Ubuntu doesn't boot after booting into windows, acpi errors / exceptions

It seems I found the issue thanks to the help I received from reddit:

Fast Boot.
But be careful, I thought I was ok about fast boot because it was (at least once) a BIOS option, whereas I recently found out that there's a software switch in windows settings. This is how to disable it.

The problem was fast boot kept "active" some data caching about an NTFS partition I shared between Ubuntu and Windows, preventing the former to boot completely.

Now everything is working fine.


Unity doesn't load any GUI with a Nvidia card

I incurred a similar situation not so long ago, after trying multiple things what worked was

Ctrl-Alt-t unity-tweak-tool --reset-unity

and restart.

Installing unity-tweak-tool:

sudo apt-get install unity-tweak-tool


Ubuntu 14.04 + Virtual Box and CorelDraw

As an aside, I'd recommend putting your swap on your HDD rather than your SSD - this is for two main reasons:

4 GB of a 24 GB drive is a large percentage. SSDs run best when you're using below a certain percentage of their storage (I think the number is around 80%)
Lots of writes from the swap, which will likely lead to degradation of the hard drive faster

As for the rest of it, you should be good to go. Virtualbox lets you put the windows 7 virtual hard drive wherever you please.


I had an identical problem on Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS "Trusty Tahr". My solution was

 sudo apt-get install gir1.2-vte-2.91

It appeared to fix this problem and update-manager launched. I then found I had an issue with 1404_HWE_EOL and updated to 16 LTS.


apt-get upgrade fails with `Permission denied`

OP posted:

So, it suddenly dawned on me that the permission denied thing may be related to the noexec option in /etc/fstab (I'm mounting /var on a different disk than /).

Turns out I'd used the following mount option:

UUID=b5ae50cf-58e6-46f8-8313-6c1492dcc8ad /var ext4 defaults,users 0 0

and, while defaults implies exec, users instead implies noexec - as the latter is last, it will override the previous one.

Changed it to defaults only and all is now ponies and sunshine with apt-get. Leaving it here in case it helps anyone else out there.


I'm not that sure but the best way to partition is to run gparted from a DVD-disk or a flash drive running lubuntu (because it's lightweight) or something else that has gparted included or is installable. From there you can run gparted by typing on the commandline sudo gparted. It opens a gparted window and from there you can resize, delete and add partitions without interfering with the program partioning so you can unmount all.


Tracker, which is enabled by default in Ubuntu since 19.10, is a file metadata indexer. It indexes your files to allow for fast searching for content in files from Files or Gnome Documents, find pictures in Gnome Photos, allow to rename files based on metadata, and so on. The different processes you see are processes that crawl your file system, read the file contents and index that contents in database indexes for fast search through Tracker-aware interfaces, such as Files and Gnome Shell activities overview.
Until Ubuntu 19.04, Ubuntu developers removed Tracker from Gnome Shell when they started to use it in Ubuntu 17.04. Performance issues were the reason. The first time, the full index is created, which takes significant time. Subsequently, the index is updated on the fly, which as such does not incur severe performance penalties. Nevertheless, even on a fully indexed system, there is intensive processor use for many minutes shortly after log in. On a system with a modern multicore processor, this does not significantly affect interactive processes, but on older systems, it could lead to significant perceivable decrease in system response for up to ten minutes.
Tracker increasingly is more integrated with Gnome Shell and currently is a hard dependency of file manager nautilus (aka "Files"). As a result, Tracker is enabled by default in Ubuntu versions after the long term release 18.04 (i.e. 19.04, 19.10 and later).
Disable Tracker
To avoid the period of high processor use after login, you may want to disable Tracker. This will disable full text search and renaming of mediafiles based on tags. It will disable the "Starred files" feature (Ubuntu 20.04). However, file name search in Files will continue to work. In the overview, it appears as if only recent files are found after disabling Tracker.
Edit 2020-05-09: method that uses systemd to disables tracker completely for the current user (preferred)
Run the following command to disable tracker for the current user:
systemctl --user mask tracker-store.service tracker-miner-fs.service tracker-miner-rss.service tracker-extract.service tracker-miner-apps.service tracker-writeback.service
tracker reset --hard
sudo reboot

To undo, reenable the services:
systemctl --user unmask tracker-store.service tracker-miner-fs.service tracker-miner-rss.service tracker-extract.service tracker-miner-apps.service tracker-writeback.service
sudo reboot

Edit 2020-05-09: Following is the method as I originally posted, and which is based on disabling autostart on login of the tracker components. I leave it for reference, but disabling the system services (see above) is the most elegant, most complete and recommended way to fully stop Tracker for your current user without breaking your system.
With following commands, you 1) stop the tracker daemon (for this session), 2) move to your local autostart directory and 3) copy startup files for the various Tracker processes to your local autostart folder. In 4) you disable the autostart of these processes, and in 5) you free the disk space taken by the cache that Tracker may already have made (could be 2 - 4 GB).
tracker daemon -t
cd ~/.config/autostart
cp -v /etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-* ./
for FILE in tracker-* ; do echo Hidden=true >> $FILE; done
rm -rf ~/.cache/tracker ~/.local/share/tracker

When you restart, the tracker daemon will run, but no indexing will be performed, so your processor only will work when you work.


Teamviwer runs natively on Ubuntu.

You can download it following this link:
https://www.teamviewer.com/en/download/linux/

The downloaded file is a .deb package. Please see How do I install a .deb file via the command line? for instructions on how to install this via the command line.


How to fix “Bad minute” error while installing a new crontab

Each crontab line must start with a time at which the command should be run and then the command. The general format is:

Min Hour Day Month DayOfWeek Command

So, to run command at 10:15 every Sunday, you'd do:

15 10 * * 0 command

I'm not sure what your commands are, but you have lines that don't start with a time definition. I don't understand what lines like this are:

* * * * * /usr/local/ampps/php-5.6/etc

That's a time but no command. You're giving it a directory. And lines like this have commands but no time:

/usr/local/ampps/www/localshop.dev/bin/magento cron:run | grep -v "Ran jobs by schedule" >> /usr/local/ampps/www/localshop.dev/var/log/magento.cron.log

So, make sure you follow the format and you should be fine. If this is not clear, edit your question and explain what commands you are trying to run.


Error running sudo (sudo: unable to resolve host [name]: Connection timed out)

This is most likely a case of a mismatch between records in /etc/hosts and your hostname in /etc/hostname.

Firstly, let's start with /etc/hostname and get your actual hostname with the command cat /etc/hostname which will output the hostname of your system:

foobarbaz

(foobarbaz is an example of the output).

Next, let's check your /etc/hosts file.  You should see something like this from cat /etc/hosts:

127.0.0.1   localhost
127.0.1.1   foobar

# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
::1     localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters

In this example, you can see 'foobarbaz', the hostname I have on my system, is not in /etc/hosts.  So let's add it, edit the line for 127.0.1.1 to include your hostname on it sudo nano /etc/hosts will open the nano text editor on the command line so you can edit and save the file - note you'll have to wait for the 'timed out' problem to resolve itself again):

127.0.1.1   foobar foobarbaz

Save the file, then try your sudo commands again.  You should no longer see this error.


Edit your /etc/apt/sources.list/ and comment out all of the lines that contain either vivid or edgy by inserting a # character at the beginning of each of the lines. These lines don't make any sense, since edgy (6.10) and vivid (15.04) can't match with your version of Ubuntu, which is trusty (14.04).

From the terminal run the following command to edit /etc/apt/sources.list/ with nano text editor:

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

The instructions for using nano editor are always found at the bottom of every page. The only two nano keyboard shortcuts that you need to know are for WriteOut and Exit. Press the keyboard combination Ctrl+O and after that press Enter to save the file being edited. Press the keyboard combination Ctrl+X to exit nano.
Update your software sources.

sudo apt-get update

Your edited question shows that your release has changed from Ubuntu 14.04 to Ubuntu 15.04 which is an end of life release. If this is the case, your best option is now a clean install of the latest version of Ubuntu, Ubuntu 16.04. I would also recommend not enabling any Ubuntu 6.10 (edgy) software sources this time.


You cannot just force a program to use UDP instead of TCP, without rewriting parts of the program itself. These protocols are just too different to be interchangeable.

TCP is stream-oriented (the receiver sees everything as a continuous
stream in the exact order that the sender output it); UDP is
datagram-oriented (each datagram is sent in a separate packet, and
they can even get reordered).
TCP has flow control, so the sender (or the sender's OS) knows
exactly how fast it should send data without overflowing the link or
significantly affecting other connections. UDP doesn't do any of this
– a poorly-"forced" program might start sending gigabytes of data per
second over UDP, regardless of link speed
TCP has retransmission, so if a packet is dropped in the middle (e.g.
because the network is overloaded or has other problems) it will be
resent. If the protocol depends on a reliable transport and you force
it to go over UDP, the connection might die completely as soon as at
least a single packet gets lost. (And packets will get lost; see
points #1 and #2 above.)

Hope this helps!


I have been looking into this myself and as yet, I cannot fond an app that can do a full system backup/restore, like the laptop ones you have mentioned. Smartphones by their nature are intended to function differently from desktops/laptops. They store a lot of their data in the cloud (contacts, emails, photos and such like). However, this will not cover sms's, photos not uploaded to the cloud and such like. For this I would suggest archiving /home/phablet. The following link may be of use to read, but this only covers a manual backup. It is not the app you are lookig for.

How do I backup my Ubuntu Phone?


Windows 8 doesn't boot after installing Ubuntu (UEFI)

I was able to restore Windows 8.1.1 to the boot menu after restoring the MBR. I booted from a live USB with Boot-Repair-Disk on it, used Gparted to check the disks, then somehow found a way (I don't remember the actions, for which I apologize) to boot into Windows. I then used EasyBCD to make Windows the default option and rebooted, which restored the MBR boot menu with Windows at the default option and Ubuntu listed as the second option.

I think the app that actually helped me RESTORE THE MBR was Grub Customizer.


Is wine still installable on a up-to-date ubuntu 14.10 (utopic) amd64 system?

All you need to do is to install the correct version of wine1.6 for your Ubuntu 14.10 64-bit operating system. Open the terminal and type:

sudo apt install wine1.6

If you also want to install winetricks run the following command:

sudo apt install winetricks

wine1.6 is still installable in Ubuntu 20.04, but in Ubuntu 18.04 and later wine-stable is a newer version than wine1.6 and in Ubuntu 16.04 and later wine-development is an even newer version than wine-stable.


