Will my data be erased when I upgrade from saucy salamander to Trusty Tahr?

You should always backup your files. If you don't backup them, you don't value them and sooner or later you will lose them.

But no, they won't be erased if everything goes well during the upgrade.
None of your installed applications or of your settings should be lost either - you'll just get newer versions of your programs. Before the upgrade procedure removes any package which it thinks you don't need anymore it will ask whether it should.

Afterwards you'll pretty much have the same system as before, with small changes and newer versions of most software.


Route Output to Input/Skype Upload Greeter Audio File

Skype supports an easy-to-set up voicemail system. One convenient benefit of setting up Skype Voicemail is that your audio messages — both your greeting and the incoming messages people leave you — are not stored on your computer but instead are stored remotely on Skype's central servers. As a result, you don't have to worry about missing calls when you turn off your computer.

Before you can use Skype Voicemail, you have to start your setup and record the Voicemail greeting that your callers will hear:

see tutorial here


It seems that it's possible, but warned against. For example, the user in my first link began to have issues.

From the Ubuntu Wiki:

  To avoid damaging your running system, upgrading should only be done
  from one release to the next release (e.g. Ubuntu 9.04 to Ubuntu 9.10)
  or from one LTS release to the next (e.g. Ubuntu 6.06 LTS to Ubuntu
  8.04 LTS). If you wish to 'skip' a version, you can backup your data and do a fresh installation, or progressively upgrade to each
  successive version. For example, to upgrade from Ubuntu 8.10 to Ubuntu
  9.10, first upgrade to 9.04, then upgrade 9.04 to 9.10.

However, it does seem that LiveUSBs can upgrade multiple versions?

Discussed in: upgrade from 10.10 to 11.10


$ tail -f /var/log/ufw.log

helped while issuing the ssh user@hostname command: it showed a blocked connection on port 5355, which corresponds to hostmon in /etc/services, so

$ sudo ufw allow in 5355

solved the problem ...


There are a few but I recommend gprename
 which is a good compromise between usability and functionality.

Other tools are: rename, krename
, pyrenamer
, cuteRenamer, ...


If you have another computer available you could make a live DVD or usb, boot into it and install boot repair (onto the live usb) by running the commands below. Once installed tell it to re-wright the grub onto the HDD and make sure it doesn't write it onto the live DVD or USB stick.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair
boot-repair

Read this for more infomation on how to use boot-repair.


Whenever you use the command line, there might be an instance when you need to run a command that is very long. So, you want to split the command into multiple lines for better readability and understanding. But if you use new line character which is typed by Enter, the shell will think that it is a new command. So you use \ followed by the newline character.

Basically, commands or bash scripts are "interpreted", i.e. executed line by line. Every new line means the start of a new command. In the terminal, when you press Enter, you get a prompt to run a new command. So,  a new line needs to be "escaped". Typing \ followed by Enter allows you to split the current command into multiple lines so the shell doesn't think that it is a new command but the continuation of the previous command.

> is nothing but a prompt for the next line of the command being entered.

For example:
If we want to install multiple packages, the command will be like

$ sudo apt install [package1] [package2] [package3] ...

But sometimes, that makes the command cluttered. So we can use \ followed by Enter (newline character)

$ sudo apt install [package1]\
> [package2]\
> [package3]\
> ...


Use this command:

hdparm -E 4 /dev/cdrom1

where /dev/cdrom1 is your cd/dvd device (may be different) and 4 is the actual speed (in this example 4x).


Can't sign-in into the Ubuntu 12.04's Ubuntu-one app

Known bug, should be fixed in an update next week. Sorry!


Awful performance after trying everything

That machine was mediocre even back in 2008 when it came out. It had an NVidia Quadro NVS 160M GPU (which you completely failed to mention) which was not really suitable for games even back then.
It will probably still make a decent machine for browsing the web or for office programs, but you seem to expect a speed daemon for gaming. That's simply unrealistic.
What are you comparing it against? What are your expectations? What did you measure, and how?
Do you have problems of the sort "it takes several seconds until a mouse click does anything" in the normal desktop? Or is it just game performance that you are missing?
Don't start tweaking BIOS settings. If you already did, do yourself the favour and revert everything to defaults. Unless you know very well what you are doing, you are probably only making things worse.
In all my 35 years of PC computing I have NEVER seen any useful documentation what all those crazy BIOS parameters (RAM timing etc.) do.


How to perform differential backups with tar?

You cannot do automated differential backups with tar using the --diff operation mode. This is because the --diff operation mode will only look for differences between files already in the tar file and the files of the file system. If a file that resides in the tar file is missing in the file system tar will give you this message:

tar: etc/test.txt: Warning: Cannot stat: No such file or directory

If the content of a file already in the tar file gets changed, tar will print:

etc/test.txt: Mod time differs
etc/test.txt: Size differs

If there is a new file in the file system tar will give you no information. The same is true for the --update operation mode. It only checks for files already in the archiv.

I found some solutions for doing differential backups with tar using the --newer parameter relaying on date/time informations of the last full or differential backup. Other solutions stores metadata of the backups and doing differential backups using this metadata.


I have a workaround that I don't want to use anymore maybe it helps someone.

Add the following if statement around your ssh-add command:

#!/bin/bash
export SSH_ASKPASS=/usr/bin/ksshaskpass
eval $(ssh-agent)

if pstree -s -p $$ | grep Xsession; then
    exit
fi

/usr/bin/ssh-add ~/.ssh/servers ~/.ssh/gitolite

Explanation: When you start a terminal the parent process is not a Xsession and therefore the ssh-add command is executed. At this time the kwallet is already unlocked and it does not ask for the passphrases of the ssh keys.


Trouble making a Live USB with Debian 'Sqeeze'

You can also use dd.

First, find out what the USB drive is called with sudo fdisk -l, then unmount it, then run

sudo dd if=/path_to_iso/ubuntu-12.04-desktop-i386.iso of=/dev/sdX

the /dev/sdX part is whatever fdisk had shown, usually /dev/sdb or dev/sdc.

Example

Here is the output of sudo fdisk -l showing my USB drive:

Disk /dev/sdc: 256 MB, 256900608 bytes
60 heads, 27 sectors/track, 309 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1620 * 512 = 829440 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00040358

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1   *           1         310      250879    b  W95 FAT32
Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
     phys=(31, 59, 27) logical=(309, 43, 18)

What we need is the device name, which in this case is /dev/sdc. You may have it designated differently,for example /dev/sdb or /dev/sdd (!/dev/sda is usually the hard drive, so don't use it!).

Lets assume that the ISO I want to write to that USB drive is in the Downloads folder in my home directory.

sudo dd if=Downloads/ubuntu-12.04-desktop-i386.iso of=/dev/sdc

The command will write the contents of the ISO image to the USB device.


Send current workspace to another computer?

You can use ssh with X forwarding (ssh -l remoteusername -X remotehost), this will allow you to run individual application on remote machine, not the whole X-windows system. See this page and this AskUbuntu solution for details.


Can't Execvp " No such File or Directory " Error in geany Editor

In order to get shell path corrected, go to Edit > Preferences > Terminal > Shell: and set that to whatever shell you use. For example /bin/bash.

By default the shell path is /bin/bash.


I cannot change the grub Default item from OS-1, but I can from OS-2 (dual-boot 10.04 on both)

The problem is that you currently have two Ubuntu installations, each with their own grub.cfg, but only one grub installation. When you boot your computer, grub loads and reads the grub.cfg from OS #2. To make it so that grub reads from OS #1's grub.cfg you need to install grub from within OS #1. In addition you want to make sure that OS #2 is not configured to install grub on upgrades, or else it will overwrite OS #1's grub again.

These instructions assume that you only have one hard drive, /dev/sda:

First boot OS #1 and run sudo grub-install /dev/sda (note that this should not be a partition like /dev/sda1). Then boot OS #2 and run sudo dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc, this will ask a few questions. For the first and second question leave the option at its default value (the first will likely be blank, this is normal). For the third question, "GRUB install Devices", make sure that no install devices are selected (you can toggle whether a device is selected with the space bar, and move between devices with the arrow keys). You will be asked to confirm that you really want to continue without installing grub, select yes.


So I got my answer in https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2332052. Asked the same question.

sudo apt-get install ppa-purge
sudo ppa-purge ppa:strukturag/libde265
sudo apt-get install vlc-plugin-libde265


For the rabbit file, paste the following into your web browser ( I assume this is where you found the original video )

http://i.imgur.com/MRtIA77.gifv

Right click on the image (NOT the download link under the image) and choose "save video as"

Using ffmpeg you can extract frames from the video (below is set for 1 frame per second you can increase this number for more image captures per second)

ffmpeg -i MRtIA77.mp4 -vf fps=1 out%d.jpg

or png

ffmpeg -i MRtIA77.mp4 -vf fps=1 out%d.png

gifv is designed to simulate gif, but is not a type of gif. It is a .mp4 or .webm video.

**edit - those rabbits look more like Guinea Pigs to me


It seems that the 64 bit drivers for hardware acceleration are not available yet.
Open Bug Report: https://github.com/raspberrypi/Raspberry-Pi-OS-64bit/issues/52
Most likely Ubuntu will obtain the drivers once they are released in Raspberry Pi OS.
It was reported in the Manjaro Forums that kernel 5.10 brings some improvements.


How can I convert .msg files (Outlook email message) into .eml?

Install the following modules:

sudo apt-get install libemail-outlook-message-perl libemail-localdelivery-perl

When installed, download the .pl file named msgconvert.pl, then run:

./msgconvert.pl --mbox [desiredFilename].eml [currentFileName].msg

Now you can open your .eml file in thunderbird.

Reference:

Kosala's - Blog: Convert Outlook .msg to Thunderbird .eml
libemail-outlook-message-perl
libemail-localdelivery-perl
Virustotal report for msgconvert.pl


How to configure two interfaces for internet and lan?

If you want to configure Static IP address you need to edit the /etc/network/interfaces and you need to enter the following lines replace eth0 with your network interface card

sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

Set the primary network interface - to internet

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.xxx.xxx
gateway 192.168.xxx.xxx
netmask 255.255.255.0

then configure second interface - to lan

auto eth1
iface eth1 inet static
address 192.168.yyy.yyy
gateway 192.168.yyy.yyy
netmask 255.255.255.0

You need to enter all the details like address,netmask and gateways values after entering all the values save this file and you need to restart networking services in debian using the following command to take effect of our new ipaddress.

