Uninstall Windows on dual boot and install Lubuntu

I'm not too sure what all the different windows partitions are, so I can't advise too much on what's in each one. But if you just wanted to delete/overwrite some partitions that aren't used for Lubuntu, you can use gparted and you should be able to edit/delete partitions that aren't used by your Lubuntu install. Running a live dvd/usb would let you edit any of the HD partitions, since it runs live off of the dvd/usb only.

Anytime you change/edit/delete hard disk partitions, there is a risk of data loss, so having a good backup of any important data first is always a good idea.

If you did lose your GRUB from deleting some partitions, you should keep a good live dvd/usb handy and you could always run the "Boot Repair" utility, it should be able to re-install GRUB in case it was deleted.


It's apparently stored in deleted files on disk, according to very interesting blog post:

I could just look at what files gnome-terminal had open, so lsof to the rescue. Then I found it was being sneaky, it had a number of files called /tmp/vteXYZ1tv open, but it had already deleted them. Thus you can't see them when browsing, and they will be removed when the program closes. This makes sense, it means that when the process is closed, it doesn't matter how (at least I think), the space of the files can be reclaimed, i.e. we won't get leftover files on a program crash, or a kill -9. They can be restored though, my way (there are probably others), was to do a ls -l /proc/<gnome-terminal pid>/fd to see what they point to. Then you can cat these to make a new file. These are just a verbatim copy of the terminal output. No compression. No nothing. As it turns out, one of my terminal history's was almost 900 MB! But that was only after random data being spat out very quickly for quite a while, unlikely to happen in ordinary usage.

And I'll stress this again: The poster had run base64 < /dev/urandum for a while, looking for increases in memory or disk usage - 900MB would be exceptional usage.


I installed accomplishments 3 months ago. Yesterday when i tried to update my Ubuntu there was an error in accomplishments-lens that stopped me from using apt-get update so I removed it from my system.

since ypu have the same problem (I thought I am the only one who has it). May be the accomplishments-lens package has been removed from the repository ?

Now if you really want to install accomplishment run the command again but without

accomplishments-lens


Can Kickstart/Preseed install more than 1 OS

Your question is a bit off. Kickstart is not what is used to install a system, it is what is used during the install to skip questions during the install. So it can not possibly be used to create a dual boot since that is a whole different level. For you to install 2 Ubuntu's on 1 system the installer needs to be able to do that. And it can't.

If you want to automate a dual boot install you need 2 installation media each with 1 kickstart file designed for that specific install (ie. it will have 2 different targets to install to).

For installing multiple operating systems you would use a PXE server but even then you are limited to 1 kickstart file: the idea is to create multiple identical installations.


How to send a process to background and foreground?

fg is the correct command to foreground a job, but if there is more than one job running you should specify the job number. If you type only fg, the last backgrounded job (considered the current job by the shell) will be brought to foreground.

Get the current jobs:

$ jobs
[1]+     ping google.com &

Foreground the job by specifying the number:

fg %1

The command may be broken up by output from the running process, but it will still work, you can ignore the interruption.

Then hit ctrl+c to interrupt and stop the process

As mentioned in a comment, you can also send signals by job number, for example kill %1

For completeness, if you didn't use the & at the time of calling the process, you can send it to the background by first freezing with ctrl+z and then typing bg


Ubuntu Touch - Missed calls notifications

Tapping on the missed calls notification opens two options: "Message" and "Call back". Alternatively you can tap the dialer icon (in red circle). It will take you to the dialer app with the caller's number typed in.


How do I determine an application's process name?

There is no way to solve this in the general case. Whatever mechanism you come up with, I believe that it will always be possible to write a process that will elude you, unless you modify the way that processes are launched in the first place in order to track them that way.

Upstart has to deal with exactly the same problem to track if daemons are still running, and upstart job authors have to specify details (the number of forks) for upstart to track. Given that upstart cannot manage it without help, I don't think that you can, either. And upstart is even in control of the way that processes are launched, which I don't think you are here.

I think the best you can do is what you are doing already. Looking at /proc/<pid>/stat and /proc/<pid>/cmdline is a reasonably general way, but still will not catch every case. The pgrep command wraps this. If you aren't already using pgrep, take a look at the pgrep manpage for options of things you can match against.

Having said all that, I'm not convinced that you really need to do this in the first place. If you can't track the process, then I don't see how Unity could do this either. Wouldn't a better approach be to eliminate the application crashes in the first place? I would look into details of why your applications are crashing (surely that's a bug somewhere?), rather than trying to work around it as you have described. I wonder if this only affects Unity-aware applications which are calling back to Unity for extra functionality via DBus?


To use that unallocated space, you can create a new partition from that (right-click on it).
Or you could extend the other partition (sda6 in your case) using the Resize/Move option.


Is there a LibreOffice Calc video tutorial available?

Spreadsheet Tutorial - Libre Office, Calc by TheFrugalComputerGuy:


How can I force the usage of a repository?

Ign repo_link means that the diff did not return any package updates so it was ignored.

You can force it by doing: apt-get clean && apt-get update
You can also optionally pin the repo: vim /etc/apt/preferences.d/kubuntu-ppa-pin-900

Package: *
Pin: release o=LP-PPA-kubuntu-ppa,n=experimental
Pin-Priority: 900

900 puts it at the highest, anything less than 500 will make it less important than main repos.


Compiling the development version of Firefox ('Nightly') can be done with some careful preparation. (This is the best version to use when producing patches and improvements for 'upstream'). It is mandatory to undertake such a task far away from a production installation of Ubuntu and I would very strongly recommend the use of a Virtual Machine dedicated to this task only.

The technique below was tested with Ubuntu Zesty Zerus 17.04 (running in a dedicated Virtual Machine!) and it would be best to always use the most modern version of Ubuntu to compile Firefox as dependencies used will for the most part be quite modern. I have not tinkered with endless build options but feel free to do so yourself on your own build!

Note: The build system needs a huge amount of RAM as well as a very large amount of Disk space. I would suggest 8GB RAM, 30GB of free Disk space and as many cores as your VM will allow, this combination certainly worked on my system. Note: the build system will fail with lesser allowances of RAM, HDD space and available cores...

1. Build Dependencies:

First install some build dependencies, starting with the very latest stable rust compiler:

wget -O - https://static.rust-lang.org/rustup.sh | sh

Then a more standard installation from the Ubuntu Repositories:

sudo apt-get install autoconf2.13 libgtk-3-dev mercurial llvm-4.0 clang-4.0 \
libgconf2-dev libdbus-glib-1-dev libpulse-dev yasm build-essential libgtk2.0-dev \
libxt-dev

2. Clone the Firefox Development Repository:

Next to clone the Firefox Mercurial repository, make yourself a cup of tea while this one is downloading:

cd $HOME && hg clone https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central

3. Build Firefox:

Finally to build the source code itself, time for another cup of tea and probably have a sandwich as well as this will take a very long time to build on even the fastest computer:

cd $HOME/mozilla-central && ./mach build

And when this complete you should see this message:

43:58.38 We know it took a while, but your build finally finished successfully!
To view resource usage of the build, run |mach resource-usage|.
To take your build for a test drive, run: |mach run|

As well as a link with a few tips on where to go next...

4. Run Firefox:

Now simply run:

cd $HOME/mozilla-central && ./mach run

and you are running the latest development version of Firefox! You can now start hacking the source code and if your patches are up to scratch you can then submit them and get you work included in this great browser.

5. Updating the source:

You should periodically update the source by changing to the source directory and updating with standard mercurial repository commands. The following one line should accomplish this for you:

cd $HOME/mozilla-central && hg pull && hg update

Here is a standard update run on my own system:

andrew@ithaca:~/mozilla-central$ hg pull
pulling from https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central
searching for changes
adding changesets
adding manifests
adding file changes
added 767 changesets with 4619 changes to 3590 files
(run 'hg update' to get a working copy)
andrew@ithaca:~/mozilla-central$ hg update
3581 files updated, 0 files merged, 141 files removed, 0 files unresolved

Following this you should recompile:

cd $HOME/mozilla-central && ./mach build

And perhaps take a walk while this is recompiling :).

6. Gratuitous screenshot:

Below is a screen shot of the latest 'Nightly' running on my 17.04 system:

And remember: 'Have Fun!!'

Notes:

Contributing to the Mozilla code base: The starting steps to incorporating your patches into the Firefox code base...
Mozilla Firefox: Linux build preparation: A good starter for this project although a few modifications and additions were required. I could not get the bootstrap.py installer to work so instructions for this were given manually.
The rust compiler in Ubuntu 17.04 was too old so instructions for installing directly from the rust site were given. Rust has a 6 week release cycle so this may be the better option for those who prefer the bleeding edge. Some notes here...
Firefox Nightly: Some more detail about the Firefox Nightly development and release model.


You might try installing the xvba-va-driver and libva-glx1 packages alongside FGLRX. These allow the computer to offload parts of HD video playback to the GPU. Use vainfo to check if they installed correctly and that your hardware supports offloading.

This is what I used to reduce CPU usage during playback.

Credit to Bruno Pereira's post here, which helped me.


dpkg: error: dpkg status database is locked by another process

First run:

lsof /var/lib/dpkg/lock

Then make sure that process isn't running:

ps cax | grep PID

If it is running:

kill PID
#wait
kill -9 PID

Make sure process is done:

ps cax | grep PID

Then remove the lock file:

sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/lock

Let dpkg fix itself:

sudo dpkg --configure -a

You should be fine afterwards :)


Gparted cannot enlarge my Ubuntu partition although I have some unallocated space on the drive

You can only resize to adjacent unallocated space, so you would need to shrink sda5 or sda7 first (making sure to shrink in the right direction).
You could expand sda5 into the unallocated space, then shrink it from the right hand side in order to utilise the full unallocated space.


Unable to restart apache. Website is also down

This isn't an Ubuntu issue per se, so you're better off in an Apache area.

For a temp fix, just to get Apache running, comment out the LoadModule line.

And it's a sandbox project?

https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/httpd/sandbox/mod_bw/mod_bw.txt
http://bwmod.sourceforge.net/

But that should give you the ability to (re-)install it.  Or re-compile it as the case may be.


I am no longer linking this to the upgrade but to it being a weird coincidence. This is a hardware failure as far as I'm concerned now.


Ubuntu Mate 18.04 Slow Boot and Login (Clean Install)

I had the following error in the dmesg output,

  [drm:drm_atomic_helper_wait_for_dependencies [drm_kms_helper]] *ERROR
  [CONNECTOR:50:SVIDEO-1] flip_done timed out

I followed the answer here and changed GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="" to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="video=SVIDEO-1:d".