How do I correct my keyboard/mouse pad issues?

Not sure what version of Ubuntu you're running but if you can find settings there will be a section on touchpad/mouse settings that includes sensitivity, have you tried adjusting those?


How disable boot splash screen on Dell XPS 13 Ubuntu 14.04?

As a last try I had a look in /boot for the term splash which showed that quiet splash has been added to the end of my grub settings.
So I ran

  grep -R splash

in /etc which listed a script

  default/grub.d/40_oem-add-missing-default.cfg

# in case "quiet splash" is missing
# e.g. (LP: #1304155)

for __i__ in "quiet" "splash"; do
       echo "$GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT" | \
               grep -q -w "$__i__" >/dev/null 2>&1 || \
               GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="$GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT $__i__"
done
unset __i__

Bingo. This script adds quiet and splash in case it is removed - dafuq!

Anyway I just commented the script line by line, ran sudo update-grub and now I see all boot messages.


TCP Server and client application for ubuntu

For a "raw" TCP connection, take a look at netcat or telnet. There's a good chance you already have them installed, or you can easily get them with apt-get.

I'm not sure what you mean with the receive/send files bit, that depends on whatever service you have running for that on your module (ftp, scp, http, webdav, smb, ...).


I'm not sure, but I think you can just add Japanese and Chinese input sources, and that it falls back to xim when they aren't used.

Did you try it?


Keyboard, wifi, graphics card and trackpad not working in Microsoft Surface Book 3

Since you are working with a 3rd party kernel, you will get better feedback if you can identify the specific issue that relates to Ubuntu and rephrase the question focused on that issue.  For example, for the kernel you mention, the installation guide says that Surface Book 3 is supported and they have a Debian package available, but it also says you need to add modules to "initramfs/initrd".  If you didn't know how to add those modules, that might be a more relevant question for askubuntu, but if you tried and it still didn't work, you might reach out to the support channel for the 3rd party kernel.
Also, if you just need to get up and working for college, I would consider installing Ubuntu on WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux), which will avoid all the compatibility issues, but still let you have a full (non-GUI) Ubuntu installation inside of Windows.  https://ubuntu.com/wsl


Mounting disk automatically on terminal and persist across users and restarts

To mount a device at boot and have it visible in terminal you need to edit /etc/fstab

You can find explanation on how to edit and examples at this link

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Fstab


How to use scp to transfer files between ubuntu and windows10?

If we talking about the new feature of the latest Windows build: OpenSSH in Windows, you just need to quote the Windows path, because it usually contains colon sign :, that in general is used to indicate the remote host within scp, rsync, etc.

So to copy a file from (local)Ubuntu to (remote)Window you can use a command as:

scp ./test.txt user@windows-host:'D:\Downloads\'

To copy a file from (remote)Window to (local)Ubuntu you need to add the option -T (explanation) then the command will look as:

scp -T user@windows-host:'D:\Downloads\test.txt' ./

scp -T user@windows-host:'D:\Downloads\*.*' ./


There is currently no fix for this available. According to Valve, they are working on improving the HUD to support bigger screen sizes.

Update

Valve updated the HUD (a while ago) which allows playing the game on the full screen without any further issues.


command line SMTP client such as cleancode's email

Would msmtp fit your needs? It means you can run SMTP commands locally without running a full SMTP server. msmtp will just forward it to a SMTP server and is configured by a file in your home directory, so different users can have different configurations.

msmtp has been in the ubuntu repositories for a few years now.


dpkg-deb: error: subprocess paste was killed by signal (Broken pipe)

If you are using a custom PPA for Gimp remove it.

Remove package gimp-plugin-registry and gimp

sudo apt-get remove gimp-plugin-registry gimp

Fix packages

sudo apt-get -f

Update Gimp package

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install gimp gimp-plugin-registry

Install gimp-plugin-registry and gimp

sudo apt-get install gimp-plugin-registry gimp


I can't log in in vsftpd with virtual users

The problem was several:

I hadn't installed libpam0g-dev before I compiled vsftpd.
In the pam file doesn't put the db file extension.

Now it's solved.


Can I directly use the Qt and GTK+ libraries I saw in the Update Manager?

There's no need to build anything. Maybe those libraries were pulled because they're dependencies of some other package you installed through Update Manager.

So i wouldn't worry about that, chances are those libraries are already installed on your system.


HP Probook 450 G3 - screen brightness hotkeys not recognized

Well I used setkeycodes in rc.local:

setkeycodes e012 122
setkeycodes e017 124

then xev told me the keys number and so is my .xmodmaprc:

keycode 130 = XF86MonBrightnessDown
keycode 132 = XF86MonBrightnessUp

and now it work 8-)


Openprinting-gutenprint lsb install-info error 127

As sugested in a thread linked in the comments above, run:

sudo mv /var/lib/dpkg/info/install-info.postinst /var/lib/dpkg/info/install-info.postinst.bad

If it doesn't solve your problem, revert it by

sudo mv /var/lib/dpkg/info/install-info.postinst.bad /var/lib/dpkg/info/install-info.postinst


Dependancy is not satisfiable, trying to install pencil2d

Ubuntu has the same version (0.5.4~git20160910.8850389+dfsg-1 to be correct) on his universe repo but repackaged (Nightly 20160910) and without the libgif4 dependecy.

I cleanly installed it on my system with sudo apt install pencil2d without problems.


The command that is failing is the one that installs the key that is used to sign the MongoDB packages, so that apt-get can determine whether the packages are genuine.

You could try skipping installation of the key and adding --allow-unauthenticated when you run apt-get to install the packages. See How do I bypass/ignore the gpg signature checks of apt? for more detail.

But ideally, you need to figure out why you cannot connect to the key server to install the key.

Firstly, you can check your Internet connection and DNS by visiting http://keyserver.ubuntu.com/ in a browser. If your Internet connection is working you will see a simple page entitled SKS OpenPGP Public Key Server. This shows that your computer can look up and connect to the key server.

If this is the case, then it is likely that the problem is a firewall or proxy server restricting your access to the specific port that apt-key wants to connect to. See No gpg key from behind a firewall for details for how to allow apt-key to connect via a proxy server.


Installing Ubuntu Server 16.04 on Vmware

Note: This will not work if "Easy Install" option in VMware is used, which will automatically set up Ubuntu with a default set of settings. When prompted to create the Virtual Machine, select the Ubuntu version in the OS type, but don't specify the ISO and use "I will install the operating system later", do not automatically power up the VM, and edit the VM to use the ISO, then boot to the ISO and manually do system setup as detailed below.

I'll walk you through the manual partition manager for Ubuntu Server.

Initially it is the same install, I'll assume you have gotten that far.

Once you get to this screen, select "Manual":

This next part depends on how you want to install, however due to you using VMWare we will use the full disk. (Note: This is for a single partition install, if you plan to have multiple partitions, e.g. One for "/" and another for "/home" then you will need more partitions)

Okay, here is where things get interesting. In manual mode, you have to do a bit more to get the same job done. Though ensure you follow these steps precisely.

First things first, create the partition table.

You should see something like below, select yes.

Build your partitions.

Select your new partition table.

This should bring up a new menu. To save you the hassle of adding swap partitions select "Automatically partition the free space"

This will bring you back to the previous menu, select the "Ext4" partition.

This should bring up the partition's menu, select "Use as:".

Then select "Ext3 journaling file system"

Then select done in the previous menu, and then finish in the Manual partitioning menu. Then continue on with your installation! Hope I've been helpful.

Josh


I assume you already have a network share set up such that you can see the else structure from movies. In that case, you can do something like:

movies:~$ sudo ln -s /path/to/else/usr/local/sbin/scripta /usr/local/sbin/scripta
movies:~$ sudo ln -s /path/to/else/usr/local/sbin/scriptb /usr/local/sbin/scriptb

Then, you'll be able to see scripta and scriptb from your movies computer, but not anything from movies in else.

Note that you'll have to do an ln command for each file you want to symlink - it wouldn't be safe to try to symlink the entire directory contents.


The official program of shipping free CDs is long since dead.  Those links are obsolete, as the ShipIt program was discontinued in 2011 with 11.04.

There used to be CDs on the Canonical / Ubuntu store, but it seems like they only provide a Bootable USB Stick category now, and currently only provide 16.04 sticks.

There are third-party companies such as OSDisk.com which sell and ship Ubuntu CDs/DVDs, and software repository DVD sets, but they are not free.  OSDisk at least do appear to do worldwide shipping, but I don't think it's free unless you're buying $20 or more of disks.

So, your only options are to purchase USB media from Canonical, or purchase CDs from a third-party provider, or to download Ubuntu and create the installation media yourself.  (There are no more "Official CD/DVDs" anymore)


Is it possible to have a small indicator showing that updates are available (red for security updates) instead of having the update manager pop up?

12.04 onwards
Newer Ubuntu users can find the settings in dconf-editor. Install dconf-tools
 if necessary.
Then, launch dconf-editor, then go to  com > ubuntu > update-notifier and uncheck auto-launch.

Older versions of Ubuntu
Open Configuration Editor , then go to apps > update-notifier, then uncheck auto-launch.

You'll still be able to see

Updates Available

from System menu accessible from the top-right corner of the screen.


where does "sudo apt-get install " get the packages?

Packages come from repositories

Canonical, the maker of Ubuntu maintains repositories in the internet. The information about the location of the repositories are installed along with Ubuntu in a list.

There are other repositories maintained by other people. You can add those to the list if you need to install some special packages.

apt-get install will go through all the repositories in the list and find the the lastest version and download and install it. This process will also find and download and install any other packages the first package depends on.

The repository for Google-chrome is not included in the default. That's why apt-get does not work. Once you download and install the Deb file, the installation process adds the Google repository to the list. After that apt-get upgrade will find the lastest version of chrome.

Hope this helps


"No network devices available" when wireless previously worked. (14.04)

You do not have linux-image-extra for the running kernel 3.13.0-59. The kernel module ath9k is not installed. That is probably because the upgrade had been interrupted.

You need to connect to the internet by wire and run

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

If that does not install the extras, you can manually install them by

sudo apt-get install linux-image-extra-3.13.0-59-generic

but this means that some dependencies are not correct.

If you can't connect by wire, then boot with one of the previous kernels using grub menu. The wifi should work.

Then run the same commands.

