How to convert .tar.gz etc to .deb format using ubucompilator/checkinstall?

From http://answers.oreilly.com/topic/249-how-to-use-checkinstall-to-create-packages-from-sources/:

Install checkinstall using apt (or your favourite package installer):

sudo apt install checkinstall

Extract the tarball into a directory. In this case, it is /tmp/program_example. Open terminal and cd into it with:

sudo -i

cd /tmp/program_example

Now, run:

make

and then

checkinstall -D --pakdir=/home/youruser/packages/

which will make a deb package in /home/youruser/packages, and install it. You can then reuse it and give it to others. Do not use this to make a package for a PPA or package server. These must be made and tuned manually.

When it prompts you to give a description, just describe the package and then press Enter a few times to finish it.


How to use the sync between computers in Software Center

You can use one-conf to sync between two or more computers.

To use one-conf, login into your Ubuntu One account on all the computers that you want to sync. Then, open software center and click on 'File' menu. And then, click the option 'Sync Between Computers...'

After you click that, a sidebar would appear on the left side. It will only list the local computer.

On the bottom, there is a button, clicking which would display a dialog box reading Start syncing <system-name>. Click the button and your computers would then be synced between them. Only after clicking the button would the computers associated with the Ubuntu One account would be displayed on both the computers.


Gedit's save empty file dialog I never opened

Seems its a quirk of KDE, Gnome doesn't exhibit this issue at all. I have switched back to using Gnome as KDE, although a better interface, has way to many integration issues.


as PRATAP said:

  actually there are two applications in /usr/share/applications/ can you try with org.gnome.Terminal.desktop file from /usr/share/applications [...]


How can I see all the aplications and to select which one should be in start up?

in Startup applications, you go to "Add", and then "Browse". Most or all of your apps will be in the directory "/usr/bin". To get to that folder, after clicking "browse", on the left pane of the file explorer, clck "computer", then "usr", then "bin", then click the program you want to be on startup


TortoiseHG automatically deinstalled on software update, ubuntu software centre now refuse to re-install (U-14.04)

Fixed.

removed/disabled duplicates/all mercurial & tortoisehg ppa's from software update app.
apt clean & update (following first hint & comments)
installed python module for .ini files (useful to me anyhow)
uninstalled existing mercurial 3.x using synaptic package manager
installed tortoisehg from ubuntu software center (dependances autoselected)

steps 1,2 & 3 perhaps not necessary but recommended

tortoisehg now working, repos ok - readable/functional

post install:

$ hg --version
Mercurial Distributed SCM (version 3.0.1)

rerun software update, it claims no new updates available, will see how it'll behave on next software updates in future

credits to: dadexix86 & JohnnyEnglish


Yes, Samba can be a pain. I use it for my home as well as work.

The first thing you should do is start over from scratch to make troubleshooting easier. You can do this by running the command below in the terminal.

dpkg-reconfigure samba-common

Then go to the folder on the samba server that you want to share, and make sure that the user nobody can read and write to the share. This is because the user nobody is the username windows clients use. I usually just make a folder in the / directory just to keep things simple, but the "correct" way would be to make a subfolder of /srv. If you have not modified the permissions already, use the commands below.

sudo chown -R nobody.nogroup the_folder
sudo chmod -R 777 the_folder

You can also test to see if nobody can write to the directory by running the following command as root.

sudo -u nobody touch test_file

Edit your /etc/samba/smb.conf and add the lines below the [printers] share definition.

[share_name]              ;the share name can be what ever you want
browseable = yes
path = the_complete_path_to_the_shared_folder
guest ok = yes
read only = no
create mask = 777

Then when you are done save it and run the following.

testparm

This will will warn you if you made any typos. Next, you just need to restart the samba services.

sudo systemctl restart smbd
sudo systemctl restart nmbd


Why can't I find skypeforlinux in some apt-cache search?

Download skype for 64-bit Ubuntu 14.04+ from below link
https://www.skype.com/en/download-skype/skype-for-computer/

And install .deb file using

dpkg -i package name


After a bit of research following Fabby's comment - I used the following command, which has worked:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences mouse-button-modifier '<Super>'

Now it's the super key which brings up the window menu.


How to fix " Ignoring file ***** as it has an invalid filename extension"

The "ignored" message will be fixed with: cd  /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ && rm rethinkdb.list.save.*. Mind that a remove is permanent but also that "ignored" is not a fatal error: the system will continue.

E: Type '“deb' is not known on line 1 in source list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/signal-xenial.list
E: The list of sources could not be read.

... is fatal though. Use an editor and check /etc/apt/sources.list.d/signal-xenial.list and fix the error. OR remove the file (as it refers to xenial = 16.04) with ...
cd  /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ && rm signal-xenial.list


Will a Virtual Box Installation have low Disk performance

Ubuntu running inside VirtualBox on Windows will not have a better performance than Ubuntu installed wihtout separate partition (thus using file on Windows file system). Most likely the performance will be worse.

In the first case, you have a file on Windows FS + virtual machine; In the second case, you still have a file on Windows FS but no virtual machine.


Try UnetBootin.
Worked everytime for me.

Install by :-

$sudo apt-get install unetbootin

And, always use as root

$sudo unetbootin


Internet issues with Ubuntu in oracle virtual box

If you're using the default network type it's NAT.  To keep NAT, you have to set up port forwarding like this.  If you want to act more like a regular computer connected to your network, you want bridged like this.

The most common configuration for direct host to guest connectivity and internet connectivity is one host-only and one NAT interface.

My preferred configuration is bridged and host only, so I can access the machine directly and other machines on the network can access it if need be.


Hardware Decoding suddenly stopped working for Steam In-Home Streaming?

Well, apparently something did get removed. Ran sudo apt-get install vdpau-va-driver:i386. Now all is well.

For anyone else wondering, dpkg -S /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/dri/nvidia_drv_video.so showed the package that needed to be installed.

Edit 11/25/2018:
This behavior persists on a new install of 16.04, the same steps were needed to remedy the issue.


You can find everything about troubleshooting the wireless connections at this wiki page.

If nothing helps, reinstall Ubuntu.


Insertion of a USB storage device will generate a message in /var/log/dmesg, as will subsequently removing it. However, this doesn't tell you much (eg, nothing about whether any files were transferred).


Install bridge utilities if not installed with

sudo apt-get install bridge-utils
brctl show
brctl addbr br0
ifconfig br0 up
iw dev wlan0 set 4addr on
brctl addif br0 wlan0
brctl addif br0 eth0
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o wlan0 -j MASQUERADE

For more information please follow below two links.

importgeek.wordpress.com

serverfault.com


Wrapping text in a cell without exapanding height of the cell in libreoffice

By default, the cell expands, like you mention.
Unless...
You force the cell to a certain hight by clicking on the row on the left, choose Row hight (Rijhoogte in Dutch):

Example:
This

becomes:

How to save the time to set all rows individually
Although I couldn't find any setting to change the default behaviour for cells/rows, you can easily work around:

In a new document, before changing cells etc, click in the top/left blank square, where rows/columns cross each other, to select all cells/rows.
Right- click on the left of first row, Choose Row hight, simply press return.
Again, while all cells/rows are selected, right- click on the left of first row, choose Format > Cells.. > Alignment, set to wrap.

Now the document will behave like you want, for all cells in all rows.


Ok Ok! after wasting my weekend over this I find out I need to shut down windows first (not restart) then start ubuntu. I don't know what's going on there but this will fix the problem :/


Is there any way to separate IRC networks in Pidgin's chat window?

No there really isn't a way to do what you're asking. If there is I've not seen it and I've used Pidgin extensively. It just tosses the channels in one list and it's pretty much up to you to figure out what's what.


How to make Nautilus icons in Gnome 3.16 less fat?

You could try putting them on a diet, however this may work better than that: ;-)

Open the Preferences menu via the Files menu

Set the Default zoom level to Small

Close the Nautilus Window and open another one

Default

Small


In Ubuntu you have two packages for SQLite: sqlite and sqlite3. If you use the second it is compiled with support for that function (not sure if it even exists in the other version...)

sqlite> SELECT SOUNDEX("John"), SOUNDEX("Joahn");
J500|J500

So first try to use the second version:

$ sudo apt-get remove sqlite
$ sudo apt-get install sqlite3

Now to you question: I have tried to compile it and it seems to work:

Download SQLite source code from here. I used sqlite-autoconf
Extract and run the configure command without sudo. You will only need that later

$ ./configure --prefix=/usr --disable-static CFLAGS="-g -O2 -DSQLITE_ENABLE_FTS3=1 -DSQLITE_ENABLE_COLUMN_METADATA=1 -DSQLITE_ENABLE_UNLOCK_NOTIFY=1 -DSQLITE_SECURE_DELETE=1 -DSQLITE_SOUNDEX"

Compile SQLite

$ make

Test it

$ ./sqlite3
sqlite> SELECT SOUNDEX("John"), SOUNDEX("Joahn");
J500|J500

Install it in your system

$ sudo make install


The standard Ubuntu NVidia drivers generate some problems on slightly older and slightly newer NVidia hardware.

If you want more then the standard Ubuntu repository drivers, install the xorg.edgers PPA.  As the xorg.edgers group ask not to give installation instructions directly without linking to their page, this is the best I can do for now...

If you don't know what a PPA is or need some guidance about rolling forward and backward of driver versions after reading their page, leave a comment below.


How do I enter the Euro and the at sign on a MacBook?

To make the XKB options I proposed in a comment persistent (i.e. preserved when rebooting), you can open the /etc/default/keyboard file for editing and change the line

XKBOPTIONS=""

to

XKBOPTIONS="lv3:lalt_switch,lv3:ralt_alt,compose:ralt"


unable to locate packages despite having added the repositories

You didn't finish adding universe repository packages to your software sources because you also need to update the list of available software with sudo apt update. In all currently supported versions of Ubuntu open the terminal and type:
sudo add-apt-repository universe
sudo apt update
sudo apt install libexpect-perl libstring-random-perl


Snap error: main.go:220: WARNING: cannot create syslog logger

Snap requires the "System and Service Manager" systemd which is a missing piece in WSL. Right now snap is not supported in WSL.

When running the command snap install htop I receive the following info:

  Interacting with snapd is not yet supported on Windows Subsystem for Linux.
  This command has been left available for documentation purposes only.

I am running Ubuntu 18.04 with WSL on Windows 10 version 1809 build 17763.379.