It fixed the issue.

More references,

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1534300

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=109776


From man bash (somewhere after the line 3813):

!      Start  a  history substitution, except when followed by a blank,
          newline, carriage return, = or ( (when the extglob shell  option
          is enabled using the shopt builtin).

[...]

$      The  last  word.   This  is  usually the last argument, but will
          expand to the zeroth word if there is only one word in the line.

So, the !$ will recall the last argument from the last command from history.
Here are some examples and equivalents:
$ echo foo bar
foo bar
$ echo !$ # recall the last argument from the last command from history
echo bar
bar

$ echo foo bar
foo bar
$ echo !:$ # the same like `!$'
echo bar
bar

$ echo foo bar
foo bar
$ echo !:2  # recall the second (in this case the last) argument from the last command from history
echo bar
bar

$ echo foo bar
foo bar
$ echo $_ # gives the last argument from the last command from history
bar

$ echo foo bar
foo bar
$ echo Alt+. # pressing Alt and . (dot) in the same time will automatically insert the last argument from the last command from history
bar

$ echo foo bar
foo bar
$ echo Alt+_ # the same like when you press Alt+.
bar

$ echo foo bar
foo bar
$ echo Esc. # the same like when you press Alt+.
bar
All of these will work only inside of an interactive shell. But if you use that command from your question inside of a script as you said that you sow it, then the things are different: when you run the script, this will start in a new shell, a non-interactive shell, so the history expansion doesn't has any effect in this case and so the command:
echo "An Example" > !$

creates the file !$ if not present (otherwise overwrites it) and write An Example into it.


Bash: How to determine whether terminal is opened by third-party app

You could probably do it by walking back up the ancestry of the shell and working out whether it was started by something that equates to "you", or another program.

Get the shell's PID (process ID), and from that its PPID (parent process ID).  Keep going up until you get to something which tells you where it came from.  You may need to experiment on your system -- at least, I don't know whether it'll be universal.

For example, on my system, get the PID of a shell and use ps to show that it's bash:

$ echo $$
18852
$ ps --pid 18852
  PID TTY          TIME CMD
18852 pts/1    00:00:00 bash

Get the PPID of 18852:

$ ps -o ppid= -p 18852
18842

Find out what the PPID (18842) is:

$ ps --pid 18842
  PID TTY          TIME CMD
18842 ?        00:00:02 gnome-terminal

We can see it's gnome-terminal, i.e. the terminal emulator / terminal window.  Maybe that's good enough for you, if your shell launched by the other program is not running in a terminal emulator window.

If it's not good enough, go up another level:

$ ps -o ppid= -p 18842
 2313
$ ps --pid 2313
  PID TTY          TIME CMD
 2313 ?        00:00:00 init

This tells us that gnome-terminal was started by init.  I suspect your shell started by another program will have something different there.


LTS 16.06: ubuntu-software do not list pigdin when pidgin is available in synaptic

Removing the cache, might have solved the problem. Just stop ubuntu-software or gnome-software, and remove the cache like this:

$ killall gnome-software
$ rm -r ~/.local/share/gnome-software


For someone who can has interested the problem was solved installing lightdm

sudo apt install lightdm

Lightdm login extended monitor working perfectly

gdm3 bug reported here

Thanks for all


Try su root then enter your password.

If it says "Sorry, try again" it means that you are entering the wrong password.

As you have said that you are not using an account password, I would strongly suggest that you do for added security. I believe that you are not able to sudo because your account doesn't have a password. Remember that su uses the root password while sudo uses your account password. This might be the reason why su root works and sudo doesn't.

After adding an account password, add your account to the sudoers group by adduser <username> sudo

If it succeeds, you should have root privileges. Upon attaining root, type do-release-upgrade.


To run an xrandr script that gets called on login, you can put it in Startup Applications if you're on stock Gnome, or putting it in ~/.xinitrc should work if you're using startx (if you do this, you may need to fiddle with timing and order when starting the WM).


When would my application need to run with privileges?

Accessing and folder outside your home will need some elevated privileges, so it's better to keep all of your files inside your home.

$ ls -l /~$ ls -l /
total 152
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root 12288 May 28 08:29 bin
drwxr-xr-x   4 root root  4096 May 26 09:54 boot
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root  4096 May  5 10:22 build
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root  4096 Apr  8  2014 cdrom
drwxr-xr-x  15 root root  4540 May 27 12:35 dev
drwxr-xr-x 208 root root 12288 May 28 08:29 etc
drwxr-xr-x   5 root root  4096 Dec 23 09:43 home
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root    32 Apr  8  2014 initrd.img -> boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-23-generic
drwxr-xr-x  28 root root  4096 May 22 08:38 lib
drwxrwxrwx   2 root root 12288 May  7 13:20 lib32
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root  4096 Apr 14 08:28 lib64
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root    36 Feb 25 14:00 libnss3.so -> /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnss3.so
drwx------   2 root root 16384 Dec 23 09:43 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x   7 root root  4096 May 13 18:17 media
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root  4096 Dec 23 09:43 mnt
drwxr-xr-x  19 root root  4096 May  8 08:05 opt
dr-xr-xr-x 308 root root     0 May 26 13:35 proc
drwx------  23 root root  4096 May 20 08:53 root
drwxr-xr-x  32 root root  1200 May 28 08:29 run
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root 12288 May 28 08:29 sbin
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root  4096 Mar  5  2012 selinux
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root  4096 Apr  7  2014 srv
drwxr-xr-x  13 root root     0 May 26 13:35 sys
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root  4096 Dec 23 09:43 timeshift
drwxrwxrwt  22 root root 24576 May 29 13:52 tmp
drwxr-xr-x  13 root root  4096 Jun 20  2014 usr
drwxr-xr-x  15 root root  4096 May 22 12:52 var
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root    29 Apr  8  2014 vmlinuz ->

As you see all of these directories is owned by root and though to work with these you need some more permissions, unless your home which is represented by ~ and can be accessed from /home/username this is the only place for your playground as a normal user.


Installing any plugin inEclipse sticks on pending and doesn't install

I discovered answer to this question completely by chance.

The trick is to keep only HTTP and HTTPS proxy values in "manual" settings. Keep the SOCKS proxy empty.

As soon as we set these settings, eclipse successfully fetches the list of plugins, and successfully installs plugins too!!


Wifi is sometimes soft blocked by unknown service

Check your /var/lib/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.state file and see if WirelessEnabled=false. systemd-rfkill seems to check that file and soft block your interface if found. Set to true and see if that fixes the issue.


Keyboard Volume Buttons Don't Change Connected Bluetooth volume

OK I've finally figured it out, so simple yet I overlooked it completely.
In Volume Control > Output Devices tab I clicked on the green icon Set As Fallback next to the Bluetooth device and that did it. It had remained on the Built-In Audio Analog Stereo device.
Thanks a million for your help anyway!


Firefox globalmenu for Zotero Standalone

As of 2019, the preferred way of installing Zotero is by using Emiliano Heyns' packages.

His repository also provides alternative packages with unofficial Global Menu support for Ubuntu 19.04+.

For additional information about the provided packages, see the README file.


This is potentially a custom/proprietary protocol used by your router and the software designed by the manufacturer.

However, USB over IP is a thing and it can be used on Ubuntu. Assuming your router is using the standard USB over IP and not a custom protocol, this page (paraphrased below for anyone who finds this through google) should help you set it up.

Install usbip

sudo apt-get install usbip
Load the vhci-hcd kernel module

modprobe vhci-hcd
Check if it really got loaded

lsmod | grep vhci_hcd

(Your out should be similar to below)

root@client1:~# lsmod | grep vhci_hcd
vhci_hcd               19800  0
usbip_common_mod       13605  1 vhci_hcd
root@client1:~#

(optional) Add module to load on boot

sudo echo vhci-hcd >> /etc/modules
Connect to the server (your router) and get a list of devices.

usbip -l serverip

Replace serverip with the IP address of your router.

Example output:

root@client1:~# usbip -l 192.168.0.100
- 192.168.0.100
     1-1: SanDisk Corp. : Cruzer Micro Flash Drive (0781:5151)
        : /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:07.2/usb1/1-1
        : (Defined at Interface level) (00/00/00)
        :  0 - Mass Storage / SCSI / Bulk (Zip) (08/06/50)

Note the designation of the USB device you want to use (1-1 in this example).
Attach the remote device to the local computer.

usbip -a serverip designation

e.g.

usbip -a 192.168.12.34 1-1

The remote device should now be attached locally to your computer. You should see it listed if you execute lsusb from the terminal.


How do I access my files while I have trouble logging in with my account via GUI?

If the free space is the problem, you can pres Ctrl+Alt+F1 to open tty1. Then log-in with the administrator's account and remove the unnecessary files by the command line. In the article Guide to Unix/Commands/File System Utilities are listed the basics about the commands cd, ls, rm, rmdir, etc.

Alternatively you could try to install Midnight Commander (I hope there is a little free space left) that will display the file system in a more familiar way:

sudo apt install mc

Then run it by the command mc. The key F8 is the Delete key, but be careful! F5 is for Copy. Use Tab ↹ to switch between the left and the right side. F10 is for Quit. For more commands see the bottom line of the image below or press F1 for Help.

  Please read also this answer. There are provided few useful hints for beginners. I think you are just experiencing the problem with the wrong ownership described there.


How to get root terminal? Also I have a problem a wrong character appears instead of @

As for the root terminal -- as have been pointed out, open a regular terminal (press Win key, type "terminal", enter), and type sudo -i, then your own password. But beware, you can trash your system as root if you don't know what you are doing.
Something must be wrong with your language / keyboard settings.

What physical keyboard are you using? US, German, ...?
Go to System -> Preferences -> Keyboard to open the Layouts tab. Move the appropriate layout to the top.
(in 12.04 - press the "Win" key, type "keyboard layout", Enter. Make sure that your layout matches your physical keyboard. There is a little icon of a keyboard below the options. If you click it, you will see what the chosen layout is. I assure you that the @ key is there, waiting for you to get pressed)

10.04

12.04


Generally this won't work.  OpenCL isn't designed that way.  It's an abstraction layer to let you talk to differing video cards.  It doesn't beat vendors in to submission for you.

You could, however, install both drivers, design your application so that it allows multiple device/pool selections, and queue queries to both devices.  They won't magically become one opencl processing pool for you though...and I think that's what you want.