Another option is to switch to 3.19 kernel by running

sudo apt-get install linux-generic-lts-vivid


How to install the google play lens on 13.04

You can download and install the lens directly.
Download googleplaylens_12.11_all.deb from Launchpad
and install it by open a terminal in the folder you downloaded it in and do a:
sudo dpkg -i googleplaylens_12.11_all.deb

After that you might have missing dependencies, so do a:
sudo apt-get install -f

to install missing dependencies. Remember that the package won't get updated itself by this way. When there is an update, you'll have to download the new .deb file and install it the same way.


How to add an application to the launcher menu of unity in my Ubuntu phone

I think I don't completely understand what you're asking. If you wish to pin (lock permanently) one app icon to the launcher, then follow these steps:

Run the desired app
App icon should appear in the launcher, long-press on the app icon
A pop-up menu should appear, select Pin shortcut option

From now on this app icon should be present in the launcher all the time (even when the app is not running).


Windows 7 committed Wubicide. How do I avoid it in the future?

Relevant part:

Corrupted NTFS filesystem
All reported cases of damaged filesystems were from users who hard rebooted (pulling the plug).
When you hard reboot, there is always a chance of damaging your filesystem, whether you use Wubi or not.
New users, unfamiliar with a new operating system, tend to hard reboot more often than necessary when they encounter problems.
If Wubi becomes damaged as a result of a hard reboot, there is a chance that Windows may also become corrupted since the principle behind Wubi is that of a virtual disk within the host operating system.
Sometimes people blame Wubi for these issues even though a quick Google search will reveal numerous cases of NTFS corruption without users having ever installed Wubi or ntfs-3g (and a full software industry lurking on that…).
If the NTFS filesystem becomes corrupted you need to run chkdsk /r from the Windows Recovery Console on the Windows CD (or other recovery CD available on the web) or in the msdos console (if you can boot into Windows).
At the moment there is no fsck for NTFS on the Linux side, otherwise it would be possible to fix these errors automatically within Linux itself, without having to rely on Windows tools.
The best advice is to simply avoid hard rebooting, whatever OS you may be using.

This means that even if you didn't used WUBI, your disk might fail if you perform the same action you did.


How to Send Files to My Computer via Bluetooth?

Search for "Personal file sharing".  Then activate "Receive files over Bluetooth".  That is it, worked for me.


The reason why isn't clear - though it appears that some programs don't distinguish between CAPITAL and lowercase usernames. As such there lies a potential for conflict if you have a Marco and a marco account.

There currently doesn't appear to be any way to have this done via the users-admin or Ubiquity - likely that these rules are hard-coded instead of pulled from the adduser.conf file.

You add the user via the command-line if you force a "bad username":

root@mine:~# adduser --force-badname Marco
Allowing use of questionable username.
Adding user `Marco' ...
Adding new group `Marco' (1002) ...
Adding new user `Marco' (1002) with group `Marco' ...
Creating home directory `/home/Marco' ...
Copying files from `/etc/skel' ...
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: password updated successfully
Changing the user information for Marco
Enter the new value, or press ENTER for the default
        Full Name []: Marco Ceppi
        Room Number []:
        Work Phone []:
        Home Phone []:
        Other []:
Is the information correct? [Y/n] y

If you want to add users without needing to --force-badname you can change this line in /etc/adduser.conf:

#NAME_REGEX="^[a-z][-a-z0-9_]*\$"

To this

NAME_REGEX="^[a-zA-Z][-a-zA-Z0-9_]*\$"

This will allow Uppercase names for users. While there is no way to add users to additional groups via the adduser command you can use the usermod command instead:

usermod -G admin Marco


Ubuntu Touch; How do I import .vcf contacts?

Ubuntu Touch has EDS (Evolution-data-server) installed. So you can sync it using syncevolution.

First install latest stable version from repo:

sudo add-apt-repository deb http://downloads.syncevolution.org/apt stable main
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install syncevolution-evolution

If you are using Google-Contacts, then export all contacts as vcf (i.e allcontacts.vcf) & then import it using following command at terminal (Change the path & database accordingly):

syncevolution --import /path/to/file/allcontacts.vcf backend=evolution-contacts database=Personal

To know the names of all available databases type:

syncevolution --print-databases

For more info visit:

SyncEvolution - Community Help Wiki
SyncEvolution


Is it safe to install Compiz Experimental Plugins 0.1.1 on Maverick?

Most of those packages are development packages required to build the plugins, it is never safe to install software using a random script.


Now that I built Unity How do I Install it?

Turns out I just had to change the cmake install prefix But this is how I do it now

Please Note that this will install a new unity and will overwrite you old one.

Date that I wrote this 10/1/2012
Ubuntu Version 12.10

1st) get the source code. we can make a place to build from , for this example I will use

~/Desktop/

get the source code

cd ~/Desktop
apt-get source unity

This will get all the source code, Or you can use bzr to get it

bzr branch lp:unity

Either way you are going to need it. You are also going to need qtcreator and all the build dependency's of Unity so

sudo apt-get install qtcreator
sudo apt-get build-dep unity

Next We open up Qt Creator,

Now We can open up are project (Unity in this case) But before we do this lets make a Build dir
So

cd ~/Desktop/unity-6.whatever
mkdir build

Now in Qt Creator we can open Unity . Go to File->open file

Next we will be asked what file we want to open up. We want to open
CMakeList.txt

Next We will be asked what Build Directory we would like to use. This is why we set up the build dir in the projects top level. IE
    ~/Desktop/unity-6-whatever/build

And this is the Directory that we will choose Then we Press Next

Next we will be asked what Arguments we want to pass on to Cmake, Now because we are building from are sandboxed (~/Desktop/unity-6-whatever/build ) folder called build. Which is one directory below the top directory we need to use

../

and also because by default Unity build is set up to install to

/usr/local/

and not

/usr/

we need to also tell cmake that also So

-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH=/usr

So all together

../ -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH=/usr

If all goes well it should set up build files to ~/Desktop/build as shown in the screen-shot

We can now Press the Finish Button. And We will get a screen that looks like this.

Now to build Unity and test are results. The first thing that we need to do is tell Qt-creator what we want to run after compile. We do this by clicking in the Icon that looks like a monitor and then select

unity-standalone

NOTE: There are some issues with unity stand alone and it will not run as fast nor will it render graphics as good as when installed. But when you install on to system all will be ok. I am also unsure when Unity started using Unity-standalone as before 5.10 I was a Unity 2d kinda guy :)

Now we can Run Unity press ctrl+r (keyboard shortcut) to run and Unity will compile.

Or we can press the green arrow button also in QT-Creator to Run

Well Compiling (Running)  We can watch to see what is going on by pressing the

Compile Output Button

Once compile is done (takes a minute) Unity-Standalone should launch

Now we can play around with the Unity that we just built Go back to QT Creator and and Press the stop button. To Kill Unity-Standalone

Next we can start editing files if we like to make Unity more how we like

After editing we press
ctrl+s  to save are work
then Run it again
ctrl+r

and once we have Unity the way that we want it We can do One of two things
Build a debian package of it. Or Install using make. Installing with make is easy.

cd ~/Desktop/unity-6-whatever/build/
make
sudo make install

Now you can log in and out to restart and use your unity
If you want to make a debian package of it this is how you do it.

cd ~/Desktop/unity-6-whatever/build
make clean
cd ../
rm -r build
sudo apt-get install packaging-dev dh-make dpkg-dev
fakeroot dpkg-buildpackage -F

Then Look in the dir above where you are (~/Desktop) there should be all the packages there at this point if you made it correctly

Think that you got something that should be used by others ? or want to let your friends use it ? We can use launchpad for this. go to launchpad and make a repo  (ppa)

then

cd ~/Desktop/unity-6-whatever/
dch -i

enter in the changes that you have made and the version number and codename.Then save the file (changelog file)
then

debuild -S -sa
cd ../
dput ppa:YOUR_LP_NAME/YOUR_PPA_NAME unity-whatever.sources.change

and let launchpad build it for you.

Now the easy way
 to reset unity to default would be to purge it Nux and compiz and re-install

sudo apt-get --purge remove unity compiz libnux-3.0-*

then re-install

sudo apt-get install unity compiz libnux-3.0-*

and other ways that are listed on this page.

I hope that this helps and happy hacking


How to enable clipboard and drag-and-drop while using Ubuntu 20.10 as guest for VirtualBox 6.0.24 running on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS host?

The problem is caused by incompatibility between installed virtualbox host 6.0.24 and virtualbox guest additions 6.1.14.
The solution is to install latest virtualbox-6.1 package on the host. And then deb-version of Guest Additions will work as expected and fully-functional including clipboard and drag-and-drop.


No response on remote reboot or shutdown

Almost the same, for me:

sudo systemctl --force --force reboot

Worked perfectly.

Here's a good explanation about that.

https://blog.kerus.net/1897/systemctl-force-force-reboot


Installing tools for 3.12 kernel to run perf?

You could rebuild your current kernel to get the tools. Also you may be able to install the tools still using:

sudo apt-get install linux-tools-3.12


Just because it was opened with winRAR, it doesn't mean it's a .rar file. WinRAR is able to open .iso files.
It's probably a .iso file as well, if you downloaded from the ubuntu official site.

sorry for any language mistakes.
Have a nice day :)


Do Linux drivers depend on Linux kernel?

You are right: Linux kernel comes with the drivers (aka modules), and if some of the drivers do not work, you may try installing or booting (if you have) a different kernel.  For instance, on 14.04LTS, kernel 3.19 I had a problem with the Virtual box kernel module. But with 14.04LTS and kernel 3.13 there is no problem. Notice, however, that if the Linux kernel does not contain a driver for your device, you may need to find it from your manufacturer or from open source repositories.

To try a different kernel, first find out what kernel you are using with the uname -r command in terminal. Then reboot the machine, chose Advanced Options for Ubuntu, and choose any option that has a different kernel number (than shown with uname -r command ) and not displaying ( recovery mode ).

If your bluetooth donlge works with an older kernel, it's definitely a driver issue.

To tell Ubuntu to boot with your desired kernel, first remember the item you chose from the Advanced Options menu.  For instance, I want to always boot with 3.13 kernel, and I chose to boot with Ubuntu, with Linux 3.13.0-62-generic.

Next, run this command:

awk '/menuentry/ && /class/ {count++; print count-1"****"$0 }' /boot/grub/grub.cfg | less

Remember the number next to your desired entry.

Finally, run  the command bellow. REPLACE X   in GRUB_DEFAULT=X with the number you remembered.

sudo sed -i  's/GRUB_DEFAULT=0/GRUB_DEFAULT=X/g' /etc/default/grub; sudo update-grub

Now, when you reboot, you should be booting with older, working kernel.


ubuntu 14.04.1 mounts /dev/sda1 and asks to unmount while partitioning

This seems to be bug 1347726 which has not yet been resolved.