After entering all the details you need to restart networking services using the following command

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

Setting up your hostname upon a ubuntu installation is very straightforward. You can directly query, or set, the hostname with the hostname command.

As an user you can see your current hostname with

sudo /bin/hostname

Example

To set the hostname directly you can become root and run

sudo /bin/hostname newname

When your system boots it will automatically read the hostname from the file /etc/hostname

When it comes to DNS setup Ubuntu doesn't differ from other distributions. You can add hostname and IP addresses to the file /etc/hosts for static lookups.

To cause your machine to consult with a particular server for name lookups you simply add their addresses to /etc/resolv.conf.

For example a machine which should perform lookups from the DNS server at IP address 8.8.8.8 would have a resolv.conf file looking like this

sudo nano /etc/resolv.conf

enter the following details

nameserver 8.8.8.8

Now to setup traffic from internet to lan and from lan to internet

The first thing to do is do enable IP forwarding. This is done either by using

echo "1" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

Then, we will add a rule telling to forward the traffic

sudo iptables -A FORWARD -i eth1 -o eth0 -j ACCEPT
sudo iptables -A FORWARD -i eth0 -o eth1 -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT


How can I edit the Menu entries in the taskbar?

Okay, I did this myself.

I found the file I needed by right clicking on the existing menu item and choosing "Properties."

From there, it points to a .desktop file (mine was in /usr/share/applications, as I suspect most of them are...)

I edited that with "sudo emacs" and added the different path to the application.

Save the file and it opens the new one perfectly.

In doing this, I noticed that the exec was simply "digikam" so perhaps a better way would be to have pointed whatever file "digikam" was linked to to the new location?

If anyone wishes to tell me the proper way to do this, that'd be great.  But at this point at least my way worked.  :-)


It depends on whether you still have the private key, or not.

Having access to the private key:

You're lucky, and will be able to revoke the key. It is as easy as running gpg --edit-key [key-id]. Inside the edit menu, run revkey. Import the revocation certificate if needed (gpg --import [file]), and send it to the key servers (gpg --send-keys [key-id]).
Having no access to the private key:

This is very bad, as you're now not the key owner any more, but an "evil attacker".

Short answer: You're out of luck an will not be able to remove the keys, they will stay forever.

Long answer, with some perspective:

In future times, it might be possible to brute-force old RSA 1024 keys within a reasonable amount of computing time. But don't expect this happen soon. Quantum computers might change this situation, once they actually arrive.
There is another thing you can do to at least hint that you're not using these keys any more: OpenPGP knows so-called designated revocations, where a key may be revoked by another one. You could use your newest key to generate such revocations, but be aware these will not really be valid (as the old keys very likely did not specify your new one as designated revoker). But other users might observe this and draw their own conclusions. In the end, it's the best thing you can do.

Anyway: you're nor alone, this happens to a lot of people. If the keys do not have any certifications, it's pretty safe to ignore them anyway, as anybody could have created fake keys for your name (and even key ID).

GnuPG 2.1 automatically generates revocation certificates together with new keys. Make sure to generate one manually if using an older version, and also make sure to have a save backup of this certificate: I recommend creating a QR code (qrencode is helpful here) and print it on a piece of paper you could also hand over to a trusted person (the only thing that could happen is this person maliciously revokes your key, but cannot gain further access).


Error Installing Lubuntu Over Ubuntu – Please Help!

First of all

Did you remove the ubuntu components as it says here on the site you linked?

Second of all

If you don't mind losing any data, you could follow this tutorial, create a bottable CD and/or flash drive, and run the lubuntu install from there.


You can customize the look of ubuntu with themes,

so you could install a theme like this and some icons and it should look pretty close to windows 95!

To install:

Install http://ubuntu-tweak.com/ .
Download and extract the theme into your .themes and .icons folders respectivly (found in your home directory press CTRL+H to show hidden files.)
Launch the tweak tools program, and go to "Tweaks" and click on theme.
From there select the theme you want!

Good luck!


"ls" is not listing any user's under /home directory in Ubuntu

It might be easier to simply add a new user. Have you tried to do the following commands?

sudo useradd -m username
sudo passwd username

Replace username with a an account name.

The -m in the useradd adds a folder in the home directory. Maybe the last user used a location other than the home directory for users but I recommend sticking with the way it's "supposed" to be done.


Note: AVOIDING THE DEBATE ABOUT ANTIVIRUS !!!

Not all malware is a "virus" . For your user case, scanning a shared removable device, you can scan your flash drive from either Linux or Windows.

From Ubuntu see - How do I scan for viruses with ClamAV? .

Be warned, however, in general windows antivirus scanners are better if you still use windows.

Linux antivirus have 2 broad "problems" :

False positives - You will need to read and investigate the output of clamav and any reported "infected" files. Google search the reported file.
Linux antiviurs can quarantine suspect files, but there is no way to remove the virus from Linux other than to delete the files.

mkdir /$USB/VIRUS
clamscan -r --move=/$USB/VIRUS /$USB

Where "$USB" is your mount point (see Why has Ubuntu moved the default mount points? )

Note: Linux security is very different than Windows security and in general "viruses" are almost non-existent in Linux.

Ubuntu security has it's foundations in :

File permissions.
Running with a limited account.
UPDATES - your system was patched long ago for all known Linux viruses. Updating is a critical feature of security.
Apparmor

I suggest you read https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BasicSecurity and https://help.ubuntu.com/lts/serverguide/security.html


None of above apps work for me. I've got ffmpeg (command line program) to do the job. I was not able to use the Ubuntu supplied version of ffmpeg, which is actually avconv, as it won't accept the pulse parameter. So I installed the 'proper' ffmpeg using
How to replace avconv with (the real) ffmpeg and have it work right?

and that did the job. I'm going to write a Gambas3 app to do the job with a GUI.


Ubuntu Screen rotation of 90° after successful login

That is a confirmed bug in 14.04 after using the button, the screen rotates on the next restart. There's a workaround mentioned there to fix it.

an init-script, that removes monitors.xml and monitors.xml.backup on shutdown and reboot.

Start Gedit as root.

sudo gedit

Copy the following lines

#!/bin/sh
rm /home/USERNAME/.config/monitors.xml
rm /home/USERNAME/.config/monitors.xml.backup
rm /var/lib/lightdm/.config/monitors.xml
rm /var/lib/lightdm/.config/monitors.xml.backup
exit 0

Exchange USERNAME with your own and save the script in /etc/init.d.
File-name doesn't matter. I called it "orientation".

After that make the script executable.

sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/orientation

And create a link to the script, so it gets executed on shutdown an reboot.


Resume from suspend - all programs are closed 12.04

I think I found an answer to my own question.  The solution is the same one listed on here http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2150687

Create the file /etc/acpi/local/lid.sh.post if it's not already created.  You may have to make the 'local' folder.  Add the following to the file:

#!/bin/bash
grep -q closed /proc/acpi/button/lid/*/state
if [ $? = 0 ]
then
/usr/sbin/pm-suspend
fi

Then make this file executable.  Everything works for me now... at least it has so far.


PDFmod is in Official Ubuntu Repository (packages.ubuntu.com). So you can easily install it using the following command ( Not other repositories or files needed):

sudo apt-get install pdfmod

Or

You can install it using Software center:


ORA-27101: shared memory realm does not exist

Although the method I'm about to explain requires (at least on my system) the /etc/init.d/oracle-xe to be executed every time Ubuntu is started:

If you've followed the Oracle 11g installation instruction straight, try this out:

rm -rf /dev/shm
mkdir /dev/shm
mount -t tmpfs shmfs -o size=2048m /dev/shm

Note: The amount of memory defined for the "size" attribute will depend on how much memory the system has available, of course, and, if you're running under 32bits OS, the specified value is the maximum allowed, otherwise (64bits) you'll be able to set a greater value than that.

As I mentioned at the beginning, would be better if you insert the code shown here within /etc/init.d/oracle-xe like this:

if [ -L /dev/shm ]; then
    rm -rf /dev/shm
    mkdir /dev/shm
    mount -t tmpfs shmfs -o size=2048m /dev/shm
fi

Best regards.


The desktop font's key location in dconf database has been changed. To change desktop font in Ubuntu 16.04 or later use this command

gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.desktop font 'Noto Sans 11'

Here I used Noto Sans as the font and 11 as size. Use any other font and size you use. If you want to use bold variant, add bold after the font name in the command.

Same can be done using dconf-editor by navigating to the respective directories.


Graphics problem in ubuntu 14.04. Everything looking like windows 98 and terminal is totally black

Right click on Desktop -> Change Desktop Background ->  in the Theme select Radiance or Ambiance(default), Even if some of them already selected.

If it's not solved, you probably changed your theme via unity-tweak-tool or Ubuntu-Tweak or something else, you can change your theme to normal in there.


How to select the output device for system sounds in pulseaudio?

In Ubuntu, pavucontrol and system settings sound are two GUIs for the same backend config. However, they manage to conflict in many strange ways. You will have to ditch pavucontrol. Just do the same thing in sound settings and it will work - works for me. Set speakers as default, and move players to headphones.


How do I get a bigger static scrollbar (aka normal scrollbar)?

I think you should be cautious there.  Many of us will NOT recommend you edit the system-wide defaults for a theme, unless you really do intend to interfere with the activity of all user accounts in the system.  If you happen to make an error while doing that, then it affects all user accounts. Another point of caution is that when packages are updated, your changes will be erased.

Another shortcoming of this strategy is that it only changes the behavior of one GTK theme, but you might want to change the scrollbar size in ALL GTK-3.0 themes.

Instead, edit configuration files inside a user account. The trick is to figure out which one is the shortest distance to the desired endpoint. The GTK file you edit is part of a CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) setup, so the customization you put in your account will modify the settings.

In your user account, in the folder ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css I currently have this in a file called "gtk.css"

.scrollbar {
  -GtkScrollbar-has-backward-stepper: true;
  -GtkScrollbar-has-forward-stepper: true;
  -GtkRange-slider-width: 20;
  -GtkRange-stepper-size: 20;
}

If you play around with this a little bit, you'll find it is possible to integrate many specific changes from the theme file you were editing above.  At one time I tried very hard to fiddle lots of settings, but I'm in the "keep it simple" mode now.

If you really do want to edit a lot of settings, the right thing to do is to COPY the whole gtk-widgets.css file and put it in your ~/.config/gtk-3.0 folder.  Then go to town fiddling with settings.