Conky with gcalcli doesn't give proper calendar format in desktop

I found the solution by getting a script off a site, that formats the conky output here.
Here's the content of the script:

#!/bin/sh

gcalcli --conky calw 4 |
    sed -e 's/(0\x71(B/-/g' \
        -e 's/(0\x78(B/|/g' \
        -e 's/(0\x6A(B/-/g' \
        -e 's/(0\x6B(B/|/g' \
        -e 's/(0\x6C(B/-/g' \
        -e 's/(0\x6D(B/|/g' \
        -e 's/(0\x6E(B/-/g' \
        -e 's/(0\x74(B/|/g' \
        -e 's/(0\x75(B/-/g' \
        -e 's/(0\x76(B/|/g' \
        -e 's/(0\x77(B/-/g' \
        -e 's/(0\x78(B/|/g' \
        -e 's/(0\x6A(B/-/g' \
        -e 's/(0\x6B(B/|/g' \
        -e 's/(0\x6C(B/-/g' \
        -e 's/(0\x6D(B/|/g' \
        -e 's/(0\x6E(B/-/g' \
        -e 's/(0\x74(B/|/g' \
        -e 's/(0\x75(B/-/g' \
        -e 's/(0\x76(B/|/g' \
        -e 's/(0\x77(B/-/g'

Just place it inside the .config folder of your home directory.

And here is my .conkyrc file:

alignment top_right
background true
border_width 0
cpu_avg_samples 2
default_color white
default_outline_color white
default_shade_color white
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders yes
draw_outline no
draw_shades no
use_xft yes
xftfont DejaVu Sans Mono:size=6
gap_x 0
gap_y 20
minimum_size 5 5
net_avg_samples 2
double_buffer yes
out_to_console no
out_to_stderr no
extra_newline no
own_window yes
own_window_class Conky
own_window_type override
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
stippled_borders 0
update_interval 300
uppercase no
use_spacer none
show_graph_scale no
show_graph_range no
text_buffer_size 16096
max_specials 2048
pad_percents 0

TEXT
${execpi 300 ~/.config/gcal.sh}

Place this .conkyrc file inside your Home (~/) folder.

This is how my desktop looks now :)

Here is my blog post about the complete process - link.


you may also want to try to suggest a resolution in File > Prefs > Display and select hint

It could also be virtualbox being outdated, check in Help > about. Currently we are on 5.0.14; after updating you would also need to update the extension pack - its all here


Fixed by turning off 3D Accerelation in VM settings, but it's incredibly slow now.


What's the use of having just one logical partition (an extended partition containing only one logical)?

It breaks down to this...

Older computers have a BIOS, and use MBR disk partioning on the hard disk.

MBR partitioning only allows a maximum of 4 disk partitions
normally that translates to 3 primary partitions, and 1 extended partition that contains various logical partitions.

Newer computers have a UEFI system, and use GPT disk partioning on the hard disk.

GPT partitioning has no such partition limits, and normally only uses primary partitions.

When installing Ubuntu, you don't have to decide how to partition your hard disk, as Ubuntu will do that for you. Especially when using a small hard disk, or only one hard disk, there's really NO NORMAL REASON to manually partition the drive.

Update #1:

You're partially correct. Having an extended partition with only one logical partition doesn't make a whole lot of sense... as long as it has only one logical partition... but that's NOT normally the case.

Three more common scenarios end up with more logical partitions...

Where the user has to create a logical swap partition for hibernation.
Where the user has decided to have a separate / root partition, and a separate /home partition.
Where the user has an extended partition, with only one logical partition, and later wishes to add additional logical partitions.

Also remember that fresh installs of current versions of Ubuntu prefer a /swapfile, unless it finds a prior swap partition.


Wired connection stops working - Ubuntu Budgie 17.04

Some revisions of RTL8111/8168/8411 are not vey well supported by kernel drivers.

You can install a driver from Realtek by running

sudo apt install r8168-dkms

You need to be connected to the internet for it.


Unable to use external monitor in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Okay I managed to fix it and everything is working well!

I just changed my kernal to 4.4.8 and Now I'm good to go!

http://linuxdaddy.com/blog/install-kernel-4-4-on-ubuntu/

This article should get you setup. Just follow the instructions, and reboot your machine into the new kernal. Plug in your monitor AFTER your machine has booted, and do the standard

  System Settings > Displays > Detect displays

The thread "Laptop freezes after connecting external monitor, since 16.04 update" thread was where the solution came from, so big thanks to Louis-Rémi for putting it up


OnBoard is a good virtual keyboard not especially for KDE, but working on most Linux:

 sudo apt install onboard

Automatic opening and closing won't work on KDE but it places a status icon in the tray area which will let it pop up when clicked.


How do I set the native resolution on an HP Mini 210-1004sa?

Hi I was just wondering have you tried adding "nomodeset" to grub?

Here is a good reference -> How to set NOMODESET and other kernel boot options in grub2

Let me know how you get on :-)


Is there a way to make the speaker silent while the headphone-jack keeps working? 12.04LTS

You need to use alsamixer to accomplish this.

Unfortunately the options you need are not in my screenshot, but if you have headphone sense option (or something similar), unmute that, and if possible, turn the speakers to off. This way, the speakers will be off by default, but the headphones will be enabled.


Network setup not working.  Can't connect to the Internet in Ubuntu

I doesn't look like you have any network cards in the notebook. You can add a wired or wireless USB network card, depending on how you want to connect to the network.  Now if you notebook have a PCMCIA socket, which it probably does, you can get a PCMCIA network card, and that would be better.


Change colour of Calendar / System menu in Gnome Desktop

For the volume bar i can modify it with this :

-slider-active-background-color: rgb(180,208,81);

I looked for to change the color of the active day too (like in your example) in the gnome calendar but i can't find it.

I find a way to change the focus background color on the other days but not the active and the same day number after or before (in your example the 6 may is in blue, but if you change months, like June, the 6th June will be in blue too) and i want to change the background color too.

I want to change the color of the size the windows gonna have when you split it (like in the picture), if anyone knows this please share.

size focus windows color


This is a very common question, and the UI is a bit tricky.  I took some screenshots.

First:

Computers -> Select Computers -> Packages -> Find Package to Hold

You should end up on a screen like this:

Expand the row of the package you want to hold:

Click the little package icon:

Then apply changes to generate the activity that will be sent to the selected computer.


Installing MATLAB 2016a onto ubuntu 16.04?

If unzip command isn't already installed in your system, run:

sudo apt-get install unzip

Go to the directory you downloaded Matlab .zip file:

cd /path/to/download/directory

Unzip the file:

unzip downloaded_matlab_zip_file.zip -d matlab_destination_directory

Navigate to matlab_destination_directory:

cd matlab_destination_directory

Run the Matlab installer:

./install

Follow these installation steps from the vendor.


How do I load hyperv_fb at start up with Zesty 17.04

I was able to get this working. I manually added the Linux extensions by doing the following:

sudo gedit /etc/modules

At the bottom of the file, add:

linux-image-extra-virtual

Reboot.

I also removed the virtual video card from the Hyper-V configuration settings.


How to submit binaries to the armel repository?

New versions can be backported by following the Ubuntu Backport process.   Ubuntu doesn't accept binary uploads.  Also, PPAs do not provide binaries for arm, only amd64 and i386.

The simplest way to proceed is to use the requestbackport tool from ubuntu-dev-tools.

An example in this case would be:

$ requestbackport -d precise -s quantal gimp

Which provides the output:

requestbackport:  * LP: #1006424: Please backport babl 0.1.10-1 (main) from quantal  https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1006424
requestbackport:  * LP: #1040756: Please backport fftw3 3.3.2-3.1ubuntu1 (main) and fftw3-mpi from quantal  https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1040756
requestbackport:  * LP: #1006426: Please backport gegl 0.2.0-1ubuntu1 (main) from quantal  https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1006426
requestbackport:  * LP: #1002780: Please backport gimp 2.8.0-2ubuntu1 (main) from quantal  https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1002780

So, you can see that the request has already been started in LP: #1002780.


This probably can be fixed by

sudo apt-get install file-roller


How can I format the drive where ubuntu is installed without disturbing the bootloader?

It sounds like you have an WUBI install of Ubuntu 13.04.
See the Wubi Guide for more information about WUBI.
WUBI is not being developed and is not supported anymore. Therefore this is the best time for you to move from WUBI to full install.
A full install of Ubuntu needs two partitions that Windows do not understand. (a) First, a root partition, also called a / partition in the ext4 format. (b) a Swap partition in its own format. This should not be a problem unless you already have four primary partitions (the maximum possible) in your computer.
Steps for removing WUBI Ubuntu 13.04 and installing Ubuntu 14.04 in its own partitions.

Backup all your files both in Windows and Ubuntu. You never know what can go wrong.

Uninstall Ubuntu 13.04 from within Windows using the Add-Remove program.

Using the Windows default partition management utility, delete J:\ drive and keep the area unformatted.

Boot from live DVD/USB of Ubuntu 14.04 and install from there. The installation process should find the unallocated empty space where J:\ was and create its own partitions there and install the GRUB boot loader at the proper place.

For more information see How do I install Ubuntu?
If you don't have an WUBI install, you can go straight to step 4 above. Ubuntu 14.04 installation process will see that you have 13.04 installed already and offer to replace it with the new version.
Hope this helps


CPU spikes cause audio stuttering in Audacious when browsing? (Lubuntu)

Here are two things that you could try:

If you have visualization plugins running, turn them off (this was enough for me to fix stutter)
Adjust the buffer size (in Preferences > Audio > Buffer size), for example this old redhat bug discussion suggests values around 500, while I think I had better luck with higher values.


Installing libexpat0 instead of libexpat1

There is no package providing libexpat.so.0 library but there is libexpat-dev package that provides libexpat.so.1, so you can install the package and then create a symbolic link.

As the BitWise is 32 bit, at first you need to install 32 bit of the libexpat-dev package:

sudo apt-get install libexpat-dev:i386

Now you can create a symbolic link making libexpat.so.0 as the link name and libexpat.so.1 as the target:

sudo ln -s /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libexpat.so.1 /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libexpat.so.0


18.04 LTS - can't access CD drive: "special device /dev/sr0 does not exist"

So, I've solved my own problem - though I'm not at all sure how or why.

Trying to fix an issue copying music files where some were not copied because file or folder names included foreign or accented characters, I tried adding an ‘iocharset’ parameter to the CIFS mount option in /etc/fstab :

//Ext-dd/iTunes /media/iTunes cifs vers=1.0,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777,uid=1000,gid=1000,nofail 0 0

– but that failed to mount, apparently because a very large linux library needed to be installed:

sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends linux-image-extra-virtual

(NB the –no-install-recommends option had no apparent effect.)
The process included accepting or rejecting an updated kernel - I accepted, as I had suspected the current kernel wasn't right.
Once that was installed, and the system was rebooted, not only were the folders apparently mounted correctly, and the encoding seems to work – but the DVD player is back!