So I guess the answer, as of mid 2016, is: No.


I guess you can log in.
Ok, let's try it:

try to bring up a terminal to you with Ctrl+Alt+T or with @Misery suggestion in comments.
type in terminal

unity --reset
Get in X with Ctrl+Alt+7 (?)
If (3) fails, type this on terminal

sudo reboot 0

enter password and hit Enter.

I am really not sure if this gonna works because I am a Ubuntu noob too. But good luck! =D


ubuntu xfce/lxde 16.04-19.10 virtualbox bidirectional clipboard sharing, window resizing, shared folders not working

A variation of this answer worked. Specifically,
this fixes it for lubuntu 16.04:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-guest-x11 xorg-video-abi-20 xserver-xorg-core

if it asks you about keeping a file or installing the new one, press i to select the new one/package maintainer's version;
sudo VBoxClient --clipboard

this fixes it for lubuntu/xubuntu 18.04 - 20.04 and derived variants:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-guest-x11

if it asks you about keeping a file or installing the new one, press i to select the new one/package maintainer's version;
sudo VBoxClient --clipboard

Note, as raghavan said, that installing virtualbox-guest-x11 package as shown, also resolves the issue where the shared folders are not visible.
And installing this package (and rebooting the virtual machine) also resolves the guest window not autoresizing when the vm window is resized.
This also resolves the issue where paste after reboot no longer works and sudo VBoxClient --clipboard command needs to be repeated. After installing  virtualbox-guest-x11, the --clipboard command does not need to be repeated after each reboot.


Workspace switcher bindings do not always work?

Have you set nautilus to not draw the desktop? To find that out, run this command:

gconftool-2 --get /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop

If it returns true, then its a bug. I know you've filed this bug and I'm the guy who commented there.

If it returns false, then its a known issue in Unity, to not un-focus closed windows when Nautilus is not running (currently it depends on Nautilus to take away focus from the closed application).


Generally pidof(8) and in more complicated cases pgrep(1) are excellent tools to find the ID of some processes.

If you want to find all children of a particular process, you need to dig through the /proc file system yourself. Let's assume you're looking for the children of process 2345:

for PROCSTAT in /proc/[0-9]*/stat; do
    read -r PID PROCNAME STATUS PPID TAIL < $PROCSTAT
    if [ $PPID -eq 2345 ]; then
        echo $PID
    fi
done

If you choose to use

system("foobar");

instead of

if (fork() == 0) {
    execlp("foobar", "foobar", NULL);
}

it'll actually spawn two processes: /bin/sh as a direct child and foobar as a grandchild.


Shading or blending issue with Nvidia GeForce GT 610

Well, as it turns out, my problem had nothing to do with my video card, or driver, or Ubuntu itself.  Apparently my monitor has settings for different types of things that may be displayed upon it.  A few are "Sports", "Theater", "Night Scenes", "Scenery", and a couple others including "Normal".  This is controlled by one of the switches along the bottom of the monitor (pressing the switch cycles through the various options).  So, apparently while I was working on the changes I made I ended up moving the monitor in such a way as to press that switch and change its setting.  Once I discovered this I tried various settings and discovered that the "Normal" setting made everything look as it had before.


What is the difference between remove and completely remove in synaptic package manager?

To add a little bit to what Rinzwind and nickguletskii said, completely remove will remove configuration files in /etc directory, but never touch personal configuration files in your home folder, that can only be removed by hand.


Here's a PPA for Go. It worked for me, just now, and is maintained with golang versions for 10.04-12.04.

https://launchpad.net/~gophers/+archive/go

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gophers/go
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install golang-stable

Substitute golang-weekly or golang-tip if you want more up to date snapshots.

References:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Go
What are PPAs and how do I use them?

EDIT: unfortunately the Gophers archive is now discontinued (see the PPA description and http://blog.labix.org/2013/06/15/in-flight-deb-packages-of-go), now replaced by a custom binary that can be used to generate Go deb packages from source.

However, the golang package currently in Trusty is relatively recent (1.2.1 at the time of this writing). If you are still on 12.04, you might want to use this backports PPA:

https://launchpad.net/~bcandrea/+archive/ubuntu/backports

 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bcandrea/backports
 sudo apt-get update
 sudo apt-get install golang

which I maintain trying to keep up with stable updates in official Ubuntu repositories.


Loading problem in Gmail, it quits in middle

Looks like it's more of a Web browser problem. Which browser are you using on Windows and on Ubuntu?

If you're using add-ons on Firefox or chrome try disabling them one by one to see which one might be causing the issue. Try again with a different browser if it's not better.

Lastly you can try and change the default DNS of your system. Go to:
"Settings > Network" click to edit your network card. Under IPV4, uncheck automatic DNS and try using google's public DNS instead.

8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4


disper -l on 18.04 generates a segmentation fault. Are there alternatives?

I can confirm this bug 1655275, it seems to be caused by some anti-Meltdown or anti-Spectre fixes (or something similar as CVE-2017-1000364 with Scilab) since my apport crash log in comment #9 contains strange lines:

SegvAnalysis:
 Segfault happened at: 0x7f1233f14add <XQueryExtension+45>: mov    0x968(%rdi),%rax
 PC (0x7f1233f14add) ok
 source "0x968(%rdi)" (0xffffffffd63a1188) not located in a known VMA region (needed readable region)!
 destination "%rax" ok
SegvReason: reading unknown VMA

I have never used disper, but I can recommend xrandr as alternative.


Dell Vostro 3400 reboots instead of shutting down

Ok the problem seems to be laptop-mode-tools. I purged this package and viola all is well and I think after installing this package the problem started.


How paranoid should I be that the automatic package manager mechanism is going to remove packages that I use?

You don't need to be paranoid, you just need to read and comprehend what apt-get is telling you. Obviously, if you remove glchess, you will lose the ability to play glchess!

At some stage you must have removed a package (probably a metapackage) which depends on some or all of the packages you see.

To figure out which metapackage this might be, you can use apt-rdepends. This tool can look up "reverse-dependencies", or packages which depend on a given package.

For example, for the package gnome-backgrounds:

$ apt-rdepends -r gnome-backgrounds
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
gnome-backgrounds
  Reverse Depends: gnome-core (>= 1:3.0+1ubuntu1)
gnome-core
  Reverse Depends: gnome (= 1:3.0+1ubuntu1)
gnome
  Reverse Depends: gnome-desktop-environment (>= 1:3.0+1ubuntu1)
gnome-desktop-environment

This shows that gnome-backgrounds is depended upon by a single package, gnome-core, which in turn is depended upon by gnome, which in turn is depended upon by gnome-desktop-environment which no other packages depend upon.

Now you can find out about these packages:

$ aptitude show gnome-core gnome gnome-desktop-environment

You will see that these are all meta-packages, and on your system at least one has been removed. You can then:

Try to apt-get install the 'lowest' dependency, in this case gnome-core. However this may pull in additional packages that you don't actually want to install (read what apt-get says, don't just hit enter).
If you don't want everything the meta-packages would install, and you want to keep all the packages, just run aptitude keep-all. This will mark the outstanding packages as 'installed', and apt-get will stop reminding you about them.
If you only want some of the packages, you can apt-get install them before running apt-get autoremove. You'll have to read the package descriptions to decide which ones you want.

I think the main point here is that apt-get is just a tool. It doesn't know what you really want, it just does what you tell it. For this reason you should never blindly trust it to do the 'right thing', because often this is not the same as what you told it to do! This is doubly important to keep in mind when running sudo commands, since it's so easy to do catastrophic damage to your system.


Will Ubuntu One be available in spanish?

There are no plans to translate the website into any language in the foreseeable future.


Can I install Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on a SAMSUNG NP300E5X-S01?

I would recommend you run Ubuntu 12.04.3 LTS, 64-bit. You have a slower hard drive,  but suitable RAM and processor for this. You will need to configure graphic drivers, for optimum performance.

LATER

With that as a benchmark, you can then see if a LiveCD trial of Ubuntu 13.10 64-bit is any improvement. You will also need to configure graphic drivers, for optimum performance.


How do I install Ubuntu on an external hard disk?

OP answered his or her own question within the question. I moved the answer here

To start, connect the disk via the USB cable to any computer and boot the computer using an Ubuntu 11.04 CD or DVD. At the disk partitioning step, select “Something else.” Doing that and clicking on Forward will take you to the installer’s advanced partitioning tool, which you are going to use to configure the partitions for Ubuntu 11.04.
dualBoot4

If the computer you are using has only one hard disk, the external drive you are attempting to use will be detected as /dev/sdb. The “b” shows that it is the second disk detected by the system. The task now is to select the disk and configure the partitions for Ubuntu.

Note: If you are intend to use this installation for serious stuff, it is better that you encrypt the disk. That entails using an Alternate Installer ISO image. You may use how to install Ubuntu 11.04 on an encrypted LVM file system as a guide, if you decide to follow that route.

By default, Ubuntu’s installer configures two partitions – the first for /, the root directory, and the second for Swap. When creating partitions for installing any desktop Linux distribution, my recommendation is to create the following four partitions:

/boot, the boot partition. This is where programs critical for booting the system will reside.
/, the root directory. The bulk of the programs used for running the system will be installed here.
Swap, unformatted disk space for use as virtual memory.
/home, the partition where your home directory will be located. In the course of using the system, files and folders you create will reside in various folders here.

To begin configuration, select the free space as shown, and click on Add.
eBuntu

The first partition will be for /boot. When setting up an LVM-based system using an Alternate Installer ISO image, the default disk space allocated to /boot is 258 MB. However, only about 22 MB of that is used, so anything thing between that size range will do. For this tutorial, the default will be used. The mount point will, of course, be /boot. The default file system is ext2. OK.
eBuntu1

The second partition will be for Swap, disk space that the computer may use as virtual memory. The suggested size for Swap is 2000 MB. Select “swap area” from the “Use as” dropdown menu. OK.
eBuntu2

The third partition will be for /, the root directory. The default journaling file system on Ubuntu 11.04 is ext4. You may stick with it or choose another journaling file system available. The installer recommends a minimum of 4.4 GB for Ubuntu 11.04, but on a new installation, less than 3 GB of disk space allocated to / is used. Note that as you install additional application after installation, disk space used will grow, so be generous here. I think 10 GB should be more than enough. OK.
eBuntu3

The last partition will be for /home. The file system is ext4, and you may allocate all available disk space to it. OK.
eBuntu4

All the partitions have been configured. Before clicking Install Now, you need to change where GRUB, the boot loader, will be installed. By default, it will be installed in the MBR of the computer’s internal disk. But that is not what you want. You want to install GRUB in the MBR of the external disk. So, under the “Device for boot loader installation” section, click on the dropdown menu, and select the entry that matches the external disk that you just partitioned. Once that is done, continue with the rest of the installation.