In the same folder, I have a file named "settings.ini"

[Settings]
gtk-primary-button-warps-slider = false

This prevents a click in the scrollbar from moving to a certain point in the file, instead it advances just one screen.  I prefer that!

The other thing worth knowing is that changing that theme file (either as previously recommended by @Dorian or by a user account change for all GTK-3.0 based themes as I suggest) only changes programs that are based on the GTK-3.0 toolkit.  It does not change the scrollbar for all applications. It is only for the ones that read that gtk-3.0 config file.  Since you are editing a gtk-3.0 theme, apps written with QT or gtk-2.0 will not change. Hence, changing the scrollbar size of all programs is rather more difficult/tedious than you might expect.

I have changed the scrollbar width in gtk-2.0 as well. This is done in
a separate folder ~/.config/gtk-2.0. The file to create is named
gtkrc

style "scroll"
{
 GtkScrollbar::slider-width = 20
}

Note that gtk-2.0 is a differently designed setup so the syntax is different, you can't just copy the gtk-3.0 css into the gtk-2.0 folder.

I have noticed that some applications behave badly when you make the scrollbar different because the size of the "grabber" inside the slider trough is not resized correctly. I suspect the scrollbar-dragging changes in @Dorian's file would help with that. I may come back and try that. I'll let you know.

Summary: The key "old time Linux system administrator advice is" DON'T edit config files on a system-wide basis.  You are putting your system at risk, your changes won't last across revisions, and it requires root access, which is never good for cosmetic things like this. Find a way to make changes in your user account.

PS. If you really you want to fiddle around with system files (sometimes I do if I really want to insist all users have my favorite football team colors as their wallpaper and color scheme :) ), the first thing you should do is make a copy of the original file and name the original "gtk-widgets.css.orig".  Then when you edit your file, save a copy of your edit as "gtk-widgets.css.20160919", where I have the YYYYMMDD date on the end of it. This way, when the deb package is updated, you'll have a copy of your edited file. The one you edit named gtk-widgets.css will be obliterated by package installation.


RSA key usually requires password, but doesn't on original machine?

Thanks @Jakuje, yes it was the keyring. I likely added it to the keyring when creating the key, and it unlocks automatically upon login. Interestingly, the keyring has a "Security" measure or score that I'm not familiar with. I'm guessing it's related to the number of bits?


Applications menu indicator keeps showing when deactivated

The extension threw an error during an update, but it doesn't seem it was disabled or removed. To disable the extension run the following command in Terminal
gnome-shell-extension-tool -d apps-menu@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com

To remove it completely, go to your ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/ directory and delete the folder associated to the extension, i.e. a folder titled apps-menu@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com. Then restart your GNOME Shell or re-login or reboot your system.
Note: The option you see in the Tweaks app (as in the second screenshot) titled 'Application Menu' is not for the 'Applications Menu' extension (mind the extra 's').
The option is to dictate whether the menu of an application would appear in the application window title-bar or the global top-bar (bottom one in your case). When it's turned off, the menu should appear in the window title-bar. So the option is working as intended as the menu appears in your Tweaks window title-bar (application icon at the left end, before the 'search' icon).


is there any version of ubuntu that does not have snapd installed?

You can get the smallest installer - Ubuntu Netboot Image
from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/netboot/  (LTS is recommended)
and then install all needed stuff
from it using  tasksel or regular apt / apt-get.

If you already have Ubuntu installed, then remove snapd as simple as

sudo apt-get purge snapd


Show system information at startup regardless of load

The Message of the day (MOTD) in Ubuntu is controlled by the directory /etc/update-motd.d/ (and the file /etc/update-motd, if any). Particularly, the Landscape info resides in the file /etc/update-motd.d/50-landscape-sysinfo, as simpoir mentioned in their answer.

On my Ubuntu 16.04, the file /etc/update-motd.d/50-landscape-sysinfo contains some entry settings and then an if block. So to display the information regardless of the condition, you can simply remove all contents except shebang and the if block contents. The result on my Ubuntu 16.04:

#!/bin/sh
echo
echo -n "  System information as of "
/bin/date
echo
/usr/bin/landscape-sysinfo

To do this, use the following procedure in the terminal:

cd /etc/update-motd.d                 # go to the right directory
sudo cp -L 50-landscape-sysinfo{,.bak}  # keep a backup copy: 50-landscape-sysinfo.bak
sudo nano 50-landscape-sysinfo        # edit the file contents using 'nano'
                                      # (or your favorite text editor)
                                      # and paste the above contents to it

  What is meant by load higher than 1.0?

The load tells how much the hardware resources of your computer are being requested currently. As a rule of thumb, if it’s higher than your computer’s processor (core) count, the tasks get delayed. It’s OK to get the high-load MOTD message just after boot but if it keeps appearing for several days (MOTD may update just once a day), check whether your machine is powerful enough for the tasks it’s performing.

  How to add/remove other commands to be run at cli login?

There are multiple ways and the right way depends on the purpose. You could simply add a script to the directory /etc/update-motd.d/ but it would be only run when the MOTD is updated.


Evince is not able to run (says missing shared libraries)

Your shared library is where it should be, but maybe it did not get recognized and cached properly.

The command ldconfig scans all directories that are configured to contain such dynamic shared libraries and updates the library cache and links with what it found.

Simply run it like this:

sudo ldconfig

It should complete within a second or less and will fix problems related to missing shared library links and outdated library caches.


Issues Installing & Booting from USB HDD

So I figured out the issue, there was nothing wrong with the installation or anything. What happened was that in my BIOS it didn't recognize my external HDD with the Ubuntu installation on it as a different drive than my internal SSD with Windows. I have the boot order for disks and such, but there was another boot order option within my bios. Which allowed me to select the EFI I wanted to boot from. After I selected the ubuntu installation what used to show the internal SSD windows drive then switched to grub allowing me to select between ubuntu or windows bootup.


CONNECT ERROR: PHP Extensions “zlib” must be loaded

Solution:

Go to downloader/lib/Mage/Archive/Helper/File/ in your Magento directory

and edit the Gz.php file. You need to replace:

if (!function_exists('gzopen')) {

with

if (!function_exists('gzopen64')) {

and also:

"$this->_fileHandler = @gzopen($this->_filePath, $mode);"

with

"$this->_fileHandler = @gzopen64($this->_filePath, $mode);”


Ubuntu 14.04 not detecting allocated partition on windows 8.1 laptop

I have successfully installed Ubuntu 14.04 in dual boot!
There are several steps that I followed here:

As I told you I have a disk with an MBR partition, but boot repair detected them as GPT.
Actually that was stray GPT which may remain from a previously installed OS. That's why to wipe out them I used FixParts software with live Ubuntu and used the tutorial as described here: http://www.rodsbooks.com/fixparts/.
Afterward, I tried to install Ubuntu but my allocated space was detected as "unusable space" rather then "free space" during the installation, because with an MBR disk we can do a maximum of 4 partitions and the drive that I shrank was C: having a primary partition!
That's why I shrank D: drive having a logical partition with 30GB and installed Ubuntu in Legacy mode.
After successfully installing Ubuntu I restarted my laptop, but I was not able to detect Windows 8.1 (all my data remained safe as it was earlier in Windows!)
so in the terminal I ran the command: sudo update-grub and... it detected Windows 8.1. After restarting the laptop I got an option to select either of the two OSs.  :)


Avoid terminal characters from previous terminal commands

In bash's primary prompt ($PS1) all non-printable characters (e.g. escape sequences that change the color) have to be enclosed between literal \[ and \].

Similarly, for all other readline-based apps, such as gdb, non-printable characters in the prompt need to be enclosed between a 0x01 and a 0x02 byte. You can refer to these in .gdbinit as \001 and \002.


VMware Player and Ubuntu 12.04 - Full Screen

In WMWare Workstation you can select if you want to fit the guest to the window or the window to the guest in Edit -> Preferences.

I guess this setting should be there for the Player as well and it would be at least a workaround for your issue if you just disable both or play around with it.


Why doesn't network-manager start at boot?

The 'start on' section lets you know which events need to be emitted before upstart will start network-manager.

In this case it's:

local-filesystems
dbus
static-network-up

Odds are the first two have already been emitted if you have booted to a desktop.

static-network-up is emitted by the /etc/network/if-up.d/upstart script, crucially, the event will not be emitted unless every interface configured as 'auto' in /etc/network/interfaces is up.

In my case I had a left over entry for eth0 in /etc/network/interfaces which was configured to use DHCP, but since there was no ethernet plugged into eth0 DHCP could never succeed.

You can tell upstart to emit events and can use this to check if it is the static-network-up event that's missing.

Reboot your computer and don't start network-manager
man initctl (you need to run the emit command with sudo so it's no harm to run man initctl to verify commands posted on the internet first)
sudo initctl emit static-network-up (you might need to Ctrl+C this after a while)
initctl status network-manager (to check if it started)

If this solves your problem check /etc/network/interfaces, comment out everything other than:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

Then reboot and hopefully network-manager will start as expected.


Does Geany or Gedit provide a browser protocol in the way Textmate does with txmt://?

it's possible to easily create new protocol handlers in Gnome, all you have to do is add some keys in gconf.

In a terminal, type:

gconftool-2 -s /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/foo/command '/path/to/app %s' --type String
gconftool-2 -s /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/foo/enabled --type Boolean true

Replace foo on both lines with the protocol you want to register and /path/to/app with the path to the application you want to run.
(from : http://kb.mozillazine.org/Register_protocol#All_Firefox_versions )


How to shrink an Ubuntu 14.04 partition, without losing data?

You have to boot to a LiveUSB in order to safely resize the partition.  Using gparted on the LiveUSB, you can shrink the existing ext4 partition down to make room for another partition.  You can then add a new partition for storing data there (if Windows needs to read it, then that new partition needs to be NTFS).

Back up your OS before messing with the partitioning though, sometimes you can lose data, although you should be OK if all you're doing is shrinking the partition (and the process doesn't get interrupted).


I was having this problem
This works for me in 20.04LTS with a an old dell laptop
sudo service network-manager restart
sync
...(keep executing sync until there is no delay when you hit return)
sync
ping 192.168.1.8   -c3


Ubuntu 17.10 on Wayland - (How) can I install the NVIDIA drivers?

The proprietary NVIDIA drivers are still not supported under Wayland, yet. When you want to install and use the NVIDIA drivers, you have to select Ubuntu on Xorg on the GDM login screen to enter the X session. Install the latest stable NVIDIA drivers by executing these commands in a terminal :

To install the NVIDIA drivers, execute sudo apt install nvidia-384.
Additionally you can force the GDM login screen to use Xorg by default.
To achieve this, just execute sudo nano /etc/gdm3/custom.conf.
Remove the character # from the line # WaylandEnable=false.
Now press Ctrl+X, then Y and Enter to save that change.
Restart the Ubuntu operating system, execute sudo reboot.

