How can I find "Firefox updates:" option in "firefox preferences > Advanced > update" tab

Hi and welcome to Ubuntu and Askubuntu :)

You'll be able to update your Firefox from the Update Manager when a newer version of Firefox is out and updated in the repositories. You can find the Update Manager from the Unity Dash - Press Super key and type Update Manager and click on the icon that shows up. Any and all packages that have an update will show up there and you can update them if you choose from there.

Do remember to click on the Check button and then clicking on the Install Updates button, that way the repositories get checked for updates and then you can install updates of your choice cleanly.


How can I roll back xserver-xorg-core and xserver-common?

This turned out to be simple enough:

Search for the appropriate packages in Launchpad

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/maverick/amd64/xserver-common/2:1.9.0-0ubuntu7
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/maverick/amd64/xserver-xorg-core/2:1.9.0-0ubuntu7

Download packages
run sudo dpkg -i on the packages

However, this didn't solve my problem. I'll keep looking.


You should be able to create a VM from your machine using from VMware the 'vCenter Converter'. This will create a virtual machine from your physical machine.
https://www.vmware.com/de/products/converter.html
This product should be free. To download you have to register.
If you want to create a Virtual Box machine, you can use this VM to create a new Virtual Box machine.


Fluidsynth vs. TiMidity 2.13 -- why does the former play beautiful cymbals and the latter play trashy ones?

Timidity++ comes with some questionable default settings that essentially ignore the effects specified by the soundfont and midi source in favour of global defaults.
Though I have no insight into why the developers have chosen to do that, I can speculate that it is because it's a lot easier to find awful midi files made by people who don't understand midi or music very well, or cobbled together soundfonts or patchsets that make perfect midi sound like a high-school band practising for the first time.
Try the following settings in your timidity.cfg, they tell timidity to respect
the wishes of the creators of the soundfont and midi source.
# Enable all midi effects
opt -Ewpvsetoz

# Don't cut sustain to save CPU
opt --no-fast-decay

# Pan quickly, even if it sounds bad
opt --fast-panning

# Set chorus and reverb by song & soundfont
opt EFreverb=1
opt EFchorus=1

# Never kill voices to save CPU
opt -k0

# Sustain fades after three seconds (3000ms)
opt -m3000

You may feel timidity sounds worse with these settings, if that's the case it probably means you're using a crappy soundfont. The FluidR3 soundfonts are okay for most midi files if you just want to get up and running quickly, however I recommend the Tyroland soundfont, it has well matched and balanced instruments with proper settings for reverb and chorus and sounds great with fluidsynth and timidity.
https://musical-artifacts.com/artifacts/1305
If it still sounds bad, try finding better midi files or playing better.


Can ping but cannot wget with server name

When you set a static IP address in /etc/network/interfaces, you are responsible to set DNS nameservers. I suggest you amend the file on comp2 to read:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 10.10.0.20
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 10.10.0.10
dns-nameservers 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4

Then get the system to re-read and use the change:

sudo ifdown eth0 && sudo ifup -v eth0

And test:

ping -c3 8.8.8.8
ping -c3 www.google.com


Can I make Ubuntu server connect to wifi and create an Access point from the same wlan0 interface?

No, you need two networks for this. Wi-Fi is EITHER in AP or Ad-Hoc modes not both.

If your neighbour is allowing you to connect to his Wi-Fi, just connect all of the PC's to it. If they don't know what you are doing, I strongly suggest that you don't do it! It may well be illegal depending on what country you are in.

When bridging, you need two connections not one. You could bridge a wired and wireless or two wireless connections.


installation of matlab r2011a in ubuntu 13.10

exe files are stuff from Windows. They only work on Ubuntu with a compatibility layer, such as WINE.

To install Matlab in Ubuntu, install it from the software center.


How to uninstall a snap package manually?

You may have created a problem if you have deleted files as indicated.
The "normal" way to handle snap packages is via the snap utility. I have included help text and examples below to get you an impression what to use.

How exactly to get out of the situation you have created is harder to tell.
I suggest you do snap list to find out the actual name of the package you wish to remove, and then try sudo snap remove packagename - for that package.

If that displays errors, then you need to deal with those in a sane manner.

Some tips on "snap" usage...

$ snap list
<list of installed packages here>

$ snap help
The snap command lets you install, configure, refresh and remove snaps.
Snaps are packages that work across many different Linux distributions,
enabling secure delivery and operation of the latest apps and utilities.

Usage: snap  [...]

- - - 8<- - - - -

For more information about a command, run 'snap help '.
For a short summary of all commands, run 'snap help --all'.

$ snap help remove
Usage:
  snap remove [remove-OPTIONS] ...

The remove command removes the named snap instance from the system.

By default all the snap revisions are removed, including their data and the
common data directory. When a --revision option is passed only the specified
revision is removed.

[remove command options]
      --no-wait     Do not wait for the operation to finish but just print the change id.
      --revision=   Remove only the given revision

$ sudo snap remove ...

Note that at least "core" needs to be there for snap to function... I'm not as sure about the others here, they might be required too.

$ snap list
Name                Version          Rev   Tracking  Publisher     Notes
core                16-2.39.3        7270  stable    canonical✓    core
core18              20190709         1066  stable    canonical✓    base
gtk-common-themes   0.1-22-gab0a26b  1313  stable    canonical✓    -
gtk2-common-themes  0.1              5     stable    canonical✓    -

... installing e.g. gimp or vlc adds a single line each.


What you search is that:

exec 1> >(tee -a $LOGFILE)

Every data that is send trough channel 1 (stdout) is redirected line by line to tee which appends -a it to a file AND prints it to the stdout.

If you want to redirect both, stdout and stderr, use this after the first exec statement from above:

exec 2>&1


Issue selecting different Chrome windows in Ubuntu 20.04.1

You can go to the terminal and use the code $ gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock click-action 'preview'. This worked for me and I hope it helps you too.


Remove APT repositories disabled after upgrade to 18.04

Open Software & Update program already installed in Ubuntu.

Use the Dash or Show Applications:

Alternately open Ubuntu Software and then Menu > Software & Update
Alternately open a terminal and enter software-properties-gtk

Go to the tab Other Softeware.
The Repositories that are Uncheked are disabled.
Then either Edit... to enable (Chrome, for example) or Remove (others you don't need).
When you edit:
Some of the disabled repositories may have "xenial" in the text. You will need to replace "xenial" with "bionic" before you enable them so that they point to the right repository version.
Hope this helps


Theoretically, you should be able to perform what you want with gdisk (you may need to install it first):

Start with sudo gdisk /dev/sdb
Choose option b for backup and when prompted for filename, type sdb.part (or whatever you want)
Choose option q for quit
Restart gdisk with the drive to be overwritten: sudo gdisk /dev/sda
Double check that you entered the correct device, next commands will overwrite its partition table
Choose option r for recovery
Choose option l to load partition table from file, type sdb.part (the name you used with the above backup command)
Choose option w to write the partition table (it will verify you really want to do this)

Now, as I mentioned in the beginning, this is how it is supposed to work in theory. In practice, there are three caveats:

gdisk is beta software (even the latest 0.8.2 version)
Versions of gdisk available in released ubuntu versions are really old: lucid has 0.5.1 and oneiric has 0.6.14. If at all possible, use precise as it has 0.8.1, which is recent, or download latest from gdisk download page.
Above instructions may contain mistakes and seriously corrupt your disks! I have not verified they work as intended!

If you decide to go forward despite these warnings: buena suerte y ten mucho cuidado!


how to i connect huawei dongle to my ubuntu 12.4 version?

Ideally once you insert your dongle; in the Network Manager Application Indicator list (on the top bar of your screen), you should now have an option something like "Create new CDMA connection". Click that and the setup wizard should open.


Have you tried opening up "Software & Updates" and checking the "Additional Drivers" tab to see if you have any proprietary drivers available for your sound card?  You can get there by searching for "Drivers" in most dashes/application menus/etc.


How to remove *-pae Grub2 entries from previous install?

Rather than just deleting them (and thus confusing the package manager), uninstall the kernels you don't want to show in the GRUB list. Then run sudo update-grub to regenerate the list.


sudo apt-get --install-suggests install git fails

Install git-daemon-sysvinit first:

sudo apt-get install git-daemon-sysvinit

If you look at the package properties in Synaptic, you will see that git-daemon-sysvinit can be used instead of git-daemon-run. And unlike the latter, git-daemon-sysvinit actually works on Ubuntu 15.04 and up.

Once you have git-daemon-sysvinit installed, you can run

sudo apt-get --install-suggests install git

if you want to. However, note that you may not actually need some of these suggested packages. And git itself gets installed automatically when you install git-daemon-sysvinit.


add yourself to the dialout group, as described in thread you mentioned, then log out and back in. Now it should work. This is because the modification won't take effect until your current session is closed and a new one is started.


I had the same problem with a GTX 960M on my Lenovo ideaPad Y700 and the following worked for me.
Open a terminal and run
sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-drm-nomodeset.conf
In the file, write the following line:
options nvidia-drm modeset=1
Save the file. Back into the terminal, update initramfs by running:
sudo update-initramfs -u
Reboot.
Source: ubuntuhandbook.org

If the previous step didn't work, there is another solution that you can try:
$ xrandr --output eDP-1-1 --set "PRIME Synchronization" 1
Reboot.
This command will enable the sync in your hybrid card.
To check that sync has been enable:
$ sudo cat /sys/module/nvidia_drm/parameters/modeset
it should return Y now.
Reboot.


Ubuntu 14.04 desktop does not load after login

Disable the NVidia card in the BIOS or if you have a PC: remove the NVidia card.  Then repeat Ubuntu Desktop does not load again...


Yes, there is. I had to look it up in one of my text books since I couldn't remember how to do it from memory.

Moving The Cursor

  Escape codes can be used to position the cursor. This is commonly used to provide clock or some other kind of information at a different location on the screen such as an upper corner each time the prompt is drawn. Here is a list of the escape codes that position the cursor:

You would do this by modifying your prompt string which is a environment variable.

Heres an example

# This is what my prompt string looks like
$ echo $PS1
[\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]: \[\033[01;34m\]\W\[\033[00m\]]\$

Explanation

  [...] The [ and ] sequences are used to encapsulate non-printing characters.
  An ANSI escape code begins with an octal 033 (the code generated by the escape key)
  followed by an optional character attribute followed by an instruction. For example, the
  code to set the text color to normal (attribute = 0), black text is:
  \033[0;30m

Once you've got your set up, you can test it out to see how it works before making it permanent.