After installation, test the system by booting the computer from the disk. You may use this as a mobile clone of your Ubuntu 11.04 installation.
eBuntu5


How to fix broken libstdc++6, which also breaks apt

At first, I was able to get a graphical login shell by manually copying libstdc++.so.6.0.21 into its place from a Live USB stick, and creating a link to it from libstdc++.so.6. I used this exact version because it seems to be the default for Ubuntu 16.04 and also contains the "21" mentioned in the error message ("version GLIBCXX_3.4.21").

While this seemed to satisfy the graphics stack, the same errors remained with apt and other programs depending on libstdc++6. After some trying, I could resolve the whole thing with the following steps, using dpkg to manually (un)install things:

Download the deb files in the right versions for 16.04:

wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/main/a/apt/apt_1.2.10ubuntu1_amd64.deb http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gcc-5/libstdc++6_5.4.0-6ubuntu1~16.04.4_amd64.deb

Removing this specific version, which blocked installing the correct libstdc++6:

sudo dpkg --force-depends -r libstdc++6:i386

Then install the "good" version from the files:

sudo dpkg -i libstdc++6_5.4.0-6ubuntu1~16.04.4_amd64.deb apt_1.2.10ubuntu1_amd64.deb

And finally, fix the mess I left while updating and trying things out:

sudo apt-get install -f


How to use Secure Erase and is it on the install CD?

Secure Erase is part of ATA standard and it is supported by stock-standard hdparm program:

  ATA Security Feature Set

   These switches are DANGEROUS to experiment with, and might not work with some kernels.  USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

   --security-help
          Display terse usage info for all of the --security-* options.

   --security-freeze
          Freeze the drive´s security settings.  The drive does not accept any security commands until  next  power-on  reset.
          Use this function in combination with --security-unlock to protect drive from any attempt to set a new password. Can
          be used standalone, too.  No other options are permitted on the command line with this one.

   --security-unlock PWD
          Unlock the drive, using password PWD.  Password is given as an ASCII string and is padded  with  NULs  to  reach  32
          bytes.   The  applicable  drive password is selected with the --user-master switch (default is "user" password).  No
          other options are permitted on the command line with this one.

   --security-set-pass PWD
          Lock the drive, using password PWD (Set Password) (DANGEROUS).  Password is given as an ASCII string and  is  padded
          with NULs to reach 32 bytes.  Use the special password NULL to set an empty password.  The applicable drive password
          is selected with the --user-master switch (default is "user" password) and the applicable  security  mode  with  the
          --security-mode switch.  No other options are permitted on the command line with this one.

   --security-disable PWD
          Disable drive locking, using password PWD.  Password is given as an ASCII string and is padded with NULs to reach 32
          bytes.  The applicable drive password is selected with the --user-master switch (default is  "user"  password).   No
          other options are permitted on the command line with this one.

   --security-erase PWD
          Erase  (locked) drive, using password PWD (DANGEROUS).  Password is given as an ASCII string and is padded with NULs
          to reach 32 bytes.  Use the special password NULL to represent an empty password.  The applicable drive password  is
          selected  with the --user-master switch (default is "user" password).  No other options are permitted on the command
          line with this one.

   --security-erase-enhanced PWD
          Enhanced erase (locked) drive, using password PWD (DANGEROUS).  Password is given as an ASCII string and  is  padded
          with  NULs  to  reach 32 bytes.  The applicable drive password is selected with the --user-master switch (default is
          "user" password).  No other options are permitted on the command line with this one.

   --user-master USER
          Specifies which password (user/master) to select.  Defaults to user  password.   Only  useful  in  combination  with
          --security-unlock, --security-set-pass, --security-disable, --security-erase or --security-erase-enhanced.
                  u       user password
                  m       master password

   --security-mode MODE
          Specifies which security mode (high/maximum) to set.  Defaults to high.  Only useful in combination with --security-
          set-pass.
                  h       high security
                  m       maximum security

          THIS FEATURE IS EXPERIMENTAL AND NOT WELL TESTED. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

For obvious reasons, I haven't tested those options, you'll need to see if they work yourself :)


Keyboard, wifi and bluetooth not working

This is solved. Luckily it was easier than I thought.

Although rebooting the laptop didn't work on it's own, removing the battery whilst powered off, and then booting up again with the battery back in has solved all problem.


Installation of Ubuntu 13.04 on Virtualbox "breaks"

It is not unusual to experience crashes from bugs not yet fixed with the version you installed from the downloaded .iso installer.

It is therefore best advice to immediately upgrade your guest OS after completing the installation. In case we do not have access to the desktop we can do so from booting to a root shell and issue the following commands:

apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade

We also have to install the Guest Additions for Compiz.

This will add considerable stability to our system. However some crashes may still occur occasionally.


First, this command will find and delete all files older than 7 days in any subdirectory in /home whose name starts with securityuser:

find /home/securityuser* -mtime +6 -type f -delete

You need -mtime +6 and not +7 because -mtime counts 24h periods. As explained in the -atime section of man find (-mtime works in the same way):

   -atime n
          File  was  last  accessed n*24 hours ago.  When find figures out
          how many 24-hour periods ago the file  was  last  accessed,  any
          fractional part is ignored, so to match -atime +1, a file has to
          have been accessed at least two days ago.

So, to find a file that was modified 7 or more days ago, you need to find files that were modified more than 6 days ago, hence -mtime +6.

The next step is to have this command run once a day. Since each securityuserN is a different user (you might want to rethink that setup, it makes everything more complicated), this must be run as root. So, edit /etc/crontab:

sudo nano /etc/crontab

And add this line:

@daily root find /home/securityuser* -mtime +6 -type f -delete

That will run the find command once a day and delete the files.


How to make ext3 converted to ext4 support e4defrag?

I had the same problem. I found this which had the answer:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ext4#Migrating_files_to_extents

Migrating files to extents

Warning: Do NOT use the following method with Mercurial repository that have been cloned locally, as doing so will corrupt the repository. It might also corrupt other hard link in the filesystem.

Even though the filesystem is now converted to ext4, all files that have been written before the conversion do not yet take advantage of the new extents of ext4, which will improve large file performance and reduce fragmentation and filesystem check time. In order to fully take advantage of ext4, all files would have to be rewritten on disk. A utility called e4defrag is being developed and will take care of this task; however, it is not yet ready for production.

Fortunately, it is possible to use the chattr program, which will cause the kernel to rewrite the file using extents. It is possible to run this command on all files and directories of one partition (e.g. if /home is on a dedicated partition): (Must be run as root)

find /home -xdev -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chattr +e
find /home -xdev -type d -print0 | xargs -0 chattr +e

It is recommended to test this command on a small number of files first, and check if everything is going all right. It may also be useful to check the filesystem after conversion.

Using the lsattr command, it is possible to check that files are now using extents. The letter 'e' should appear in the attribute list of the listed files.

--

Note: I had assumed e4defrag could convert the files to use extents. The failed ioctl is the one that does that afaik, so I am a little confused as to why it doesn't work, but chattr +e did work for me. After you have chattr +e the files, you can then use e4defrag on them. Obviously make sure you have a backup etc just in case (I would have thought this is safe, but you never know - there is a warning here about hardlinks but I find no other reference to known issues with hardlinks).


Installer fails with "failed to load installer component" with ubuntu 16.04.1

This seems to happen if your VM isn't given enough RAM. I gave it 256MB and it happened everytime. If I changed it to 768MB then it doesn't happen... I guess this is that.

I'm leaving it here anyway because I couldn't find anything when Googling for this issue.


postfix/submission/smtpd Relay Access Denied

Add something like this to your main.cf:

smtpd_relay_restrictions = permit_sasl_authenticated,
    permit_mynetworks,
    reject_unauth_destination


Ubuntu transmits TTL 0 multicast packets

Solution is to join multicast group with

setsockopt(sockFd, IPPROTO_IP, IP_ADD_MEMBERSHIP, reinterpret_cast<const char*>(&mcastJoinReq), sizeof(ip_mreq))

before multicasting with sendto().

My assumption always has been that I don't need to join multicast when I have to only send multicast, i.e. I won't ever call recvfrom() to receive multicast. But regardless of only sending / only receiving, we have to join multicast.


Cannot Install VMware Tools in 15.10 VM, due to Easy Install being in progress

The error is self explanatory.  You're in the middle of Easy Install, which would install and/or update the VMware Tools anyways as part of the Easy Installation process (which is an automated process to make deployment of VMs simpler); as such, it won't permit you to run the installation manually.

Install the OS first, and let VMware do its thing, including VMware Tools installtion.
After installation completes, shut off the VM.
Remove all CD and Floppy images from the VM's settings.
Reboot the VM, then install the tools if they're not yet installed.  You have a few ways to get the tools though:

VMware tools installer, from the VMware system itself, OR
sudo apt-get install open-vm-tools - open source version of the tools that does pretty well.

I caution you, though, this doesn't mean you'll  be able to get 'full screen' functionality automatically - for the most part, I've only seen that as a Windows function, not a global-across-everything function.


Sounds like a bad hard drive possibly. I'd recommend running a hard drive scan to find the health of your machine. Typically freezing of the mouse and slowness (specifically on computers with a history like this) is caused by hardware not software. Good luck!


So it turned out, I needed to refresh my local DNS handling or something of this kind. It can be done with this command sudo dhclient.

I saw this here : http://brunodbo.be/blog/2013/04/26/setting-up-wildcard-apache-virtual-host-wildcard-dns


Ubuntu 13.10 doesn't allow me to install "alongside" Windows, just "replace"

After selecting something else , you would be presented with the
window which contains all your partition.
Select the partition on which you want to install ubuntu (in your
case it is 125.91 GB partition ).
Now click on edit partition, It will present a popup window . Select
"partition type" as ext4 journaling file system, check the "format
partition" option and select "mount point" as /. Now click ok.
It will ready the partition for ubuntu installation.  Now click on
proceed button to proceed the  installation process.