How Can I Disable Spesific Hotkeys With GSettings in Ubuntu?

the one, you mentioned is
gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-applications

Example:
[admin@ADMIN ~]$ gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-applications
['<Super>Tab', '<Alt>Tab']
[admin@ADMIN ~]$

above results two combinations, so remove the one you dont need with below command
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-applications "['<Super>Tab']"

to revert back above change, run below command in need.
gsettings reset org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-applications


Delete all lines containing backslash from text file

You just have to escape the backslash (escape the escape!)

$ sed '/\\/d' pdataf.txt
apple
cat
egg


What's the difference between ddrescue, gddrescue, and dd_rescue?

ddrescue, confusingly, can refer to two completely separate programs, dd_rescue by Kurt Garloff, and GNU ddrescue. Both have the same purpose and are actively developed.

Garloff's program dd_rescue is the first attempt to improve on dd; GNU ddrescue is newer and was created to address shortcomings in dd_rescue.

Several sources prefer GNU ddrescue over dd_rescue. For example,

http://lwn.net/Articles/430000/

  ddrescue wins (in my book) because it is an efficient self-contained program written in C++ (not a shell script kludge), produces much cleaner output on the console/terminal, and (most importantly) handles unreadable blocks gracefully and intelligently.

http://www.toad.com/gnu/sysadmin/index.html#ddrescue

  GNU ddrescue is your best friend.

  It is modeled after the two preceding programs, dd_rescue (with an underbar), and dd_rhelp. But GNU ddrescue it's far better than both -- I've tried all three, on the same drive, as well as trying to use plain old "dd".

  Antonio Diaz Diaz's GNU ddrescue learned from these experiences. It combines both dd_rescue's ability to read big blocks and then shift gears, with dd_rhelp's ability to remember what parts of the disk have been looked at already. It keeps this info in a really simple logfile format, and keeps it updated every 30 seconds, or whenever it stops or is interrupted. It's written in C++ and it's small and fast.

One advantage of GNU ddrescue is that it backs up most data faster, by first skipping bad blocks (hich are slow to recover) and coming back to them only after good blocks have been backed up. One disadvantage of GNU ddrescue is that it doesn't support piped output, which means you can't compress the output image with gzip or lzop.

Ubuntu packages

Unfortunately, the package names in the Ubuntu repositories are confusing; dd_rescue is packaged under the name ddrescue, and ddrescue under gddrescue! From the package summaries:

gddrescue package:

  Please note that this is the GNU ddrescue version providing
  the /sbin/ddrescue executable. If you are searching for the
  ddrescue version of Kurt Garloff please check out the
  ddrescue package instead.

ddrescue package:

  Please note that this is the dd_rescue version of Kurt Garloff
  providing the /bin/dd_rescue executable. If you are searching
  for the GNU ddrescue version please check out the gddrescue
  package instead.

Summary of names:

Program name     Ubuntu package name     Executable name    Name in URL
GNU ddrescue     gddrescue               ddrescue           ddrescue
dd_rescue        ddrescue                dd_rescue          ddrescue


Corrupt usb. Is there any way to fix it?

If you don't need any data off it, here's how to get rid of everything and make an 'FAT' partition:

Search dash for 'disks' and open
Click the memory stick from the left
If there is anything shown under where it says 'Volumes', do this (otherwise skip):

3.1. Click it. If when you click it it shows these: [square] [line] [gear] click the square. If it shows these: [triangle] [line] [gear] that means it's not mounted.
3.2. When you've done that for all partitions (items in the box under 'Volumes'), click the gear in the app top right and choose format disk.
3.3. Choose 'Don't overwrite existing data' and 'Empty'.

Click where it says 'Free space' and click the plus in the bottom left of the box.
Drag the bar up to as far as it'll go, choose 'Don't overwrite existing data' and 'Compatible with everything (FAT)'.
Choose a name and click 'Create'.

Done!


xfce panel weather applet has wrong/missing data

The xfce-weather-update plugin needs to be updated. You're looking for version 0.8.9 from here: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xfce4-weather-plugin/0.8.9-0ubuntu1/+build/12025316/+files/xfce4-weather-plugin_0.8.9-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb

Then use

sudo dpkg -i /full_path_to_the_deb_file_you_downloaded_above

After that, log out and log back in.


How can I stop Steam from polluting my home directory?

if you create a .hidden file with each of those names in it (1 line each) they will not be displayed in nautilus (ubuntu's default file manager) unless you set it to show hidden files, i am sure you can delete the install ones but i am not sure about the rest
** does not work in thunar bug 110521

How to hide files and folders in Nautilus?


The above should definitely be possible by following the "Root on ZFS" how-to; the only step which differs is the creation of the pool(s), after all. However, you should be aware of the fact that "non-ZFS partitions" (e.g., EFI) on said discs should be mirrored/kept in sync at all times as well in order to ensure that the system can still be booted if one of them fails; this has already been hinted elsewhere. You might want to check out Saverio Miroddi's "zfs-installer" repository on GitHub.


Blank screen Ubuntu 15.04 update with NVIDIA driver (nomodeset does not work)

When the GRUB boot menu appears : Highlight the Ubuntu menu entry and  press the E key.
Add the nouveau.modeset=0 parameter to the end of the linux line ... Then press F10 to boot.

When the login screen appears press Ctrl+Alt+F1.

Enter your user name and password.

Identify your NVIDIA graphics hardware by executing:

lspci -k | grep -EA2 'VGA|3D'

Uninstall every NVIDIA related software by executing:

sudo apt-get purge nvidia*
sudo reboot

When the GRUB boot menu appears : Highlight the Ubuntu menu entry and  press the E key.
Add the nouveau.modeset=0 parameter to the end of the linux line ... Then press F10 to boot.

When the login screen appears press Ctrl+Alt+F1.

Enter your user name and password.

Install the NVIDIA drivers by executing:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-*
sudo reboot

Note 1:

As you did not provide any information about your NVIDIA graphics card check drivers versions.
Replace * with the latest stable main version number (e.g. 355) that supports your NVIDIA GPU.

Note 2:

When you have switchable graphics cards install nvidia-prime (NVIDIA Optimus support) as well.

Note 3:

If you ever have had bumblebee installed before to switch between graphics - also remove this.


Terminal command to clean tmp folder and set permission flags

Your problems it isn't the /tmp, your problem is the full partition.

The sort command use a file to store temporal data, you haven't space to do it.

Try to make some space deleting old logs:

sudo find /var/log/ -name "*.gz" -exec rm -v {} \;
sudo find /var/log/ -name "*.0" -exec rm -v {} \;
sudo find /var/log/ -name "*.1" -exec rm -v {} \;

You can do more space cleaning the apt cached files:
    sudo apt-get clean
    sudo apt-get autoclean


Can Unity display a Launcher icon for Spread Mode?

Normally, you could do this with compiz's d-bus integration, but it appears to be broken in natty.

Instead, we can do this with xdotool.

Install xdotool:

sudo apt-get install xdotool

Create a script called ~/scripts/compiz-scale.sh to invoke scale:

#! /bin/sh
# Assumes compiz binding for Initiate Window Picker is Super-Tab
xdotool keydown Super && xdotool key Tab
xdotool keyup Super

(If you have a different binding, just replace Super with the meta key you use and Tab with the letter you use.)

Make the script executable:

chmod u+x ~/scripts/compiz-scale.sh

Create an app file called ~/scripts/compiz-scale.desktop to run your script:

#!/usr/bin/env xdg-open
# link me to /usr/share/applications/

[Desktop Entry]
Comment=Switch programs
Exec=/home/YOURUSERNAME/scripts/compiz-scale.sh
Icon=gnome-klotski
Name=Scale
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Version=1.0

Be sure to replace YOURUSERNAME with your user name.

In order to add to the launcher, the app file must be part of the system configuration. (If you just want it available as a search result, you can put it in  ~/.local/share/applications .) We'll add a link to the file you created (so your setup is portable to new installs).

sudo ln -s ~/scripts/compiz-scale.desktop /usr/share/applications/compiz-scale.desktop

Now invoke the dash and search for "Scale". Your new app should show up. Click and drag it to the launcher. You should now be able to invoke scale from your launcher.

However, if you change your key binding it will break and you'll have to update your script. Also, it can't be invoked multiple times quickly. The launcher seems to have some double-click detection that prevents an app from being launched twice, so you have to wait before you can click again.


VirtualBox Guest Additions won't install

Instead of installing the guest additions from virtualbox's virtual CD, you can try installing the pre-built Ubuntu package. Just:

sudo apt-get install virtualbox-guest-dkms

this will compile and install the required module and enable folder sharing, shared clipboards and resizable display with seamless pointer integration.

If you want to continue doing it the hard way:

The message on your screen clearly indicates a log file you can look at to get more details about the problem.
I'm pretty sure this is because you don't have the appropriate development tools and kernel headers installed. You can do this to install them, then retry your process:

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r) build-essential


A "dummies" guide to dual-booting with Windows XP?

I suggest you install Ubuntu in Windows installer (Wubi). Plenty of info is located at:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wubi

Then if you still prefer windows, you can very easily get rid of the Wubi installation.

I have done it in my old (>10 years) laptop and it is still running very smoothly.

However, for full capability, I suggest later to remove Wubi and make either a clean Ubuntu install or, alternatively, if you want to keep windows, a dual boot with windows XP.


I found two causes of this behaviour and a resolution for each, which I will post for future reference.

Initially this was caused by a missing package. Resolved by:

 sudo apt-get install libpam-krb5

I also saw the same problem re-occur when reverse DNS is broken - check that both forward and reverse DNS look-ups work with the following commands, substituting in your clients FQDN and IP address:

nslookup mynfsclienthostname.domain.internal
nslookup 192.168.1.5

If either fails you need to find out why and resolve that issue.


Upgraded to 20.04 and can't install gnome-control-center

I solved my problem using the aptitude to remove and reinstall the two unmet dependencies libglvnd0 and libglapi-mesa. I was not being able to delete/install them using apt or apt-get, but aptitude worked pretty well. After that, I kept the same process of adding the new dependencies that eventually appeared to the sudo apt install command and reinstalling those more problematic when they appeared.
Long story short:

if the unmet dependence has a description like this:
gnome-control-center : Depends: libcheese-gtk25 (>= 3.18.0) but it is not going to be installed

use sudo apt install package1 package2 to install all dependencies simultaneously; it won`t work if you install them one by one.

else, if the description is like this:
libgl1 : Depends: libglvnd0 (= 1.3.1-1ubuntu0.20.04.1) but 1.3.2-1~kisak~b is to be installed

use aptitude to reinstall them. The following commands install aptitude, remove the problematic package and install it, respectively.
sudo apt install aptitude
sudo aptitude remove package
sudo aptitude install package

After solving this problem I immediately got another one. I tried to reboot my PC but it never reached the login screen. I must have delete some important packages accidentally when I was testing solutions. I fixed this problem by launching the recovery mode, opening the root shell and typing
sudo apt install --reinstall ubuntu-desktop


I had the same issue which was solved by changing the cursor theme and restarting it. Earlier my cursor theme was the one with vimix theme, but changing it to DMZ-white worked and had the same result as vimix theme didn't have a different cursor design.
Possible reason for this behaviour is that the snap apps don't recognize this new theme, but am not so sure of it.