GRUB menu not showing with dual-boot UEFI mode installation

First try to change the boot order in BIOS (UEFI) settings.
Select Ubuntu to be the default operating system to boot.

If this is not possible boot into Windows and disable hibernation and Fast Boot.

To disable hibernation open command prompt as administrator and execute this command:

powercfg /h off

To disable Fast Boot open Control Panel (the old version - not the modern design),
select the Energy Settings, enable show hidden settings and uncheck Fast Boot.

After having done this shutdown the machine completely - do NOT reboot!

Then reinstall the GRUB boot loader to your Ubuntu installation  in EFI mode.

Boot from the Ubuntu installation media - then  open a terminal and execute:

sudo mount /dev/sd*** /mnt
sudo mount /dev/sd** /mnt/boot/efi
for i in /dev /dev/pts /proc /sys /run; do sudo mount -B $i /mnt$i; done
sudo chroot /mnt
grub-install /dev/sd*
update-grub

Now you can choose which operating system you want to boot from the GRUB boot loader menu.

Note :

sd* = disk | sd** = efi partition | sd*** = system partition

To identify the partition numbers use GParted.
The tool is included in the Ubuntu install media.


Can I install Ubuntu AMD/ATI Drivers on a Live CD/USB?

I successfully installed the atidrivers on a live usb system.
First of all you need an empty stick - i used one with 16gb of space.
Put the live-cd in and install a system as u normally would install on an external hard drive.

Its neccessary that you use the instructions of method 1.

Then you already have a system with login on your usb stick.

Next you download the driver from AMD

Install the the driver the ubuntu way.

Its all tested with Ubuntu 12.04 amd64 version. If your getting problems let me know.

Because I am a new user I can't post more then 2 hyperlinks so I definitly would posted the complete solution.
But I will do a post on my blog the next days.


Poor FPS with mac webcam when used on Ubuntu on VMWare Fusion

VMWare confirmed that this is a bug in their latest version 11.x and will be fixed with the next release. Previous versions work fine and I tried that with VMWare v8.x and it worked just fine!!


To see all the services that automatically starts, you can use

  initctl list shell

It will list the contents of

  /etc/init

Then check which services you don't need.


What decent email client would you recommend (at least better than Thunderbird)?

If you would consider a terminal based option, and usually work with plain-text email mutt is awesome. It is lightweigth, and can handle anything thunderbird can, except for photos.

Rather than that, I'd recommend Gmail's web interface, as I find it quite nice, and usually use it for my mail. You can use it as a desktop email client, which receives mail from many different accounts from any provider, via either pop and imap (not sure about imap). It has decent filtering and organising capabilities.

If you are interested in desktop clients only, I'd extend @alfC's answer by adding Claws Mail. I've used it for a little while and didn't learn much about it, but it is nice too, I wan't to add it as it is a widely-used open-source option.


autoinstall options ignored on Ubuntu 20.04

Andrew's comment regarding the different installers was the right thing.  I just made the (obviously bad) assumption that the kernel/initrd bits for the ISO installer would be the same as the network installer. I switched to the bits from the ISO and now it all makes sense.


How to Configure for Intranet Only Access? Apache, Ubuntu Server 18.04, Hyper-V VM

I was actually able to figure it out on my own!

sudo ufw default deny
sudo ufw allow from (local ip address, use 0 as last #)/24
sudo ufw reload


How can I install a specific program on Ubuntu?

Compiling Software on Ubuntu requires a few extra steps, as most packages come as precompiled binaries available in the software store or in your version's repository.  Following these steps as a guideline will ensure that you can compile software easily:

Let's create a place for our software to live.  This ensures that we do not affect our running system, should something go wrong.  The guide linked below uses /usr/local/src, but I prefer /opt: sudo mkdir /opt/ProgramName.  Replace ProgramName with the actual name of the compiled program.
Move all the Items that you're trying to compile into /opt/ProgramName, or better yet move and extract the Tarball into /opt/ProgramName: mv -v tarballname.tar.gz /opt/ProgramName && cd /opt/ProgramName/ && tar -xzvf tarballname.tar.gz
With a fresh copy of the tarball extracted, we need some tools, namely the compiler, the make, and the install program: sudo apt-get install build-essential checkinstall
Run ./configure --prefix=/opt/ProgramName in the root directory, ProgramName.  The --prefix parameter is very important, as this tells make not to install this in your system's default directories.  This also tells you that the package is not managed by apt.
Now if the configure script crashes, we need to install the missing dependencies. We do this by using tools provided in apt.  Every configure script will generate a file ending in .pc or .log when it errors: apt-file search nameoflogfile.pc will gather the missing dependencies.
Install the missing dependencies with apt-get install missing-package-names where missing-package-names is the output from Step 5.
Repeat Step 4.
Now issue make && make install

You were missing Step 4.

Please also realize that from your question that Prog.pro is a QT Project file, which requires qmake.  Qmake requires the QT Libraries, and by default the QT Libraries aren't installed.  Adding them will result in extra menu items etc, because Unity is supported by the GTK Libraries.  QT is most notably used for the K Desktop Environment, aka KDE, which means that the person who wrote this application intended it to be used in KDE, and NOT GNOME or Unity.

Update

You may need to run autogen script.  If you don't see that, you need to redownload/reaquire the program.  Programs are built using the Autotools Toolchain - Tutorial.  See Also: WikiPedia Entry.

See Also: CompilingEasyHowTo


How can I share the Internet on my laptop to my wireless network connection in my laptop?

You can use ap-hotspot to create wifi hotspot..

To install use this command.

sudo apt-get install ap-hotspot

Then configure using

sudo ap-hotspot configure

And then start the hotspot

sudo ap-hotspot start

to stop

sudo ap-hotspot stop


run crontab as www-data to create a file with www-data as owner

So you want to have

all your crontabs in one place under root
execute some python code every 5 minutes
execute the script with user www-data

Since su is not available for www-data as discussed in the comments one can use sudo instead if it is available on the system. From the man page it says

  sudo, sudoedit — execute a command as another user

In your case this would mean you use

sudo crontab -e

to edit your crontab as user root. Inside crontab prepend sudo -u www-data python  command to execute python ad user www-data.

*/5 * * * * sudo -u www-data python /my/python/log/script.py


Maybe you have "Disable touchpad while typing" checked in the "Mouse & Touchpad" system settings area.
Have you checked this?


I would say that if it's not detected in either Widows or Linux or gparted it's permanently broken.

But to be sure , you can check in your bios, during startup, if the drive is detected there. If you don't see any drive there then it's gone.

If you dont have a bios you can access you can see if the linux detects it at all by typing :

dmesg |less

, in the terminal to look through the up start log of your computer.
it will contain any harddrives detected during start up of Linux


What can I do to get my package from Debian unstable to next Ubuntu LTS?

It's already done.

Hooray for Ubuntu's Merge-o-Matic

See https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thonny

Consider spinning up an 18.04 VM, and testing it.


The '?' means that it can't determine the serial number , but adb may still work. The first thing you should try if it doesn't is to try a different USB cable/and socket. There are enough anecdotes involving Samsung devices to suggest that this is the problem.

You probably don't have adb over tcp/ip enabled but if you do turn that off.

If it says "no permissions", then that usually means a udev problem. If it works when you run adb as root then it is a problem with your udev rules: sudo /path/to/adb devices. One thing to watch out for with udev is that your computer needs to be rebooted for your changes to be recognised.


You can use the boot repair tool to reinstall grub with a menu delay. This will allow you to add the nomodeset option to your kernel by pressing 'e'.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair

Once booted, enable the nvidia driver in the  'additional drivers' application and reboot the computer, this time without changing the boot settings.


Why system accounts given login shell on Ubuntu 12.04.5 Desktop

For instance, cronjobs. They need a shell to run.

See Post of Unix and Linux Why does the 'bin' user need a login shell?


QEMU / KVM: Unable to pass multiple cores / CPUs to guests

Well then, shame on me:

In the middle of the command line above, there is already an option "-smp 1". I didn't remember this, and I haven't seen it during my tests. When removing it, it works like expected.


To answer my own question, I found a vsftpd.conf here that works:

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/181436/vsftpd-wont-start

listen=YES
local_enable=YES
write_enable=YES
local_umask=022
dirmessage_enable=YES
use_localtime=YES
xferlog_enable=YES
secure_chroot_dir=/var/run/vsftpd/empty
pam_service_name=vsftpd
rsa_cert_file=/etc/ssl/private/vsftpd.pem


Any user can execute an appimage if he has been granted permissions to run the file. If it is set only for the owner or the group, only the owner or a member of the group of the file can execute it. Thus, check whether the executable bit of the appimage is set for "others".


How to get os name (ubuntu) in java program

I found that there is only three system properties to determine os details :

os.name : Linux
os.version : 3.13.0-74-generic
os.arch " amd64

ubuntu specific solution is to read these files :

/etc/*-release

for me :

$ cat /etc/*-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=14.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=trusty
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 14.04 LTS"
NAME="Ubuntu"
VERSION="14.04, Trusty Tahr"
ID=ubuntu
ID_LIKE=debian
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 14.04 LTS"
VERSION_ID="14.04"
HOME_URL="http://www.ubuntu.com/"
SUPPORT_URL="http://help.ubuntu.com/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="http://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/"

and the java code:

File file = new File("/etc");
File[] list = file.listFiles(new FilenameFilter() {
    public boolean accept(File dir, String name) {
        return name.endsWith("-release");
    }
});
for (File f : list) {
    Scanner s = new Scanner(new FileInputStream(f));
    while (s.hasNext()) {
        System.out.println(s.nextLine());
    }
}


Increase resolution for multiple displays above graphics card resolution?

You need to state:

which driver you are using (Open source or Proprietary)
which tool(s) you are using to configure your driver

But, as a general guide,

if your graphics card says that it will support  2560x1600 and yet the total "displayable" resolution that you want to display exceeds that then there is probably not much hope.

You may have some mileage experimenting with your /etc/X11/xorg.conf, specifying a suitable virtual area to match the desired total resolution, but I would expect this particular approach to work best with a dual display featuring consistent resolutions across both monitors.

Note that if using the proprietary driver, you can generate a suitable Xorg.conf on the commandline using the "aticonfig" command.

I found this to be more reliable than using the gui tool which crashed out all of the time.