Question about the partitioning during installing Ubuntu 14.04


Ubuntu 14.04: Screen turns blank, but system still ON

Have you checked for updates and installed them if there any?

What display manager are you using?
to find out paste the output of:

cat /etc/X11/default-display-manager


"Method gave invalid 400 URI Failure message" when running "apt-get update"

Your locale encoding settings is utf8 instead of UTF-8.

try this command:

   sudo locale-gen en_CA.UTF-8

exit from terminal and re-login (I'm not sure if you have to reboot).

Check if locale settings are correctly modified and try perl and apt-get command.


Paste fixed string without using clipboard (i.e. regular copy & paste)

‣ If your command works well, you can directly assign it to a keyboard shortcut in "Settings" - "Keyboard".
‣ Better perhaps is to use xdotool to directly type the string whenever you press a shortcut key. xdotool can "type", so you could make it type directly instead of using the clipboard.
Start with a command like this:
xdotool keyup ctrl+shift+b type \<br\>

This makes xdotool type <br>. The \ is an escape string, indicating to bash that it should not interpret the characters < and> as the redirection symbols they normally represent.
There is an additional trick included here: the keyup command. In the example, I assume that you will assign the command to the hotkey ctrl+shift+b. You will be hitting that key combination to trigger the command. The keys may in most cases still be pressed while xdotool adds the typing. That may not lead to the expected outcome. The keyup statement is used to simulate releasing these keys before the typing happens. Change the keys specified after keyup to the actual shortcut key you use.


Why can I not access imgur.com and gravatar.com from Ubuntu but can do so from Windows?

This may be a MTU path discovery issue. This can lead to certain websites working incorrectly even though all others work fine. It will appear as a time out rather than connection refused. It will only show up with reasonably large transfers like whole webpages - telnet will probably not send any packets which need to be fragmented. It can affect outgoing ssh too.

The fix is to lower the MTU on your network device so that packets above a certain size are always fragmented. See for example:

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Adv-Routing-HOWTO/lartc.cookbook.mtu-discovery.html

In detail what happens is that when you send data over the internet it is split up into packets. The maximum size for these packets anywhere on the internet is 1460 bytes not including headers. If you send a message large than that it must be split up, or fragmented.

Now, if your message goes over certain types of internet links it must be encapsulated in another protocol. That means that the packet including headers will get wrapped inside another packet. That obviously increases the size of the packet, so if your packet is already maximum size it must be split up again. However, because this can be exploited to perform DDoS attacks, many routers won't automatically fragment packets that they didn't create. Therefore your maximum size packets won't cross these routers.

In order to avoid this problem MTU path discovery was invented. If a packet is too big for a router it will send back a message saying to send smaller packets. However, it turns out this could be exploited too, and so many routers won't do that either.

So the way to overcome this problem is to always send packets slightly smaller than the absolute maximum. That's what the MTU setting is for. The idea is to set it just small enough that any extra overhead doesn't put you over the limit. Of course you won't know how small that is so you have to find the optimal value (biggest value that still works) by experimentation.


How to make videos show thumbnail in ubuntu 13.04?


What is the meaning of & at the end of a command?

What is the & terminator ?

The trailing & operator at the end of a command is used to put commands into background. This is actually a standard syntax specified by POSIX standard:

  Asynchronous Lists

  If a command is terminated by the control operator
   ( '&' ), the shell shall execute the command
  asynchronously in a subshell. This means that the shell shall not wait
  for the command to finish before executing the next command.

  The format for running a command in the background is:

  command1 & [command2 & ... ]

The purpose of backgrounding commands is to run a command without the main shell in script or interactive shell waiting for command, which would block execution of other commands and make an inconvenience for the user to wait. This is handy for starting long-running commands but you need to continue work in the current shell. As you can guess, this originated from the time where there were no multi-tab terminal emulators, but terminals were actual physical hardware connected to a computer itself.

From the definition you can see that & also serves as command terminator for lists of commands, much like ; does. In your specific example, pyprogramm >> /dev/null  2>&1 & there is only one command in the list.

Sequential ; lists vs asynchronous & lists

More generally,

echo Hello ; echo World ;

and

echo Hello & echo World &

are two examples of lists terminated by the ; and & operators. One difference is that & terminated list will have input connected to /dev/null if job control is disabled:

  If job control is disabled (see set, -m), the standard input for an
  asynchronous list, before any explicit redirections are performed,
  shall be considered to be assigned to a file that has the same
  properties as /dev/null. This shall not happen if job control is
  enabled. In all cases, explicit redirection of standard input shall
  override this activity.

In sequential list, however, each command still has stdin connected to terminal if there are no explicit redirections.

Note also, that from the definition we mentioned earlier, & executes commands in subshell. By contrast, the ; terminated list is executed in current shell. There's also difference in exit statuses. For & the standard says:

  The exit status of an asynchronous list shall be zero.

This is significant when you want to put multiple commands in background. When you write a script or command you will have to chose commands for which you don't care if they failed or not, or you will have to find a way to handle the non-zero ( error ) exit status.  In your specific example, pyprogramm >> /dev/null  2>&1 & running in background should have some way of indicating if it failed or not, however judging that you use 2>&1 you are hiding error output by redirecting, and you probably assume the script should not fail.

By contrast, ; exit status is defined as:

  The exit status of a sequential list shall be the exit status of the
  last command in the list.

Again, this has implications on how you write a sequential list of commands in command-line and how you want things to be handled if some of the commands in the list failed.

Side notes and additional reading

The fact that this is POSIX definition means that all Bourne-like shells, meaning bash, dash, and ksh must support it.
& in redirection is different from & as command terminator. It means duplicating (copying) the file-descriptor object. See What does & mean exactly in output redirection?

In bash there is also |& operator ( note no space between pipe and ampersand ). From bash manual:

  If |& is used, command's standard error, in addition to its  standard
  output,  is  connected  to command2's standard input through the pipe;
  it is shorthand for 2>&1 |.  This implicit redirection of  the
  standard  error  to  the  standard  output  is performed after any
  redirections specified by the command.


Installing Ubuntu on formated hard drive

Try booting Ubuntu from USB or CD. Then, just install it. Recommended 13.04, Raring Ringtail.


Refer to this article for making gnome desktop faster. To summarize the six steps in the article:

Disable or Uninstall Extensions
Turn Off Search Sources
Disable File Indexing
Turn Off Animations
Install Lighter Alternative Apps
Limit Startup Applications

The linked article above links to another article with steps you can try:

Show Hidden Startup Applications
Fix Bugs That Slow You Down
Install Adaptive Readahead (Preload) Daemon
Decrease Swappiness
Upgrade Your Hardware


Why Kubuntu,ubuntu 14.04 and similiars dissapears the initial logo when starts the so

My guess is that It is linked with the parameter of your boot loader (grub by default).

In the configuration file or at boot time edit the grub lines and look for a line like:

linux   /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-40-generic root=UUID=0x......-xxx ro  quiet splash $vt_handoff

if quiet and splash are missing, you will get a console start.

If you use a "safe boot" variant, it is probably the case also.


Can I install the Xubuntu 10.04 theme on Ubuntu 11.04?

Yes.  If you want all the xubuntu themes and branding, install the xubuntu-artwork package.  Note that this will install the Xubuntu 11.04 themes, if installed on Ubuntu 11.04, etc. (as the repositories all have the same version, regardless of which desktop environment you use).

Be aware that the Xubuntu themes are tested primarily in the XFCE environment: there may be gaps in the coverage when used in a GNOME environment, although it may also be that it works perfectly.

If you are especially attached to the Xubuntu 10.04 theme, and the theme in 11.04 is unsuitable for you, you could potentially forward-port the xubuntu-artwork (and dependency packages) in some private repository (e.g. a PPA).  Note that there may be changes in the theming engines or similar that may affect the work of forward-porting these packages.


Even I faced a similar issue while dual booting. On researching, I found that in Windows 10, the grub is not loaded by default by the BIOS. We need to explicitly provide the path once, so that it will load the GRUB everytime at restart. This will only work if you have successfully installed Ubuntu, but only facing the GRUB issue.

To load GRUB at startup, to the following:

Boot into Windows 10
Open the Command Prompt(in Administrator Mode). Go to Start -> Command Prompt -> Right Click and "Run as Administrator".
type in the following command and press enter:

bcdedit /set {bootmgr} path \EFI\ubuntu\grubx64.efi

Now Restart your system, and the GRUB menu should be loaded. Select the OS you want to boot into.

Hope this helps!


To turn off disk device`s write protect, we use the low level system utility hdparm like this:

sudo hdparm -r0 /dev/sdb

where we asume that /dev/sdb is the Physical disk device we're working on.
If the device has partitions that are mounted as read-only, you should re-mount 'em as read-write in order to write data to them.

Hope that helps.


How to unable to switch login domain? directory domain?

The answer of @Jos was right and it solved my problem. Here is the solution:

I don't need anything in the fe domain but have FE as my standard home directory. I delete fe and create a symbolic link from fe to FE. The link should be created like this:

sudo ln -s /home/FE /home/fe

after you have deleted /home/fe.


where do I find ubuntu 10.04 setup files

You can get the previous version you request with this link, but I'm sincerely curious, bordering on doubtful, about your reason to install it.  Can you tell us why it is you "need" to install it, so maybe we can help you with a better solution?

http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/


I suddenly don't see launcher and I can't even start terminal

Ctrl-Alt T  should pop up a terminal, or you could switch to a virtual term with Ctrl-Alt-F2. .  What you are seeing may possibly be fixed by renaming the .config file in your home directory (to force a new one to be made).  I had a second blank desktop blocking my original after an update, and the symptoms were similar to yours.  If you have things in .config you want, you can copy them from the old one to the new one.


Is it possible to configure the menubars to stay on their associated window in Unity?

It works the way you want to me. When the application is maximized, the menu bar combines with the superior bar, but when you restore the window, it has its own bar, so it seems to be configurable since it works different to us. I was having troubles with unity so I did unity --restart and restarted the system. maybe that can help. Also, make sure that your graphics drivers are up to date.


Probe with this

Alt + F2 >> gstreamer properties >> section video and probe your dispositive (check correct device, is possible have 2 or + in your /dev/video)... if you webcam working, is problem identifier device for cheese, change en dconf apps >> cheese >> camera -- for /dev/video #Number for you webcam.


Ubuntu is extremely slow 15 min AFTER boot

Actually it had something to do with kernel upgrade, after which my ATI drivers stopped working (I didn't realize it). I don't know precisely why it slowed down so much but I suppose it had something to do with those drivers. Now I reinstalled system so I think we will never know, but if anyone will have similar problem, check if graphic drivers works correctly after kernel upgrade.