Help! Trying to upgrade 18.04 to 20.04.1, but upgrade button does nothing

If your are trying to upgrade from 18.04 (LTS version) to 20.04 (LTS version) you'll have to wait for the first point release. This would be 20.04.1. As it currently stands, this release is out. So why does the updater not update? Because the metadata file is not yet updated. Wait for the folks at Ubuntu to update the metadata, so it lists Focal Fossa.
(Based on this comment)


Internal microphone not working in Google talk

You may need to check your sound settings using the Ubuntu System Settings - ensure you device shows up. You would look under the Input Tab.

If it says Analog Microphone like mine does you will need to change it to 'Internal Microphone'. You may also have to uncheck 'mute' or increase the input volume.


First, you want to boot up your machine, and shortly after the BIOS/UEFI has run, you'll want to hold down the left Shift key until you arrive at the GRUB bootloader menu. It should have a purple background with white text, assuming that it hasn't been customised)

Push the arrow keys until the entry with the words

  Advanced options for Ubuntu

in the description is highlighted, and push the Enter key. Then, select an option with the words, "Recovery mode" at the end. Now push the Enter key. There will be a literal flood of diagnostic bootup text, but that should be nothing to worry about.

The part that we are interested in is the recovery menu. It should have a light purple background, with a dialogue in the centre of the screen. Take note of the filesystem's current state, which is shown at the top of the dialogue. It's usually read-only at recovery mode.

Push the arrow keys down until you get to the option,

  root

This option will
 make the user a temporary administrator for the recovery session.

You should now see a prompt that looks like this,

root@ubuntu:~#

If your filesystem's state is in read-only (It should be), you will need to type the following command out. This will remount your file system with write privileges.

mount -rw -o remount /

Now the fun part! Let's change your password with the passwd command. Lets assume that the user's name is hannah. We would need to type these commands into the prompt.

passwd hannah

Replace hannah with your username.

You will now be asked for a new password.

Enter new UNIX password:

Type it out again for security and verification purposes.

Retype new UNIX password:

Your password should now be updated.

passwd: password updated successfully

You should now reboot your computer, and check if the password works. Type

reboot

into the prompt.


After having said that everything else prints except LO, I discovered that I could not print a photograph today and the problem was the same - 'printer not connected'. I solved it by deleting the printer, connecting it via USB and re-installing it as a local printer. Now it prints from LO, photos, Firefox etc. Wi fi connection just doesn't work on Ubuntu.


USB devices only recognized after I login

It is a bug

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lightdm/+bug/807291

I did not see a fix in the bug report(s)

he "work around" seems to be to unplug the mouse/keyboard and plug them in again.


How can I donate to Ubuntu without PayPal?

Currently you can only donate to Canonical directly with PayPal. According to Jono Bacon, "other payment mechanisms are currently being explored as we speak."

Another option for you is to donate to the projects behind applications that you often use or would like to support. Simply contact the software developers directly and ask them about it.
Or send a real physical postcard to a developer where you thank him for his work, i am sure many open source developers appreciate some kind words just as much as money.


Problem accessing old data on btrfs /home in ubuntu 14.04

I solved the problem!

First i noticed in /etc/fstab that / was mounted with subvol-@ but /home as subvol=@home. So I googled and found the solution.

Here are the steps (assuming /home is on /dev/sda2) I did:

Create a directory to mount the total partition.

sudo mkdir /mnt/old_home

Mount the partition.

mount -t btrfs /dev/sda2 /mnt/btrfs

Copy contents from the backup directory to suitable location.

And that's it.


How can I validate if a 13.10 update was complete?

sudo apt-get upgrade -y; sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y; sudo apt-get install -f -y; sudo aptitude upgrade -y;

If all things check out, then you are fully upgraded.


How to customize unattended-upgrades notification emails?

Don't know why they deleted this line on Ubuntu, but Debian includes:

// Set this value to "true" to get emails only on errors. Default
// is to always send a mail if Unattended-Upgrade::Mail is set
//Unattended-Upgrade::MailOnlyOnError "true";

If your /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades don't include the line (and the changelog don't give away this change in presice) is very odd, but at least it doesn't say they changed the behavior. I use a slightly updated version (0.80~sid2 opposed to 0.79.3ubuntu4 that Ubuntu includes in the precise-updates repository) and it will send a mail only on errors (I hasn't get a mail for now). Just write the lines to your configuration file, and everything should be working:

Unattended-Upgrade::Mail "your@email.com";
Unattended-Upgrade::MailOnlyOnError "true";

You may want to run sudo unattended-upgrade -v -d --dry-run to check the entire process yourself.


Ubuntu installation stuck at random crng init done

It's a kernel bug that can happen with different kernel.

"apt-get install rng-tools" run as root in a terminal should work.


Ubuntu 14.04(32-bit) : Is it necessary to reinstall ubuntu after adding more RAM?

From the comments...

The user wants to upgrade from 2G RAM to 4G RAM, and asks if anything else is required. They're running 32-bit 14.04. If they add more than 4G total RAM, they will have to install the 64-bit version of Ubuntu. We discussed it, and decided that the user would increase their swap partition (or swapfile) from 2G to 4-8G.

Update #1:

Everything is running fine now.


Dell9550: bluetooth headset connects and then disconnects in a couple of seconds

Go into bluetoothctl and set your device to trust

# bluetoothctl
# devices
    Device XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
# trust XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX

Then I rebooted and the device worked fine. This was probably the 15th fix I tried for the numerous issues connecting my bluetooth headset so hopefully this works!


"pkg-config --modversion glib-2.0" reports older version

As I guessed it stemmed from conflicting multiple libraries.
When I run

 echo $PKG_CONFIG_PATH

it returned empty line

Then I searched for

  locate glib-2.0.pc

and I got

  /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/pkgconfig/glib-2.0.pc
  /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/pkgconfig/spice-client-glib-2.0.pc
  /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/glib-2.0.pc

I also run

  pkg-config --debug --modversion glib-2.0

to find which directories were searched for

I looked in the glib-2.0.pc files and checked out the version numbers.

I located the correct glib-2.0.pc file

then I run

  export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/pkgconfig/

after then ./autogen.sh and make

went smoothly


How do I access the preferences from my main dialog window? Also how do I add a new preference?

Ok I solved it.

First I had to edit data/glib-2.0/schemas/net.launchpad.calorie-burner.gschema.xml:

Note that type="s" is for strings and type="i" is for integers

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<schemalist gettext-domain="calorie-burner">
  <schema id="net.launchpad.calorie-burner" path="/net/launchpad/calorie-burner/">
    <key name="weight" type="i">
      <range min="1" max="350"/>
      <default>100</default>
      <summary>User's Weight Kgs</summary>
    </key>
    <key name="units" type="s">
      <choices>
        <choice value='Metric'/>
        <choice value='Imperial'/>
      </choices>
      <default>'Metric'</default>
    </key>
    <key name="energy" type="s">
      <choices>
        <choice value='KJs'/>
        <choice value='Calories'/>
      </choices>
      <default>'KJs'</default>
    </key>
  </schema>
</schemalist>

Next I had to wire up my ui elements to my preferences:

In the preferences dialog I had to do the following:

    # Bind each preference widget to gsettings
    settings = Gio.Settings("net.launchpad.calorie-burner")

    widget = self.builder.get_object('weight')
    settings.bind("weight", widget, "value", Gio.SettingsBindFlags.DEFAULT)

    widget = self.builder.get_object('cmbUnits-entry')
    settings.bind("units", widget, "text", Gio.SettingsBindFlags.DEFAULT)

    widget = self.builder.get_object('cmbEnergy-entry')
    settings.bind("energy", widget, "text", Gio.SettingsBindFlags.DEFAULT)

Note that the first argument is the name of the setting, the second is the widget on the ui and the thrid is the property of the widget that contains the data I want to store in my preferences.

Also note for comboboxes I had to enable "Has Entry" to create a text box with the text property.

Lastly in my main dialog I had to do the following:

    from gi.repository import Gtk, Gio # pylint: disable=E0611
    self.settings = Gio.Settings("net.launchpad.calorie-burner")

To access the settings call either get_string or get_int with the name of the setting:

  self.settings.get_string("energy")
  self.settings.get_string("units")
  self.settings.get_int("weight")


Do I need a bootloader in my existing hard disk to boot from USB?

No, a bootloader needs to exist just in the device selected by the BIOS.

So as long as the BIOS selects a device containing a bootloader, such bootloader will be able to boot any OS on any device.

If your USB device has a bootloader installed in it, that's enough to be able to boot the OS on the USB device itself (and to boot any other OS present in the USB drive itself and any other OS present in any other device).


My Ubuntu will not load after login or if does login it will crash eventually

If you have installed nvidia drivers from their website, please remove it following the installer instructions. You can still login to Ubuntu using Ctrl+Alt+F1 for that.

Now follow these steps(login to terminal using Ctrl+Alt+F1)
First purge any nvidia drivers

sudo apt-get purge nvidia*
sudo reboot

Then install it from the ppa

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-358
sudo reboot

For more details, refer to this thread

If sidebar is missing then try this
Press Ctrl+Alt+F1 to got to tty and log in, now run this

dconf reset -f /org/compiz/

then

setsid unity


Trying to disable mouse accel and I have a question

virtual core pointer is going to be you mouse.


Having your program behave differently depending on what it is connected to is frowned upon. For example, the GNU Coding Standards say:

  Likewise, please don’t make the behavior of a command-line program
  depend on the type of output device it gets as standard output or
  standard input. Device independence is an important principle of the
  system’s design; do not compromise it merely to save someone from
  typing an option now and then. (Variation in error message syntax when
  using a terminal is ok, because that is a side issue that people do
  not depend on.)

Instead, consider adding command line options to your program to change behaviour, and using these in your upstart job.


My Ubuntu 12.04.2 Online Accounts only has Google and Windows Live accounts. Where are the others?

Try to reinstall account-plugin-facebook

sudo apt-get install account-plugin-facebook

Or you can try to install all account plugins:

sudo apt-get install account-plugin-*


Eye of Gnome zoom 100% gone in Ubuntu 15.10?