The installation process did not change since Ubuntu 17.04 - and on X everything is the same. The current situation might change soon, because there is already some promising work in progress to get the proprietary NVIDIA drivers running in a Wayland session - maybe in Ubuntu 18.04 it'll work.

Find more details about the current development status from the developers on GitHub :
The EGL External Platform interface  | The EGLStream-based Wayland external platform


It seems, this deflect in guest additions is popular. There are plenty of threads/tickets filled for the issue. Closed & reopened again because same version may work for some but not for others.

One related ticket: #12941 3D not working on Ubuntu 14.04.

What worked for me:

Upgraded VirtualBox to last stable release 4.3.12-93733 from:

deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian trusty contrib

Upgraded installed guest additions in Guest Ubuntu to 4.3.12-93733 that comes with it.

Well, if it didn't work, I suggest trying one of the last test case Guest additions (mentioned in linked ticket):

https://www.virtualbox.org/download/testcase/VBoxGuestAdditions_4.3.13-94438.iso
https://www.virtualbox.org/download/testcase/VBoxGuestAdditions_4.3.13-94159.iso

If still the same, try downgrade VirtualBox to older release.


Cannot apt upgrade due to kernel package problems

I managed to find a solution to the problem. Nevertheless I decided to post it as an answer if someone with the same problem struggles.
The cause of the problem:
I checked the dpkg status of the packages:
dpkg --status linux-image-3.13.0.57-generic
dpkg --status linux-image-extra-3.13.0-57-generic

The output clearly stated that the packages were in bad state. They were "not fully installed" as I have written in the question above.
The solution:
The entries of these packages must be deleted from the status file of dpkg in order apt-get to function normally. The steps are as follows:

Make sure to make a back up of the status file if something goes wrong.
sudo cp /var/lib/dpkg/status /var/lib/dpkg/status.backup

Open /var/lib/dpkg/status with your preferred text editor and search and delete ONLY the references of the broken packages. You must not delete anything else!

Run sudo apt-get upgrade to make sure that everything is fixed.


Ubuntu 13.04 hangs on reboot (shutdown works fine)

I have this issue on 5 different 13.04 systems they all get stuck in run level 1 if you use sudo reboot now, this is a serious issue, I don't want to have to physically reboot all remote servers I manage.

The solution is to use sudo shutdown -r now which works and reboots.


Can we put files other than bootable files in a bootable flash Drive?

Bootable USB Tool Data Files Storage
Data storage space depends on the Bootable USB tool used.
Mkusb will create a NTFS partition that can be used by Linux and Windows for Data storage. The partition can be reformatted as FAT32 using GParted so Apple can also use it.
Rufus and UNetbootin put their files on a FAT32 partition that can be used by Linux Windows and Apple for data. Putting data in it's own folder is recommended so it doesn't get mixed up with system files. When the USB is booted the data can be found in the cdrom folder. Data in the casper-rw/writable persistence partition/file is not accessible to Windows or Apple.
Etcher, Startup Disk Creator, dd, Disks, etc, drives can be easily modified so that unused space can be used for data, In Terminal run: sudo mkfs.ntfs -f -L data /dev/sdx3The drive must be booted at least once before making this conversion. For details see: Add NTFS Data Partition to Startup Disk Creator USB Install


The problem with winscp/file explorer not listing the directory was solved by opening up the ftp ports
sudo ufw allow 40000:45000/tcp


Deleting last few hours of zeitgeist history like in Firefox?

You need to install Activity Journal for this. The events are shown daywise and by Morning, Afternoon and Evening wise. Just right click on those events and select delete.

Snapshot:

Alternativly Stefano Candori (Activity Journal maintainer) has worked on a BIG FAT ERASER concept.

The work has landed in the source code, but it will be available in next Activity Journal release.


Eject your usb drive and restart. It looks like it is booting to your drive instead of the Harddisk.


How do I prevent Ubuntu gradually slowing down to a stop?

To diagnose this, I suggest you run top on a terminal. You can run two instances, one sorted by CPU usage (the default) and the other by memory usage. Keep an eye on memory used by applications, load average (if it increases constantly, the system will become very sluggish with values around 5), swap usage and the "wa" value in the CPU line that would indicate the amount of time a CPU is waiting for I/O.

the symptoms you describe suggest either a memory leak (which you say you don't have, could you detail how you determined this?), a CPU hog somewhere (this would lead to your fan spinning very noisily, you should notice this!), or possibly slowdown caused by the CPU overheating and going to a lower speed (if you don't notice your fan spinning up, it may be malfunctioning).

Disk problems like Uri Herrera mentions may also influence this, but if your disks are damaged to the point of causing a slowdown you'd see a lot of messages in /var/log/syslog about a failing sda. You can also look for this.


If you installed Angular Cli globally then just deinstall it with npm uninstall -g <angular cli version>


Setup LXD storage thin pool on an existing LVM volume group of the host

In the lxd init wizzard, answer no to a question about creating a storage pool.

Do you want to configure a new storage pool? (yes/no) [default=yes]: no

The following commands need to be executed with root privileges. Switch to root with sudo -i command or execute the following commands with sudo prefix.

In this code snippet, <VG> is the host's volume group name. Use vgs command to find your volume group name. This command creates a LXD storage pool with a name pool in the LVM volume group <VG>. The pool's name in host's LVM becomes lxd-pool.

# lxc storage create pool lvm source=<VG> lvm.vg.force_reuse=true lvm.use_thinpool=true lvm.thinpool_name=lxd-pool

Afterwards, make it a default pool for the containers' disks.

# lxc profile device add default root disk path=/ pool=pool

To check if it worked as intended, use lvs and check if lxd-pool is listed...

# lvs
  LV                   VG      Attr       LSize   Pool Origin      Data%  Meta%  Move Log Cpy%Sync Convert
  lxd-pool             <VG>    twi-a-tz-- 162,00g                  0,00   1,63
(...)

... and lxc storage list to check the LXD storage configuration:

# lxc storage list
+------+-------------+--------+---------+---------+
| NAME | DESCRIPTION | DRIVER | SOURCE  | USED BY |
+------+-------------+--------+---------+---------+
| pool |             | lvm    | <VG>    | 3       |
+------+-------------+--------+---------+---------+


firefox shows only blank screen when opening new pdf

I have the same problem, and it seemed to be reported as bug already. You can mark that it affects you, too to increase its significance.

As workaround I recommend to open pdf files with Document Viewer/Evince as follows: Go to Edit → Preferences → Applications, search for "pdf" and choose Use Document Viewer:

With the file it opens another window - but Evince is very fast and lightweight, so you won't experience serious performance losses.

(how to embed Evince in Firefox with mozplugger)


Have you tried installing a kdelibs5 deb file such as this one directly?


A proxy is set using a global variable, but not all software uses this value. Sometimes this needs to be configured per application.
Read up on the most used applications here.

CPAN/PEAR/PECL:

pear config-set http_proxy http://username:password@your.proxy:8080

APT-GET:

echo 'Acquire::http::proxy "http://username:password@your.proxy:8080";' >> /etc/apt/apt.conf


Those errors are saying:

there is already a web server running on port 80, so you can't start another one
Apache can't find its PID or lock files, because it's missing some configuration and doesn't know where to look

What I think is happening:

The other web server already running on port 80 is Apache itself.  The reason it can't recognise itself is that it can't find its PID file, so it can't tell that Apache is already running.

For a service to be able to restart or stop itself with scripts, it needs to keep a record somewhere of which process it is running as.  This is stored in a PID file.  The PID file tells the restart/stop script which process the service is already running under, allowing it to be stopped.  Without it, the restart/stop script doesn't even know that the service is already running, let alone which process it's running as.

You need to check your Apache configuration directory, as something may be missing or corrupt.  If you do not find the cause and are desperate, keep a record of any customisations you've made to Apache configuration, then purge and reinstall Apache, then restore your customisations by hand.

Is it possible that this was caused by gitlab?  It's possible though it's not certain.  Some software likes to add files to Apache's configuration under, for example, /etc/apache2/conf.d/.  Check that directory for anything that looks like it might have been added by gitlab or other third party software.


Configure SSH server to NOT ask key OR password over localhost connection

You can set an empty password for the user and allow authentication with empty passwords from the localhost, by adding these lines to the top of the file  /etc/ssh/sshd_config:

Match Address 127.0.0.*
  PermitEmptyPasswords yes

That makes OpenSSH accept "none" authentication:

  The available authentication methods are: “gssapi-with-mic”, “hostbased”, “keyboard-interactive”, “none” (used for access to password-less accounts when PermitEmptyPasswords is enabled), “password” and “publickey”.

WinSCP and PuTTY try "none" authentication automatically. So they should not even ask for the (empty) password.

Thanks to @pa4080 for suggesting a simplification of my solution.


How to find eclipse workbench.xmi file on ubuntu?

The file is in your home folder, eg.:

~/workspace/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.e4.workbench/workbench.xmi

You can search it with this command.

find ~/workspace -type f -name "workbench.xmi"

I'm using ~/workspace, because that is the default path.

Alternatively, you can also use this command, but it takes a while.

find ~ -type f -name "workbench.xmi"


You can try to enable low graphics mode in Unity (1). To do that you need to edit (or create) the file ~/.xprofile and add this at the bottom:

export UNITY_LOW_GFX_MODE=1

Save, logout, login and see if it makes any difference. In the case it didn't help at all or it gives you some problem, you can just delete the text you added to .xprofile.

Also you can try to install a lightweight window manager like OpenBox or XFCE(2).

Hope this helps.

Sources:

Answer to "How do I enable llvmpipe rendering in Unity?"
How to install Xfce desktop environment?