Running the aticonfig command generated the following Xorg.conf for one of my machines running oneric ocelot:

(Hint 1: please make sure the driver you state in Xorg.conf is installed before writing it into Xorg.conf, else your X-Server most likely won't start.)

(Hint 2: Xorg.conf might not exist on your system. You can still create one and it will be used, but its settings might be overwritten by configurations made in the files in the folder /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ )

(Hint 3: please keep a copy of your old xorg.conf prior to editing the file)

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "aticonfig Layout"
    Screen      0  "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" 0 0
    Screen         "aticonfig-Screen[0]-1" LeftOf "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0"
EndSection

Section "Module"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
    Option      "Xinerama" "on"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier   "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"
    Option      "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
    Option      "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
    Option      "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier   "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-1"
    Option      "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
    Option      "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
    Option      "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
    Driver      "fglrx"
    BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[0]-1"
    Driver      "fglrx"
    BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
    Screen      1
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0"
    Device     "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
    Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"
    DefaultDepth     24
    SubSection "Display"
        Viewport   0 0
        Depth     24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]-1"
    Device     "aticonfig-Device[0]-1"
    Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-1"
    DefaultDepth     24
    SubSection "Display"
        Viewport   0 0
        Depth     24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Good luck.


If you're not finding what your looking for in the Ubuntu software repositories, you might want to use WINE and try setting up the windows program you're already familiar with. WINE is a valuable utility and extremely useful when what you're looking for just isn't there.
Native Linux programs are always preferred but sometimes the better option is what you already know.


Ubuntu Touch - Mobile Data becoming increasingly unusable

Yeah, i have also issues with Meizu Pro 5 and 2G/3G/4G connections.

At first issues was smaller: Connection loss, try turn air plane mode on and off. if not worked reboot device and connection works sometime. Now i boot my device and get connection <1min until phone drops connection and says "unregistered". Air plane mode does not help anymore. Reboot sometimes helps, but usually i have to turn my phone off, use my spare phone and wait for a day or so and try to connect to network again. As i posted comment here: Meizu Pro 5 Ubuntu Edition OTA-11 - 2G/3G issue, I have this issue in Finland with OTA-10.2, OTA-11 and OTA-12. I was in Sweden 4 days and network connections worked fine with OTA-10.2 and OTA-11.

I'll try to borrow a sim card from some of my friends and try to get connection and see what happens. Also i'll try to get micro sd card from somewhere so i can test sim slot 2 if that has same problems. I'll let you know does any of that solve anything.


Can’t install 18.04 from live usb. Screen freezes, but cursor moves

Please try edit kernel parameters in grub menu by change quite splash to nomodeset to gain access to desktop environment.
After that update your graphic card driver, and choosing NVIDIA proprietary instead of xorg in Additional driver


You probably aborted the mysql root password prompt dialog. From the terminal, run the following command:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure mysql-server-5.0

Let us know the results, please update your question or use the Add Comments feature.


I don't know if you've already considered trying clamav-milter , which is in the repositories .

From apt-cache show clamav-milter:

 This package contains the ClamAV milter for use with sendmail. It can
 be configured to be run either standalone, or using clamav-daemon.
Homepage: http://www.clamav.net/

Otherwise, it appears you are missing some dependencies for clamcour .  (What version of clamav is on your system?)

Trying to build this myself, with clamcour "Current release" 1.0.0-1 - Development (beta)
from the clamcour page
it looks like you'll need

 libboost1.42-all-dev courier-mta libxml2-dev libclamav-dev


Courier IMAP postfix Question folders and namespace

I figured out dovecot.  Courier is ultra reliable, but the whole "everything has to be a sub directory of INBOX" issue is just too much.


Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Release is unable to boot and lands in a blank screen after fresh installation in Oracle Virtual Box

Switching from full screen to scaled mode and then back to full screen allowed me to see my guest's screen.

Background

I had already set the video memory to 128 MBs, but was getting a blank screen in full screen mode anyway. I have an ultrawide monitor and had installed the guest extensions so that I could use the full resolution (2560x1080) which was fine before rebooting the guest. Following a reboot or shutdown+boot, I was getting a blank screen after the spinning Ubuntu loading screen. I discovered that switching VirtualBox between modes would workaround the issue. Hopefully Oracle is able to fix this, seems like a bug.


Ubuntu 18.04.5 Shutdown taking too much time (90+ seconds)

The default timeouts of systemd are completely insane; typically it's 30 seconds, and they tend to add up. Check your current settings with:
grep -i timeout /etc/systemd/*.conf

Then make a decision if there is anything that could possibly really take 30 seconds to shut down, or if you want to reduce e.g. DefaultTimeoutStopSec to something more reasonable like 10 or even 5 seconds.
IMHO any process that isn't finished shutting down itself within 5 seconds is seriously broken by design.


Ubuntu 14.04 won't recognize Garmin etrex 30 GPS

While you might do some work with Viking reviewing .gpx files for transfer to and from the Etrex 30, you will not get it to work with FoxtrotGPS as a live gps device.

It doesn't have the ability to stream data, and FoxtrotGPS uses gpsd to stream the data to itself.

I think it might be the wrong device for what you might be wanting to do.

If, and why, it is not recognised as a mass storage device is another matter.


File containing a list of all installed software, including dependencies?

Yes, there is a file. It is /var/lib/dpkg/status although this file is not going to be really useful if you want to get 'just' the list of installed packages. As you can see from the output below, this file has lot more information including dependencies, maintainer, version, architecture, etc.

ron@ron:~$ head /var/lib/dpkg/status
Package: fonts-sil-abyssinica
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: fonts
Installed-Size: 2208
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com>
Architecture: all
Multi-Arch: foreign
Version: 1.500-1
Replaces: ttf-sil-abyssinica (<< 1.200-1)


You should replace files in theme folder -/usr/share/icons/

A better idea would be creating a custom theme, which inherits original theme, but contains modified icons. Here is a tutorial


Unable to install drivers after updating linux kernel 3.10

None of the nvidia drivers are currently compatible with kernel 3.10. There are some patches floating around however I would wait for the official NVidia update. Go back to kernel 3.9 or earlier for the moment.


Use

sudo apt-get install libpcre3=2:8.38-3.1 libpcre3-dev=2:8.38-3.1

to force apt-get to install version 2:8.38-3.1 of those packages.

Warning: Only use this this if you are really sure you want to install version 2:8.38-3.1 (the version from the official Ubuntu 16.04 repository) of the packages libpcre3 and libpcre3-dev.

If you are not running Ubuntu 16.04 you should change the version number to the version you actually want to install.


RESOLVED: Booted into Maintenance and selected Fix Broken Packages.


To answer phone Swipe right  - Do not press button - swipe right instead.


Software Upgrader does nothing on attempting to upgrade to 20.04

This finally worked for me to locate and fix the broken packages that I had:
sudo dpkg --configure -a

Followed by
sudo aptitude why-not <package_name>

for each package listed, then accepting the solution offered. A bit clunky and manual and it might be less than ideal in many cases but it worked this time and now Synaptic says I have no broken packages any more.
Hope that this helps someone.


Check it using lsb_release -a

user@Laptop~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
Release:        14.04
Codename:       trusty

also check linux kernel version using uname -r

user@Laptop~$ uname -r
3.13.0-24-generic

You can always sudo apt-get update, apt-get upgrade and sudo apt-get -f install to meet dependencies and install/update apps


How I can create a 32-bit version of Atom?

These instructions assume you have a 32-bit system:

sudo apt-get install build-essential git libgnome-keyring-dev fakeroot rpm libx11-dev libxkbfile-dev

Setup node.js:

curl --silent --location https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_0.12 | sudo bash -
sudo apt-get install nodejs

Clone the Atom repository:

cd
git clone https://github.com/atom/atom

If you need the latest release:

git fetch -p
git checkout $(git describe --tags `git rev-list --tags --max-count=1`)

Now build and install:

cd atom
sudo script/build --create-debian-package

Use sudo above to avoid permission denied errors during the build process. Also, if you have a problem at the build command, run sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/node node /usr/bin/nodejs 10.

Or install Atom via a PPA:

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


You have 2 easy to use via terminal. Wondershaper and Trickle. There are more here: How to limit internet speed?

Anyway the basics are:

sudo apt-get install wondershaper

In terminal find out what is the name of the interface connected to your internet by using ifconfig. Could be eth0, eth1, eth2, etc... In my case is eth1. So, I would do this:

sudo wondershaper eth1 1024 256

This will give me a Download speed of 1024 Kbits and 256 Kbits Upload. Which are 128KB and 16KB.

If you want to reset that do this sudo wondershaper clear eth1

NOTE: That will limit ANYTHING in your PC, for example the torrent downloader, firefox, etc..

Another program is Trickle

To install do this:

sudo apt-get install trickle

To run firefox with a maximum of 120KB/s download and 32KB/s upload, run

trickle -d 120 -u 32 firefox

In my case I recommend wondershaper.

If you want more info for any of the two after installed type man wondershaper or man trickle depending on the one you installed.


You ran a script which have installed some packages on your system, what you have to do is to remove all of them.

Here is a list of packages:

git python-pip python-dev gcc lm-sensors wireless-tools

see which one of them you don't want anymore then remove them.

it also installs some requirements using pip, I guess you can remove them using:

sudo pip uninstall -r glances/requirements.txt
sudo pip uninstall -r glances/optional-requirements.txt

it also creates a directory named glances where you ran the installation script, remove it simple as rm -r glances.


As root, you can start applications with higher scheduling priority by setting a low niceness value. This can be done using the nice command, like:

sudo nice -n -20 your_command

-20 is the highest priority you can give, 0 is default, 19 is lowest. See man nice for more info.

This will make the CPU scheduler prefer your process over others, if both are ready to run and requesting CPU time. It does not prevent other processes from running while your process is not using 100% CPU time, which you also would not want anyway.

Note however that this will also run your command as root, and also that setting high priority to a process that consumes all CPU time can make your system unresponsive.

Other than that, as mentioned in the comments, to measure the runtime of your command, let it run several times under the same conditions (equal input and environment, so that in a perfect world, the process would do 100% the exact same thing) and take the shortest time you got as your actual measurement value. Environmental factors may slow your application down, but not really speed it up, so the fastest run is the one with least influence from outside.

You should not only take CPU usage into account though, but especially disk read/write performance is also a quite important factor. For precise and reproducible measuring, you should not perform any real hard disk operations but operate in RAM only, reading your application and data from there and also performing any writes only to RAM. You can mount a RAM disk that acts like a normal file system to e.g. /mnt (or anywhere else) using:

sudo mount -t tmpfs none /mnt


12.04 LTS apt-get hanging connecting to us.archive.ubuntu.com

Having the same issue led me to another post on forcing apt-get to acquire IPv4 connection which resolved my issue.
I have quoted the answer from the other forum for convenience.