# backup your prompt string
$ oldps1="$PS1"
# The create a new one
$ PS1="Your Prompt String Goes Here"
# then export it to see the results
# note that this is usually global for the current shell
$ export PS1

Hope this helps. You can visit here to see more info!

This information came from The Linux Command Line by William E. Shotts, Jr.. You can support his work by buying a physical copy from amazon or download a free copy from his website.

The Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide also has an cursory explanation on how to manipulate the cursor. You can find in-depth examples here.


How to set a Ctrl+Up+Left to move window to the top and left corner in KDE Plasma?

The image below is of the user interface KDE Plasma provides in Kubuntu 18.04, for setting up the type of shortcuts of interest (System Settings > Shortcuts > Global Shortcuts > KWin).

KDE Plasma provides for, among other things, options for moving windows to the

top left
bottom left
top right and
bottom right

corners of your screen.

Points to note

You can have two modifier keys but not two non-modifier keys in a shortcut. (Modifier keys are Alt, Ctrl, Meta, and Shift.)
A combination such as Ctrl+Left+Up isn't recognized.
If a keyboard shortcut you choose is already used by something, you'll get a pop-up;  if you wish, you can click Reassign to make the shortcut work for the action of your choice.


Error: No default or UI configuration found

I had a similar problem trying to burn Linux Mint 17.1 Cinnamon on a USB drive which was formatted in FAT32, iso burned using UNetbootin on Ubuntu 14.04. I formatted the drive in ext4, burned the iso again with the same parameters and it worked fine.
I didn't have to rename or move files within the USB drive.

I read on some other forums that a FAT16 formatting should do the job too, but I didn't try.


Trying to run 32bit application on 64bit Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Okay, thanks to @muru's answer linked me to related question's answer, I've managed to get my 32bit application working on Ubuntu 64bit.

What I needed was dpkg -S missing-lib-file.so command to find out package containing the missing library, and apt-get install package-name:i386 command to install 32bit compatible package containing the missing library.

Thread can be closed.


I got essentially the same message (except that ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 was replaced by ld-linux.so.2).  I had installed Valgrind using apt-get so libc6-dbg was already included as a dependency.

I haven't fully resolved this yet, but a clue is that the error correlates with my use of -m32 when building.

So it would seem that, in my case, the problem is the lack of a 32-bit version of libc6-dbg (or some of its components), when building on a 64-bit install of Ubuntu 12.04.

Solution (for my case)

For me, the following command made things work...

sudo apt-get install libc6-dbg:i386

This is discussed at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/eglibc/+bug/881236

Note: The package libc6-dbg:i386 doesn't show up as an available option in Synaptic or via command-completion of apt-get -- but it was there anyway.


How to add album art to mp3 using vlc media player in ubuntu?

You don't have to download anything, VLC works well with album art 'out of the box'.

Since it is unclear to me whether you are asking how to (1) manually add, or (2) automatically download, album art, I will answer both:

Manually Adding Album Art, or Downloading One Album Art
Tools > Media Information (CTRL+I) > "General" Tab > Right-click on the proxy (default) orange cone picture (1" x 1", on the bottom right) > Select "Add cover art from file" or "Download cover art".
> Change any value (e.g.: the Artist), only then the 'Save Metadata' button will appear, after it does - press it.

Performed on v2.1.4.

Automatically Downloading All Album Art
Just go to "Tools"->"Preferences" menu. Under the "Interface" tab there is a "Privacy/Network Interaction" section. Under "Album art download policy" choose "As soon as track is added". See screenshot below.

This will download the album art for any song you play.

See screenshot below:


How to use host names rather than ip addresses on home network?

You can refer to machines by by tacking a .local to the hostname, like so:

ssh machinename.local

References:

What does ".local" do?


I use synergy to control all my desktops and laptops in the same LAN with the main keyboard and mouse. I'm assuming you have some desktop installed in the Pi, like Ubuntu or Debian.

Also, if you just want access trough commandline, install openssh-server and openssh-client in the Pi, and you can log-in using the IP in the LAN.


Ubuntu 12.10 recognizes wireless but no internet connection

Try

sudo modprobe -r iwlwifi
sudo modprobe iwlwifi 11n_disable=1


What's the most direct way of creating a persistent live Ubuntu image file?

It's actually very straightforward, with the right tool.

First, create a bootable flash key via any live media creation tool that supports persistent images (for example, mkusb).

Now, one can use VBoxManage to directly dump the key into a VDI image (after unmounting all the flash key partitions):

# Assumes that the device is /dev/sdb
VBoxManage convertfromraw -format VDI /dev/sdb ubuntu_live.vdi

Finally, attach the disk to the virtual machine IDE controller.

The live disk will now be booted by default.


Well you could run top command in the terminal to know the process eating away your CPU and if you want to kill the process you just have to note down the PID of the process (left side of the terminal under PID). Once the process PID is known, you can kill the process by running kill PID XXXX

Hope this helps..


I had the same dependency problem with the .deb package on Ubuntu 17.04, but installing Trelby from source was fairly simple.

Install python-lxml and python-wxgtk3.0 from the repository:

sudo apt install python-lxml python-wxgtk3.0

Download and extract the Zip file or clone the Git repository. Example:

sudo apt install git
git clone https://github.com/oskusalerma/trelby.git
cd trelby

Navigate to the trelby folder and enter:

sudo python setup.py install

Done, you can now type, or add a shortcut pointing to, /opt/trelby/bin/trelby to start Trelby


No menu bar in gedit 3.18.3 on Ubuntu 16.04

This did the trick for me:

pkexec env DISPLAY=$DISPLAY XAUTHORITY=$XAUTHORITY GTK_MODULES=$GTK_MODULES DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS gedit


Installation of capybara-webkit ruby gem

Seems to be a popular issue... https://github.com/thoughtbot/capybara-webkit/issues/513

Had this problem myself and fought with it for a week or so. Seems to be working now though! Problem is I can't narrow it down to what I did. Here's a list of things that might of helped fix it:

Install missing packages:

sudo apt-get install libqt4-dev libqtwebkit-dev build-essential

If the packages exist already purge and then install

sudo apt-get purge libqt4-dev libqtwebkit-dev

Reinstall ruby

rvm reinstall 1.9.3

Create a unique fresh gemset: https://rvm.io/gemsets/creating
remove specific version of cabybara-webkit from Gemfile
Delete Gemfile.lock

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

I think re-installing RVM was what did it for me. It had become cluttered over time with all the different rails projects and personal hacks.


Is there any video player that plays Youtube playlists?

It turns out there is:

Playing Youtube playlists using a playlist parser script for VLC

Installation

Instructions as per the source:

download the script (or copy it and paste it in a new file with the
name playlist_youtube.lua)
move the file to ~/.local/share/vlc/lua/playlist/ (current user) or
/usr/share/vlc/lua/playlist/ (all users)

Usage

Open up VLC and hit CTRL+N to display the Open
Network Stream dialog. Paste your youtube playlist link into the text field
and hit Enter. Make sure the link you copied contains the youtube  playlist identifier (list=PLxxx).

Note: This script relies on VLC's inbuilt youtube parser. As youtube
changes its system now and then, video playback in VLC might suddenly stop
working. In that case you will have to update your youtube parser script.
You can do so with the following commands (credit goes to phoibos):

sudo apt-get install curl

(makes sure curl is installed)

sudo rm /usr/lib/vlc/lua/playlist/youtube.*

(removes old parser)

sudo curl "http://git.videolan.org/p=vlc.git;a=blob_plain;f=share/lua/playlist/youtube.lua;hb=HEAD" -o /usr/lib/vlc/lua/playlist/youtube.lua

(downloads new parser)


Make online link for application in softvare center

Web interface with install button for the software center: https://apps.ubuntu.com/cat/

Or just make a link with: apt://appname


Ubuntu 18.04 VirtualBox black screen after login

When using VirtualBox with Ubuntu 18.04 I have to leave full screen (Ctrl + F) and reduce VirtualBox display windows by dragging it to a lower size for Ubutnu system to boot an activate view on login window. Playing with screen size often allows me to overcome unresponsive cases.

Once login is complete I use fullscreen again and it works. I have a dual screen setup on a laptop under windows 7 with  older VirtualBox 5.2.20, this is behaving this way for a while now.


How do I remove Windows 8 to install Ubuntu, while retaining the data in my other drives?

My preferred version is to first run live disk and use gparted.
Then I remove the disk/partition which I don't need and format it to ext4 for use with ubuntu system.
Plus from the live cd you can see which is the correct drive for the partition/disk you want to remove and browse the drive for triple checking.


Don't know if this helps; but I've found useful informations at
https://www.howtogeek.com/175159/an-introduction-to-the-z-file-system-zfs-for-linux/

If you have a second HD (say /dev/sdb) without any partition table and you want tp create a pool named "geek1" this is the command you have top use:

sudo zpool create -f geek1 /dev/sdb


Is it possible to stop using VPN on some application?

This is possible using network namespaces.

network namespaces allows separate ip,routing table, socket listing, connection tracking table firewall and other network-related resources.

At least for VPN solutions like Layer3 SSH, OpenVPN and Wireguard since they are using a virtual interface to route VPN traffic.

In this simplified example the computer has two interfaces eth0 & eth1 both with
DHCP internet access.

Connect to VPN.
in a terminal:
sudo ip netns add not-vpn  # create  new network namespace
sudo ip link set eth1 netns not-vpn # put eth1 in new namespace
sudo ip netns exec not-vpn bash # enter new namespace with a shell
dhclient eth1 # get an DHCP IP for the moved interface
curl icanhazip.com # curl application will return your non-vpn public IP
In a another terminal:
curl icanhazip.com  curl application will return your VPN public IP
assuming that your VPN is configured to route all traffic through it by default.


Remove an application from "Show Applications"

You can do it easily by removing a desktop file from /usr/share/applications.
But it will appear again if the package gets an update.


Does zeroing a drive equivalent to 'Nuke it from orbit'?

If I run dd if=/dev/zero to my main hdd, does that also count as nuke it from orbit? will that get rid of malware?