If you like the GDM themeability - MDM is great!
MDM is currently part of the Linux Mint repository - after contacting the Andrew of WebUpd8.org he has also packaged this in his PPA.  Great going Andrew!
The following has been tested on 12.04 Ubuntu in a VM.  It also has been tested independently on 12.04 Xubuntu.
Until then (and assuming you understand the risks of using third party PPAs etc)
from the linux mint repo
sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ maya main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mint.list'
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linuxmint-keyring
sudo apt-get update

If you see the error below - dont worry, just type y:
W: GPG error: packages.linuxmint.com maya Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 3EE67F3D0FF405B2" and "WARNING: The following packages cannot be authenticated!
linuxmint-keyring
Install these packages without verification [y/N]?

from the webupd8 PPA
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
sudo apt-get update

Then install MDM:
sudo apt-get install mdm mint-mdm-themes

During the package installation you will be asked to select between mdm and lightdm.  Using your cursor keys to select mdm and tab to OK and press ENTER to select.
The following error can be ignored:
The home directory `/var/lib/mdm' already exists. Not copying from `/etc/skel'.
adduser: Warning: The home directory `/var/lib/mdm' does not belong to the user you are currently creating.

Reboot.
Configure your MDM themes using:
gksudo mdmsetup

I would strongly recommend that after you have install mdm you immediately disable the PPA via your Software Sources because you may inadvertantly install other mint packages when you do a future update.
how to theme
Download a GDM theme file (for example from this website)
You can then use gksudo mdmsetup to add the .tar.gz archive file.
As an aside, run mdmphotosetup to change your face - in my example theme above I chose one of the stock images - the blue butterfly.


You need to check which symlinks are in place. The Python binaries are located in the directory /usr/bin (check with which pythonX.Y). The python3 symlink points to the python3.5 binary.

As mentioned in the comments: if you don't want to type python3.7 every time you shouldn't change the symlink. Changing the Python version might brake system stuff in unexpected ways. You should rather create an alias in your shell. In Bash you would add something like alias python=python3.7 into ~/.bashrc.


How do I connect to Libera.Chat with HexChat?

Libera.Chat provide a guide at https://libera.chat/guides/hexchat

Open the Network List (Ctrl + S)
If the Libera.Chat network exists in the list, then click on Edit and skip ahead to step 5
If it does not yet exist in the list, click Add and type Libera.Chat, then hit enter and click on Edit
Replace the string newserver/6667 with irc.libera.chat/6667
In the User name field, enter your primary nick Select SASL (username + password) for the Login method field
In the Password field, enter your NickServ password

If you are unable to edit the User name field, the change can be made
in the User Information section on the Network List window.
If everything was configured correctly, you should see a SASL
authentication successful message when you connect. You will already
be identified to NickServ, so you don’t need to do this again.

Note:  on my Lubuntu impish system I could not skip from step 2 to 5; but that could be because my system is old (many-many-release-upgrades)


How to configure grub to boot an OS based on key press?

What you want can't be done. What will capture your F1, F2 key press and direct the computer to the specific action?

The first thing that loads is the BIOS (or UEFI). This cannot do what you want.

The second thing that loads is GRUB. This can do part of what you want but not the way you want it.

The third thing that loads is Ubuntu or Windows based on your inaction / action.

To do what you want with GRUB. You have to change the default settings:

Make Windows the default boot. Follow How do I set the grub timeout and the grub default boot entry? to change the default=0 to the number corresponding to the Windows entry in the GRUB list. Note the first item (Ubuntu) is 0, the second item is 1, etc.

Hide GRUB by default. Follow How to hide grub2 menu? so that GRUB does not show up if you don't press anything.

Progress so far:

When you press nothing, GRUB won't show and after the set timeout period Windows will boot.

When you press and hold Shift GRUB menu will pop up and you will be able to choose Ubuntu or any of the other options in GRUB including Windows.

Hope this helps


If you are using a version of Ubuntu higher than 10.10 (11.04, or 11.10), you are likely running Unity.

To install the drivers for your graphics card, type "drivers" in the Dash, and the "Additional Drivers" icon should show up. Click that, and you should get a window that is somewhat like this:

Now, I don't have any such drivers to enable, but you should see something along the lines of fglrx, Catalyst or AMD/ATI.
Select a driver, and click enable, and it will download and install the driver.
After it finishes, restart your system, and you should be able to choose the resolution correctly.


The package should be named libapache2-mod-jk .

You would therefore be able to use

sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-jk


Which ARM SoC are supported by Ubuntu/will be supported in future?

Have a look at:

Ubuntu Wiki on ARM;
Ubuntu 11.10 ARM image for Toshiba AC100 Nvidia Tegra 2;
The past, present, and future of Ubuntu on ARM.


With the help of Gmanedit
you are able to create manpages with a graphical GUI.

Gtk+ Manpages Editor is an editor for man pages that runs on X with GTK+.
Gmanedit is an application which allows you to edit manual pages (man) on Linux/Unix systems.
It is like most common HTML editors but more easy. You need to know manpages format.

According to the Debian FHS user program manpages are stored in usr/share/man/man1 or usr/local/share/man/man1.
After changing manpages it may be wise to update the manpage database by running mandb in a terminal.
Details on the manpage syntax are summarized in the manpage for man.


How do I install a .deb file via the command line?

Packages are manually installed via the dpkg command (Debian Package Management System). dpkg is the backend to commands like apt-get and aptitude, which in turn are the backend for GUI install apps like the Software Center and Synaptic.

Something along the lines of:

dpkg --> apt-get, aptitude --> Synaptic, Software Center

But of course the easiest ways to install a package would be, first, the GUI apps (Synaptic, Software Center, etc..), followed by the terminal commands apt-get and aptitude that add a very nice user friendly approach to the backend dpkg, including but not limited to packaged dependencies, control over what is installed, needs update, not installed, broken packages, etc.. Lastly the dpkg command which is the base for all of them.

Since dpkg is the base, you can use it to install packaged directly from the command line.

Install a package

sudo dpkg -i DEB_PACKAGE

For example if the package file is called askubuntu_2.0.deb then you should do sudo dpkg -i askubuntu_2.0.deb. If dpkg reports an error due to dependency problems, you can run sudo apt-get install -f to download the missing dependencies and configure everything. If that reports an error, you'll have to sort out the dependencies yourself by following for example How do I resolve unmet dependencies after adding a PPA?.

Remove a package

sudo dpkg -r PACKAGE_NAME

For example if the package is called askubuntu then you should do sudo dpkg -r askubuntu.

Reconfigure an existing package

sudo dpkg-reconfigure PACKAGE_NAME

This is useful when you need to reconfigure something related to said package. Some useful examples it the keyboard-configuration when you want to enable the Ctrl+Alt+Backspace in order to reset the X server, so you would the following:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration

Another great one is when you need to set the Timezone for a server or your local testing computer, so you use use the tzdata package:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata


Issues with CurrencyConverter qml tutorial

I used the third one "QML App with Simple UI(qmake)". I also discovered I needed to change
"import QtQuick 2.4" to "import QtQuick 2.0"
and "import Ubuntu.Components 1.3" to "import Ubuntu.Components 1.1".
Now it seems to work OK. I hope this will help some one else.

Barry


I assume you are installing from openssn-1.3.tar.gz. The README is pretty cryptic about what's needed, since it assumes you are a bit experienced and you might be compiling for any number of Linux distributions. A bit by trial and error, I got it to 'make' without error or warning by installing from Synaptic: libsdl-mixer1.2, libsdl-ttf2.0-0, libsmpeg0,sdlbasic, sdlbrt, libasound2-dev, libavahi-client-dev,
libavahi-common-dev, libcaca-dev, libdbus-1-dev, libdrm-dev, libgl1-mesa-dev, libglu1-mesa-dev,libpulse-dev, libsdl1.2-dev, libslang2-dev, libx11-xcb-dev,
libxcb-glx0-dev, libxdamage-dev, libxfixes-dev, libxxf86vm-dev, mesa-common-dev, x11proto-damage-dev, x11proto-dri2-dev,x11proto-fixes-dev, x11proto-gl-dev, x11proto-xf86vidmode-dev, libsdl-gfx1.2-4, libsdl-gfx1.2-dev, libsdl-image1.2-dev, gnu-smalltalk, gnu-smalltalk-common, libgst7, libmikmod2-dev, libsdl-mixer-gst, libsdl-mixer1.2-dev and libsigsegv2.

I built it on 12.10, so some details may differ slightly.

Good luck and have fun!


Gigabyte P34Wv4-BW1T Ubuntu 15.10 no audio from speakers

In the command line, go into alsamixer   and unmute everything ("00")
Be sure to select Auto-Mute Mod and then Disabled.

You might have to press the unmute button  FN+ if one exists.


Maybe your user files are now owned by root. Try figuring out the user with the ls -l command in your home directory.

In case it looks like

drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  4096 2011-04-24 14:55 bin

instead of

drwxr-xr-x  2 queueoverflow queueoverflow  4096 2011-04-24 14:55 bin

you can try to claim ownership of all the files by doing sudo chown -R YOURUSERNAME ~ to set the owner of all files back to your user account. Then you should be able to work again.

For a complete fix, you would then have to do sudo chgrp -R YOURUSERNAME ~ as well to get everything back into your group as well.


Mysql compressed file .gz unable to extract file part

It should not matter if you have mapped 127.0.0.1 to mysite.com, the most common problem I have had with Mysql backup script for 20 years it that there are no spaces allowed between "-u" and the username, and between "-p" and the password.


Your Ethernet advice is correct, but for it to apply you also need to open your update manager and be sure to click CHECK before clicking "install updates".


Can Empathy show what Rhythmbox track I'm listening to?

You can also just open the Edit ➜ Plugins menu in Rhythmbox and enable the "IM Status" plugin. Worked instantly for me.


No, however, as you are probably aware, the closest thing to an OoB experience is simply running through the install themselves.

Assuming you're not trying to install software for the customer, you could simply mount the ubuntu ISO directly to the HDD and then update grub.

Now, when the customer powers up the device, they can simply run through the install wizard, dictating their usernames/passwords/etc.

Aside from that, your 2 options are to either build an OoB experience for Ubuntu yourself, or educate the customer on how to use and customize the pre-installed OS.


Ubuntu 14 intermittently can't come out of hibernation / sleep mode

Hibernation mode isn't the same as sleep mode. Hibernation actually turns the computer off, meaning you need to press the power button to wake it up. For sleep, it's possible that your computer isn't designed to wake up by key-press. Try pressing the power button to wake it up instead.