  Add -o Acquire::ForceIPv4=true when running apt-get.

  If you want to make the setting persistent just create
  /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99force-ipv4 and put Acquire::ForceIPv4 "true";in it.

  Config options Acquire::ForceIPv4 and Acquire::ForceIPv6 were added to
  version 0.9.7.9~exp1 (see bug 611891) which is available in Ubuntu
  Saucy (released in october 2013) and Debian Jessie (not released yet).

Source: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/9940/convince-apt-get-not-to-use-ipv6-method


SOLUTION: after upgrading the version to latest x2go repo version and installing xfce, the window appeared at the edge of the screen.

don't know why it was being drawn outside of the screen in the first place, maybe changing the desktop resolution would have revealed it too.


When is network-manager-openvpn going to be updated to the 0.9 version?

Assuming there are no last minute regressions, these package ARE v0.9.

As you can see from the change-logs (at the time of writing this), release candidate 2 is being used from upstream.

It is usual for the developers and maintainers to use either the full release-candidate versions from upstream - or to cherry pick certain bugfixes and merge this in.  In this case, the maintainers are using the release-candidate version + some alternate compile options.

So - as to your issue - I would strongly recommend you file a bug-report on launchpad to help the maintainers find a solution before v0.9 is fully committed.


How do you change the ownership of an iPod

To change to ownership of a mounted device (your iPod), you must remount it with new ownership. Here's how:

On the command line, type

mount

to list all your mounts. Find your iPod's line. Read man mount to understand this line. I don't have an iPod, but it might look like:

/dev/sdc on /media/w3/0123-4567 type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,shortname=mixed,dmask=0077,utf8=1,showexec,flush,uhelper=udisks2)
 ^device    ^mountpoint              ^filesystemType   ^options

Now, "remount" the device with

# YMMV - device, mountpoint, filesystem, options MUST
# come from YOUR system - these example values will not work for you!
device="/dev/sdc"
mountpoint="/media/w3/0123-4567"
filesystem="vfat"
# remove "uhelper=udisks2"
options="rw,nosuid,nodev,shortname=mixed,dmask=0077,utf8=1,showexec,flush"
# new options
uid=$(id -u)
gid=$(id -g)
options="remount,uid=$uid,gid=$gid,$options"
sudo mount $device -t $filesystem -o $options $mountpoint

Now, you will own the device, and can change it to y9our heart's content.


How can I determin if a reboot is required after update from CLI

The package manager creates a file, /var/run/reboot-required, if the installation requires a reboot. This file is deleted when the machine is restarted.


The issue with the permissions for /dev/ttyACM0 can be permanantly solved by adding yourself to the dialout group.
You can do this with:

sudo usermod -a -G dialout $USER

Logout and then log back in for the group changes to take effect.


How do I enable the "Universe" repository?

If you want in one command and not use Software source ticking then in terminal put:

sudo add-apt-repository universe

On older versions of Ubuntu, you might have to use a full source line:

sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu $(lsb_release -sc) universe"

To enable all Ubuntu software (main universe restricted multiverse) repositories use

sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu $(lsb_release -sc) main universe restricted multiverse"

you can add also partner repository with different link (see difference is ubuntu to canonical)

sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu $(lsb_release -sc) partner"

Then update the package list:

sudo apt-get update

p.s.

$(lsb_release -sc) checks your Ubuntu version and puts its name in the source link. Since 12.04 is called precise, you can test in a terminal that lsb_release -sc gives precise. That adds the precise name of your Ubuntu release in Software sources. Wrong word and nothing will work.

For all differences in repositories read https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Repositories/Ubuntu


Just installed ubuntu. I get a boot error

Do you have dual boot? Do you have grub installed? have you tried booting another kernel version? or safe mode?

have you tried using google?

Kernel Panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)

I would say this is similar, but an older version of your question.

the mentioned topic should help you, but some CLI experience might be handy.


Delete the profile file for that network which will be stored in /etc/NetworkManager or
/etc/NetworkManager/system-connections then delete the profile in Network Manager itself. Reboot, and then create a new profile for your home WiFi.

There is a possibility your computer's WiFi adapter is not compatible with the type of network broadcast by the home WiFi Router, so if the above fails, please use another computer to find out if your home WiFi is 802.11b, 802.11a, 802.11g, 802.11n or 802.11ac, and also tell us the make and model of your computer as well as the make and model of its WiFi adapter, and the version of Ubuntu you are using.


Squid proxy server giving the error 'The system returned: (110) Connection timed out'

You try to connect www.google.bf on port 443 and the return code is 503, means Service Unavailable

  503

  The server is currently unavailable (because it is overloaded or down for maintenance). Generally, this is a temporary state.


OP again. This worked for me just now:
On the command line: dconf reset -f /
Then reboot.
I was then able to get back into System Settings > Displays to reset my scale to a more reasonable value.

Thank you for your patience.


Where should I install bootloader in a system with multiple disks?

In your case, install them in /dev/sdb.

sdb contains all of your OSes and boot files, so it is the better choice. However, it really does not matter. GRUB works fine across disks, so you can install it to the other drive if you really want. I recommend an install to sdb though just for simplicity and ease-of-maintainence later on (esp. if you need to re-install GRUB).

It is really your choice. It works anywhere, but I recommend that you place it on the /dev/sdb disk.


Nope! There is no need to reinstall Ubuntu!

Here are the steps you need to take in order to add a new admin account:

Shutdown the computer.

Hold down the shift key and you will be greeted by the "grub" menu (it looks similar to the image below). Next, select the second option on the grub menu:

Once you selected the second option on the grub menu, you will see another menu with several recovery options:

Select the "root" option. then you will see a root terminal-prompt like this:

root@ubuntu:~#

You are going to have have to remount your Ubuntu partition to continue. At the prompt type:

mount -o rw,remount /

Next type (this will create the new admin account):

passwd username

Now it will prompt you to type in a new password:

Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:

This is how the results should look like:

passwd: password updated successfully
root@ubuntu:~#

Next, reboot the computer by typing:

shutdown -r now

Or, if you want to just change your standard account into an admin account type:

adduser username sudo

You should now see a message saying 'adding user' followed by another one saying: "done".

Reboot by typing:

shutdown -r now

I hope this fixes your problem. Good Luck!


Is there a command to refresh the applications listed on the Dash?

To restart the GNOME Shell (no logout):
Press ALT + F2 and type r or restart and press enter

To restart Unity (no logout):
Press ALT + F2 and type setsid unity or unity --replace


Introduction

This is an interesting question. Probably one of the most interesting in months for me personally. Like the OP there is no option for disabling Hyper Threading in my old BIOS (invented 2012, updated 2016 or so).

Hyper-Threading bugs in Intel Skylake and Kaby Lake:

  Anyone using Intel Skylake or Kaby Lake processors must read
  the bug reports about Hyper Threading that surfaced a couple months
  ago. This UK Register story spells out how Debian Developers
  spotted how Hyper Threading can crash and corrupt the machine.

There are numerous problems with Skylake reported in Ask Ubuntu over the last year and one wonders how to discern which problems may have been caused by Hyper Threading bugs.

This answer is divided into three parts:

Display of CPUs when Hyper-Threading is turned off/on
Bash script to automate turning hyper-threading off/on
Conky Crashes if Hyper Threading is turned off before it starts

Display of CPUs when Hyper-Threading is turned off/on

Below you can see the CPU utilization when hyper-threading is turned off and a CPU stress test is performed. About 10 seconds later the same script is repeated with hyper threading turned on. Finally 10 seconds after that the script is run with hyper-threading turned off again:

The display is divided into two sections:

On the left half the terminal window invoking the script set-hyper-threading with the parameter 0 (off) and then 1 (on).
On the right half conky displays the CPU percentage utilization of CPUS 1 to 8.

First script run Hyper Threading off

The first time the script is run CPU Numbers 2, 4, 6 & 8 (according to Conky) are frozen at 3%, 2%, 2% and 2%. CPU Numbers 1, 3, 5 and 7 spike to 100% while stress test is run.

The CPU topology is displayed with hyper-threading turned off and only the four cores reported:

/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/topology/core_id:0
/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu2/topology/core_id:1
/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu4/topology/core_id:2
/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu6/topology/core_id:3

Second script run Hyper Threading on

The second time the script is run Hyper-Threading is turned on and all CPU Numbers 1-8 spike to 100% while stress test is run.

The CPU topology is displayed with hyper-threading turned on and only the four cores plus and four virtual cores reported:

/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/topology/core_id:0
/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/topology/core_id:0
/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu2/topology/core_id:1
/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu3/topology/core_id:1
/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu4/topology/core_id:2
/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu5/topology/core_id:2
/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu6/topology/core_id:3
/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu7/topology/core_id:3

Third script run Hyper Threading off

Note how after the second script ends CPUs 2, 4, 6 and 8 are idling at 4%, 2%, 3%, 4%. This is important because in the third test turning Hyper-Threading off shows those CPU percentages frozen at 4%, 2%, 3%, 4% rather than 3%, 2%, 2% and 2% from the first test.

Therefore turning off hyper-threading seems to just freeze the virtual CPUs at the current state.

Also note no matter if you turn Hyper-Threading on or off the script still displays "Hyper Threading Supported".

Bash script to automate turning hyper-threading off/on

When viewing the script below keep in mind that Conky numbers the CPUs from 1 to 8 but Linux numbers the CPUs from 0 to 7.

#!/bin/bash

# NAME: set-hyper-threading
# PATH: /usr/local/bin
# DESC: Turn Hyper threading off or on.

# DATE: Aug. 5, 2017.

# NOTE: Written Part of testing for Ubuntu answer:
#       https://askubuntu.com/questions/942728/disable-hyper-threading-in-ubuntu/942843#942843

# PARM: 1="0" turn off hyper threading, "1" turn it on.

if [[ $# -ne 1 ]]; then
    echo 'One argument required. 0 to turn off hyper-threading or'
    echo '1 to turn hyper-threading back on'
    exit 1
fi

echo $1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/online
echo $1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu3/online
echo $1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu5/online
echo $1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu7/online

grep "" /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/topology/core_id

grep -q '^flags.*[[:space:]]ht[[:space:]]' /proc/cpuinfo && \
    echo "Hyper-threading is supported"

grep -E 'model|stepping' /proc/cpuinfo | sort -u

stress --cpu 8 --io 1 --vm 1 --vm-bytes 128M --timeout 10s

NOTE: The program stress is built into all Debian systems which Ubuntu is a derivative of. Therefore you don't have to download and install any packages to run this script in Ubuntu.