Grub2 boot loader doesn't appear on boot

Hold the shift key down as you boot and you will get a menu.

If you want to change that behavior, you need to edit /etc/default/grub

# Graphical
gksu gedit /etc/default/grub

# Command line
sudo -e /etc/default/grub

And comment out GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0 (add a # at the front of the line)

Like this

#GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0

See : https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2#Hidden

Save your edit and then run

sudo update-grub

If you wish, you can install StartUpManager which gives you a graphical method of configuring grub


File transfer (copy/paste) speed variations - why?

If there is a sudden increase in speed, followed by a gradual decreasing and another sudden increase, it is because there is a buffer somewhere in between the source and the target. The source fills the buffer, which is instantaneous (high speed), but then the source has to wait while the target is busy emptying the buffer as fast as it can. From the point of view of the source, this means that the speed decreases.


How to fix wine gecko error while installing something from winetricks

The issue is because that file does not exist in the .winetricks folder.
But why? For me, the reason was that winetricks downloaded file under a different name - winegecko.php\?v=0.1.0. Pretty obvious thing, but it took me an hour and several reinstallations of wine and winetricks to figure it out :(.


Cannot enable SSL, apache service won't start when default-ssl.conf changed

If you blindly follow stuff from the Internet, you're doomed. Your life will be filled with confusion and failure.

However, a careful reading of "Kas 06 00:55:42 XCH apachectl[25161]: AH00558: apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1. Set the 'ServerName' directive globally to suppress this message" should tell you that there's a problem around the ServerName directive in your modified  default-ssl.conf. Did you have a working apache2 configuration before you did this?


You can re-enable NPAPI support on Firefox 52 by opening about:config, adding the boolean preference plugin.load_flash_only and setting it to false.

(That's what keeps NPAPI support enabled for a few more months in Firefox ESR.)

Edit:

That preference stopped working with Firefox 54.


Should ntpd must listen on 192.168.1.255 interface?

NTPD_OPTS contained -b flag in /etc/default/ntp. Removing this parameter fixed the issue.

Check you distro service init script/settings, if config does not use broadcast setting.

The broadcast and multicast modes are inherently less accurate and less secure. See explain here


Howto prevent screen idle/dimming in an Ubuntu Phone html5 app

Apps cannot prevent the screen from locking.

The only way to keep the screen from locking, is for the user to go into System Settings and change the screen lock timeout to Never.


Dual boot mechanism did not finish installing

First you must update the initramfs. Then you need to reinstall grub and update it.
Here are the steps.

Once you have logged in Lubuntu, open a terminal using Ctrl + Alt + T.
First log into root shell using sudo -s.
Run update-initramfs -u and hit Enter
After the execution of the command has completed run grub-install /dev/sdX where sdX is your HDD. If the OS is installed on internal HDD, then replace sdX by sda. The command would then look like grub-install /dev/sda.
After the grub has installed, run update-grub.
After the command has finished executing log out of the root shell by pressing Ctrl + D.
Now close the terminal and reboot the system.

You will now have the option to boot into either OSes.


Running Samba is slightly different to running apache or mysql.

When you connect to the web server all processes are run as user www-data, when you connect to mysqld all processes are run as user mysql.

But when you connect to samba a new process is forked with your user credentials.
Only root can fork processes as other users.

It is correct that samba is running as root.


You are trying to install a package whose repository your Ubuntu does not trust.

Possibility 1

Run

sudo apt-get update

and find the missing key and install with

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://subkeys.pgp.net --recv-keys <your_missing_key>

Possibility 2

But you can also use y-ppa-manager

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/y-ppa-manager
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install y-ppa-manager

Run y-ppa-manager
Click Advanced
Click Try to import all missing GPG keys


How to change web browser's tab bar background color or image?

Want to edit the desktop colors? No graphic way to do it in Ubuntu 11.10/12.04.

Execute gksudo gedit /usr/share/themes/Ambiance/gtk-2.0/gtkrc
Don't like orange? Change the value of selected_bg_color. Feel free to change the other colors using HTML colors.
Save and exit, effects will kick in eventually.

This should set the background color for Chrome/Chromium.

See How to change tooltip background color in Unity?


Can I start an application with a specific nice value from its launcher?

Imo the best way to do that is adding a right- click (quicklist) entry to the firefox launcher. There are a few options:

1. Manually

copy the firefox launcher from /usr/share/applications to ~/.local/share/applications

cp /usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop ~/.local/share/applications

Open the file with (e.g.) gedit, Look for the line starting with:

Actions=

Add "Nice firefox" to the line:

Actions=NewWindow;Nice firefox;

Add to the very bottom of the file a section:

[Desktop Action Nice firefox]
Name=Nice firefox
Exec=nice -10 firefox

Now save the file, log out and back in. A new entry appears:

2. Use a GUI quicklist editor

...like this one

After installing, open the editor, choose the firefox launcher from the list (no need to say it needs to be locked to the launcher), and click the big + to add your entry.

To install:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:vlijm/qle
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install qle


Most elegant way to check if a process is running, and start if not?

With pgrep, you might match other programs than just yours. If you want to be sure to match the right program, use pidof instead.

You could also use start-stop-daemon with a PID file. start-stop-daemon will check if the program is running and start it if required. This is what is used in most init scripts.


Neverending issues with grub (ubuntu 14.04 on ASUS with Win8 dual boot)

I have had the same problem and you can make a virtual drive whit an virtualmachine VM whit windows 8 whir pre installed ubuntu, and then run boot-repair.

and it might work fine this way.


Abiword starts automatically each restart

This is a bug in AbiWord associated with upgrade to Ubuntu 15.04. Resolved by removing AbiCollab.service as follows:

sudo rm -f /usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.freedesktop.Telepathy.Client.AbiCollab.service

For full discussion about this bug, visit the bug report link: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/abiword/+bug/1432271


Which architecture should I install on x86 64bit machine?

The Intel 64 architecture is compatible with ubuntu's amd64 images. For the most part 64bit is vender neutral.


You can use PAM for this. The PAM configuration for the SSH service is in /etc/pam.d/sshd. To run a command before anything in the login process, add something like:

auth [default=ignore] pam_exec.so /path/to/some/script

For example, if I use /usr/local/bin/foo.sh containing:

#! /bin/sh

cat <<EOF >>/tmp/log
PAM_RHOST $PAM_RHOST
PAM_RUSER $PAM_RUSER
PAM_SERVICE $PAM_SERVICE
PAM_TTY $PAM_TTY
PAM_USER $PAM_USER
PAM_TYPE $PAM_TYPE
EOF

And then I do ssh muru@localhost, I get:

$ cat /tmp/log
PAM_RHOST localhost
PAM_RUSER
PAM_SERVICE sshd
PAM_TTY ssh
PAM_USER muru
PAM_TYPE auth

This doesn't happen before the password prompt shows up, but auth modules are the first ones run after the password is entered - they check whether the user is authenticated, after all:

   authentication - authenticate a user and set up user credentials.
   Typically this is via some challenge-response request that the user
   must satisfy: if you are who you claim to be please enter your
   password. Not all authentications are of this type, there exist
   hardware based authentication schemes (such as the use of smart-cards
   and biometric devices), with suitable modules, these may be substituted
   seamlessly for more standard approaches to authentication - such is the
   flexibility of Linux-PAM.

So, in effect, auth modules run before login, and if the first auth module is pam_exec, that's pretty much the first thing to run.

Note the [default=ignore] part - since auth modules authenticate the user, we don't want the script's exit status to mean anything. default=ignore tells PAM to ignore pam_exec's return value, whatever it may be, which in turn depends on the script's exit status. See man pam.d for more details.

Caveats:

This doesn't run if the user just quit before entering any password.
This doesn't run if the user provided an empty password (the default SSH configuration has PermitEmptyPasswords no, so SSH rejects those out of hand).
SSH needs to have UsePAM yes for it to use PAM.


Weird issue with bootstrap icons on html pages

As i have this issue for a long time .. :)

The issue that in my Firefox settings (Content-> Advanced) ..
I didn't check this option (Allow pages to use their own fonts,instead of my selection above) ..

So when rendering with my font .. I lost the icons ..

I hope that your issue is the same as mine .. to be solved with this solution .. :)


Freshly installed Ubuntu 16.04, no Wi-Fi

Run in terminal

sudo apt-get purge bcmwl-kernel-source
sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/asus.conf <<< "options asus_nb_wmi wapf=4"

and reboot.


Mind that this will copy also folders containing just folders, and not just folders containing at least one file. Not sure if that's exactly what you're looking for; in any case I'll leave this in case it could be useful to someone else.

Using find:

find source -mindepth 2 -maxdepth 2 -type d -not -empty -exec mv {} target \;

source: searches in source/
-mindepth 2: searches starting from the second level of the specified directory hierarchy
-maxdepth 2: searches stopping at the second level of the specified directory hierarchy
-type d: searches only for directories
-not: negates the following condition / action
-empty: searches only for empty folders
-exec [...]: for each result, executes the following command
mv {} target \;: moves each result to target/

user@debian ~/tmp % tree
.
├── source
│   ├── folder A
│   │   └── folder A
│   │       ├── file1
│   │       ├── file2
│   │       └── file3
│   └── folder B
│       └── folder B
└── target

6 directories, 3 files
user@debian ~/tmp % find source -mindepth 2 -maxdepth 2 -type d -not -empty -exec mv {} target \;
user@debian ~/tmp % tree
.
├── source
│   ├── folder A
│   └── folder B
│       └── folder B
└── target
    └── folder A
        ├── file1
        ├── file2
        └── file3

6 directories, 3 files


Copy file with smbclient and path to directory

Try to use the initial directory option (--directory Public/Offline)


Why are some applications so hard to find in the Ubuntu Software Centre?

They are hidden because they are marked as technical packages - the ones with no .desktop file (see How does Software Center determine what is a "technical item" and what isn't? ). You can use Show # technical items link in the bottom left corner to see them.


Does the Spanish dictionary work on Ubuntu 15.10?

Set up the system wide language settings as explained in the accepted answer here:  How to install a LibreOffice Dictionary (Spelling Check, Thesaurus...).

I did this and then went to Tools -> Options -> Language Settings -> Writing Aids and clicked the Edit button for writing aids.  Selecting Spanish (Spain) now shows an entry under Spelling.  It was empty before changing the system wide settings.