2018-11-02
My recent experience installing ubuntu 18.04 on same MacBook Pro mid 2009 ( MBP 5.5 ) that had ubuntu 14.04 and for THOSE WHO HAPPENS TO HAVE A BEAUTIFULL USELESS, WOTHLESS MacBook Pro that sits around doing nothing because Mountain Lion is overpass not suppoorted and dead!
My recipe is if you DO NOT GIVE UP AND ARE VERY PERSISTENT.
I have to say It is becoming tedious or I am getting older....
First let us be clear, The ''refind'' approach did not work before and not this time again for me on this Mac Book Pro and not on a more recent Mac Boo Pro with intel i5! and not with my older big MacBook Pro 2008 with 2 Zeon cpu totalling 4 cores.
On the MAc BOOk Pro mid-2009 I tried the DVD approach and pressing C key - No success it is always rejeted.
I tried pressing the ''alt-option'' key - not much luck it would stop after starting to read the 18.04.iso DVD, then engaged in a reject... and same with a usb flash drive alone.

The approach I used that was succesfull...
I got get rid of refind , insert the DVD + the usb flash drive all at same time.
Restart pressing ''Alt-option'' key + power on switch.
I Held on, cause it takes time. Don't let off the ''alt-option'' until you see the new choice showing ''windows'' and the ''yellow usb drive''.
Select the new yellow usb drive. It should go on... with the installaton process.

The first pitfall I had to face was at the time of selecting the city/country.
My choice was Montreal,Qc ... but  that never stayed selected and it always moved  to Toronto, On ... Why? unknown.... After reselecting over 20 times I decided to keep Toronto and go on...
Then came another problem with language. In all previous installations since Ubuntu 6.XX (over 10 years or so) I always seleced English US as the language
and things would roll on to install. This time, NO it cut off and died out. I had to restart the whole process from the beginning. I found out it was a NO NO.

By luck or chance after 5-6 times, I decide to selected ''English Canadian'',''Canadian Multilingual'' and regional ''Canadian French''. That is the only way it proceeded to install. I selected the minimal, with no downloads while installing. When I rebooted I could connect to update and dist-upgrade + Install all the other apps as I liked to choose.
There must be some bugs in this new vesion 18.04-1 and I pass my experience because many may have tried to install a much better OS on these Apple products the company wants us to throw away .Apple want us to Keep up piling the waste on the planet...and give them money

Denis Gaulin


Try to change MTU in Network Manager. It works for me 2 years ago.


Terminal stops every time a yes/no question appears

The problem seems to be due to the use of gksudo. It looks like it doesn't redirect the stdin to the launched process.

As explained in the manual page of gksudo :

  Their primary purpose is to run graphical commands that need root
  without the need to run an X terminal emulator and using su directly.

It is not really intended to launch interactive console commands, sudo is designed for this kind of job.


You've got two disks:

/dev/sda is an MBR disk that holds Windows and has the Windows BIOS boot loader in the MBR.
/dev/sdb is a GPT disk with an EFI System Partition (ESP). The ESP holds both GRUB and the Windows EFI boot loader, and the MBR holds the first-stage GRUB BIOS boot loader.

Note that you've got both BIOS and EFI boot loaders for both Windows and Linux, so it's unclear how either of your OSes is booting -- in BIOS mode or in EFI mode. Given that Windows is installed to an MBR disk, my hunch is it was installed (and should boot) in BIOS mode; but it's conceivable it's booting in EFI mode, since you seem to have a Windows EFI boot loader in your ESP, even though it's on the other disk. (OTOH, those files may have been placed there by Boot Repair, which sometimes "hijacks" those names for copies of GRUB.) Both your Boot Repair and your Boot Info Script outputs include efibootmgr runs, which indicates that they were run from an EFI-mode boot; but it looks like they may have been run from a live CD, so that's not necessarily diagnostic of how your regular installation boots. Your grub.cfg file has some EFI-specific features, which also suggests an EFI-mode installation of Ubuntu, but that could be misleading.

Untangling this setup is possible but would be quite tricky. There is a potential shortcut, though:

Download the USB flash drive or CD-R version of my rEFInd boot manager.
Prepare a boot medium from the files you download.
Boot to the rEFInd medium. Its menu should appear, showing options for both Ubuntu and Windows. Note that the point of using rEFInd up to here (and in the next couple of steps) is to ensure that Ubuntu boots in EFI mode and not in BIOS/CSM/legacy mode.
Test the boot options. I expect that at least one Ubuntu option will boot normally, but Windows is up in the air. (The option might start and then hang or present an error message.)
If rEFInd can boot Ubuntu normally, and especially if it can also boot Windows, install the rEFInd PPA or Debian package in Ubuntu.
Reboot with the rEFInd USB drive or CD-R removed. rEFInd should come up, booted off your hard disk.
Boot to Ubuntu from rEFInd.
If rEFInd did not boot Windows, edit the /boot/efi/EFI/refind/refind.conf file: Uncomment the scanfor line and ensure that hdbios is among the options. This action activates rEFInd's support to switch from EFI-mode booting to BIOS-mode booting. The idea is to get rEFInd to show you an option to boot Windows in BIOS/CSM/legacy mode.
When you reboot, you should see a new gray diamond-shaped option with a hard disk badge. With any luck, this will boot Windows (in BIOS/CSM/legacy mode).
If the new BIOS/CSM/legacy option does not boot Windows, uncomment the uefi_deep_legacy_scan option from refind.conf and try again.

Note that you can delay installing rEFInd to your hard disk and edit the EFI/refind/refind.conf file on the USB flash drive if you want to test rEFInd's ability to boot Windows in BIOS/CSM/legacy mode. You might do this if you want to be sure rEFInd can boot both OSes before installing it.

The end result is that you'll boot Ubuntu in EFI mode and Windows in either EFI mode or BIOS mode, whichever was used for its installation. You may have extra boot options on rEFInd's menu, but you can trim those by further edits to refind.conf. In particular, you'd use dont_scan_files, dont_scan_dirs, or dont_scan_volumes. You can also delete pointless boot files, such as if the "Windows" boot files (/boot/efi/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/*.efi) are copies of GRUB created by Boot Repair.


A shortcut that assigns an icon to a running program window in KDE environment

Or you could just change the default icon of the program you wish to run? This is how you do that:

You need to get a .png icon file that you would like to use and copy it to the following directory

~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/

This directory would contain a number of directories (they are named after the dimensions of the icon like 16x16 or 32x32)

You need to copy your .png icon file in the correct directory so if its 16x16 issue following command:

cp icon16x16.png ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/16x16/apps

From there you would need do the following in a terminal:

sudo cp /usr/share/applications/application.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/

You need to change application.desktop to the application from which you want to change the icon (i.e. pidgin would become pidgin.desktop)

Then you need to edit the .desktop file:

nano ~/.local/share/applications/application.desktop

Look for the line that says:

Icon=application (i.e pidgin)

And change it to the new icon name without the .png prefix

Icon=icon16x16

Save changes, logout and log back in


Can I recover data from lost partitions?

Data recovery is very unlikely if you are using Ubuntu for some time. There are chances that your data is overwritten and hence available to recover in laboratory conditions, but definitely not in the home environment.

Anyway you can try to rebuild partition table to get access to previous partitions. But I assume, that if you didn't backed up your project files, then you didn't have backup of partition table as well. You can try to set up new partition table that is exactly the same as before, but it still don't guarantee any success.

Another option is the help of some data recovery company, but such services are extremely expensive, so if your project is not a life and death matter, I would not recommend it.

Well, to sum up, the best advice:

Make a backup of your important files. Always.


Sure. These instructions are for a fresh ubuntu install.

Open Déjà Dup. Search the dash for deja.

Click on the big “Restore” button.

A dialog will appear asking where your backup files are stored (your “Backup location”). Choose “Other…” and navigate to the folder of backups. On this same screen, select whether you encrypted the backup or not. Click “Forward”.

Choose the date you want to restore from. Usually you can just leave this alone, as the default is the most recent backup. Click “Forward”.

Choose where to restore. Since this is a full system backup, leave it as the default (to restore over your current install). Click “Forward”.

Review your selections and click “Restore”.

Wait. Your files won’t appear in your home directory until the entire restore is finished. It may take a while.

Reinstall any programs that you enjoyed in your previous install.

Taken from the deja dup help wiki.


Does installing Ubuntu 12.10 with 'Erase Win7' option deletes Windows partitions?

Yes. You deleted windows, all your data is lost. Time to pull out your backup USB. Also F:\ G:\ H:\ and drive labels like that are merely abstractions created by windows, (they don't exist in other OS'es) as Ubuntu may have left some of these partitions alone and only removed the main windows partition, they may still exist, open up the file manager and look in the side bar for anything without a name. (IE something that has just defaulted to saying the file system size). Also, no offence meant, but what else did you think "erase windows 7" meant?


Thunderbird download indicator for Unity?

The Firefox feature is integrated with the newest version of Ubuntu to date (12.04).

An add-on for Thunderbird was made during 11.04 days and that url can be found below:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/unity-unread-count/

This feature has been added into the Ubuntu Thunderbird build since and currently works (Ubuntu Thunderbird Version: 12.0.1+build1-0ubuntu0.12.04.1)

The download status bar feature is not a feature yet made in either the standard Ubuntu build or as a Thunderbird add-on at this point. Some ways to get this feature added to the next build of Ubuntu's Thunderbird would be by asking the question about a download status bar to the Ubuntu Mozilla Team here: https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunderbird/+addquestion

Another way to get this feature added would be to create an add-on for Thunderbird that would just help with the download status bar option for Unity and see if this feature will be added in the future (but can be used now if developed correctly).

Hope this helps.


Can I choose NTFS when creating a USB bootable device?

According to this answer it could be a problem since UEFI does not support NTFS.

Side note if possible it is suggested to use UEFI rather than legacy BIOS.


"Disable touchpad while typing" for under 1 second

I found a solution to my described problem. You can call:

syndaemon -K -i 0.2 -R -d

For me works 0.2 seconds, but you can change the value to your desires.

I could not get it running over the settings configuration, but I added the syndaemon command to my startup commands and it works fine.


How can I export all my VPN PPTP connections to known Ubuntu machines?

Archive (a.k.a. "zip") those 50 connections from the /etc/PPP/peers with their configurations in a file and unzip them at the other computer also in the /etc/PPP/peers directory.

This is how you can achieve what you want.


How to install PHP 5.5.12 (specific version) and mysql 5.6.17 on Ubuntu 15.04?

LAMP, Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP... as package doesnt have the newest releases of everything. Im sure someday there will be a LAMP package with php5.6 but not currently evidently. So that puts you with installing LAMP packages individually from source, or add a repo that includes php5.6.

You can try this page for installing php5.6.


You can use df and a one-line shell script.

First, we need to tell df to only print the percentage used:

df / --output='pcent'

Combine this with grep to get the raw number:

df / --output='pcent' | grep -o [0-9]*

This will yield e.g. "55" if the disk has been filled by 55%.

