applicable, and what security is acceptable.

Maintaining a CA and distributing certificates may be more work than distributing passwords. This depends on your setup. It also makes it more difficult to setup VPN on a new computer, as you securely have to bring the relatively long key to that computer. The decreased security of password authentication may be a worthwhile trade off in this aspect.

TL;DR: It depends.


As the author of the above mentioned answer says, that solution is an "ugly hack". Have a look at the Upstart Cookbook -- instance section and see if you can create a .conf file for individual instances of mydaemon. Then when you run mydaemon-parser.py, use

subprocess.call('initctl start mydaemon INST="SomeNewInstance"')

The python code will have to find a way to identify a unique value for "SomeNewInstance".

You can then have a pidless wrapper job that runs mydaemon-parser.py probably in a pre-start script. This job will have the start on and stop on stanzas.

The problem then would be stopping the instances. The cookbook has suggestions for this. Pay special attention to the section entitled '6.14.2 Another Instance Example', and the code block immediately preceeding that which suggests the following as an example:

initctl list | grep "^foo " | cut -d\( -f2 | cut -d\) -f1 | while read i
do
  sudo stop foo BAR="$i"
done

I'm going to post a similar set of jobs I made to start/stop PostgreSQL clusters through Upstart. When I do, I'll add a link to it here because it provides some pretty good examples.


Can I connect to other computers on my network using FTP?

Of course, you can access the FTP service running on other computers, either use a client like filezilla or mount remote FTP folders as file system by using curlftpfs, similar to sshfs.

http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-to-mount-ftp-folder-to-local-directory-in-ubuntu.html

Classic GNOME has a GUI tool does similar thing:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/22518/how-to-mount-a-remote-folder-in-ubuntu/


How do I wipe and set up donated laptops with Ubuntu?

Well now, this is a very good question. I assume that the laptops will be of a low spec because they are second hand, so I would suggest current versions of Lubuntu or Xubuntu.

It is worth, however, trying out all the versions to see which people respond to the best.

These should all come with Libre Office installed by default.


Windows in Ubuntu 20.04 dropping to background

Found the problem. In Gnome Tweaks there's a setting: Windows > Focus on Hover. Changed to: Focus on Click.
After the upgrade, I must have changed it not knowing what it would do.


Does TLP automatically start when my system boots?

Yes TLP will automatically start you do not need to run any command

please check

  0.) General

  TLP_ENABLE=1

Set to 0 to disable TLP (Reboot needed), It should be enabled so leave the default value

Is there a power saving application similar to Jupiter?

If you're not sure you can always check whether TLP is running by typing in a terminal:

sudo tlp-stat -s


How to install Windows(8.1/10) when Ubuntu 14.04 is installed?

Few days ago I tried to install Windows 10 using USB stick, but couldn't because Ubuntu didn't boot it.

So, that's a misconception here. Ubuntu won't boot from your USB stick. That has to happen before you boot Ubuntu or any other operating system.

First off, not all computers can boot from USB, they need to be sufficiently new to support this (the last couple of years should be fine).

Plug-in your USB stick and reboot your PC. What happens next depends on your PC (and the BIOS/UEFI).

Usually you will see a message like "Press some key to change boot device". So, often you'll see a message and it'll tell you what key to press to select a boot device. Sometimes you will only see a message about "BIOS setup" or similar and you will have to change the boot priority there.

What do I mean by boot priority? That's the priority of devices your BIOS/UEFI will check for operating systems (or boot loaders). On modern systems, the hard disk will often be the first. Since that's where your groub boot loader is, it won't continue searching.

If you tell us your PC model/manufacturer, we/I/you could search for the exact message.

EDIT:
I found a list of keys for different vendors/models. F12 is very common


I know that this is an old thread, but in case someone comes across the same problem, check the flow control settings in minicom. In mine hardware flow control was turned on which resulted in nothing being transmitted. Just turn it off and everything will be fine!


How to salvage user home files from previous installation

0) Always make a backup and verify the backup before performing surgery on your OS.

1) Use the LiveUSB you were going to use to reinstall with. Boot into its Ubuntu. Look in the filesystem for the internal drive and its /home to see how big /home is. If you have room on another USB flash drive, copy its contents over to the other flash drive, for a selective copy back once you've installed the new OS.

2) Don't have room? Using gparted, shrink the partition with /home on it and commit the change with the green checkmark  in gparted. Move it to the end of the drive, and commit that change with the green checkmark . Then install the new OS into the space you made with the shrink-and-move.


Copy/move a list of files to a new directory

Assuming list.txt has names of files (with only prefix) one in each line, the following code will move all listed files to folder2:

while read file; do mv "$file"basz.dat /path/to/folder2; done < /path/to/list.txt