You can still jump to 100% via the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+0


I always use the GUI way to manage my software sources: system Settings --> software & updates and than under the other software tab uncheck the sources that cause problems. did you try this?


How to make read-only file system writable on Ubuntu 16.04?

Try this:

Open a terminal,Press Ctrl+Alt+T

Run it:

exec sudo -i
umount /dev/mmcblk0p1
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mmcblk0p1 bs=1024
mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/mmcblk0p1 -I


This looks like there is some script amounting to spamming the sudo command into the terminal on startup without proper usage.  In case you are not aware, there are various scripts that automatically run when you start a terminal, so you should check these haven't been broken or corrupted.  If you did not edit these files before, then it could be something you recently installed that caused it.


ureadahead seems to block the system on boot

Blocking the boot is by design.  The point of ureadahead is to preload all the data your boot will require ahead of time.  The reason to do this is that the primary reason for disc slowness is seek times - even slow hard drives should be able to push out >50 MB/sec reads, but if you need to seek around - at tens of milliseconds per seek - that decreases dramatically.  By running ahead of time, ureadahead should be able to minimise the seeks and hence minimise the time needed to read all the data your boot will need.

So, the ideal bootchart looks like ureadahead at 100% I/O utilisation, followed by everything else starting up and using no (disc) I/O.  This boot isn't practically achievable, not least because many of the services we're starting up write to the disc, but that's the idea.

Looking at your bootchart it seems that ureadahead is having a hard time actually pulling data off your disc - there's lots of time where it's at a very low throughput.  Even so, it looks like it's doing some of its job - after ureadahead starts your boot is mostly CPU bound, rather than I/O bound, and it looks like the large patches of I/O-bound boot are associated with preload firing up.

You might want to try removing preload, or to reprofile your boot¹, or it might be that some of your files are very fragmented, or it might be a bug in ureadahead.

1: Removing the pack files from /var/lib/ureadahead will cause ureadahead to reprofile on your next boot.


Installed 12.04 dual boot with 10.04, fails to boot 10.04

I did some more digging and came across a blog that stated if the partition started on zero instead of one, it is possible that it could cause similar symptoms as this. It recommended running Gparted to correct the issue. I located my system rescue CD (downloadable from System Rescue CD) and ran it. Accessed Gparted. The partition that would not boot was starting at zero so I reduced the size of the partition by one meg, started the partition at one and initiated the action. Because this was an almost 300 gig sized partition, it took about 6 hours for it to complete. After it finished, I rebooted the computer and on the grub screen, I chose the partition I had problems accessing from before and it booted as designed.

Problem solved.


Run script in Terminal via context menu (Open with Terminal)?

The clean way would be to create a .desktop file for your script and then make it the default text editor.

Create a file called /usr/share/applications/openscript.desktop with the following contents:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Open script in terminal
Exec=gnome-terminal -e "%U"
Terminal=false
Type=Application
MimeType=text/plain;

Then, do these steps:

Log out/in (I don't know if it's necessary)
Right click on the file
Click on Open with...
Click on Another app...
Select "Open script in terminal"
You're done!


How to mute, unmute and set all output and input audio devices to full volume from command line in ubuntu?

I solved the problem using pacmd.

For example, the following command produces the list of devices that work as audio inputs:

pacmd list-sources|awk '/index:/ {print $0}; /name:/ {print $0};'

The output for the command in my system is a below:

    index: 0
    name: <alsa_output.pci-0000_01_00.1.hdmi-stereo.monitor>
    index: 1
    name: <alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo.monitor>
  * index: 2
    name: <alsa_input.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo>

The * indicates that this input device is used as the default currently.

The following command changes the volume of the device alsa_input.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo.

pacmd set-source-volume alsa_input.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo 50000

You can also put the index number instead of the device name as the following one:

pacmd set-source-volume 2 50000

Here I used 50000 as the volume value because normally 100000 is maximum value.

Please look at the pacmd manual for more command related information.


Finally, After 6 hours work. I fixed it using:

snap refresh core --edge
snap refresh core18 --edge


Unable to install LanguageTool 2.5 extension for LibreOffice 4.2 on Ubuntu 14.04

First of all, the most important:

sudo apt-get installlibreoffice-java-commonjava-common
Go to LibreOffice Options menu, choose Advanced and be sure Use Java runtime environment is checked and a Java version is selected.
Now install your extension either by double-clicking on it in File Manager or by importing it in LibreOffice Extension Manager dialog.


Simply delete the .wine directory in your home directory. You may have to press crtl-h to unhide hidden files. If your a mouse person find this option in the view menu, or other menus depending on which file manager you use. If you used winetricks, or PlayonLinux then the directory will have a different name. Winetricks will likely name the directory in a similar fashion to the program name, and PlayonLinux bottles are in ~/.PlayOnLinux/wineprefix. I would refer to the wine app db for further reading on how to install this, I'm sure it's possible, you may be missing some dependencies.

After Removing the directory, issue a winecfg (if you used vanilla wine) from the console to rebuild the .wine directory, if you would like to try again!


14.04 Nvidia graphics drama - How can I get back into the install?

Okay, boot with a live CD or DVD to access all the data on the hard drive (although that isn't possible with encryption).
If you only encrypted your home folder, we can make a small modification, remove the file with this path:
/etc/X11/xorg.conf

That may allow you to get to a terminal with Ctrl + Alt + F1.
The add the Xorg Edgers PPA, follow these instructions:

Add the xorg-edgers PPA first:
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa

Then, update your package list:
sudo apt-get update

Source
And then install the current driver with this command:
sudo apt-get install nvidia-current

I have to say, I have serious problems with dual screen display, but I have 2 cards. Is yours a single or double head, and what are the ports?


How to search and cut strings from a file?

An operation as simple as this can be done with a oneliner, you don't need a whole script for that. I'd go with a function which you can put in your ~/.bash_aliases file so that it's loaded in every terminal you open.
function_name(){ awk /^$2/'{print $1": "$2", "$3}' $1 ;}

This allows you to call function_name <filename> <string> and get the result as shown below:
$ cat test
string name age sex
Akdk john 22 male
Jrtkfp miah 26 female

$ function_name test Akdk
Akdk: john, 22

As you can see, you can achieve this goal without any options, using only arguments is much simpler. If you somehow need options I recommend this tutorial and this article.
Explanations

function_name(){ … ;} – defines the function function_name which does …
awk /^$2/'{…}' $1 – in the file given as the first argument to the function ($1) search for the lines which begins (^) with the second argument ($2) to the function and do … with it
awk '{print $1": "$2", "$3}' – print the first column (space separated), then “: ”, then the second column, then “, ” and then the third column

NB: E.g. $1 has a different meaning for bash (what runs your terminal) as for awk: The first expands it to the first argument you gave it, the second interprets it as a shortcut for the first column. That's why we need single quotes (') around awk's print command, that way bash doesn't expand $1 but lets it untouched for awk to parse.


init premount script error from dropbear

If there is a leftover dropbear script in /etc/initramfs-tools/scripts/init-premount/ you can try to remove it, followed by running sudo update-initramfs, and see if that helps.


Here is a quick bash script that does that. I don't know if it will fit your requirements

#!/bin/bash

echo ":: Checking package integrity in current directory"

for p in *.deb; do
    pkg=`echo $p|cut -f 1 -d '_'`
    sha256=`apt-cache show $pkg|grep SHA256|head -1|cut -f 2 -d ' '`
    csha256=`sha256sum $p|cut -f 1 -d ' '`
    if [[ "$csha256" == "$sha256" ]] ;then
        echo "$p: OK"
    else
        echo "$p: failed"
    fi
done


root password required for driver installation

Enter your own password to temporarily gain root (superuser) privileges. Also usually you do not re-login as root but stay as "yourself" but gain root privileges temporarily.

If working in a shell/terminal entering sudo (super user do) before your command in the shell tells the system you wish to temporarily invoke superuser rights.


update-alternatives for sh reports bash is used, but I still get dash

The update-alternatives system could have been used to manage /bin/sh, but it would have had to be implemented that way in the Debian packages for bash and dash.

The packagers decided against it, instead using the current scheme involving dpkg-configure to manage /bin/sh. See this excellent answer for details and rationale of that choice.

The article you linked to is recommending using update-alternatives on /bin/sh, setting that up manually. That is terrible advice. Because, in effect, you'll have two separate systems trying to manage the same symlink in different ways, and probably stepping on each other's toes. (Which is probably what caused your issue during an Ubuntu upgrade.)


NVIDIA card not working even after drivers installation

I have a GTX 1050 Ti and it works well on Ubuntu 18.04.2

Note: these steps are for a desktop with an aftermarket video card installed. If your laptop has a more complicated configuration, this may not be the proper process.

The following steps will purge the incorrect driver, add a ppa with more recent versions of the driver, and install it.  You will end up with the 390 driver, which is what you want.

sudo apt-get purge nvidia*
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt-get install nvidia-384 nvidia-settings

This worked for me both on my original Ubuntu 18.04 install and now on the 18.04.2 HWE kernel.

You might be able to install nvidia-390, but that is not what I did.


Why does ubuntu 14.04 arm v7 load only a coloured screen on my raspberry pi 2 model b

It could be a couple of things.  The image you are using is not compatible with the RPI Hardware version or the SD card you are using is not loading.  I would get a new SD, image it, and see if it will boot.  It seems like Raspbian is compatible with all Pi hardware types.  Good Luck!


Whoopsie and NetworkManager seem to be crashing causing network connectivity issues

As per the reference : https://gist.github.com/okapies/de0d08f9e3c8bcb2b76a33b68f62a48c

This might be Kernel issue:

Try to reinstall the current linux-header

I hope this will solve your problem.


vmlinuz-4.18.12-041812-generic has invalid signature

https://github.com/jakeday/linux-surface/blob/master/SIGNING.md has more specific instructions on kernel signing (adapted from the same tutorial linked in the accepted answer). The instructions are reproduced in full as follows:

Signing a custom kernel for Secure Boot

Instructions are for ubuntu, but should work similar for other distros, if they are using shim
and grub as bootloader. If your distro is not using shim (e.g. Linux Foundation Preloader), there
should be similar steps to complete the signing (e.g. HashTool instead of MokUtil for LF Preloader)
or you can install shim to use instead. The ubuntu package for shim is called shim-signed, but
please inform yourself on how to install it correctly, so you do not mess up your bootloader.

Since the most recent GRUB2 update (2.02+dfsg1-5ubuntu1) in Ubuntu, GRUB2 does not load unsigned
kernels anymore, as long as Secure Boot is enabled. Users of Ubuntu 18.04 will be notified during
upgrade of the grub-efi package, that this kernel is not signed and the upgrade will abort.