Yes. Just formatting the windows partition is the SAFER method. dd does not care if you tell it to format your Ubuntu partition. gParted used for formatting does: it will not format an active partition.

One more piece of advice: add the empty space to Ubuntu, install virtualBox and install Windows in there. A backup of your complete Windows means to copy the container virtualBox makes. You can then make an automatic backup plan where you keep the last x weeks and fixing your Windows then means deleting the broken one and picking the last good one from a list.


Ubuntu Touch Documents Viewer wont Install

I was on OTA 9 and after I upgraded to OTA 10 the document viewer installed without issue.


Any package of that you believe you need it just do the following:

sudo apt-get install package-you-need

That way you mark packages as manual and then you can do autoremove.


laptop cannot boot after clean single-boot single-drive install using ubuntu-18.04.2-live-server-amd64.iso

The "Subiquity" installer is very new and geared towards modern systems with UEFI implementations, so if you have an old BIOS system you'll probably better of with the traditional installer.
The following bug could apply for your problem: https://bugs.launchpad.net/subiquity/+bug/1786384


I found the solution in this answer below-
Failed to change profile to headset_head_unit
Please note-
Need to install ofono and phonesim in order to make bluetooth headset work.
For ubuntu 20.04 phonesim is not there in the repository, but it is available in this PPA
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:smoser/bluetooth
sudo apt install ofono-phonesim


How to change xorg.conf file with permission?

Open a Terminal and then :

Open with Gedit...

gksudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

open with nano...

sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

now you can edit ..

P.D make a backup before change the file so you can revert your modification...

sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf_backup


Problems when trying to upgrade from 10.04 to 12.04

try first

sudo apt-get update -f

or

sudo apt-get update --fix-missing

then

sudo apt-get upgrade

then

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

hope it will work for you , if not check you broken repo's (package's)


After the Skype update, on Ubuntu 12.04, it crashes directly after log in.

This will display all the hidden files:  ls -a | egrep '^\.'
and use:

rm -rf $HOME/.Skype

to delete the skype config directory.


How to get the Forerunner 305 to work under Ubuntu?

Alright. Somehow I got it to work by myself.. I am not sure how I did it, but if you are, like me, having trouble getting your Forerunner 305 to work on Ubuntu, I'll describe what I did here.

If you haven't already, install Pytrainer trough the Ubuntu Software Center.
You'll also need to install an extra library in order to communicate with the Forerunner so execute this command in the terminal, or search for the package in the USC: sudo apt-get install garmin-forerunner-tools
Now open up Pytrainer and open in the menu Tools > GPS Device Plugins
Select the "Garmin via garmintools" option and press "Preferences"
Enable the plugin by selecting the "Enable" option under Status.
Now connect your Forerunner to the PC with the USB cable and go to File > Import from Garmin GPS Device (via garmintools)
Notice that your device gives a beep and a progress bar will show. It might seem like the program crashed (Pytrainer turns grey) but after a few seconds it should come back to live, and your activities should show up in Pytrainer!

If you run into problems, make sure that there is an recorded activity that is not older than 30 days! Pytrainer will not import activities that are older than that. You can change this default value in the preferences.

I also saw somewhere on a site that it might fail to import your tracks when there is one with a special character in it's name. So make sure you won't name any tracks with special characters.

Took me a while to figure all this out since there is not a whole lot of information about it on the internet. I hope this is of use for some more people running into problems!


You may need to add the location of bash or sh :

* * * * * /bin/sh /home/myuser/Belgeler/test.sh

Otherwise, maybe you can see what the logs says to find an error:

# cat /var/log/syslog |grep cron


Change the icon for one specific file (from the command line)

There are 2 solutions:

You change the icon from the terminal using gio set here is the command you will use:
gio set -t 'string' FiletoInsertIcon 'metadata::custom-icon' 'file:///home/user/..path to icon/'

gio set is an update of gsfv for anyone who is familiar wih this command.

You can create a .desktop using the following code:
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Name=MyApp
Exec=/path to file/file.py
Icon=/path to icon/icon.png

and make the desktop entry executable using chmod +x MyApp.desktop


How do I stop Banshee from putting a notification in the panel for every song?

Go to Edit → Preferences → Extensions, then disable the Sound Menu Integration (make sure that also the "Notification Area Icon" plugin is disabled).


I'm seeing "rpcbind" errors on 13.04_x64 Startup

I solved this by creating the two files listed (as root, of course). They are empty, but it stops the complaint when booting. The x64 is an NFS/http/tftp/BOOTP server, and does not seem to be affected either way. There was no problem with functionality before, and none after. The only change is the absence of the error from the boot log.


How to set up manually a resolved dns record

Put it in /etc/hosts in the form:

   <ip>    <host>

You can find out the IP's from running nslookup google.com

For example, put this in /etc/hosts:

173.194.40.228    goo


This looks like a Driver issue open up Additional Drivers with this command:

/usr/bin/software-properties-gtk --open-tab=4

Install the one of the proprietary Drivers if that dose not work.

Install the Open Source Driver if that dose not work.

Install the recommended driver


Difference between systemctl init.d and service

To start, there's a whole history and struggle between going from SysVInit to SystemD. Rather than trying to break that all down in one answer though, I'll refer you to some google venturing for more details on the history as well as one particular article on the topic:
The Story Behind 'init' and 'systemd': Why 'init' Needed to be Replaced with 'systemd' in Linux
In summary though, it's been a slow and arduous transition. Some legacy features were kept intact (such as init.d to some degree). If you have the option to use systemctl for your service control I recommend using that one. It's the foreseeable future for Linux and eventually older SysVInit methods will be considered deprecated entirely and removed.
To cover each one you listed specifically:

sudo systemctl status apache2.service
This is the new SystemD approach to handling services. Moving forward, applications on Linux are designed to uses the systemd method, not any other.

sudo /bin/systemctl status apache2.service
This is the same thing as the previous command. The only difference in this case is that it's not depending on the shell's $PATH environment variable to find the command, it's listing the command explicitly by including the path to the command.

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 status
This is the original SysVInit method of calling on a service. Init scripts would be written for a service and placed into this directory. While this method is still used by many, service was the command that replaced this method of calling on services in SysVInit. There's some legacy functionality for this on newer systems with SystemD, but newer programs don't include this, and not all older application init scripts work with it.

sudo service apache2 status
This was the primary tool used on SysVInit systems for services. In some cases it just linked to the /etc/init.d/ scripts, but in other cases it went to an init script stored elsewhere. It was intended to provide a smoother transition into service dependency handling.

Lastly, you mention wanting to know how to get more information out of the commands, since some provide more information than others. This is almost always determined by the application and how they designed their init or service file. As a general rule though, if it completed silently it was successful. However, to verify a start, stop, or restart, you can use the status sub-command to see how it is doing. You mentioned a status command being incorrect on an old init script. That is a bug that the application developers would have to look at. However, since init scripts are becoming the deprecated method of handling services, they may just ignore the bug until they remove the init script option entirely. The systemctl status should always work correctly otherwise a bug should be logged with the application developers.


UEFI: BIOS boot windows on the HDD if i try to boot UEFI ubuntu 12.10 from USB, why?

disregard that, I've downloaded the 32bit image by mistake.

Will not delete the question as it may help somebody.


Message about no longer required packages on every install through apt-get

On a previous apt operation, your Linux Kernel and associates has been updated and the old kernel is not needed anymore. That's why apt system suggests you to remove the old one. You can remove them with "sudo apt autoremove" command - as suggested - after you have finished with your tor-browser installation.


First make sure it's updated using following command,

sudo apt-get update

after that install Git using,

sudo apt-get install git-core

and check installation using following command

git --version


You can install Adobe Flash Player with apt-get:

sudo apt-get install flashplugin-installer.


mounting webdav folder a non sudoer user fails

Try to mount it within /etc/fstab
you must be installed davfs2

paste this line to /etc/fstab

https://somedomain.xyz/webdav.php/somefolder/ /mnt/s02 davfs,_netdev defaults 0 0

then

mount -a


First, you need to remove all 3rd party binary drivers such as NVIDIA or AMD graphics card driver.

(Because 3rd party drivers only works with current kernel and will not work with newer version. You may see blank screen with older driver version. Hence, remove, update, and reinstall to save time.)

Once removed and rebooted the desktop.Then:

Open terminal by ctrl+alt+t .

install update-manager-core by:

sudo apt-get install update-manager-core
upgrade the newest version by:

sudo do-release-upgrade -d

Finally, reinstall 3rd party binary drivers.


Is there a way to tell what encoding is used for the name and content of a file?

You could try

chardet <<<filename

The chardet program can try to guess the encoding of the stream on stdin, and <<< is the mean by which bash use a string as stdin, the same as

echo filename | chardet

For a whole directory content you can use

ls dir | chardet

EDIT

I forgot about the content, but is almost the same:

chardet <filename

or

cat filename | chardet

or for all the files in dir

cat dir/* | chardet


If you own a digital TV try this: disconnect the digital signal to it at the TV end. Connect your monitor instead. If this works, your monitor is fine.


According to my experience the command should be:

gnome-terminal --working-directory='/home/<user>/project' -x bash -c "source startProject.sh; exec bash"

Notes:

The path of --working-directory='/home/<user>/project' is enclosed with single quote marks in case it contains some special characters as spaces, etc.
The option -x means: execute - the  remainder of the command line inside the terminal.
And our command is bash -c "<commands>". That means we execute a new bash shell, which should run some -c "<commands>".
We have two separated (by semicolon ; == new line) <commands>.
The first command source startProject.sh will source the script file.
The second command exec bash has a meaning - remain open the current gnome-terminal window. There are another possible approaches to do that. In the current case the command exec will replace the current process image with a new process image - in other words it will 'kill' the current process and will execute a new (bash) under the current PID.

Further reading:

How to launch gnome-terminal from StartupApplications
How to launch tmux from StartupApplications
How to launch gnome-terminal from StartupApps and execute an application as root
How to launch gnome-terminal from Cron
How to launch gnome-terminal with few tabs, each with different profile, at system startup


How are flash drives called under ubuntu's naming scheme?