Now in the crontab, we can use it like this:

@daily sh -c "if [ $(df / --output='pcent' | grep -o [0-9]*) -gt 90 ]; then docker system prune -af; fi

In this example, we run docker system prune -af if the disk has been filled by more than 90%. Adjust as needed.


You can download the deb files (for different versions) from SourceForge here.

Then use sudo dpkg -i <name-of-deb-file>.deb to install.

The latest .deb file is this one.


How do you connect a bluetooth wireless mouse to Ubuntu Touch on mobile phone?

What you need to do is get a bluetooth mouse ylthat doea not rely on the sub dongle. I have one, a Microsoft little bluetooth mouse that I have connected to my phone without any Asturias. It works great when connected. This is the one I have https://www.amazon.co.uk/Microsoft-Bluetooth-Notebook-Mouse-5000/dp/B000TSIAQO


How can I Install the Old TweetDeck version on Ubuntu 12.10 64bits?

Adobe Air for Linux is no longer supported by Adobe. Their 64 bit support was pretty bad to begin with. The chances of you getting this to work well are pretty slim. I would recommend just using wine.

You can use the older version of tweetdeck by installing air in wine then installing tweetdeck. This should work quite well (though it's obviously not ideal).

You also install the newer version of tweetdeck via wine.

Here are some links to get you started.

New Version Post, A new version announcement stating wine works, Some poor instructions for air and wine, and finally the winehq page for air.


You can check here:

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/btrfs-tools

after the oficial versions for every release you can see "Other versions of 'btrfs-tools' in untrusted archives." section.

yes, are "untrusted archives" but you can see that Stephane Grabber (LXD Developer from Canonical) have many ones for trusty, on this, my recomendation is:

https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-lxc/+archive/ubuntu/buildd-backports

for backport for several developer packages, and you can see btrfs-tools here.

Now this is the first part, the other part is that you upgrade your kernel too, for kernel package for btrfs (btrfs from kernel <> btrfs-tools, different things):

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack

and install linux-generic-lts-xenial for newer kernel now.


Low Res Boot Screen Resolution Nvidia driver 418 Ubuntu 19.04

Hum... Are you sure you are not running wayland? Because it's incompatible with Nvidia drivers. Check this: How can I tell if I am running Wayland?. And maybe this https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-disable-wayland-and-enable-xorg-display-server-on-ubuntu-18-04-bionic-beaver-linux


Shortcut keys don't work in Eclipse when I change keyboard language

This longstanding bug "Shortcut keys doesn't work with Arabic and other non-English keyboard", which affected all non-Latin keyboard layouts, has now been fixed as of version 4.7.2.

However, the version of Eclipse in the repositories is out of date, so you will need to install the latest version, which is available from the Eclipse website, and not by using the package manager.

More help on installing this way is also available here.


After searching a lot, there was some methods to do it but I liked the theme available on the https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1482847/
The process is simple, first download the package as per to your choice, which is in my case is Ubuntu.tar
Extract the downloaded package in /boot/grub/theme
but before doing it we have to create a directory in this path to avoid confusion if we have more than one theme.
In my computer there is not theme folder, so first creating the theme folder:
cd /boot/grub/
sudo mkdir theme

after this, create the theme folder in the /boot/grub/theme/ to extract the package files in it, In my case the theme folder is Ubuntu
sudo mkdir Ubuntu

Now we have to extract the package in the theme folder, so I will use tar command, go back to your package directory and type the below command:
#sudo tar -xvf [Package_name] -C /boot/grub/theme/[Folder_name]

sudo tar -xvf Ubuntu.tar -C /boot/grub/theme/Ubuntu

the package will be extracted to theme folder, now we have to edit the file /etc/default/grub, open the file with gedit or nano editor:
sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

and add the line,
GRUB_THEME=/boot/grub/theme/[THEME_FOLDER]/theme.txt

In my case the THEME_FOLDER is Ubuntu, so:
GRUB_THEME=/boot/grub/theme/Ubuntu/theme.txt

save it.
and the last step is to update the grub
sudo update-grub

My grub theme at final


How do I troubleshoot a local webserver?

Total red herrings everywhere. I moved files from /var/www/luna to ~/Public/luna and my home directory wasn't world executable. Spotting this helped: Permissions issue: how can Apache access files in my Home directory?


How to overwrite to the older version Ubuntu in dual-boot desktop?

It depends on how you installed Ubuntu. If you created a root partition only, you'll have to backup your data before reinstalling your OS, which could be through the First option or through "Something else" (I mean, if that's the case, you'll necessarily need to erase your data). However, If you have a /home partition where your data is stored, then you should choose "Something else" and do the proper installation steps.

It won't be too much different from the first time you installed your system. There you'll be able to pick the same partitions already in use by your Ubuntu and set them as you wish, since you'll have the choice to either format or not your /home partition (in your case, you'll have to uncheck "format" checkbox for your current /home partition).

The link below might be helpful. It carefully explains the possibilities.

https://itsfoss.com/replace-linux-from-dual-boot/


Each line in your cron will be executed by a separate process. Perhaps you should run them inside a subshell? * * * * * root (. /home/nigel/.bashrc && script).

Also, your .bashrc will usually have assumptions about it being a login shell (certain variables are assumed and their absence might make the script crash). For example, your .bashrc might start with this line, which means that nothing from your .bashrc will take effect when run from cron:

[ -z "$PS1" ] && return

You might want to try with a small script that just has variable settings.


Ubuntu 16.04: Doxygen fails claiming it cannot open libclang

After upgrading to Ubuntu 18.04, installing flex and bison with apt, and rebuilding from source using these instructions, I was finally able to get doxygen to work.


Just reinstall Linux (Mint or Ubuntu), if that is the OS you want to have.

During the installation, it will ask you how you want to partition your hard drive. Select 'Erase disk and install Ubuntu'. That should take care of what you want. (The following image won't  show your exact options, but should look close enough).

The only thing I can think of that you might have trouble with is having Ubuntu registered as an UEFI boot option. But if you already had a dual-boot system working, then this might not be an issue at all.


I would try booting into recovery mode and running fsck.  fsck check and repairs (if necessary) your filesystem.  Shut down your computer, then boot.  During the boot, hold down the shift key so that the grub menu is shown. Select the “Advanced options”.

Then choose “Recovery mode”.

In the next menu select “fsck”.

You will be asked if you wish to have your / filesystem remounted. Select “yes”.

You should see something similar to this.

You can then resume to normal boot, by selecting “Resume”.

Select Normal Boot

Instructions taken from this site, where there is more information available: https://www.tecmint.com/fsck-repair-file-system-errors-in-linux/


Installing Nvidia Graphics drivers on Ubuntu-GNOME 16.04

You most likely have hit this bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-gnome/+bug/1559576 which renders Nvidia prime cards currently unusable. You can maybe try some workarounds provided in the comments, but these might not work. However please do share your findings!


How do I remove nitrogen back to Ubuntu's default wallpaper manager?

I figured it out. I had to enable icons on the desktop in order to solve it. This seemed like the easiest process:

Install Gnome Tweak Tools: sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool
Check the option Desktop -> Icons on Desktop


It doesn't really matter from what location you boot Ubuntu from and in what location you have drives with other data partitions. As long as it's connected, it's accessible.

I'm now describing the possibilities. Probably the likeliness of infecting your Ubuntu system with malware that is capable of performing all those tasks is very close to zero, but it would be technically possible.

Theoretically possible attacking scenarios:

Let's first assume the easiest situation for malware: You have mounted the file systems on the internal Windows (? I assume this, but it doesn't matter) somewhere. This allows every program to access (read and write, depending on your mount options you might also restrict that though) all files on the mounted device simply by their path. Programs can/do usually not distinguish between data from different disks as Linux systems mount all partitions into the same virtual file system tree structure. So it's just like the files were on your Ubuntu drive. No difference as soon as it's mounted. The risk of damage is pretty high.

The other possible situation is that you did not mount the Windows partitions from Ubuntu. In that case no application (including malware of course) running as normal user can access the files there. To mount the partition root privileges are required, so that would be impossible as well unless you voluntarily enter your password in the wrong place. As long as you don't enter your admin password or run any possibly infected software as root, your Windows data is pretty safe.

But how would the situation change if either the malware you get is smart enough to bypass Ubuntu's user privilege restrictions and become root by itself or if you accidentally give it your admin password or manually run it as root? In that case the application can not only mount all available drives to access the contained file systems and do whatever it wants with the data there (steal data, delete or overwrite data, install other malware), it can also get direct read/write access to all connected raw disks and partitions without mounting them. This raw disk access is pretty useless to steal your data or modify something to inject other malware to your Windows system (unless it ships its own NTFS/other file system driver), but it is perfectly enough to make a data massacre and simply overwrite or format the entire partition or disk. This is an extreme risk for all your data on any connected device!

Conclusion:

Software running under your normal account without root privileges can only damage data on unmounted devices/partitions if it is smart enough to exploit a not yet discovered and fixed security vulnerability in the Ubuntu system to cause a privilege escalation and become root without user interaction. You can protect yourself from this pretty unlikely case vary well by always installing all available software updates as soon as they get released. The risk that you yourself grant a malicious application root access by simply entering your password where you should not have done so is much higher. Be vigilant.

Data on a mounted device/partition is always in danger. Usually you mount the partition in a way so that your user account has full read/write access. So all applications you run can do the same, including malware.

If a malicious application somehow manages to run as root (by tricking you to enter the admin password or rarely by exploiting a vulnerability), there's nothing that can stop it from accessing all physically connected devices. It can either mount them and read/write access the containing file systems to get to your data or it can simply access the raw partition/disk and just format or overwrite it to harm you. Whatever runs as root on your system has ultimate powers over everything connected to the computer.

How to protect myself?

Never enter your admin password in a password prompt you did not expect!
Always install the available updates as soon as possible.
Never install software or run scripts from untrusted sources.
The official Ubuntu repositories can be trusted, third party PPAs are usually safe (especially those maintained by well known teams) but are not necessarily checked. Remember that everybody can create a PPA. .deb packages downloaded from any arbitrary online source are highly insecure.
Never run anything as root that you do not ultimately trust.
Avoid doing anything as root wherever possible. Prefer a restricted user account for daily use over your admin account.
When you have to operate as root, do that using sudo or similar tools, do not log in as root.
When you have to run interactive applications as root (such as your files manager or an editor) try to keep the session as short as possible to avoid accidentally performing other tasks as root.


formatting hard drive before installing Ubuntu

Firstly, backup anything you want to keep.  When partitioning, it is very easy to lose all data on the harddrive if you don't know what you are doing

Then given C:\, D:\ and E:\ in windowsXP are distinct partitions, you'll most likely have to sacrifice (at least) one of those three partitions to install Ubuntu. You'll need feasibly at least 8GB hard disk space for Ubuntu.