Thus you have three options to solve this problem:

You sign the kernel yourself.
You use a signed, generic kernel of your distro.
You disable Secure Boot.

Since option two and three are not really viable, these are the steps to sign the kernel yourself.

Instructions adapted from the Ubuntu Blog.
Before following, please backup your /boot/EFI directory, so you can restore everything. Follow
these steps on your own risk.

Create the config to create the signing key, save as mokconfig.cnf:

# This definition stops the following lines failing if HOME isn't
# defined.
HOME                    = .
RANDFILE                = $ENV::HOME/.rnd
[ req ]
distinguished_name      = req_distinguished_name
x509_extensions         = v3
string_mask             = utf8only
prompt                  = no

[ req_distinguished_name ]
countryName             = <YOURcountrycode>
stateOrProvinceName     = <YOURstate>
localityName            = <YOURcity>
0.organizationName      = <YOURorganization>
commonName              = Secure Boot Signing Key
emailAddress            = <YOURemail>

[ v3 ]
subjectKeyIdentifier    = hash
authorityKeyIdentifier  = keyid:always,issuer
basicConstraints        = critical,CA:FALSE
extendedKeyUsage        = codeSigning,1.3.6.1.4.1.311.10.3.6
nsComment               = "OpenSSL Generated Certificate"

Adjust all parts with  to your details.

Create the public and private key for signing the kernel:

openssl req -config ./mokconfig.cnf \
        -new -x509 -newkey rsa:2048 \
        -nodes -days 36500 -outform DER \
        -keyout "MOK.priv" \
        -out "MOK.der"

Convert the key also to PEM format (mokutil needs DER, sbsign needs PEM):

openssl x509 -in MOK.der -inform DER -outform PEM -out MOK.pem

Enroll the key to your shim installation:

sudo mokutil --import MOK.der

You will be asked for a password, you will just use it to confirm your key selection in the
next step, so choose any.

Restart your system. You will encounter a blue screen of a tool called MOKManager.
Select "Enroll MOK" and then "View key". Make sure it is your key you created in step 2.
Afterwards continue the process and you must enter the password which you provided in
step 4. Continue with booting your system.
Verify your key is enrolled via:

sudo mokutil --list-enrolled

Sign your installed kernel (it should be at /boot/vmlinuz-[KERNEL-VERSION]-surface-linux-surface):

sudo sbsign --key MOK.priv --cert MOK.pem /boot/vmlinuz-[KERNEL-VERSION]-surface-linux-surface --output /boot/vmlinuz-[KERNEL-VERSION]-surface-linux-surface.signed

Copy the initram of the unsigned kernel, so we also have an initram for the signed one.

sudo cp /boot/initrd.img-[KERNEL-VERSION]-surface-linux-surface{,.signed}

Update your grub-config

sudo update-grub

Reboot your system and select the signed kernel. If booting works, you can remove the unsigned kernel:

sudo mv /boot/vmlinuz-[KERNEL-VERSION]-surface-linux-surface{.signed,}
sudo mv /boot/initrd.img-[KERNEL-VERSION]-surface-linux-surface{.signed,}
sudo update-grub

Now your system should run under a signed kernel and upgrading GRUB2 works again. If you want
to upgrade the custom kernel, you can sign the new version easily by following above steps
again from step seven on. Thus BACKUP the MOK-keys (MOK.der, MOK.pem, MOK.priv).


How to start the preferred audio player via the command line?

Try to use XDG open, it should open file with default application:

xdg-open music.mp3

From xdg-open man-page:

  NAME

   xdg-open - opens a file or URL in the user's preferred application

  SYNOPSIS

   xdg-open {file | URL}

   xdg-open {--help | --manual | --version}

  DESCRIPTION

   xdg-open opens a file or URL in the user's preferred application. If a
   URL is provided the URL will be opened in the user's preferred web
   browser. If a file is provided the file will be opened in the preferred
   application for files of that type. xdg-open supports file, ftp, http
   and https URLs.

   xdg-open is for use inside a desktop session only. It is not
   recommended to use xdg-open as root.


"import: unable to read X window image: Resource temporarily unavailable"

I'm on Kubuntu 18.04. I tried

$ sleep 5s && import -window "$(xdotool getwindowfocus -f)" ~/Desktop/file.png
import-im6.q16: unable to read X window image `83886084': Resource temporarily unavailable @ error/xwindow.c/XImportImage/4982.
import-im6.q16: missing an image filename `/home/dkb/Desktop/file.png' @ error/import.c/ImportImageCommand/1287.

and

$ sleep 5s && import -window "$(xdotool getactivewindow)" ~/Desktop/file.png
$

The latter command which uses xdotool getactivewindow works in konsole (version 17.12.3) and in lxterminal (version 0.3.1).

sleep is to let me switch from the terminal to another application's window. The command catches active windows of Firefox and geany.

As for

  Do you know why the problem happens?

I don't really know but searching man xdotool for windowfocus tells us that

  Uses XSetInputFocus which may be ignored by some window managers or programs.

Whether that also applies to getwindowfocus isn't explicitly mentioned.


imwheel defunct on dialog popup in front

When running imwheel from the commandline, use the options '-d -D' to see debugging information.

I have had some issues with imwheel crashing/freezing in the past, though mine is much less reproducible than yours. It looks like we're not the only ones having an issue with imwheel: There are two suggested patches on the upstream tracker ( sourceforge.net/p/imwheel/patches/2/ sourceforge.net/p/imwheel/bugs/8/ ) which may help with your issue.
Since the upstream project appears to be inactive, you may have better luck contacting the Debian maintainer for this project: chrsmrtn -AT -debian.org You might ask them to include one or both of the patches mentioned above. Package details are here: packages.qa.debian.org/i/imwheel.html
Since imwheel is not behaving as expected, the problem is most likely in imwheel. If you file a bug for this problem, the bug should be filed against imwheel.
The official support channel for this project is the Sourceforge page (see #1), which does appear to be inactive. (See #2 for more info)
Easystroke is an alternative. From wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/All_Mouse_Buttons_Working :

  Go to Preferences tab > Additional buttons > Add, and add any special button.

  Note: In case of easystroke doesn't automatically detect mouse buttons, you can specify it manually. Button identifiers (numbers) can be viewed by xev.

  Go to Action tab -> Add action, give the new action a name, as Type choose "Key", as Details set "Alt+Left" for Back button, "Alt+Right" for Forward button, as Stroke click the proper mouse button (confirm if a warning is displayed), and voilà! Your mouse button is configured.


cant access Disks after update and other problems

I did fix the the access to the all disks and the external hard drive , by using the program ( disks ) and mounted them manually.


Yes. You can create a RAM disk in Ubuntu, and then copy your preferred program on it, and run it from RAM.

See for example here how to create a RAM disk :

How do I make a RAM disk?

You could create a bash script for this, which you can load after boot time, for example with a crontab entry :

@reboot /usr/local/bin/my-RAM-disk-script.sh


For CUDA 8.0 on Ubuntu 16.04 you have to build and install TF from source, during configuration phase it will request CUDA version, specify 8.0


Ubuntu 14.04 doesn't recognize my Bq Ubuntu Edition smartphone

I just tried and had the same issue on Ubuntu 14.04.
Then I unplugged it and unlocked the phone (I have a PIN lock). I tried again after having unlocked the phone and it worked.


Is there any way to use Https in the Ubuntu?

You are wrong in thinking that https is what you need. What https does is to encrypt the information send between you and the server abroad. It does not allow you to access a server that your government (which you'd better not mention) has blocked.

You should really be looking at some of the following things (I am no specialist, so look around the site or ask another question):

A proxy How can I configure proxy authentication?
A VPN connection
An alternative DNS server
Tor

Probably the best option is to use Tor. It allows for anonymous websurfing. There are some questions on this site about Tor in your country. Be careful, though, because your government is likely to be warned of you inquiring about Tor (and they might find other ways to know what you are doing; if it's just surfing BBC world, no worries).

Useful links:

How to install tor


Firefox 4 stores passwords, but suddenly forgot that it did?

Some how it seems to have been fixed, so I'm not sure if it was a bug in a nightly build? Whatever the case is, it seems fixed for most websites now.


Why is custom shortcut Ctrl+Alt+Delete special and not working?

Try setting it using Compiz, after disabling it from System Settings → Keyboard → Shortcuts tab:

Install ccsm

sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

Run it and enable Commands plugin
Set it the command in Commands tab & shortcut in Key Bindings tab

Actually, setting custom shortcut from System Setting works too for me. Custom shortcuts are handled by media-keys plugin from unity-settings-daemon try reinstall it:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall unity-settings-daemon


The patch you've indicated is already merged into the Ubuntu packaging and has been present since at least 18.04 in the repositories.  In 18.04, there's also the newer security release version of 9.26~dfsg+0-0ubuntu0.18.04.13 as well which has more patches and fixes for issues already merged in it. (available in the -updates and -security repositories for 18.04, and -security is usually enabled by default).
Ubuntu 20.04 and later already have a much newer version of Ghostscript which is already at and beyond the patch level you've indicated.  There is no action needed on your part unless you are using a version of Ubuntu older than 18.04 (in which case, time to update your system to a newer Ubuntu)
Check the version of the package you're using with apt-cache policy ghostscript - if the 'Installed' value is a version at or later than 9.22~dfsg+1-0ubuntu1 or 9.26~dfsg+0-0ubuntu0.18.04.13 (for 18.04) systems then you're already good.  If you're on Ubuntu 20.04 or newer, you don't even have to check as it's already part of the packaging.


How to Make Permanent Changes to Default user-dirs.dirs?

Most likely it removes those entries because the directories do not exist at the moment when you log in. So I'm guessing /media/storage isn't mounted at that point.


How do I install network drivers on my Ubuntu Server OS via command line

Normally, any linux has drivers out of the box. I never had experience looking for network card (NIC) drivers elsewhere.

Using the terminal try this and post the outcome here:

$sudo ifconfig


xorg works very strangely without specific resolution settings within /etc/X11/xorg.conf

You need to put the specific resolutions and it would work perfectly.