Device names of flash drives

A flash drive can be connected

via USB

the device name is the same as for SATA drives, /dev/sdx
and partitions are named /dev/sdxn

where x is the device letter and n the partition number, for example /dev/sda1
via PCI

the device name is /dev/mmcblkm
and partitions are named /dev/mmcblkmpn

where m is the device number and n the partition number, for example /dev/mmcblk0p1

Example with an SSD, HDD, USB pendrive and an SD card

lsblk

$ sudo lsblk -o model,name,fstype,size,label,mountpoint
MODEL            NAME        FSTYPE    SIZE LABEL              MOUNTPOINT
Samsung SSD 850  sda                 232,9G
                 ├─sda1      vfat      300M EFI                /boot/efi
                 ├─sda2                  1M
                 ├─sda3      ext4      100G root
                 └─sda4      swap        5G                    [SWAP]
00BEKT-00PVMT0   sdb                 298,1G
                 ├─sdb1      vfat      480M
                 ├─sdb2      ext4       80G lubuntu-xenial64   /media/tester/lubuntu-xenial64
                 ├─sdb3      swap      3,9G                    [SWAP]
                 ├─sdb4      ext4      100G ubuntu-artful64x   /
                 └─sdb5      ext4    113,7G ubuntu-artful64w   /media/tester/ubuntu-artful64w
Extreme          sdc                  14,6G
                 ├─sdc1      ntfs      6,7G usbdata            /media/tester/usbdata1
                 ├─sdc2                  1M
                 ├─sdc3      vfat      244M usbboot
                 ├─sdc4      iso9660   948M Lubuntu 17.10 i386 /media/tester/Lubuntu 17.10 i386
                 └─sdc5      ext4      6,7G casper-rw          /media/tester/casper-rw
                 mmcblk0               3,7G
                 ├─mmcblk0p1 ntfs      661M usbdata            /media/tester/usbdata
                 ├─mmcblk0p2             1K
                 ├─mmcblk0p3 vfat      122M usbboot            /media/tester/usbboot
                 ├─mmcblk0p4 iso9660   355M 9w-dus             /media/tester/9w-dus
                 └─mmcblk0p5 ext4      2,6G persistence        /media/tester/persistence

parted

$ sudo parted -ls
[sudo] password for tester:
Model: ATA Samsung SSD 850 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 250GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:

Number  Start   End    Size    File system     Name  Flags
 1      1049kB  316MB  315MB   fat32                 boot, esp
 2      316MB   317MB  1049kB
 3      317MB   108GB  107GB   ext4            root
 4      244GB   249GB  5369MB  linux-swap(v1)

Model: WDC WD32 00BEKT-00PVMT0 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 320GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:

Number  Start   End     Size    File system     Name                  Flags
 1      33,6MB  537MB   503MB   fat32           EFI System Partition  boot, esp
 2      537MB   86,4GB  85,9GB  ext4
 4      86,4GB  194GB   107GB   ext4
 5      194GB   316GB   122GB   ext4
 3      316GB   320GB   4161MB  linux-swap(v1)

Model: SanDisk Extreme (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdc: 15,7GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:

Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name     Flags
 2      1049kB  2097kB  1049kB               primary  bios_grub
 3      2097kB  258MB   256MB   fat32        primary  boot, esp
 4      258MB   1252MB  994MB                primary
 5      1252MB  8473MB  7221MB  ext2         primary
 1      8473MB  15,7GB  7221MB  ntfs         primary  msftdata

Model: SD SD04G (sd/mmc)
Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 3965MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags:

Number  Start   End     Size    Type      File system  Flags
 3      2097kB  130MB   128MB   primary   fat32        boot
 4      130MB   502MB   372MB   primary
 2      502MB   3272MB  2769MB  extended               lba
 5      503MB   3272MB  2768MB  logical   ext2
 1      3272MB  3965MB  693MB   primary   ntfs


To use a proxy, you need a proxy server. The IP and port have to be from this proxy server. Login and pwd must be your user and password on the proxy server (if the proxy requires login).

From help.ubuntu.com site:

  APT configuration file method

  This method uses the apt.conf file which is found in your /etc/apt/ directory. This method is useful if you only want apt-get (and not other applications) to use a http-proxy permanently.

  On some installations there will be no apt-conf file set up. Edit apt-conf file (or create a new one if you have no one yet) using the editor of your choice.

sudo nano /etc/apt/apt.conf

  Add this line to your /etc/apt/apt.conf file (substitute your details for yourproxyaddress and proxyport).

Acquire::http::Proxy "http://yourproxyaddress:proxyport";

  Save the apt.conf file.

If your proxy needs a login/password, substitute:

"http://yourproxyaddress:proxyport";

with:

"http://username:password@yourproxyaddress:proxyport";

using username and password from the proxy server.


I just recently installed Ubuntu 14.04 and I can't seem to download anything

I'm pretty sure this is a duplicate, but here's the answer. You need to install that library that Steam needs. Do so by running sudo apt-get install libc6*. This should fix the Steam problem and will hopefully solve the other one as well.


How can I install Openstack Grizzly using Juju and MAAS?

This is only a partial answer as this is still a work in progress

The charm work and documentation have not been merged yet, however you can follow along the work-in-progress here:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam/OpenStackHA


wordpress restored from backup asking for ftp

During the development on WordPress, giving www-data write access on your files can make your life a lot easier,

The reason is for the fact that the admin panel of WordPress allows you to do easily change lots of configuration, create the .htaccess for you with the correct rewrite rules (depending on how you want your permalinks), install and configure plug-ins, you even have access to an editor which allows you to edit your CSS and PHP files.

Although, the editor is not that important when you have access to the files. As an IDE would be a much better choice, but as for the other functionalities it can prove to be useful sometimes.

So to summarize, the best configuration, in my opinion, would be to give user ownership to root and group ownership to www-data.

sudo chown -R root:www-data /var/www/wordpress

Then give write access to www-data during development:

sudo chmod -R g+w /var/www/wordpress

Once you are done with development, you should revoke the write access from your files to www-data and only give write access on the uploads folder. (This is where files that are uploaded from the admin end up)

sudo chmod -R g-w /var/www/wordpress
sudo chmod -R g+w /var/www/wordpress/wp-content/uploads

And finally just to make sure, it is best to revoke all permissions from other (This can even be done during development):

sudo chmod -R o-rwx /var/www/wordpress


From man hosts:

  This manual page describes the format of the /etc/hosts file.  This file is a simple text file that associates IP addresses with hostnames, one line per IP address.  For each host a single lineshould be present with the following information:

IP_address canonical_hostname [aliases...]

Thus,

chassisOne     10.0.0.1

is wrong.

It should be

10.0.0.1 chassisOne


How to move icons in the Unity Launcher permanently, i.e. it survives a reboot

To change the order of icons in the Launcher, you can drag them to a new position. Just left click the icon and hold, drag it to where you want it to be, then release。

A note on the click and hold: You can immediately drag the icon to the right; that is, off the launcher before dragging it back to a new position. Before you can move the icon vertically without dragging it off the launcher, you need to wait a second or two before moving it. Otherwise, you will scroll the launcher icons. (Thanks to Catskul for this point.)

To remove icons from the Launcher, right click the icon and choose Unlock From Launcher

To prevent newly installed programs from automatically being added to the Launcher, change the the setting in the Software Center. Click View in the menu, then uncheck 'New Applications in Launcher'

In response to a comment from the OP:

If these changes do not persist after a reboot, try reinstalling libdconf0, a suggestion from Unity reset after restrarting.

sudo apt-get install --reinstall libdconf0


How to change mouse speed permanently in Ubuntu 16.04LTS?

You can always change your mouse sensivity by going to settings -> Mouse & Touchpad.

You will be able to change the sensivity there.


Try remapping your Num lock in the following way it might work for you. Follow the steps exactly.

Know how your system sees those keys, using the command xev and pressing the keys whose id you want to discover.After entering the xev just press page up and then press alt+t then you will get the following results. Then use the key code you got on pressing alt+t keys in the command at the end. that's all it will be done. I did this on my laptop and got the below results and so i gave it for reference only. You have to perform action to get your own result as these results vary with computer.

Pressing Up produces keycode 111, assigned to action Up:

KeyPress event, serial 34, synthetic NO, window 0x3a00001,
root 0xa5, subw 0x0, time 13739005, (165,-16), root(170,32),
state 0x0, keycode 111 (keysym 0xff52, Up), same_screen YES,
XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes:
XFilterEvent returns: False

Pressing Pg Up key gives the following:

KeyPress event, serial 32, synthetic NO, window 0x2400001,
root 0xc3, subw 0x0, time 13714833, (61,151), root:(63,236),
state 0x10, keycode 112 (keysym 0xff55, Prior), same_screen YES,
XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes:
XFilterEvent returns: False

Once you know the keycode of the keys you would like to use, and the name of the actions you want to perform, you can assign the desired actions to the chosen keys.
The following four commands will produce the desired change, valid only for the present X session:

xmodmap -e "keycode 112 = Up"

To get these changes for every session, after issuing the commands above, create a file called .Xmodmap (or whatever), with the following command:

xmodmap -pke > .Xmodmap

Then, create a file called .xinitrc in your home directory, containing just the following line:

xmodmap .Xmodmap

Refer to the site for any doubts: http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/...txkbmap_Method


After reviewing a bit of Python code here and here it became clear that I need to disassemble the big JSON blob and see which instructions exactly fail, which lead me to the following (after storing the JSON blob into ~/nftables.json):
jq '.nftables | length' ~/nftables.json

...to get the number of entries (225 in my case) and then:
for i in $(seq 1 224); do \
    jq --argjson index "$i" '{"nftables": [.nftables[0], .nftables[$index]]}' ~/nftables.json | tee nft.json; \
    sudo nft --json --file nft.json || break; \
done

...which failed just for the first entry:
{
  "nftables": [
    {
      "metainfo": {
        "json_schema_version": 1
      }
    },
    {
      "add": {
        "chain": {
          "family": "inet",
          "table": "firewalld",
          "name": "raw_PREROUTING",
          "type": "filter",
          "hook": "prerouting",
          "prio": -290
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}
internal:0:0-0: Error: No such file or directory

As this was just adding a chain, the only thing that could be wrong here is a missing table, which was confirmed by:
$ sudo nft list tables
table bridge filter
table bridge nat

...so we need to add it:
sudo nft add table inet firewalld

After some more similar failures, I ended up with just the following tables being added manually:
table inet firewalld
table ip firewalld
table ip6 firewalld


The only thing I can suggest is to:

Re-download the iso (make sure and double check that you download the right one 64 bit or 32 bit.)
Then burn the iso to a usb stick AND a cd.
Try installing using the usb stick again. When you install make sure and click "remove Ubuntu" and then reinstall.
If you encounter the same problems retry the installation using the good old fashion cd.