When you boot Ubuntu from CD/DVD or USB device, go through the wizard (one of the only wizards you'll get in Linux) and when it comes to choosing how Ubuntu will be installed on your hard drive, pick the last option (whether it be "do something else", "manual partition", "for advanced users", etc.). The exact wording will vary from one version of Ubuntu to another, but in my experience it's always been the last option. You should be familiar with your C:\ D:\ and E:\ partitions (they'll all be NTFS or FAT and you should be able to recognize them based on how much disk space each partition takes...if not you can always mount them and look through them in the file manager).

You'll want to make a SWAP partition, which should be double your RAM (if you have 1GB RAM, make a 2GB SWAP partition). Next make an ext4 partition (at least 8GB...you can adjust the size of Linux filesystem partitions but it does take a long time) and make its mounting point / (that's right, a simple forward slash). That way Ubuntu will be installed on "drive /". You can create mounting points for your NTFS/FAT partitions (don't reformat them, simply "use partition" as NTFS (or FAT) and write in your mounting point...such as /media/drive_d or /media/windows. Follow the wizard to its end and then you will have an operational Linux computer (with a dual boot if you kept your XP partition, the bootloader will automatically detect it).

Alternatively, if all you want to do is partition your hard drive, it is possible to grab a live CD just to run gParted, mind you gParted runs quite nicely in an Ubuntu live session as well.

Here's an old screenshot of that important step that takes place during the Ubuntu install wizard:


How to install an app via Ubuntu Software Center AND visualize those commands in terminal?

Note that although this is the literal answer to your question it's not the answer you really want.
You can see the "commands" the software center is issuing by enabling debug mode. You do this by opening a terminal and typing the following command:

software-center --debug

You will see all the program's output including package management activities. Look for the parts that contain Apt. You won't be able to reproduce these commands though, unless you make a program yourself that makes use of the same libraries and daemons that software-center is using. If you want to learn more about package management on the command line you are better off reading the man page of apt-get and apt-cache for starters. You do this by issuing the man apt-get and man apt-cache commands on a terminal.


How to make Kubuntu automatically switch between the laptop monitor and the external monitor when it's plugged in?

I have the exact same problem and would like to know if theres a workaround for this. Its one of the reasons preventing me from switching unfortunately. I have been told that it is possible using xrandr but i am not sure how...

Edit:
Im actually appalled at how hard it is to get Kubuntu (or any other linux distro as far as i can tell) to just "work" as you would expect it to.

The best option i have found till now is to run the xrandr command using the --auto option at startup. This will automatically enable all available displays to their preferred resolution/rate etc

In Kubuntu, this can be run at startup in ~.kde/share/config/krandrrc

[Display]
ApplyOnStartup=true
StartupCommands=xrandr --auto

There are still a few problems however.

If for example you want to enable only your external monitor if it is available and enable your laptop display if it is not available, this appears to be quite hard to do without writing some bash script to parse the output of the xrandr command.
Another problem which i really find annoying is that xrandr (or kubuntu/linux) does not adjust itself well when you remove a display on the fly. If i have my external monitor plugged into my laptop and decide to remove it while kubuntu is running, all i seem to get is error messages and i cannot seem to find a way to automatically make it switch to the laptop display (as you would naturally expect it to).

I really really hope theres a better alternative to this setup. It must put a lot of users off to create such a complicated an elaborate setup just to get external monitors working.

I might post this reply as a new question in the hopes that someone would be able to point out better options.

EDIT2: I also noticed that gnome session automatically performs this switching so its deffinatly functionality that is available.

Why does Kubuntu not have such a standard feature?

EDIT3: Kubuntu 13.04 actually has this automatic switching feautre. It has been implemented as part of kde 4.10. The only problem is that i find Kubuntu 13.04 really really buggy compared to 12.04

EDIT4: Kubuntu 13.10 has been released and I can honestly say that it is a very stable version which you should change to. It contains the support for switching automatically between different display configurations as you plug in and out monitors. Highly recommended!


You will need to install the xserver-xorg-video-displaylink package to get support for this class of devices (identifiable by connecting via USB and presenting a green screen on successful initialisation).  The X server does not currently support hotplug events on the USB bus, so you will need to create an xorg.conf file to use such a device.  An example xorg.conf file is included in the package (under /usr/share/doc/xserver-xorg-video-displaylink/examples).

If the above is not working for you, please file a bug against xserver-xorg-video-displaylink: there may be some variation between displaylink devices, which may not be handled completely by the existing driver (but any such lack of support is a bug to be fixed, rather than a result of user error).


No "chat" option in Ubuntu GNOME 15.04 for facebook account

You can still open Empathy, go to the "Accounts" section and add a "Facebook chat" account type. That worked for me.


After installing owncloud-client (the GUI) it worked:

sudo apt install owncloud-client


How to switch to a signed kernel in Ubuntu 18

Hold down (right) SHIFT to display the menu during boot. Use the 4th kernel by selecting it in "Advanced options for Ubuntu" submenu in GRUB during startup. Then proceed with these instructions to remove the extra kernels.


The issue was with pycharm  when I stop using it didn't have the issue anymore


how to fix: no unity, no launcher no dash in ubuntu 14.04

I would like to thank all people who gave me suggestion. I used all of them. But sorry to say nothing actually worked. It appears that there is the problem with upgrade itself. Ultimately i created a live usb. Surprisingly my system which has nvidia graphics card and 8 gb ram with intel cor i3 processor booted without the nvidia drivers. I created the 64 bit version and did a fresh install using this stick. And now i have a perfectly running system without using any extra drivers. If anyone has data locked in ubuntu partition then i would suggest that you do a fresh install with the option of retaining the existing operating system. this would install the new ubuntu on a partition carved out of existing ubuntu partition. the data would now be available just as another mount. you can extract the data and then go to the disk manager to delete that partition. be clear that deletion of that partition would break grub. for repairinggrub you need the boot-rejpair tool . This question has been answered on this forum.

Please excuse me for my lack of technical language. I am a simple user who has learnt ubuntu through forums like this only.


How do I open Unetbootin on my pc using Ubuntu 15.04

After the installation via

sudo apt-get install unetbootin

the binary is in

/usr/bin/unetbootin

Open your Dash and type

unetbootin

or start unetbootin via terminal:

unetbootin


Looks like you didn't define a default gateway, you need to use:

d-i netcfg/get_gateway string 192.168.1.1

Of course the ip address in the above command is just a guest, you should adjust it to the correct gateway of your network.

I can't test it, but it's very likely that you will need this too:

d-i netcfg/get_nameservers string 192.168.1.1
d-i netcfg/confirm_static boolean true

The first one will set the dns, I don't know why or if the second one is necessary but it appears in the documentation so...


Follow these steps:

Download the right dropbox version.
Open a terminal (by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T and type: ~/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd and hit Enter
Restart your machine.

After the restart you can see a dropbox icon click on it and this will download additional files. You will then asked to login details.

If this doesn't work, leave a comment.


Have you tried playing Typing of the Dead using wine? It has a gold rating which means it should run fine.


How to make Ubuntu to show a notification when there is a btrfs checksum failure?

Running the script below in the background will both show a notification:

...and add the error message with time stamp to the log file (~/btrfs_errors.txt), looking like:

Mon Oct 10 08:25:12 2016
BTRFS error (device md2): csum failed ino 7551 off 2310144 csum 623932426 expected csum 3810482428

The script

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import subprocess
import time
import os

log = os.path.join(os.environ["HOME"], "btrfs_errors.txt")

while True:
    msginfo = subprocess.check_output(["dmesg", "--read-clear"]).decode("utf-8")
    match = [l for l in msginfo.splitlines() if all(["btrfs" in l, "error" in l])]
    if match:
        with open(log, "a+") as out:
            out.write(time.ctime()+"\n")
            for l in match:
                out.write(l)
            out.write("\n\n")
        subprocess.Popen(["notify-send", "-i", "gnome-disks",
                 "BTRFS error","Please see ~/btrfs_errors.txt for details"])

    time.sleep(4)

How to use

Copy the script above into an empty file, save it as check_btrfs. Copy the script into a location where it cannot be edited without administrator's privileges, such as /usr/local/bin. Make the script executable(!).
Add the script to the sudoers file, as described e.g. here. This is necessary, because the script is run by using sudo. The script reads from dmesg, and clears dmesg' history after reading, to prevent accumulating the amount of output to read. Clearing dmesg needs sudo privileges.
This means however that if you need the output of dmesg for other purposes also, we need to work around. If so please mention.
Test- run it with the command:

sudo check_btrfs

if you copied it into a directory in $PATH. If not, include the path to the script.
If all works fine, add it to Startup Applications: Dash > Startup Applications > Add. Add the command:

sudo check_btrfs

Since I cannot test it with "real" btrfs errors, I ran it with checking for other events (pluging in a usb stick). In final the script, I used the message format in your link. The script checks on lines, containing both strings btrfs and error.

WHat it does

The script:

once per four seconds reads the output of dmesg
in case of an error, it shows a notification and adds the error to the file: ~/btrfs_errors.txt
clears the history of dmesg to keep the script "low on juice".


How can I install Windows from within Ubuntu so that I can boot into it Windows when I start my computer?

If you install Windows, after installing Linux, the windows installation will wipe out your MBR (Master boot record). I think which ever way of install windows (after installing linux) by using a CD, USB, or PXE boot, you wont be able to restore your MBR... Which mean you will not get a ubuntu boot menu (grub or grub2 depends on your version of ubuntu), to select the OS you wish to boot into.
Now you will have to use ubuntu live cd, or some other live linux cd to boot into linux and restore grub.

But since you donot have USB or CD support. I think the only way is, if you motherboard supports PXE boot. So back to your question, to install windows without USB or CD room, follow link A, link B, link C. Then boot into linux using PXE boot again, restore grub. All the best, it looks too much of tricky work to me.


LibreOffice Calc goes grey takes lots of CPU cycles

Open any LibreOffice application. In the Tool-bar under "Tools" use the drop-down and open "options" look for "memory". This setting as well as others will help limit CPU cycles and decrease lag time.