Here is how I set up my xorg.conf and you can use this as a guide for yours (search on google for your resolution) or for a short time you can backup yours and use this one but it will let you use a maximum resolution of 1024x768@60Hz (I love this xorg.conf):

Section "InputDevice"

    Identifier  "Generic Keyboard"
    Driver      "kbd"
    Option      "XkbRules"  "xorg"
    Option      "XkbModel"  "pc105"
    Option      "XkbLayout" "ro"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

    Identifier  "Configured Mouse"
    Driver      "mouse"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier  "Configured Monitor"
    Modelname "Custom 1"
    modeline  "640x480@60" 25.2 640 656 752 800 480 490 492 525 -vsync -hsync
    modeline  "800x600@60" 40.0 800 840 968 1056 600 601 605 628 +hsync +vsync
    modeline "1024x768@60" 65.0 1024 1048 1184 1344 768 771 777 806 -vsync -hsync
EndSection

Section "Screen"

    Identifier  "Default Screen"
    Monitor     "Configured Monitor"

    SubSection "Display"

        Depth 24
        Modes "1024x768@60" "800x600@60" "640x400@60"
        Modes "800x600@60" "640x400@60"

    EndSubSection

EndSection


Why do du -sh and the file manager disagree?

Short answer: The file manager calculates with units based on 1000, du calculates per default with units based on 1024. Because of this, the file manager views a file of 1024 bytes as "1.024 kB", while du views it as "1.000 kiB". This (literally) multiplies if you think of larger files, for example Megabyte (1000 * 1000) vs. Mibibyte (1024 * 1024) or Gigabyte (1000 * 1000 * 1000) vs. Gibibyte (1024 * 1024 * 1024).

Long answer: The difference stems from the different ways computers and humans count. Most current human societies do their math with the decimal system, on the base of 10. Not all cultures in history did, that's why, for example, we divide the day into 24 hours. But with most things, we use 10, or multiples of 10, or 10 to the n-th power. This is evident in the International system of Units (SI), which uses prefixes to mark 10 ^ 3 = 1000. 1000 gram equals 1 *kilo*gram, the 1000th part of 1 meter equals 1 *milli*meter and so fort. Technical, 1000 kilogram would be 1 "megagram", but traditionally, we use a different word for it, "ton". Still, it is based on 1000.

On the other hand, computers calculate not based on 10, but based on 2 - on/off, power/no power, true/false. Therefore, computers use multiplies and powers of 2 instead of multiplies of 10: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 and so fort. The power of 2 which is nearest to 1000 is 1024. Because of this, "1 kilobyte" was defined originally not as "1000 byte" as most other units would have been, but as "1024 byte". In the same way, "1 megabyte" originally was "1024 * 1024 byte", "1 gigabyte" originally was "1024 * 1024 * 1024 byte" and so forth.

"Back then", most people who used computers knew about this, and in the order of scales that were used in those days, it didn't make munch of a difference. Whether a file is 1000 bytes "large" or 1024 bytes, doesn't really matter in most cases. But time went on, computers became omnipresent, and the numbers became larger. Today, many computer users don't know about 1000 vs. 1024, or they don't care. It doesn't make too much sense to explain to "Joe Everbody", that with almost everything, "kilo" means "1000 of it", but with computers, it's different. Additionally, the difference starts to get significant. If you compare a "Gigabyte" based on 1000 to a "Gigabyte" based on 1024, the difference is roughly 10%. With "Terabyte" and larger, the difference is an even larger fraction.

Therefore, over the last years many countries decided to differentiate between those two calculation systems. The classical prefixes kilo-, mega-, giga-, tera- etc. are today almost always used based on 1000. So, a file with 1024 bytes would no longer be "1.000 kilobyte", but "1.024 kilobyte". The units based on 1024 got new prefixes, with the first syllable of the "old one" followed by "bi": Kilo -> kibi, mega -> mibi, tera -> tebi and so forth. The symbols are KiB, MiB, TiB and so forth.

Nautilus, Ubuntu's file manager, calculates based on 1000. So it shows your file sizes in kilobytes, megabytes etc. du on the other hand still calculates based on 1024. So with du you see your file sizes in kibibytes, mebibytes etc. And as said above, once we are in the tera- vs. tebi- range and up, it starts to show ;)

du offers the --si switch. It works like -h, but calculates with SI units instead of based on 1024. So

du --si -s my_files/

would give you a size in KB, MB, GB etc., while

du -sh my_files/

would give you a size in KiB, MiB, GiB etc.


What do the nomodeset, quiet and splash kernel parameters mean?

From this question, about nomodeset:

  The newest kernels have moved the video mode setting into the
  kernel. So all the programming of the hardware specific clock rates
  and registers on the video card happen in the kernel rather than in
  the X driver when the X server starts.. This makes it possible to have
  high resolution nice looking splash (boot) screens and flicker free
  transitions from boot splash to login screen. Unfortunately, on some
  cards this doesn't work properly and you end up with a black screen.
  Adding the nomodeset parameter instructs the kernel to not load video
  drivers and use BIOS modes instead until X is loaded.

From Unix & Linux, on quiet splash:

  The splash (which eventually ends up in your /boot/grub/grub.cfg )
  causes the splash screen to be shown.

  At the same time you want the boot process to be quiet, as otherwise
  all kinds of messages would disrupt that splash screen.

  Although specified in GRUB these are kernel parameters influencing the
  loading of the kernel or its modules, not something that changes GRUB
  behaviour. The significant part from GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT is
  CMDLINE_LINUX

This answer covers acpi, noapic and nolapic:

  In general, such boot parameters are not needed unless there is a
  problem with your BIOS and how it handles these standards, or it just
  might be old enough where these standards were not fully implemented
  properly.

  ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) is a standard for
  handling power management. Older systems may not support ACPI full, so
  sometimes it helps to give the kernel a hint to not use it. "acpi=off"

  APIC (Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller) is a kind of feature
  found on newer systems. The "local" version is called "LAPIC". What
  this controller can do is be set up to generate and handle interrupts,
  a signal the hardware uses to pass messages. Again, some
  implementations of APIC can have problems on older system, and so it
  is useful to disable it. "noapic" and "nolapic".

  Sometimes the APIC is working, but it slows things down by getting in
  the middle of messages being passed around. This can mess with audio
  and video processing, for example. Folks might disable it for that
  reason as well.

Additional parameters can be found here.


problem with installing nvidia-173 driver ubuntu

You'll want to install only nvidia-173 and the directions are here:
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=102602

It should be pretty much the same for ubuntu


What is the true install procedure for youtube-dl in 20.04?

If you install the youtube-dl package from the 20.04 Ubuntu archive, it does not result in any /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl file. So probably you have previously installed youtube-dl in some other way than one of the ways you mention in your question, and that may be the cause of the confusion.
If you don't remember how that happened, I would suggest that you simply delete that file:
sudo rm /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl

The pip3 way is a good way to get the latest available version. Please note though, that if you install via pip3 as your own user (i.e. without sudo) the youtube-dl executable will end up in $HOME/.local/bin, and you may need to log out and log in again to make that directory be included in PATH.


How shred very large folder and subfolder and files

The chattr command can be used to change a folder or files attributes.

So if you use

chattr -R +s the_big_folder

It will recursively add the secure delete attribute to all sub directorys and files. Which means that when you delete them they will be zero filled. Then, you just have to delete them using

rm -rf the_big_folder


Installing Ubuntu 15.10 in a virtual machine under Windows 10-1511 with AMD processor 64-bit

'AMD-V' represents hardware support for Virtualisation when using an AMD CPU. There could be 3 possible reasons for the lack of AMD-V support:

You have it turned off in the Virtual Machine settings (in VirtualBox this setting is under System --> Acceleration --> Hardware Virtualization). See screenshot below for a screen grab of the location...

The setting is turned off in your computer's BIOS. To rectify this you will need to access your BIOS settings and turn it on. Carefully :).
If the above settings are not an issue and you are running a Windows host the problem can sometimes be interference from another hypervisor (like Microsoft’s Hyper-V) using AMD-V. Hyper-V can be inactivated by un-checking its box following this sequence:

 (Windows key + x) --> Control Panel --> Programs -->
 Turn Windows Features on or off --> Hyper-V


Not able to upgrade from 12.04 to 13.04 or above

please add a link for the steps you've followed so we can help, also try the following:

from software center > Edit menu > Software Sources: select the Updates tab. below you should find an option that says Notify me of a new Ubuntu version, This is probably set to Long Term support versions only, change it to any new version and try updating again. this MIGHT solve your problem.

But please notice that this will update to 13.04 then 13.10 not 13.10 directly. I would recommend downloading 13.10 iso and using it to update your system directly.


Chrome is not starting in Ubuntu 20.04 (ERROR:sandbox_linux.cc(374)] InitializeSandbox() called with multiple threads in process gpu-process.)

The problem itself got sorted after today's update.


How can I have my display settings automatically restored after I play a full-screen game?

Go to a terminal by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T and type the following commands:

mkdir bin

to create a binary directory in the home directory for your user that automatically will get added to the path.

cd bin
cat > SC

to change to that directory and start creating that file.

Now copy-paste the following code:

#!/bin/bash
# This script starts StarCraft as an example for automatically restoring the video
# resolution as per question https://askubuntu.com/questions/594283/

# Copyright (c) Fabby 2015

# This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
# You DID NOT receive a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program as the license is bigger then this program.
# Therefore, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/ for more details.
# The following line needs to be changed per game.  Example is for StarCraft
/usr/share/playonlinux/playonlinux --run "StarCraft" $1
# The following line needs to be changed per machine's individual resolution settings:
xrandr --output DVI-0 --auto --rotate normal --pos 0x0 --output VGA-0 --auto --left-of DVI-0

and hit: Ctrl+D and then type:

chmod +x SC

Now the "program" SC is ready to be executed with 1 parameter.  Close the terminal and open it again and type:

cd /path/to/SaveGames
SC szFirstCoupleOflattersOfSaveGame[Tab]

Where /path/to/SaveGames and szFirstCoupleOflattersOfSaveGame are the directory where you keep your savegames and the first couple of letters of the name of your savegame respectively followed by the Tab key to auto-complete the entire name of your savegame. (if you just type SC it will just launch StarCraft without loading any savegame...)

Then finish with Enter and smile!

The above example should be enough for any other game that you have.  If you use all capitals all the time for your own games and keep he names for your "programs" short, you'll turn into a real terminal addict. ;-)

If you don't like terminal commands, there are already answers on this site to turn them into icons on your desktop or in your dash (like this one )


Will Ubuntu run slower in a virtual machine?

You most definitely can.  I have Ubuntu on my machine,(Dual core 3.2, 4GB RAM, 250HD and 2 80GB Drives) Unfortunately Windows as well.

I also have VMware 8 installed, and I have Ubuntu 12.04, 10.04LTS, and 12.10 all running inside VM's.  Once you have VMware installed, you can virutally boot any operating system of your choice, providing you have the hardware to handle it.