If you have a dual core CPU you need to remove (or comment out with #) the lines controlling CPU numbers 5 and 7.

Credit to Hi-Angel for bash line grep "" /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/topology/core_id displaying CPU topology.

Conky Crashes if Hyper Threading is turned off before it starts

To get CPUs 2, 4, 6, 8 to lowest percent utilization possible I tried turning off Hyper-Threading during boot up. I used this script to do that:

# NAME: /etc/cron.d/turn-off-hyper-threading
# DATE: Auguust 5, 1017
# DESC: This turns off CPU 1, 3, 5 & 7
# NOTE: Part of testing for Ubuntu answer:
#       https://askubuntu.com/questions/942728/disable-hyper-threading-in-ubuntu/942843#942843
# BUGS: Conky crashes with Segmentation Fault when CPU 2,4,6 & 8 (as conky calls them)
#       are off-line.
#
SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
#
# @reboot   root    echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/online
# @reboot   root    echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu3/online
# @reboot   root    echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu5/online
# @reboot   root    echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu7/online

However conky crashes with a segmentation fault if hyper-threading is turned off when it starts up. As such I had to comment out the four @reboot lines in the script.

Conky Code to display CPU percent utilization and load factor

If you are interested in setting up a similar display in Conky here is the relevant code snippet:

${color orange}${voffset 2}${hr 1}
${color2}${voffset 5}Intel® i-7 3630QM 3.4 GHz: ${color1}@  ${color green}${freq} MHz
${color}${goto 13}CPU 1 ${goto 81}${color green}${cpu cpu1}% ${goto 131}${color3}${cpubar cpu1 18}
${color}${goto 13}CPU 2 ${goto 81}${color green}${cpu cpu2}% ${goto 131}${color3}${cpubar cpu2 18}
${color}${goto 13}CPU 3 ${goto 81}${color green}${cpu cpu3}% ${goto 131}${color3}${cpubar cpu3 18}
${color}${goto 13}CPU 4 ${goto 81}${color green}${cpu cpu4}% ${goto 131}${color3}${cpubar cpu4 18}
${color}${goto 13}CPU 5 ${goto 81}${color green}${cpu cpu5}% ${goto 131}${color3}${cpubar cpu5 18}
${color}${goto 13}CPU 6 ${goto 81}${color green}${cpu cpu6}% ${goto 131}${color3}${cpubar cpu6 18}
${color}${goto 13}CPU 7 ${goto 81}${color green}${cpu cpu7}% ${goto 131}${color3}${cpubar cpu7 18}
${color}${goto 13}CPU 8 ${goto 81}${color green}${cpu cpu8}% ${goto 131}${color3}${cpubar cpu8 18}
${color1}All CPU ${color green}${cpu}% ${goto 131}${color1}Temp: ${color green}${hwmon 2 temp 1}°C ${goto 250}${color1}Up: ${color green}$uptime
${color green}$running_processes ${color1}running of ${color green}$processes ${color1}loaded processes.
Load Avg. 1-5-15 minutes: ${alignr}${color green}${execpi .001 (awk '{printf "%s/", $1}' /proc/loadavg; grep -c processor /proc/cpuinfo;) | bc -l | cut -c1-4} ${execpi .001 (awk '{printf "%s/", $2}' /proc/loadavg; grep -c processor /proc/cpuinfo;) | bc -l | cut -c1-4} ${execpi .001 (awk '{printf "%s/", $3}' /proc/loadavg; grep -c processor /proc/cpuinfo;) | bc -l | cut -c1-4}
${color1}NVIDIA  ${color}-GPU ${color green}${nvidia gpufreq} Mhz  ${color}-Memory ${color green}${nvidia memfreq} Mhz
${color1}GT650M ${color}-Temp ${color green}${nvidia temp}°C  ${color}-Threshold ${color green}${nvidia threshold}°C
${color orange}${voffset 2}${hr 1}

NOTE: The Nvidia code above has never been tested because I haven't got the Nvidia GPU working under Ubuntu yet. Any year soon now :)


serial-port thermal printer communication

I have no idea about thermal printers, but this the way I used to test Arduino or cell phone modem.

As example, with an Android phone as modem:

Reading serial port (need to be root):

sudo su
cat /dev/ttyACM0

As you can read just few lines as needed:

head -n2 /dev/ttyACM0

Writing serial, Open other terminal tab or window:

sudo su
echo -e "AT" > /dev/ttyACM0

It shows OK on reading port window, Also you can sent hexadecimal data (use -n option to avoid sending new line at the end)

echo -e -n "\x41\x54\x0a" > /dev/ttyACM0

same as:

echo -e "\x41\x54" > /dev/ttyACM0

Shell will show undisplayed hex as small square with its value written inside it. Try this.

echo -e "\x13"


Press F9,
or select View > Show Sidebar in the Menu. Then click + Other Locations you drives will show up along with any available network shares.

Right click on any of them and select "Add a bookmark" to make that one visible for a single click (14.04 and 16.04 at least).


Italics display issue on Firefox and Ubuntu

I got the same issue. It gets fixed when I restart Firefox and it is not clear to me what is causing it.

You are running the snap package of Firefox, because Firefox 77.0.1-1 is the version number of the snap package.

What happens, is that for some reason, Firefox from the snap package cannot find any suitable font to display italics for some specific font style. When no font is found for a specific style, the system shows those boxes and in them, puts the Unicode codepoint of the missing character. In your screenshot, the 002A is the * character.

If instead those boxes where empty, then that would mean that the encoding is bad, a different problem.

I suggest to restart Firefox (close all windows) and try again.

Then, run snap info firefox and check the refresh-date, to see whether it was just updated.

This issue qualifies as a bug report on https://forum.snapcraft.io


There are a few things, which can be done. First, check, if your BIOS has AHCI enabled. (I have it little unlogically named RAID Mode in On Chip ATA devices tab.). Option IDE is slow and my computer does not recognize this a new Memory. This is fundamental.
Then use Gparted from Ubuntu live. You should see the /nvme0n1 drive. If yes, you can begin with installation. It should be as usual. If not, try to create partitions using Gparted in Live Ubuntu and try it again. Partition table should be GPT or MSDOS type. If UEFI not functioning or you prefere reliable way , than use MSDOS.

Generally, GPT is used for large devices using UEFI. First partition should be in FAT32 format, size is about 500MB.

I advice using older, but more conventional MSDOS. First partition should be primary partition based on Linux File System (e.q. ext4) with size about 1GB mapped on /boot.

For exaple, I decided to split partitions into 3 plus SWAP partiton (you can use Swap File for now, but I don't see advantage). Tested on Ubuntu 18.04 - the both manners - UEFI and MSDOS. You can see below, what I finally choose.


Partitions contain File Systems. There are many operations that you can do on these partitions. I recommend you have a look at gparted.

sudo apt-get install gparted
gparted

The exteneded partition is just a particular kind of container which can contain more partitions. In early partition table schemes, there was only room for 4 partitions. The need to have more caused an evolution to making one of these an "extended" partition which contains more partitions. With newer partitioning schemes (gpt) this limitation is overcome.

However, what you propose, to fuse the contents of different partitions into a single partition is difficult to do and depends on what kind of file systems these partitions hold. If they are different kinds of file systems (for example ext4 and FAT32), it's simply not practical to fuse them together.

Your best bet would be to buy a new hard drive, large enough to hold the contents of all the file systems on the old drive. Then create one large partition on the new drive, format it with your chosen file system (ext4, btrfs, etc.) and then copy the entire contents of the older drive's file systems.


The effects of upgrading to latest version of Ubuntu from 16.04 on VirtualBox

I don't see why it would be damaged or erased in any way from a proper upgrade as long as you're using the 64-bit version since I do see a 64-bit build for Ubuntu 18.04 for the version in question on VirtualBox's website: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Download_Old_Builds_5_1

Although, it does seem like this is an older version of virtualbox and I would highly recommend updating it once you do upgrade, especially since on that same page I shared, it said that this version is no longer supported. Newer version: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads

If you're absolutely paranoid or have anything super sensitive on there though, then I recommend cloning your drive if possible before the upgrade. All I can say is I've upgraded a few machines to the latest 18.04.1 LTS and have had no issues myself, but then again, I haven't messed with VirtualBox on Linux. Hope this helps :)


Might modifications to scripts in "/etc/gdm3/" be overwritten by updates?

No, modifications to files in /etc ("conffiles") will not be automatically overwritten by dpkg (see the Debian Policy 5.1. Automatic handling of configuration files by dpkg). Typically, you'll be prompted on how to handle the situation (choose your version or the package version or something else), and in any case dpkg will save a backup. If unattended, or your version was picked, then the package version is saved with a .dpkg-new extension, or if the package version was preferred, then the existing one is saved with a .dpkg-old extension.


What is the recommended way to empty a SSD?

ATA Secure Erase

You should use the drive's security erase feature.

Make sure the drive Security is not frozen. If it is, it may help to suspend and resume the computer.

$ sudo hdparm -I /dev/sdX | grep frozen
       not     frozen

The (filtered) command output means that this drive is ”not frozen” and you can continue.
Set a User Password (this password is cleared too, the exact choice does not matter).

sudo hdparm --user-master u --security-set-pass Eins /dev/sdX

Issue the ATA Secure Erase command

sudo hdparm --user-master u --security-erase Eins /dev/sdX

Note:

/dev/sdX is the SSD as a block device that you want to erase.
Eins is the password chosen in this example.

See the ATA Secure Erase article in the Linux kernel wiki for complete instructions including troubleshooting.


Absolutely, make a bootable usb stick of any distro of your choice, boot to it and follow the steps.
Assuming you are on a mac I would use dd from the terminal:

e.g.
(umount the unit in this case disk2s1 before this command)
dd if=/path/to/ubuntu.iso of=/dev/disk2 bs=1M

With your bootable usb stick in hand you can now boot your Macbook depending on the model to select booting device and go on


I can't su as root, my account type is admin BUT am I root?

While using Terminal, Just prefix sudoto the command that you want to execute as root.
Authenticate it with your user password.....

For example, to install curl, via the root privileges, execute this

sudo apt-get install curl

In ubuntu, the root account does exist, However it is not activated by default.
Tough you should avoid this, but if you want to login using the root account, the this is the workout.

sudo -i
sudo passwd root

replace "passwd" with the password of your choice that you want for the "root" account.