Hope this helps,

Leinardo


kde on virtualbox already running gnome?

What is the smartest/easiest way to get KDE installed on a VM that is already running GNOME?

 sudo apt-get install plasma-desktop (non Kubuntu settings)
 sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop (Kubuntu)

Plasma Desktop: Provides the environment for running and managing applications and integrating
interaction of applications. It is designed as generic environment for all
kinds of desktop applications, not only applications built on the KDE Platform.
It integrates best with applications following the standards used by the KDE
Platform.
Kubuntu Desktop: This package depends on all of the packages in the Kubuntu desktop system.
Installing this package will include the default Kubuntu Plasma Desktop or
Netbook installation.
It is safe to remove this package if some of the desktop system packages are
not desired.

This package is part of the KDE base workspace module.

  Would it be better to create a complete new VM just for KDE (because they don't work well together?)

No, they perfectly work together.

  If the best way to do this is in fact to create a new VM, on virtualbox the only Ubuntus that it has is 32 and 64 bit, it does not specify gnome or kde, it just defaults I think to gnome.

No, VM's default to whatever you have installed on them.


Setting permissions for /var/www/mysite?

use 644 permission for my websites in /var/www.

NO. Nobody said this.

"use "600"  up "644" permission for my websites in /var/www" FOR FILES.
You use "700" up to "755" for directories (what you want depends on your usecase).

These 2 commands fix your permissions:

find /var/www/ -type d -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 755
find /var/www/ -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 644

The first sets directories to 755. The seconds sets files to 644.

Permissions come in 3 groups: owner, group and others. If you edit files only with 1 user you could also use "700" and "600". That will disallow the group and others to access the files. "750" and "650" allows also access for the group.


Libre Office Draw comes installed by default on Ubuntu. It will let you add text to pdf's that don't have form fields as well as add graphics and sometimes move existing ones depending on how the pdf was saved.


try update your bios you can find it your motherboards website


Ubuntu 18.04 USB installer fails to start: "Ubiquity not installed"

I re-downloaded the ubuntu-desktop.iso

I then used Etcher to flash to the drive.

It's working perfectly now.


Can I boot straight into bash from a USB drive installation?

You can install to your usb the server edition iso without the graphical interface so you boot straight into console.

From the normal ubuntu desktop booting iso in the begging you have 3 secs when you are show the icos keyboard and human. If you press any button you can execute commands on bottom to pass parameters.


Problem while moving Mysql DB from Windows to Ubuntu?

Have you converted your existing database table names to lowercase before restarting MySQL? The documentation on MySQL website has instructions.


Use sys.argv[1] so that the filename is taken from the arguments:

import sys

with open(sys.argv[1],'r') as in_file

Then, you can use various methods to pass the filename as an argument. For example, with find:

find test/ -type f -name '*.csv' -exec /path/to/script.py {} \;


I had the same issue with the DVD Live install.

I used the following command to stop the freezing:

boot: live-nosplash video=ofonly radeon.agpmode=-1

The option does not stay after a reboot, so, after the installation you need the following.

boot: Linux video=ofonly radeon.agpmode=-1

To make the option permanent you need to edit /etc/yaboot.conf

Look for the line:

append="quiet splash"

and change it to:

append="quiet splash radeon.agpmode=-1"


Autoconnecting seamlessly to Bluetooth headset (Sennheiser Momentum M2 AEBT) in Ubuntu 16.04

The following solution worked for me:

Check to see if the module-bluetooth-discover is loaded:
pactl list short | grep blue
If it's not in the list then:
Load the module:
pactl load-module module-bluetooth-discover

You might want to reload it even if it is in the list. Then, try to connect again to the audio sink for High Fidelity sound.


Why is Firefox on Ubuntu choppier than Firefox on Windows?

I was getting graphic lag as well, but with the Gnome Shell. I read on a forum that changing the driver would solve the problem and it did! Let us see if this can solve your problem as well.

Open the Additional Drivers application.
Select the recommended nvidia driver for usage.
Follow the instructions issued by the application.

If I remember correctly, you will have to restart your computer in order for it to integrate the drivers into the kernel, and the next time you log in your problem might be solved.


I have an Intel i7 920. It's not very new or was it the top of its class when it was released but it's close. It's a very fast CPU by any measure. It also has a Nvidia GTX 580 strapped to it. I say this not to boast (you should see my poor bank balance) but just to get the point across, I'm talking about a powerful system.
It struggles with 1080p Flash.
If you need flawless performance, ignore the system requirements because they're likely idealised for Windows. Flash Player's performance has, at least for the past and the present, been awful, whatever your hardware.
Hardware acceleration with Flash in Linux is also a billion times less certain than in Windows. I don't see any help from the CPU with videos on my Nvidia card. There may be some cards that can do it for you - but I don't know one that works for certain.
The best thing you can do is to take Flash player out of the equation. I don't know what your usage is going to be but you might want to look at tools like rtmpstreamer or HTML5 video (YouTube and other sites are starting to support this on more videos).
Flash Player still has a long way to go.


Do we still need swap partitions on desktops?

There is a common misconception that having a swap space is negatively affecting system performance. This is incorrect. As long as you have enough RAM, having a swap area whatever its size doesn't hurt performance at all. What affects performance is being short in RAM and effectively using the swap space.

If you have no swap space and happen to be out of RAM, the kernel will pick one or more processes which it thinks are good candidates (although you might give it some hints though) and kill them.
If you have a swap space and are out of RAM, the kernel will pick less used memory pages and put them on the swap area to free RAM. This will slow down the system but your applications won't be affected otherwise.

I always prefer case 2. as I feel uncomfortable loosing parts or all of my work because the kernel thinks my applications are worth killing. Moreover, with the current size of an average disk being in the TB range, reserving a few percent for swap is usually not an issue.


PulseAudio problems (only showing dummy output)

It is possible that PulseAudio hasn't been initialized fully. Try pulseaudio -k followed by pulseaudio --start. If this still doesn't help, try to restart your system and then check if Skype detects PA correctly.

If it still doesn't work, please provide more info on what you tried (and what failed) in the original question. Also make sure that you are indeed running Skype 4.3.

But if your question is about still using Skype with Alsa only, the answer seems to be: "no".

See also:

Is Skype 4.2 still supported on Linux?


Is it secure to connect a google account with online accounts of GNOME?

I would say so with the proviso that you should invoke 2 step verification on on your Google account.

I have been using my Google account with Ubuntu for some time and have not had any issues of concern.

If security still concerns you, you can also install ClamTK from the Ubuntu Software Center for an additional layer of security/peace of mind.


How can I mirror Shotwell library in the directories?

You can decide for yourself where Shotwell keeps and looks for the pictures in "Shotwell Preferences", under "Library Location". Just change the directory next to "Import photo's to:".
When you import photo's into Shotwell using Shotwell, Shotwell organizes the pictures, using a naming scheme that you can define in the "Shotwell Preferences", under "Importing".
In addition, Shotwell can be set to watch its library directory for changes done outside of Shotwell: "Shotwell Preferences", under "Library Location". Make sure "Watch library directory for new files" is checked to have Shotwell update the database according to the files present there.


The system which intercepts crashes right when they happen the first time is Apport. When a crash happens, you will see something like this:

A report is written automaticaly in a file *executable_path.uid*.crash in the /var/crash directoty:

If you want to print one of these reports, you can run in terminal next command:

lpr <executable_path.uid>.crash

More about: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Apport.


What is the major difference in terms of security features in -open source- free downloaded OS.

The difference between open source and closed source is that with the 1st many eyes can look at the source code whereas with closed source your need to trust the company that owns the code. If some government decides it needs a backdoor in an operating system adding it to an open source system will be spotted. In a closed source version it will not.
In general, a closed source operating system tends to be non-free. But open/closed source is not exactly the same as free/non-free.

My doubt is do you have any commercial edition which suits for servers platform instead of free/open downloadable OS.
Do you have any other version which having more security and feature set. Please suggest.

No, why would we need to? It is super-secure out-of-the-box and with a few simple commands it can be hardened even further.  It is not invulnerable, but much more robust as most commercial OSes. Ubuntu does have a (payable) support service called landscape for businesses.

Please suggest.

Feel free to use the Ubuntu operating system (stick with an LTS though due to the long support cycle) or any other Linux system for that matter. It is safe, secure and you can tinker with it as much as you want. We use Ubuntu for all our server needs: professionally, my company has Ubuntu servers where we code on, we have Ubuntu in a datacenter hosting our software and we use it in google and in amazon instances to host our software. All with apache, mysql, jasperserver (that is a document server system) with replication between all of them.
Canonical (the company behind Ubuntu) does not put any restrictions on anyone using it besides their copyright on the word *buntu and the *buntu logo. But that is only if you want to distribute your own version of the operating system. Not when using it.

Security is something that needs permanent evaluation. If anything security is about social engineering.
Changing passwords every so often; making sure passwords are not easy to guess. If the admin gets fired you FIRST change the admin passwords and then you fire him. Checking log files every so often. Sign yourself up to mailing lists so you are up to date regarding bugs  and security related problems. Security is also making sure the backup is restorable so in case there is a breach you have something to fall back on.


serial port opening for mac : mac serial port

for ubuntu : there is a program sudo apt-get install blueman

firts you have to setup blueman before do steps in link


Vim: Exit (:wq) with trailing exclamation mark ! What's the purpose?

"!" means don't nag me with warnings; just do it.

If you try and vim /etc/hosts, and make changes and try and save with :wq! - the "!" is moot.  That is a real error that can't be forced thus use of "!" won't work.

A useful example..

touch ~/example
chmod -w ~/example
vim ~/example

If you open a file where you have READ access only but have taken away your WRITE access before hand,  that warning can be overridden by the "!" (unlike permissions error in /etc/), thus a ":wq!" in this case is handy (quicker than jumping to shell to fix).