Running One OS, doesn't really require much, but some OS's require a lot of hardware ie. Windows.  Ubuntu runs great, but of course, if I run all 3 VM's at the same time, it gets a bit sluggish.  Hope that this answers your question.


How to install Nvidia drivers and run unity 3d?

After installing the nvidia driver you need to re-start X. Log out and back in.


GRUB should be installed on the /dev/sda (for example) and not in any of its partition


glColorMaskIndexedEXT is part of the OpenGL extension EXT_draw_buffers2, which is unsupported by your graphics adapter (at least with the current driver) according to the output of glxinfo you provided.

You are very likely unable to launch Source engine based games under Linux with your current hardware.


Virtualbox having a plethora of problems

Good news. I fixed the problem! I downloaded the install package from the virtualbox website and when I fired it up and it somehow overwrote or replaced the old one and now it is working fine. If you're having the problem I did download the package here: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads.


I have a file named "-t". How to remove it?

You can use rm -- -t or rm ./-t

From man rm

To remove a file whose name starts with a '-', for example '-foo',
use one of these commands:

          rm -- -foo

          rm ./-foo


You can't disable autoupdate. You can, however, control the update schedule:

snap set core refresh.schedule=<spec>

I can't find an easily-accessible description of the spec (I'll update this answer if I do), but here are some examples:

9:00-15:00 (every day between 9am and 3pm)
9:00-15:00/21:00-22:00 (every day between 9am,5pm and 9pm,10pm)
thu@9:00-15:00 (only Thursday between 9am and 3pm)
fri@9:00-11:00/mon@13:00-15:00 (only Friday between 9am and 3pm and Monday between 1pm and 3pm)
fri@9:00-11:00/13:00-15:00  (only Friday between 9am and 3pm and every day between 1pm and 3pm)


Making a custom mouse cursor in ubuntu 12.04

This and this video tutorial might help you making cursor theme.

To change cursor theme, Go to software center and install Unity tweak tool. Open it, select cursors and select the cursor that you like.


Error cloning git repo onto exFAT usb drive

Assembling from the comments above:

Mounting with

sudo mount -t exfat -o rw,auto,user,fmask=0022,dmask=0000,uid=1000,gid=1000 /dev/sda1 mnt

where mnt is in my home directory thus owned by me
and then doing

git -c core.fileMode=false clone ../whatever-bare-repo.git/

seems to work correctly


https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/unity/+filebug

The link answers it all.... =)


Unable to disable Horizontal Scrolling on Ubuntu 16.04.1

It is quite easy to do if you installed libinput.

Edit /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/xx-libinput.conf ( replace the xx with the right number for your system; often 90 or 40 ) and add

Option "HorizontalScrolling" "False"

to the touchpad section.

xorg-synapics and libinput have different config files.

Option "Tapping" "True"

will enable tap-to-click function. It is disabled by default.

You can see the full list of options HERE


Unity interface Close/Minimize/Maximize too small

The button images are stored in the themes /usr/share/themes. Open you theme's folder, for example Ambiance. In that folder you'll find folders for GTK 2 and 3 as well as folders for metacity-1 and unity. Those two folders contain the icons you're interested in. These icons are PNGs which means fixed size. I suggest you first backup the icons you wish to change and then replace the icons with those of a larger size. Note there are icon variations for each of the icon states to indicate things like pressed, focus and unfocused. You'll need a close, minimize, maximize and unmaximize version which will then get color varations for the various states. I've changed the orange close icons to blue on my system. I've not tried changing sizes but I'd think that at least a wider icon would work if not both wider and higher. Changed icons will need to be placed in both the metacity-1 and unity folders always keeping the same names as currently used.


Gnome Shell not showing Dropbox on top panel

After installing libappindicator1 from the repositories, I had to install TopIcons and REMOVE AppIndicatorSupport to get support working.


Replace/remove Bind for improved security

Run the following command:

dpkg -l | grep 'dnsutils\|bind9utils\|dnsutils\|maas-dns\|samba\|autodns-dhcp\|bind9-dyndb-ldap|\bindgraph\|cobbler\|collectd-core\|dhis-dns-engine\|dhis-tools-dns\|dlz-ldap-enum\|dms-core\|dnssec-tools\|freeipa-server\|gadmin-bind\|ikiwiki-hosting-dns\|ldap2dns\|ldap2zone\|bind9:i386\|bind9utils:i386\|dnsutils:i386\|bind9utils\|dnsutils\|maas-dns\|bind9:i386\|bind9utils:i386\|dnsutils:i386\|dnsutils'

This will list all the packages that depend on bind9 that are installed on your system. If you are okay with uninstalling these packages, go ahead and uninstall it.

Also, do you need a DNS server? If so, you may want to look into something else

There's pdnsd, unbound, dnsmasq, and pdns (PowerDNS) just to name a few.

It looks like PowerDNS has the most features to compete with BIND.

To list the available PowerDNS packages, run the following command:

apt-cache search pdns | grep "pdns-"


"syntax error: unexpected end of file" simple script

There are three obvious errors:

On the line else s=$1-50  m=$2-50  h=$1+1 fi, the word fi is not treated as a keyword, because it is not the first word in the command. To the shell, this looks like three assignments that apply to the command fi. If you ever got to execute this line, you'd see an error bash: fi: command not found. Put fi on a line of its own (or put a ; before it).
[ "$3" < 50 ] is the same as [ "$3" ] < 50 — it's the command [ … ] (which can also be written test) with the sole argument "$3", and with an input redirection from the file 50. Either use the numeric comparison operator -lt, or use an arithmetic instruction (( … )). The single bracket construct is an ordinary built-in command, so special characters such as < retain their normal meaning. The double parenthesis construct is special syntax, and you can use < as a numeric comparison operator inside.
["$2" < 50 ] is missing a space after the opening bracket.

Also the usual convention in shell scripts is to put a newline after then and else. Furthermore, instead of an else block that consists entirely of an if statement, you should use elif. And please indent consistently.

#!/bin/bash
declare -i s
declare -i m
declare -i h

if (( $3 < 50 )); then
  s=$3+10  m=$2  h=$1
elif (( $2 < 50 )); then
  s=$3-50  m=$2+1  h=$1
else
  s=$1-50  m=$2-50  h=$1+1
fi

echo "$h:$m:$s"

P.S. I haven't reviewed your logic. You seem to be looking for date +%T -d 'now + 10 seconds'.


VM Player 6.01 on Win 8.1. Ubuntu on VM, internet connect fail

Enable the bridged network option in vmplayer settings.

It would share the internet between the host(Windows 8) and guest(Ubuntu).


What is a good card creating application?

I found these templates online for LibreOffice:
http://templates.services.openoffice.org/en/search/node/greeting%20card


Honestly? I would save all your data and then set up (clean install) your PC with Ubuntu 16 again. Don't worry, the first time I used Ubuntu I had similar experiences.


Dude it tells you exactly what you need to do.

Download a netinstall version of the latest Ubuntu.

During install you will need to select both "minimal or minimum" and "standard" packages.  But to be honest this system can't do much; has no GUI.  In addition to those, you need an X server which Xorg, and you need a window manager to utilize this X server basically so you can have a desktop and can have applications with graphics...the window manager you must choose for yourself but for xorg the command is probably sudo apt install xorg (it will give you a big list of things to install, but you don't need to install all of it.  You do need things like xinit, x11-xserver-utils, xserver-xorg-video-dummy, xserver-xorg-xinput-all
xserver-xorg-video-all or xserver-xorg-video-(whatever you have intel, nvidia...)
 and in combination with commands like no-install-recommends...of course nothing will work without a window manager...My suggestion install xorg in full and get it working with a window manager before you start cutting down on parts of Xorg. Use the command startx to start the window manager once Xorg and it are installed.

So after the standard and minimum, you have to install the stuff the enables graphics (Ubuntu only does  this in bloat fashion forcing you to use a desktop manager which necessarily has a lot of bloat between the login manager, window manager, app indicators (system tray) menu bar, other extensions...) but as I said all you need to get graphics is technically essential parts of Xorg and a complete window manager.  So what are these parts of Xorg, what do they do?
xinit (without it startx will fail, the most essential part of Xorg)
x11-xserver-utils (think about it, gives you control Xorg, what kind..investigate)

xserver-xorg-video-dummy (a placeholder so xorg will work, but without accel.)

xserver-xorg-video-all (extensions for Xorg that support accel. for all known graphics configuraitons)

xserver-xorg-xinput-all (extension for Xorg that supports all known inputs inc. game controllers)

Note: without a login manager, you will boot to a terminal where you must specify your username and password.  Once logged in, you must then type startx.  Note: there security issues with xorg, thus to mitigate always use the latest version possible and block everything from the outside from coming in with iptables which is a little complicated at first, but then everything makes sense.  ufw will not ensure you are not penetrated, only iptables can do it.  For window manager, I recommend FLWM if you want a lightweight stacking window manager or i3wm if you want tiling window manager.


Ubuntu 12.04 LTS - Apple iPad 3 (iOS 7 non-jailbroken) USB connection problem

This is a known bug for IOS.7.0.2:
You can see:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libimobiledevice/+bug/1215098


Only if wxWidget has backends for SurfaceFlinger and Mir, otherwise it won't know how to talk to the display server.


Removing the file ~/.config/autostart/Feem.desktop should prevent it from running on startup. This will not uninstall the application.

To uninstall, you'll have to manually remove the files. You can't use apt-get or the software centre, because Feem was not installed by Ubuntu's package manager. I've looked at the installer code, and I can see three locations where it installed to. You can remove all of these. If you like, use the following commands.

rm -r ~/bin/Feem
rm -r ~/.local/share/applications/Feem.desktop
rm -r ~/.config/autostart/Feem.desktop

If ~/bin is empty now, you can safely remove this too.


At the partitioning step, select the partition you want to have Ubuntu installed on, click the "Change" button, and select / as "Mount point". Then click "Install now".


Copy package to a specific directory with customized ISO

I have at least a suggestion for you. I know that this works, because I work on a project with Ubuntu 14.4 and this mechanism works for me.

First the preesed.cfg preseed-lat command

d-i preseed/late_command string \
cd /target; \
wget http://sub.webserver.domain/directory/script; \
chmod +x ./script; \
chroot ./ ./script; \
rm -f ./script

The file that we call script here contains the code that gats executed while the
installation:

something like

wget http://sub.webserver.tdl/dir/run -O /etc/profile.d/run.sh
chmod +x /etc/profile.d/run.sh

as you see this approach requires a webserver. If you have an ISO as your case ju can store both files in the root of your ISO and use the following

  d-i preseed/run string script

In this case the script has to be in the same directory then the preseed.cfg

In the example above the script file juust copies run.sh to the profile.d directory in wich every sh file is being executed when a user is logging in.