Then close the options and create a new paragraph style.  In the Font tab of the paragraph style, change the language to Spanish (Spain).

Now in paragraphs using the new style, it underlines misspelled words in Spanish.  For example if I enter "Hello", it is underlined as misspelled, but if I enter "Hola" it is not.

My system is Ubuntu 14.04 with LO 4.2.

See also: https://help.libreoffice.org/Common/Selecting_the_Document_Language.


How do you defrag and remove cookies on Ubuntu

Remove Firefox cookies:

rm ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default/cookies.sqlite

Rremove Chrome cookies:

rm ~/.config/google-chrome/Default/Cookies


gksudo gedit /etc/hdparm.conf

Enter and on the "bottom" of the gedit file

 /dev/sda {
    apm = 254
    apm_battery = 254
}


Expect script that enters a username and password

Just comparing the last bit with another example I've seen:

spawn ssh root@$ipaddr $scriptname $arg1
match_max 100000

expect "*?assword:*"
send -- "$password\r"

# send blank line (\r) to make sure we get back to gui
send -- "\r"

expect eof

Their send syntax seems slight different. And they also allow quite a liberal expect regex. The final bits might have some answers too.


How to find out which songs in a directory are loudest?

As this answer demonstrates, SOX works for this.
However, it is painfully slow and does not offer to correct (i.e. normalize) the offending files in the same process, therefore:

I love easyMP3Gain for normalizing MP3s !

Unfortunately, there seems to be no package for 17.10 Artful, but luckily the GUI packages for 16.04 Xenial are compatible and you can find them here!

This is probably not best practice but what I did was..

wget <your favorite ubuntu repo server here>libqt4pas5_2.5-15_amd64.deb
wget <your favorite ubuntu repo server here>easymp3gain-data_0.5.0+svn135-6_all.deb
wget <your favorite ubuntu repo server here>easymp3gain-qt_0.5.0+svn135-6_amd64.deb

Start with the libqt dependencies but install all the packages like this :

sudo dpkg -i libqt4pas5_2.5-15_amd64.deb

you will have to run sudo apt-get --fix-missing
 and sudo apt-get --fix-broken install once or twice to get all the libqt dependencies, and then rerun the dpkg -i commands

Once you are able to run easymp3gain you can get the source for mp3gain from sourceforge here, untar it. Change directory to the extracted files and make sure you have the build tools installed

sudo apt-get install build-essential

then build it with

sudo make
sudo make install

You might need to copy the binary, at least I had to do that

 sudo cp -p mp3gain /usr/local/bin/

Now you can run easymp3gain-qt ! Just select the folder with your MP3s and sort by Volume !

Screenshot of easyMP3Gain sorted by volume

I hope this helps !


Yes, unless you do a fresh install and accidentally overwrite the backup partition. But for an upgrade, it is OK.


Where does Juju store a log of all commands run and their output for each unit?

It appears that each unit stores a log of the commands run in /var/log/juju/unit/unit-service_name-service_number.log. You can access it by taking advantage of Juju's ssh command like so:

juju ssh service_name/service_number

This will drop you into a shell for that unit. You can then use a text editor or even just cat | less to read the log.


Try to play with xrandr, it has definitely more options, but you have to get into console... After you define your screens correctly, then they maybe start working correctly in arandr/grandr.


How to disable the login password for a specific user?

1.To keep a small password.

Change password on terminal sudo passwd username
Enter whatever small password you like at prompt "Enter new UNIX password:"

And again type at prompt "Retype new UNIX password:"

Note: on terminal you will not see anything when you type the password.

To make totally password free:

Run very carefully:

sudo -H gedit /etc/sudoers

add

<username>   ALL=(ALL:ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

below the line

%sudo   ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

save and close.

and also:

Delete password for user:

sudo passwd -d <username>

Repeat the steps for other user.

To add to the group nopasswdlogin:

sudo usermod -a -G nopasswdlogin <USERNAME>
To remove from nopasswdlogin group:

sudo gpasswd -d <USERNAME> nopasswdlogin


How do I add sudo commands to a keyboard shortcut?

You have three options. Pick the one of them which you like best:

Install the gksu package if not done already and use gksudo to get a GUI password entry dialog pop-up instead of being asked on the terminal console like sudo does (which is not present when you run it as keyboard shortcut and therefore does not work).

sudo apt install gksu

The command you need to bind to your shortcut would be this:

gksudo -- bash -c 'echo VALUE > /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/kbd_backlight'

Use pkexec instead of sudo. It works similar to gksudo and should be preinstalled, but it only works for terminal commands, if you wanted to run a GUI application as root with it, it needed special configuration. But for your command it would be sufficient.

The command you need to bind to your shortcut would be this:

pkexec bash -c 'echo VALUE > /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/kbd_backlight'

Write a short script to change the brightness and then configure sudo's NOPASSWD option so that you can run it as root without getting asked for a password.

Relevant question: How do I run specific sudo commands without a password?

Here's what you need to do in your specific case:

Write a script file that contains all commands necessary to achieve what you want which will then be run as root:

#!/bin/bash
if test "$(id -u)" -ne 0 ; then
    sudo "$0" "$1"
    exit $?
fi

if test "$1" -gt 0 ; then
    echo "$1" > /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/kbd_backlight
else
    echo "Invalid argument $1"
    exit 1
fi

The script above takes an integer number greater than zero as command-line argument and writes it to the backlight control file after performing a basic sanity check. You could also modify the check to only allow the values 0 and 2 if you want, but I'll leave that up to you.

Additionally, it checks as which user it is running and tries to elevate its privileges to root by executing itself with sudo if necessary. That means you can even omit the sudo when running it.
Save this script as /usr/local/bin/set-kbd-backlight (you may pick a different file name, but the directory should stay the same ; note that writing to this location requires sudo)
Make sure your script file has correct ownership and permission settings. You're going to be able to run this script as root without password, so we must make sure it can be executed by everyone, but not be edited by non-root users!

sudo chown root:root /usr/local/bin/set-kbd-backlight
sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/set-kbd-backlight

Now you can configure sudo to allow running this script as root without password:

Edit your sudo configuration file /etc/sudoers by running the command below (not any other way!):

sudo visudo

Now append the following line right before the line containing includedir /etc/sudoers.d near the end of the file, replacing USERNAME with the correct username which you will grant the passwordless execution as root:

USERNAME ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: /usr/local/bin/set-kbd-backlight

Exit the visudo editor by pressing Ctrl+X, then Y (or whatever key represents "Yes" in your locale) and then Enter.
Verify it is working by first running sudo -k to revoke your cached password, just in case you entered it within the last 15 minutes in the current shell session. This is not needed for the script to work, it is just to test whether you configured NOPASSWD correctly.

Then run the commands below to turn the backlight on and off, without sudo. You should not be requested for your password.

set-kbd-backlight 0
set-kbd-backlight 2

Bind the commands (set-kbd-backlight 0 to switch the light off, set-kbd-backlight 2 to switch it on) to the respective keyboard shortcuts.


Not getting into GRUB (no sign of Ubuntu) after running Boot-Repair to fix grub rescue

=> Syslinux MBR (4.04 and higher) is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda.
 => Syslinux MBR (4.04 and higher) is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdb.

sda1: __________________________________________________________________________

    File system:       ntfs
    Boot sector type:  Windows 7/2008: NTFS
    Boot sector info:  No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block.
    Operating System:
    Boot files:        /bootmgr /boot/bcd

sda2: __________________________________________________________________________

    File system:       ntfs
    Boot sector type:  Windows 7/2008: NTFS
    Boot sector info:  No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block.
    Operating System:
    Boot files:        /bootmgr /Boot/BCD

sda3: __________________________________________________________________________

    File system:       ntfs
    Boot sector type:  Windows Vista: NTFS
    Boot sector info:  No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block.
    Operating System:  Windows 7
    Boot files:        /bootmgr /Windows/System32/winload.exe

sda4: __________________________________________________________________________

    File system:       Extended Partition
    Boot sector type:  -
    Boot sector info:

sda5: __________________________________________________________________________

    File system:       ntfs
    Boot sector type:  Windows 7/2008: NTFS
    Boot sector info:  According to the info in the boot sector, sda5 starts
                       at sector 2048.
    Operating System:
    Boot files:

sdb1: __________________________________________________________________________

    File system:       vfat
    Boot sector type:  SYSLINUX 4.07 2013-07-25
    Boot sector info:  Syslinux looks at sector 58112 of /dev/sdb1 for its
                       second stage. SYSLINUX is installed in the /uui
                       directory. No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block.
    Operating System:
    Boot files:        /boot/grub/grub.cfg /casper/vmlinuz.efi.signed
                       /EFI/BOOT/grubx64.efi

The boot-repair log clearly shows that there is no sign of installed Ubuntu on your HDD. Maybe your Ubuntu partition got formatted or something else. So please try to reinstall Ubuntu on a separate partition wherever you want.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsDualBoot


How to update PKG_CONFIG_PATH for Guile?

It seems you installed only the application, and not the development libraries, asked for by configure. In your case, try :
sudo apt-get install guile-3.0-dev
What packages are available can be listed by :
apt-cache search guile


Search in /usr/share/applications/ for the corresponding .desktop files. They contain the command in the line starting with Exec=.

See the Freedesktop Desktop Entry Specification for more about .desktop files.


How to add some of my /home memory to /(root)

You need to shrink down another partition that you don’t need as much of. Currently, your entire drive is taken up by partitions. Select the partition that you want to shrink and use the same resize tool to make it smaller.

Edit: Make sure to use a LiveUSB.


Installing Windows 8.1 on SSD and Ubuntu on a partition of a secondary HDD?

A similar question about windows and ubuntu from another user is Windows 10 & Ubuntu read my advice and try reading both articles I linked there.

You can alternatively install Ubuntu as a virtual box and try before switching to Ubuntu when you are comfortable.


Use a Clementine smart playlist to show duplicate songs

Try installing FSLint!

To install from terminal Hit Alt+Ctrl+T and run the following command:

sudo apt-get install fslint

To install from Software Center, Search for 'fslint'.

It can easily find duplicate files and then gives you an option to delete, Move etc. Give it the path to your iTunes folder, and click find.


Grub won't detect Windows 10 on NVME SSD

Apologies, it seems I expected too much from Microsoft. Even though I installed Windows within the last year and just expected it installed as UEFI, it was installed as BIOS and Ubuntu was installed as UEFI. Just converted Windows to UEFI and it seems to work fine.