A language definition for Swift has recently been added to the git repository of GtkSourceView (the library that performs syntax highlighting in gedit).  It hasn't made it into any GtkSourceView release yet, but you can download it here:

https://git.gnome.org/browse/gtksourceview/plain/data/language-specs/swift.lang

Place this file (swift.lang) in this directory, creating it if necessary:

~/.local/share/gtksourceview-3.0/language-specs/

Then gedit will highlight Swift code for you.


Managment / Removal (Define a 'public' space?)

Yes, the documentation needs update. You can refer to https://jujucharms.com/docs/2.0/commands

The command to add space is

juju add-space <space-name>

There is no command to remove a space but you can move the subnets to other spaces. For example, if a subnet is in a space named 'internal', and you want to move that to another space 'admin', run

juju add-subnet <cidr> admin

The space settings should be automatically picked up by Juju if you've configured spaces in MAAS.


This bug is still present in 14.04. There is a workaround.  In Preferences->Customize Look and Feel, under Widgets, change from "Lubuntu-default" to anything else.  I use "Mist".


Installed plex media server, and it wont start

It sounds like either the plexmediaserver package failed to install, or it has been badly packaged. This is obviously not an Upstart issue though.


running simple bash script fails with Syntax error: word unexpected (expecting ")")

The problem is with the script: though it claims in its own documentation that it can be run by sh, i.e. by any standard POSIX shell, it actually requires bash.

The construct (( $? )) is not valid POSIX sh, nor is ($ans != "yes") when $ans is empty.  They are hardly valid in bash either (TBH, this is the first time in 20yrs I see the idiom (( $? ))) but apparently bash lets it pass.

Solution: run using bash: bash Anaconda3-4.2.0-Linux-x86_64.sh


External hard drive not allowing permission

Or you could try and change the permission using the following command as an administrator account or your account, if it's the only account you set up.

sudo chmod -R 755 /<folder name or path>

The -R will take care of all the sub-directories while the 755 permission will give the OWNER full access, USER read and execute and OTHERS read and execute.

Read = 4, Write = 2, Execute = 1

Read (4) + Execute (1) = 5

Read (4) + Write (2) + Execute (1) = 7

These are applied to groups and there are 3 groups in the order
OWNER followed by USER followed by OTHERS and hence 755


Combine partitions in GParted after removing Windows from dual boot

You don't combine partitions, you delete the old windows partition and grow the linux partition via GParted to claim all unused space. In your case, if you made a new partition to start clean, just delete it again.

Make sure that there is no data to salvage from it before the delete.

After this, you can grow the linux partition via GParted, but not if it is mounted. So you need to boot from a live install medium with GParted (latest Ubuntu install works fine) to accomplish this.


That's a known bug for a long time (Nautilus and Gedit):
Inability to overwrite files in shared folders from Nautilus and other means

There are a few more bug reports /tickets for virtualbox and gnome. Just google around. Seems that this issue won't be fixed...


Which package contains EC2 kernel in Ubuntu 12.04

I found my package: linux-image-virtual - Linux kernel image for virtual machines


Packages are not installing, many "unable to locate" errors

I had the sme problem only before a few days.
Try to run

# apt-get update

Your apt-repository is outdated.
This might be the problem.


How do I get an HP 1018 laser printer to work on 12.04?

Solved my problem by using the Terminal to install the driver. Open the Terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run this command:

sudo hp-setup

Trying without sudo could not install the driver.


How to get the official, non-development version of Focal Fossa 20.04

Official upgrade path will be openwed in a couple of days. You will be notified.

update-manager -c -d is a force upgrade. That's why you get this message.

Notification for LTS releases is enabled as you can see on the posted screen. So wait for a notification.


Where can the last FSTrim be seen as successful or not? (log files)

No, there is no special log file and the command fstrim has usually no output without the -v switch if there is no error.

/sbin/fstrim --all is started via cron and the only thing you can see are the messages that cron writes into /var/log/syslog.

You could change the configuration in /etc/cron.weekly/fstrim.

Open the file in your editor:

sudo nano /etc/cron.weekly/fstrim

Add the -v switch

/sbin/fstrim -v --all || true

and you will have an output like this

/: 182,2 MiB (191000576 bytes) trimmed

in your syslog


I don't know of any other encryption programs that will work without a download and installation, you could try LUKS,
http://code.google.com/p/cryptsetup/, it is an alternative to Trucrypt that is made to work well with Linux operating systems, but it needs to downloaded and installed, however, you most likely could install it to a small USB flashdrive and always run it from that......


Making the terminal interface non closable

Use ccsm (CompizConfig Settings Manager), enable "Window Rules" plugin (category Window Management), set Non-closable windows; you might need to restart compiz. It does not do exactly what you want - after setting that, you can't click the close button at all, there is no such button. I guess this is ok too.


This is happening because it needs root privileges.
The solution is to add the hibernate command using sudo crontab -e -u root instead of crontab -e.

  polkit is necessary for power management as an unprivileged user. If
  you are in a local systemd-logind user session and no other session is
  active, the following commands will work without root privileges. If
  not (for example, because another user is logged into a tty), systemd
  will automatically ask you for the root password.

Power management commands:

systemctl reboot|poweroff|suspend|hibernate|hybrid-sleep

Reference: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd#Power_management


Differentiating user-defined executables from pre-existing executables

TL;DR: the shell stops looking once it finds something to run.

You ask how will Linux differentiate between them?  By Linux, perhaps you mean the kernel, which understands, for example, magic numbers, and in general knows how to execute an executable.

I will leave that topic to others, and assume that you're asking about what happens when a shell runs a command that exists in more than one form.

One reason, and seemingly the one you're asking about, why there might be two commands with the same name, is that two files can have the same basename, for example:

/usr/bin/foo
/bin/foo

We can always differentiate two files by their full paths, because it's not possible for two files in a filesystem to have the same full path. cmak.fr made a comment pointing this out.

If you install or write your own executables you might choose to put them in ~/bin or /usr/local/bin. These locations are in your default PATH in Ubuntu. /usr/local/bin is at the start of the default PATH:

$ grep PATH /etc/environment
PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games"

and ~/bin is prepended to PATH if it exists:

$ grep -A3 bin ~/.profile
# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then
    PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
fi

So I end up with this PATH...

$ echo $PATH
/home/zanna/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games

Since /home/zanna/bin comes before /bin in my PATH, if I put a command called chmod in ~/bin, and ran chmod, that executable ~/bin/chmod would be run instead of /bin/chmod, because the shell stops looking once it finds something, and if I want to run /bin/chmod, I will have to do exactly that: type the full path of the program I want to run.

This is really the end of a story we haven't mentioned the beginning of, because path lookup is the last thing the shell does when trying to execute a command, and having two files with the same name isn't the only way there could be two commands with the same name.

I am here going to talk about Bash, because it's the only shell I am reasonably familiar with. As far as I know, other shells will follow similar procedures. It's important to note though that many utilities on Ubuntu call /bin/sh rather than Bash, and while /bin/sh may by a symlink to /bin/bash, by default on Ubuntu it's to /bin/dash, and could be to any shell program installed.

The first word of a command is what the shell tries to execute - subsequent words are its arguments (which may be options, and may not be required).

Note that alias expansion is performed before all other expansions at the stage of breaking the command into words, several stages before command execution. This means that aliases always take precedence over other commands that may have the same name.

After tokenization and all expansions are completed, redirections have been set up, and variable assignment has been done, command execution starts.

If the first word contains /, the shell assumes that the word is a path, and tries to execute (afaik, gets the kernel to get the CPU to execute it or to call the interpreter for it, or if all else fails runs it as a shell script) the file at that path. If the file at that path doesn't exist, you get no such file or directory.

If the first word doesn't contain /, the shell will proceed to look for the command in this order, and will execute the first thing it finds and then stop looking:

Is there a shell function with this name?
Is there a shell builtin with this name?
Is there a command in the hash table with this name?
Is there a command in any PATH directory with this name?

So, searching PATH is the last resort. Note that PATH is searched in order, left to right. The first directory in PATH is searched before the last one, so a command in the first directory with the same name as one in the second directory will be executed rather than the second one.

Note also that when you use sudo, it sets PATH to one defined in /etc/sudoers as secure_path.

If you install/create an executable with the same name as a preexisting executable, you should be aware that this may affect other programs, not only stuff you are doing in an interactive shell. A typical example of this is Anaconda, which installs a version of Python and prepends its bin directory to PATH. System programs that call python and expect something in /usr/bin might break because they get the wrong python. In general, create executables with different names.

Defining shell functions and aliases generally avoids this problem, because these are only known to shells that read ~/.bashrc (or whatever file defines them), that is, interactive (Bash) shells.

You can see all the programs that might be run when you execute a command using the type builtin (assuming you haven't defined an alias or shell function called type!). Run with -a to see all possible commands with this name in the order the shell would find them.

$ type type
type is a shell builtin
$ type -a echo
echo is a shell builtin
echo is /bin/echo
$ type -a ls
ls is aliased to `ls --color=auto'
ls is /bin/ls

Thus, in general, commands are differentiated by how they are known to the shell, and the order in which the shell tries to execute the executable things it knows about. To know and control what command will be run when there is more than one possibility, you must understand how the shell calling it works.

Many thanks to Eliah Kagan for explaining this stuff to me in chat.


Install mysql-server version 5.5.40-0ubuntu0.14.04.1

mysql-server version 5.5.40-0ubuntu0.14.04.1 is not available anymore in Ubuntu repositories. You have to manually install it.

wget https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-security/+archive/ubuntu/ppa/+build/6451356/+files/mysql-server-5.5_5.5.40-0ubuntu0.14.04.1_amd64.deb
wget https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-security/+archive/ubuntu/ppa/+build/6451356/+files/mysql-server-core-5.5_5.5.40-0ubuntu0.14.04.1_amd64.deb
wget http://launchpadlibrarian.net/186808649/mysql-common_5.5.40-0ubuntu1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i mysql-common_5.5.40-0ubuntu1_all.deb mysql-server-core-5.5_5.5.40-0ubuntu0.14.04.1_amd64.deb mysql-server-5.5_5.5.40-0ubuntu0.14.04.1_amd64.deb


How to Remove varicad2013-en (A Virus or PIA)

I following this post and was able to remove manually: How Do I manually remove malformed Packages?

By editing the file and removing it, it stopped erroring out.
sudo vi /var/lib/dpkg/status


Why do I get this permission issue when trying to unrar a file into /media/?