Depending on what you want to do you can either use the script file itself to copy your files with sh-shell commands or use the sh file in profile.d with bash after the user has loggd in and delet it if thae actions are done.


Alt-Tab window switcher that responds to mouse clicks in MATE?

Updating my answer because this will now be possible. This has been added in this PR: https://github.com/mate-desktop/marco/pull/499

Will be available starting mate desktop v1.23.1

Not yet released as of today.


I don't have a android phone. But I could sync my Bada OS 2 phone with Evolution over funambol. It syncs memo, tasks, calendar and contacts.

I used this german tutorial: http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Funambol


Change MYBB landing page from var/www/html to var/www/html/mywebsite

This answer assumes you did not change the default settings of the apache server before.

First change the /etc/apache2/apache2.conf, edit the following lines:

<Directory /var/www/html/>
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
    Require all granted
</Directory>

to

<Directory /var/www/html/mywebsite/>
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
    Require all granted
</Directory>

then edit /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf and change the following line

DocumentRoot /var/www/html

to

DocumentRoot /var/www/html/mywebsite

Easier however would be to simply copy the contents of /var/www/html/mywebsite to /var/www/html


14.04 wifi ndisgtk drivers and getting card working

First, I suggest you remove the incorrect ndiswrapper driver:

sudo ndiswrapper -e rt2860

Next, with a temporary internet connection, by ethernet or whatever neans possible, do:

sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-generic git
cd ~
git clone https://github.com/mareksuscak/asus-pce-n53-linux.git
cd asus-pce-n53-linux
sudo make
sudo make install
sudo modprobe rt5592sta

Let us know your result as we will probably have one additional step.

If you run into trouble, backtrack and run these exact steps in order:

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

Reboot and then:

cd ~/asus-pce-n53-linux
sudo make clean
sudo make
sudo make install

Please be certain that you don't see any errors. If you do, stop and ask. sudo make install should include, at the very end:

  install -m 644 -c rt5592sta.ko
  /lib/modules/4.0.1-040001-generic/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/
  /sbin/depmod -a 4.0.1-040001-generic make[1]: Leaving directory
  '/home/chili/asus-pce-n53-linux/os/linux'

If so, load the driver:

sudo modprobe rt5592sta

It is not ndiswrapper that needs to be added to /etc/modules but rt5592sta. Please do:

gksudo gedit /etc/modules

Use nano or kate or leafpad if you don't have the text editor gedit. Remove the line ndiswrapper; add a new line rt5592sta. Proofread carefully, save and close the text editor.

Reboot. Is your wireless working as expected?

You have compiled the driver for your currently running kernel version only. When Update Manager installs a later kernel, also known as linux-image, you must recompile after the requested reboot:

cd ~/asus-pce-n53-linux
sudo make clean
sudo make
sudo make install
sudo modprobe rt5592sta

Please retain the file and these instructions for that time.


No manual entries for recvfrom, sendto, and bind commands in Ubuntu 18.04

If you want to read the manual pages of the system calls by these names (as opposed to the command-line applications outlined in karel’s answer) please make sure that the manpages-dev package is installed:

sudo apt install manpages-dev

If you prefer the manual pages to be translated to your language you can list available translation packages with:

apt-cache search 'manpages-.*-dev'


How to get the 2560x1440 resolution option permanently under Ubuntu 18.04?

Hmmm. I think this may have worked.

gedit ~/.profile

added to the end of the file and saved

xrandr --newmode "2560x1440R"  241.50  2560 2608 2640 2720  1440 1443 1448 1481 +hsync -vsync
xrandr --addmode HDMI-1-1 2560x1440R

Anyone see any issues this might cause?

This is where I found this solution.
http://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2017/04/custom-screen-resolution-ubuntu-desktop/


How to build a .deb file from apt-get packages?

Pretty easy: go to http://packages.ubuntu.com and download them there, put them on a USB stick and then deploy them using the USB stick!

When you double-click the .deb files, the software center should open automatically and download any additional packages needed while you're doing this.

If this happens, on that machine go to /var/cache/apt/archives/,copy them on your USB stick as well and on the next machine, install them from the USB stick...


Yes, 16.04 should be compatible with 3.19 since it would be used in 14.04, which can be upgraded to 16.04.

Some people are still using 3.19 due to issues such as https://github.com/vmware/open-vm-tools/issues/74

eldamir was able to manually install the 3.19 packages in this manner:

mkdir kernel
cd kernel
wget http://launchpadlibrarian.net/220635919/linux-headers-3.19.0-31-generic_3.19.0-31.36~14.04.1_amd64.deb
wget http://launchpadlibrarian.net/220668669/linux-headers-3.19.0-31_3.19.0-31.36~14.04.1_all.deb
wget http://launchpadlibrarian.net/220635970/linux-image-3.19.0-31-generic_3.19.0-31.36~14.04.1_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i linux-*

Note:

The kernels are related to hardware support, so the machines that upgraded from 14.04 to 16.04 should be able to use the same kernel before the upgrade (at least for some time), since there was no change in the hardware. It is possible that a machine may have new hardware that is only supported in kernels newer than 3.x, but this does not mean that 16.04 is strictly incompatible with 3.x kernels, just that the machine will need to use a newer kernel.


cheese not working with latest update of gstreamer

This can be solved by running sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-gconf


You can install indicator-multiload:

sudo apt-get install indicator-multiload

Run it from the dash, and it will appear in the bar at the top.  Right click on it, select Preferences, uncheck Processor (if you wish) and check Hard disk.

It shows usage over time (rather than an LED-style indicator) and doesn't separate out individual disks.

Source


The period for support doesn't depend on what was initially installed but solely on the package.

A package that is considered to be a "server package" gets LTS on any installation. Packages that are considered both "server packages" and "desktop packages" get LTS as well. Packages that are considered "desktop-only" don't get LTS on any installation.

So during the server LTS period on a desktop installation you still get updates for some packages, but not for others.

For example it's still Firefox 20 in Ubuntu 10.04 with all its known security bugs.

Please upgrade to a still supported version of Ubuntu as soon as possible.


gVim randomly spouting warning: invalid source position for vertical gradient

This can be caused by an incompatibility or bug of the selected gtk theme and/or the version of the gtk theme engine. You should be able to get rid of the error by switching to another theme, preferably the default theme that comes with your distribution.

Although not directly related, this bug report may be able to help understanding the underlying problem: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=751735


Be sure the folder is really empty (hidden files/folders might be in there). Look at the file contents again with

sudo ls -lha /path/

If you're absolutely certain that it doesn't contain anything you want to have (including subdirectories), delete it with

sudo rm -r -f /path/

-r is for recursive, so it will delete the folder and subfolders, even if it is non-empty
-f is for force (this might be unnecessary).


Install dconf-tools

sudo apt-get install dconf-tools

Run dconf Editor and navigate to /desktop/unity/runner/history:

Click the Set to Default button and then log out and log back in.


Enable TRIM

TRIM (Trim command let an OS know which SSD blocks are not being used and can be cleared)

Back up fstab first in case something wrong happen.

# cp /etc/fstab ~/fstab.bk

Edit fstab file

# nano /etc/fstab

Add discard to your ssd drives or partitions, after ext4

UUID=bef10b86-494d-41c6-aa46-af72cfba90fd / ext4 discard,errors=remount-ro 0 1

Edit fstab file

# nano /etc/fstab

Add noatime,nodiratime to your ssd drives or partitions, after ext4

UUID=bef10b86-494d-41c6-aa46-af72cfba90fd / ext4 discard,noatime,nodiratime,errors=remount-ro 0 1

Disable hibernation

# nano /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.upower.policy

Look for

<allow_active>yes</allow_active>

Change from “yes” to “no”, there are two, one for hibernation, and another one for suspend. If you have to disable them both, make sure to replace them both from yes to no.

<allow_active>no</allow_active>

Tmpfs

Edit fstab file

# nano /etc/fstab

Add the line to the end of fstab file

tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0

If logs aren’t important for you (laptop or desktop), you can also mount /var/log to

tmpfs. Add the line to the end of fstab file
tmpfs /var/log tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=0755 0 0

From How to tweak and optimize SSD for Ubuntu, Linux Mint


How do i make ubuntu request a specific ip address from a dhcp server?

You have a few options.

1) DHCP reservations on your router. Some routers have this look around in the settings.

2) I'm pretty sure if you go to networking manager you can set a manual ip, but still be on DHCP. I mostly use cli.

3) Set a staic ip with this guide
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/ubuntu/change-ubuntu-server-from-dhcp-to-a-static-ip-address/


Can I prevent an OpenPGP key from being synchronized to keyservers?

No, there are no means of preventing keys from being uploaded to keyservers. Neither does RFC 4880 (OpenPGP) specify any restrictions, nor do the usual key server implementations support anything like "do-not-upload"-options.

The only chance would be to manually tell people not to upload a key; but I would not put expectations into such a desire being successful for a longer time span: users of OpenPGP are just used too much in keys being available on key servers, and at some point somebody will (accidentally) upload the key. And deleting from key servers is not possible to prevent deletion attacks and censorship.


If you have installed "Docker" with the following command:

sudo apt-get install docker.io

the man pages can be viewed with:

man docker

Even if you have installed Docker with these instructions the man pages can be viewed with:

man docker

With this command, you see the files installed for the man pages:

dpkg-query -L <package_name> | grep "/usr/share/man"

E.G. docker.io:

apt-cache policy docker.io

docker.io:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 1.5.0~dfsg1-1ubuntu2
  Version table:
     1.5.0~dfsg1-1ubuntu2 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ vivid/universe amd64 Packages

apt-file list docker.io | grep "/usr/share/man"

docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-attach.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-build.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-commit.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-cp.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-create.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-diff.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-events.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-exec.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-export.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-history.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-images.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-import.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-info.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-inspect.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-kill.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-load.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-login.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-logout.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-logs.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-pause.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-port.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-ps.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-pull.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-push.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-restart.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-rm.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-rmi.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-run.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-save.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-search.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-start.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-stop.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-tag.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-top.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-unpause.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-version.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker-wait.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man1/docker.1.gz
docker.io: /usr/share/man/man5/Dockerfile.5.gz


Installing Ubuntu 16.04.3 dual boot Windows 10 Pro (1709) with Nvidia Quadro P2000

I was able to install Ubuntu after setting the nomodeset parameter. I was still having problems booting so I again set nomodeset on the startup screen and now I was able to boot.

I then went to Software and driver update and selected the NVIDIA drivers (it was using the XORG nouveau drivers).

The issue has been resolved.