/media is owned by root and it can be modified only with superuser privileges. That means that, if you want to unrar, create or copy any file to that directory, you have to precede the command by sudo or launch the program you are going to work with, launched with gksu.


what does this mean in detail? -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 920788 Mar 28 2013 bash

It says that the file bash has :

a size of 920788 bytes
is owned by user 'root' from group 'root' (1st root is user, and 2nd is group)
the user root can read/write/execute file (rwx on the left)
users from group root can read/execute file (r-x in the middle)
all other users can read/execute file (r-x on the right)
the - means it is a normal file and the 1 links it to files.


Firefox 19 added shortcuts to move tabs:

Ctrl+Shift+PgUp to move left, and
Ctrl+Shift+PgDn to move right.

The change is recorded as bug #364845; here is the specific commit that added the shortcuts.

Therefore, the Move Tabs extension is no longer required; in fact, if you have it installed you should disable it (or else the shortcut will move the tab twice).

However, there is still no built-in shortcut to move the current tab to the start or end. If you need those shortcuts, keep the extension and in its preferences set the left/right shortcuts to something you don't use.


Remotely run a command on a ssh-server with a script

You can pass a command (or list of commands, separated by ;) to a SSH connection like this:

ssh user@server-address "./foo 1"

If you have a local script that outputs 0 or 1, you can simplify things further:

ssh user@server-address "./foo `/path/to/your/script`"

The code in backticks executes before anything else and its output is put into the line dynamically.


How do I get service command to print output in 15.10?

You're running the same command … but actually you're not.

You are using Ubuntu version 15.10, a systemd operating system.  Your system service management is no longer performed by upstart.  It is performed by systemd.

The service command may be the same … but the Debian/Ubuntu service command is a shell script that tries to auto-detect whether upstart or systemd is the running system service manager, and run the actual native service management commands for upstart and systemd.  It executes two pretty much entirely different code paths for upstart and for systemd.

upstart's native service management commands are initctl start, initctl stop, initctl status and so forth.  Those print messages as they go.

systemd's native service management commands are systemctl start, systemctl stop, systemctl status and so forth.  Those print no output as they operate.

Further reading

https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/233840/5132
https://askubuntu.com/a/621209/43344
https://askubuntu.com/a/613814/43344
`service` no longer gives useful output (except with status) in 15.04?


That pesky Intel Centrino wireless N + WiMAX 6150 wireless card

Try this commands :

sudo rmmod iwlwifi
sudo modprobe iwlwifi bt_coex_active=0

We tried the same with our Asus laptop running with Intel 6150 wireless card and it worked!!


It's rather difficult to solve such problems via the internet, and it certainly doesn't fit the question -> answer nature of askubuntu.com.

Anyways:

Whenever such things happen, immediately shutdown the system and don't write (or install) anything to it!
Start a live CD, download the 6.12-WIP version of TestDisk (you just need to unpack it, then start it with sudo ./testdisk), let it search for partitions, examine the contents of the found partitions, and if you are 100% sure that you've found the right partition, restore it.
You can find a couple of detailed examples in the TestDisk wiki (e.g., TestDisk step-by-step).

If you don't feel comfortable doing it yourself, ask someone that has experience with this tool to do it for you. Any mistake can lead to permanent loss of data!


Unable to install any application in Ubuntu 14.04

sudo apt-get purge dropbox

Same goes for any package that tries to get its content from the net - flash, m$ fonts, skype...


How to install flash payer in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS?

For a 32 bit system:

Press Ctrl+Alt+T on the keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, run the command below to update your package lists:

sudo apt-get update

Then open the Ubuntu Software Center, search for and install the package flashplugin-installer.

It extracts the 32-bit Flash player library from the adobe-flashplugin package (which is retrieved from http://archive.canonical.com/) and configures itself as default for Internet browsers.

For a 64 bit system:

Because flashplugin-installer installs the 32-bit version of Flash and a related compatibility library which may be slower and less stable, it’s recommended to install the adobe-flashplugin package from the Canonial partners repository.

First open Software & Updates from the Unity dash, then enable the partners repository under the Other Software tab.

After that, press Ctrl+Alt+T on the keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, run the commands below to install flash:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install adobe-flashplugin

If it still fails(installation candidate not found), its possible that canonical sources were not added. You can try change it manually by un-commenting the lines containing canonical source links in the file /etc/apt/sources.list


openstack install command line with proxy setup

In general proxies are set on the command line as follows, specifying proxyname and port

export http_proxy=http://myproxy.mynet.net:80
export ftp_proxy=http://myproxy.mynet.net:80
export https_proxy=http://myproxy.mynet.net:80

unsure how the openstack installer ready proxy settings though


"Ubuntu boot failed [ok]" Immediately After Installation/Reboot (Lenovo Ideapad 330S - external SSD)

What kind of disk setting in your BIOS? If you need to choose between Legacy or UEFI.
The UEFI need one first partition with at least 500MB to store secure boot information, if you book from UEFI, my suggestion is you install a Windows (7 or 10) first, let Windows do the partition itself, then it will have at least 4 partition to be created.
After Windows installed and able to reboot, use your Ubuntu USB stick the 2nd booting time to start installing, choose use full disk and let Ubuntu to allocate partition for you.
Good luck!


Using Ubuntu 16.04 on a system with 2 AMD GPUs

found a solution (not sure if the most optimal one): adding amd_iommu=on iommu=pt before quiet splash in grub allows the livecd to boot and ubuntu to install. once the install was done i had to repeat the process to boot into the new os, and once more to make it permanent by editing /etc/default/grub


Getting Wine error after upgrade from 16.10 to 17.04

I'd definitely recommend uninstalling wine and reinstalling it. it's quite insane to expect wine (and it's app) to work past a distribution upgrade. plus the error message seems to confirm it's a version error.

sudo apt --purge remove wine
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get autoclean
sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt upgrade && sudo apt dist-upgrade

At this point you can decide whether you want to conserve your  AmigaForever install or re-run a clean install. I say you stand to loose nothing by doing it if you go into your .wine folder and collect your save files first (if such a thing even exists for this program. From what I'm googleling, there doesn't even seem to be that option) (and you really should do the clean reinstall because if you do it'll run alot better).

So go into your home folder (with file browser) hit Ctrl-H
This will reveal hiddin files, files starting with a .
The folder .wine is where you wanna go and from there it's windows-only so not my nor ask-ubuntu turf but you should know what to copy to another folder temporarily like home/elanozturk/documents.

Once this is done you can now delete all wine files completely (again if you aren't re-running the amiga forever install skip this step) :

rm -r "$HOME/.wine"
rm  $HOME/.config/menus/applications-merged/wine*
rm -r "$HOME/.local/share/applications/wine"
rm $HOME/.local/share/desktop-directories/wine*
rm $HOME/.local/share/icons/????_*.xpm

Back to the main course don't skip the following this is to reinstall wine :

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
wget https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/Release.key
sudo apt-key add Release.key
sudo apt-add-repository https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/

Now if you've deleted wine/amiga forver you can re-run your amiga forver installer then (after testing that it runs correctly) go back into the .wine folder and put the files back.

Cheers! tell me if this works.


I scoured the internet more and found someone who had a similar problem with an older version of Mint, I think. They discovered the clock was set wrong. I checked mine and the date was wrong. Set to 2108 instead of 2018. I turned off automatic date and time and set to the correct date and time and was immediately able to connect to WiFi.

So if you have this problem, check your computer's date and time.


I have my self been struggling with this particular issue last night! (I just love geeky text that im not able to read cause it loads so damn fast)

Anyways, my conclusion was: to edit /etc/default/grub and change GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" into: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="" and then afterwards removing the hash tag in #GRUB_TERMINAL=Console so the line will look like this: GRUB_TERMINAL=Console.

So to sum up, remove quiet and splash, and afterwards activate the GRUB_Terminal=console line.

Good luck, have fun.


One SSD and two HDD. Install on SSD and RAID 0/1 or LVM for HDDs?

If I had your hardware, and was dropping Windows entirely as you mention in your comment, I would install the operating system on the SSD mounted at / and use the installer options to mount one of the 500GB drives at /home The 2nd 500GB HDD I would likely hold in reserve and mount as needed for backups. I think you'll find you have plenty of space and having a backup plan is always a fabulous idea. You can skip LVM entirely since it's not in your comfort zone and there are always easy ways to deal with outgrowing storage on a Linux system such as Ubuntu.

Full Disclosure: I actually have 3 systems setup exactly like this.

In response to your edit regarding keeping the 500GB internal as a spare or mounting it when you also have a 500GB external that you are using for backup: I would still keep it as a spare and mount it as needed. Say you collect lots of pictures and video and discover one day that one of those folders is taking up half your space. You could mount the spare temporarily on /mnt/whatever, mv all the files from the overloaded folder to the spare drive and then unmount and remount to your original pictures or videos folder. end result is a seamless increase of space where you need it most.


Ubuntu One won't synchronize pictures folder

If you try to create a synchronized folder from something that is not an actual directory inside your home (if it is, for example, a symlink to somewhere else), or if it is a subdirectory of a synchronized folder, then the creation will fail.

If you try to do the same thing from the Terminal, you should get a slightly more verbose error message; e.g.,

$ u1sdtool --create-folder=/home/tyler/Pictures
FolderCreateError: UDFs can not be a symlink (path=/home/tyler/Pictures)

(UDFs is what we Ubuntu One developers call synchronized folders). If the output is instead

$ u1sdtool --create-folder=/home/tyler/Pictures/
FolderCreateError: UDFs can not be nested (path=/home/tyler/Pictures)

then you can use u1sdtool --list-folders to see what synchronized folder you have already that is a subdirectory of Pictures.


update Cifs  then mount the device before enable mass storage in your mobile / Android device.

after use cifs command its will work. for more man cifs


Set individual file priority (single torrent): Transmission

In Properties on the Files tab, expand the window so that the priority column is visible.  You may have to make the name column narrower.

Then click on the text of the priority, where it says 'Normal'.  Each click cycles through Low, Normal, High.


Check out the Protecting the Root Filesystem on Ubuntu with Overlayroot article about the creation of a read-only root FS.

It seems that you are running in the recurse issue with the temp fs.

Try booting the system with the / mounted read-only (no overlays!). This will lead to too many errors during the startup, but the system will boot. Then login as root and manually try to mount the overlays.


USBtinyisp not showing up in Arduino IDE

First, in the terminal window, go to /snap/arduino/current and execute ./arduino-linux-setup.sh username, where username is your login username.

cd /snap/arduino/current

./arduino-linux-setup.sh username

Restart your system

Connect USBtinyISP and open Arduino IDE.

Use ctrl+shift+U (capital or active caps) to upload your sketch, or go to Sketch menu and click 'upload using programmer'

USBtinyISP doesn't open a serial port!

This works for me.

Hope this helps.

regards,


Error installing oracle-java8-installer from webup8team ppa

The following might work, it would delete any partials:

sudo rm /var/cache/oracle-jdk8-installer/jdk-*

Then finish the install with:

sudo apt-get install -f
sudo dpkg --configure -a


Compiz not loading the Unity plugin since 13.04 upgrade; shows desktop background only

This seems kind of far fetched - but are you sure Unity is installed? If so, it may be worth doing a purge and a reinstall. These can be done from the recovery terminal if necessary.

sudo apt-get purge unity && sudo apt-get install unity


How can I install the ubuntu 12.04 without downloading ubuntu-12.04-wubi-amd64.tar.xz?

Your best answer is to get the live-DVD.  Please use this to boot and use the 'Try Ubuntu' option to make sure it runs OK on your hardware before attempting to install.  You then have the option of using wubi recommended only if you use Ubuntu only occasionally or installing on a partition.  Either way, make sure you can recover all data and the Windows operating system if something goes wrong.


How to insert a space between "file" and "git" + How to get full path to show?

In your git_prompt_info function you should prefix the output with a space if there is any output, otherwise not. (As a side note: you probably want to look into the vcs_info system that is integrated into zsh, see the zshcontrib manual page)

As to your second question: If I understand you correctly you should be able to use %~ instead of %c to get what you want. If you really want the full path to be shown use %d. Have a look at the zshmisc manual page (prompt expansion section) for more variations of this.


Partitioning an external hard drive for Linux

Also for your questions on how to do this with gparted, the manual might help.
http://gparted.org/display-doc.php?name=help-manual


How to run VMWare player on kernel 2.6.38-8? [Failed to compile module vmmon]

To answer my own question, the solution I used was to uninstall the old version, and install 3.1.4 from the VMWare site.

sudo vmware-installer -u vmware-player
sudo rm -rf /usr/lib/vmware
Download and install VMPlayer 3.1.4


I had a problem with this and had disabled secure boot- I changed my EUFI to a CSM/legacy bios which worked perfect.


Internet data card connection MTNL 3G in Ubuntu 12.10

Normally to install a .deb package, you just press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open Terminal. When it opens, navigate to the folder where the file was downloaded, and run the command(s) below:

sudo dpkg -i <package_name>

Now keep in mind that a deb package may not have all the needed dependencies.  You can try to see if it works.


Wireless is disabled by hardware switch ,lenovo b460

I had a similar problem with my Lenovo Z570. There are two potential issues going on... One is related to hardware, the other software.

For the software end of things, your laptop is most likely suffering from "Multiple WiFi Personalities". Basically, the way I understand it, Ubuntu is not clear on which wifi drivers should be loaded based on incompatibilities with the hardware (this is just how I understand it... I could be wrong =).

The simple & temporary test is to blacklist "acer-wmi" (from terminal):

sudo rmmod -f acer-wmi
sudo rfkill unblock all
rfkill list all

if that stets all of your blocks to "no", you are in business... simply edit your /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf file to blacklist that item and you are good to go.

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

When the editor opens, add blacklist acer-wmi as a new line at the end of the file. Save and Exit. then type in the following just to double check things:

rfkill list all

If you still see any "Hard blocked: yes" entries at this point, you have one of three things going on. Either your physical wifi switch is in the off position (if you have one... my z570 has it on the front bezel), your software switch is off (Fn+F5 on my z570) or you may need to simply reset your Bios.

For me it took resetting my Bios to fix it. Simply restart your laptop and press F2 at boot up. Once in the Bios, press F9 to reset the Bios, followed by F10 to save and exit. Test your wifi now. If it's working, you can now head back to your bios and get things setup the way you like them again.

It took a TON of digging and trial and error until I finally got this working. I hope you don't have the same perils!


Its relatively straightforward to remove the video lens.

From a terminal:

sudo apt-get purge unity-lens-video

Alternatively, from the software center just search for unity-lens-video, click remove and click Remove All when prompted.

Finally - logout and login.


Error when trying to run TrueCrypt 7.1a x64

I was getting the same error. I realized I had installed the x64 version instead of x86.

I ran truecrypt-uninstall.sh and then installed the x86 version and TrueCrypt is running OK now. Hope it helps.


There is no completely safe method except to destroy the hard disk drive completely (physically). But for most cases it should be enough to use DBAN to overwrite the drive.

You have to make a fresh installation after that, and you may want to use 'encrypted disk' alias LVM with encryption. An encrypted system is difficult to recover, so please back it up at regular intervals, and use a good passphrase, that you can remember, but other people cannot guess.


I believe that the application that you are looking for is gnome-disks and it is installed via the package gnome-disk-utility

from a terminal:

sudo apt install gnome-disk-utility


Connection failed to open the DB connection: could not find driver

What version of Ubuntu? Are you sure you need to add those lines to php.ini?

I have versions 10.03 and 11.10, and both are similar in that none of that is in php.ini, but is in the directory under that one, called conf.d.

In conf.d/mysql.ini, I have:

extension=mysql.so

In conf.d/pdo.ini, I have:

extension=pdo.so

In conf.d/pdo_mysql.ini, I have:

extension=pdo_mysql.so

I don't have the newest version, and I also don't use any special LAMP stack, just the standard apps I installed separately, if that makes any difference.  But I never had any problems, and never had to explicitly install PDO that I can remember.


I did the following two steps:
sudo apt purge nvidia* from a terminal.
And then went here and did this:
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r)
distribution=$(. /etc/os-release;echo $ID$VERSION_ID | sed -e 's/\.//g')
wget https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/$distribution/x86_64/cuda-$distribution.pin
sudo mv cuda-$distribution.pin /etc/apt/preferences.d/cuda-repository-pin-600
sudo apt-key adv --fetch-keys https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/$distribution/x86_64/7fa2af80.pub
echo "deb http://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/$distribution/x86_64 /" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/cuda.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y install cuda-drivers

This worked for me. Let me know if it did the trick.


Configuring the dnsmasq instance started by connection sharing in NetworkManager

Dnsmasq doesn't "share connections". The role of the NetworkManager-controlled dnsmasq is to route DNS traffic.

You can't configure the NetworkManager-controlled dnsmasq process in Precise. In Quantal you are able to configure it via files in /etc/NetworkManager/dnsmasq.d/. See dnsmasq(8).

Another possibility is to use the standalone dnsmasq server which is fully configurable even in Precise. To run standalone dnsmasq alongside NM-dnsmasq in Precise you need to give standalone dnsmasq the "except-interface=lo" option. This is not necessary in Quantal.


In gnome-tweak-tool turn Window list off


Button "Add" is disabled in VPN Connection's dialog

I seem to remember running into a similar issue a while back. In my case at least, the root cause was that my Ubuntu 9.10 install was missing a bunch of Network Manager plugins. Searching for network manager plugins using apt give me the following list (again on a 9.10 install):

  network-manager-openconnect - network management framework (Openconnect plugin)
  network-manager-openvpn - network management framework (OpenVPN plugin)
  network-manager-pptp - network management framework (PPTP plugin)
  network-manager-strongswan - network management framework(strongSwan plugin)
  network-manager-vpnc - network management framework (VPNC plugin)

Maybe it would be worth verifying that the plugin matching whatever type of VPN service you're trying to use is installed.


The best way to do this is to simply change the ownership and permissions of all the files. Beware that this may take a while, depending on how much you have saved on your drives. You can leave it mounted read-write, but you would still need to use sudo for all operations to the files.

Assuming they are already mounted (at the locations stated above), you can just do:

chmod -R o-w,a+r /mnt/media1 /mnt/media2
chown -R root:root /mnt/media1 /mnt/media2

The first command makes all the files within /mnt/media1 and /mnt/media2 readable to everybody and writable only to the owner or group. The next command changes the owning user and group to root so that you need to use sudo to modify anything on the drive. You will only have to run these commands once; after that, they are permanently stored on the drive.

This will sufficiently protect your drive from user tampering while maintaining the readability of its stored contents.


Ubuntu desktop slightly too big on HDMI TV

I think this is a overscan issue. Do you have proprietary drivers installed? If so, you could perhaps fix it with something like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtFKfz2Ptt0

From the manual pages on your TV, it would seem like such an option could be found under:
Setup -> Other Settings -> Picture Overscan-


How can I use Caps Lock to capitalize semi-colon?

You can check in evdev.lst the available XKB options

$ grep caps: /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev.lst
  caps:internal        Caps Lock uses internal capitalization; Shift "pauses" Caps Lock
  caps:internal_nocancel Caps Lock uses internal capitalization; Shift doesn't affect Caps Lock
  caps:shift           Caps Lock acts as Shift with locking; Shift "pauses" Caps Lock
  caps:shift_nocancel  Caps Lock acts as Shift with locking; Shift doesn't affect Caps Lock
  caps:capslock        Caps Lock toggles normal capitalization of alphabetic characters
  caps:numlock         Make Caps Lock an additional Num Lock
  caps:swapescape      Swap ESC and Caps Lock
  caps:escape          Make Caps Lock an additional ESC
  caps:backspace       Make Caps Lock an additional Backspace
  caps:super           Make Caps Lock an additional Super
  caps:hyper           Make Caps Lock an additional Hyper
  caps:shiftlock       Caps Lock toggles ShiftLock (affects all keys)
  caps:none            Caps Lock is disabled
  caps:ctrl_modifier   Make Caps Lock an additional Ctrl

What it seems you are looking for caps:shiftlock but if you don't want a lock just as shift (hold+press other key) use caps:shift or caps:shift_nocancel instead.
Install dconf-editor then go to:

org → gnome → desktop → input-sources

then add caps:shiftlock to xkb-options:

['caps:shiftlock']

BTW, it's a comma separated list.