Is there any drivers compatible with the monitor mode and Ubuntu for Nexus Touch 4?

I have installed successfully aircrack ng on my Bq aquaris but the wifi interface is not compatible so you can install aircrack ng or reaver also but it does not work

PS to install it use sudo mount / -o remount,rw that mounts the filesystem as readwrite and it does not break your ota(i do it a lot of times and i have the last ubuntu build)


Any known Ubuntu issues on Acer aspire S3-391?

I am running Ubuntu 12.10. Bluetooth doesn't work for me (though other people have got it working). There are some minor issues, but they are easy to fix.

There's more information at the Linux Laptop Wiki.


Reading from multiple serial ports in Ubuntu

The problem is that the redirections aren't working as you are assuming they do. This works fine:

sudo sh -c "tee </dev/ttyS1 test.txt"

Or you can login as root:

sudo -i
tee </dev/ttyS1 test.txt


Here's what I've gleaned from info grub and this grub tutorial.

Short story is that, yes, if you change the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file, the grub2 bootloader will read those changes and act accordingly.

The caveat is that if you make a tiny typo, your system won't boot, (although grub2 itself will run and you can use the grub shell to boot, with three commands, if you know what you're doing). So instead of actually editing a boot entry within grub.cfg, duplicate it, and give a new name for the new menuentry.If the new one boots up correctly, you can either make it the new default (see below) or delete the old one.
The complication is that by default, whenever Ubuntu pushes a grub or kernel update it completely rewrites grub.cfg (via the shell script /usr/sbin/update-grub2). So if you change grub.cfg by hand to boot a custom kernel, those changes might get overwritten.

The way around this is, instead of messing with grub.cfg at all,  add the custom kernel menu entry to the end of /etc/grub.d/40_custom, and run #sudo update-grub2

(That will ensure that your custom kernel will always be in grub's grub.cfg file even when there are grub or kernel updates pushed by by Ubuntu).

You still need to ensure that your kernel gets booted by default. Do so by editing the file /etc/default/grub

Change the line

GRUB-DEFAULT=0

to

GRUB-DEFAULT='My super duper kernel 3.11.xxx'

where the quoted string  is exactly what is in quotes for the corresponding menuentry in grub.cfg

You may need to run update-grub2 again.

That's it, you're done.

Example:

I have the following kernel and initrd:

vmlinuz-3.11.0-18-generic

initrd.img-3.11.0-18-generic

and want to instead boot the following custom kernel by default

my_super_duper_kernel_3.11

initrd.img-my_super_duper_kernel_3.11

1) I look in /boot/grub/grub/cfg for the current entry. (Note, there seems to be a lot of unessential stuff in each menuentry -- see the end of this post for a bare-bones one).

menuentry 'Ubuntu' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os
$menuentry_id_option 'gnulinux-simple-83af7d46-f6f8-4161-b7a4-47c44de0dd5e' {

... stuff deleted for brevity...

#this specifies first hard disk, first partition (i have a separate /boot partition)
set root='hd0,msdos1'

linux   /vmlinuz-3.11.0-18-generic root=/dev/mapper/linuxlvm-lvubuntu ro   quiet splash $vt_handoff

initrd  /initrd.img-3.11.0-18-generic

}

2) I append the menuitem to /etc/grub.d/40_custom, substituting a new menuentry name, kernel image, and initrd:

#!/bin/sh
exec tail -n +3 $0
# This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries.  Simply type the
# menu entries you want to add after this comment.  Be careful not to change
# the 'exec tail' line above.

#menu entry changed. It can be anything as long as it's unique
menuentry 'my_super_duper_kernel_3.11' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'gnulinux-simple-83af7d46-f6f8-4161-b7a4-47c44de0dd5e' {

set root='hd0,msdos1'

#kernel image here must match the one in /boot
linux   /my_super_duper_kernel_3.11 root=/dev/mapper/linuxlvm-lvubuntu ro   quiet

splash $vt_handoff

#initrd image, if you use one
initrd  /initrd-my_super_duper_kernel_3.11

#don't forget the closing bracket
}

3) run #sudo update-grub2

4) reboot. you should see the new kernel at the bottom of the bootloader list.

5) Make it default by editing the default line in /etc/default/grub. It must exactly match whatever you put in quotes in /etc/grub.d/40_custom right after menuentry=

GRUB-DEFAULT='My super duper kernel 3.11'

6) Not sure if necesary, but won't hurt to re-run `#sudo update-grub2

Background info:

Terminology: `The bootloader is called grub2, but colloquially ppl still call it 'grub'. So if you google for help on the subject, make sure to search specifically for grub2. Googling just 'grub' will bring up some outdated info on the old grub loader (which is still in use, but renamed 'grub-legacy').

How it knows: Grub2 consists of a tiny  piece of software (boot.img) that is installed (usually on the MBR of your disk) and has hardcoded into it the locations on your disk of the grub.cfg file and more software (core.img and various *.mod files) which actually boot the linux kernel. So boot.img knows to find core.img, which in turn will read grub.cfg

grub.cfg is generated by the shell script /usr/sbin/update-grub2. It executes all the executable scripts in /etc/grub.d/ (in alphabetical order, so 10_linux gets executed before 40_custom, etc) and sends their outputs to grub.cfg

Barebones file
Unless you are using non-standard filesystems or hardware you should only need a few lines to boot a linux kernel on a standard PC with grub. The other stuff is for graphical splash screens and I don't know what else (the following was tested with an ext4 /boot partition and / in lvm-ext4 ):

menuentry 'foo' {
set root='hd0,msdos1' #depends on your partitioning scheme

linux   /kernel_image root=/dev/mapper/linuxlvm-lvubuntu ro
#root= should be set to whatever /etc/fstab (or the mount command) says for the device that / is mounted on.

#initrd image, if you use one
initrd  /initrd-my_super_duper_kernel_3.11
}


gnome-control-center can't set display resolution under openbox

The only way -- and non-automatic one -- I found:

xrandr --output VGA1 --mode 1280x1024 --right-of LVDS1

In the absence of answers I'm accepting this one.


Open a text-only console by using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+F3.
At the login: prompt type your username and press Enter.
At the Password: prompt type your user password and press Enter.
Now you are logged in to a text-only virtual console, and you can run terminal commands from the console. To reboot the system from the console run the command: sudo reboot. Press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+F7 to exit from the virtual console. In Ubuntu 17.10 and later press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+F2 to exit from the virtual console.
Sometimes if you just run the command: sudo reboot from the console, your computer will boot to your normal login screen when it reboots. This does not work every time or in all situations, but you may want to try it once anyway. Also this way of getting to your normal login screen is a workaround that does not fix anything, so you will still need to do something to fix your low-graphics mode problem.


setup dhcp server - "Job failed to start"

What does /var/log/syslog say?

isc's dhcpd is a bit picky in terms of the ip subnet parsing and ignoring bits. Suspect that the following may help in your setup:
subnet 10.0.0.0 netmask 255.0.0.0
         ^^^


Trying to install ubuntu in primary partion .but converting logical to primary makes some problem

On an mbr you can only have 3 primary partitions and one extended partition (containing logical partitons) or 4 primary partitions. In windows 7 I believe it may make a partition for boot if its installed first. Its also possible that you just need to shrink down one or both your partition’s to make free space.


PPTP server stuck at "GRE: Bad checksum from pppd"

Personally I am unfamiliar with this.
But I like to go out of my way to help.

There were users experiencing the same issue as yourself and have fixed it.
Here is the related ubuntuforums post for a possible fix: Ubuntu Forums


High gnome-shell cpu on fresh 18.04 install

I didn't do the fresh install, but rather updated from 17.10, and I started getting those crazy 5 fps interface lags and high CPU usage by gnome-shell - it helped me to run ubuntu-drivers autoinstall, which fetched new nvidia drivers - it seemed to have positive impact on the system.


You need to map the feature names in the config.txt file to field indices in the result.txt file, e.g.

awk '
  BEGIN {ind["Min"]=3; ind["Median"]=4; ind["Max"]=5}
  NR==FNR {arr[$1] = ind[$2]; next}
  $2 in arr {print $1,$2,$(arr[$2])}
' config.txt result.txt
Apple fruits 30
Car vehicle 50
Book study 70


Whys is dropbox not working on ubuntu 18.04?

I just noticed that one of my photos had the error of

  libatomic.so.1: can't open

Blah

On searching for libatomic in askubuntu I found answer1. This was a question about failure to implement answer2.

Anyway on running the following command (as in answer2 )

  sudo apt install libatomic1

It was fixed. Dropbox GUI and CLI are working now.


How to get a driver for an Intel 82852/855GM?

I have the same graphics in my laptop - I'm afraid that the i8xx series are not supported for the Unity interface.

You can test this by running

/usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -p

The unity 2D interface I found also an issue - quite slow with graphic artefacts as well.

I'm using Lubuntu 11.04 with the xcompmgr composite manager.  This works very well for my i855 laptop.

Below is a link for someone I've helped in the past with the slightly older graphics set.  He similarly had to boot with one of the i915.modeset parameters.  He concluded, like me to stick with Lubuntu.

Linked Question:

Fixing display issues on Intel 82845GL


How do I open a file browser in the Netbook Edition?

The easiest way is to open the trash bin at the bottom. That will open your file browser. After doing that you can right click the file browser icon on unity and select the option so it stays there now on. It did take me time to realize that was the workaround. Luck!


Ubuntu 15.10 has kernel version: 4.2.0-23-generic. So

Download the driver and extract it. Open a terminal and type

chmod u+x amd-driver*.run
sudo ./amd-driver*.run

Now it should install the driver, of course it could be, that it's not reaching the requirements (kernel < 3.4).

It would help for all people to answer your question if you say what you have already done, how experienced you are with linux, is it a clean installation,... and so on. The more we know about your problem the better we can help. (I am not only referencing to you. Other people may also learn from my last sentence).


Why is the mkpasswd utility part of the whois package?

According to Marco d’Itri in his answer to the same question in an issue ticket it is only because of historical reasons:

  It was part of the original RIPE whois package which I packaged before writing my own implementation.


WireShark not working on 12.04, how do I get this working?

It probably isn't working because you need to run it as root.

Try launching it using this command.

gksudo wireshark&

Let me know if this works.


Install orchis-gtk theme on Ubuntu 14.04

The designer/developer here.

"Orchis requires the Murrine engine for it's GTK2 aspects" is just a notice of it's dependencies.

But since it's being installed via a package manager instead of from the source, you needn't worry about it as it'll be done automatically.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:moka/stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install orchis-gtk-theme


Tom, you could also make sure everything finished installing.. Does running

sudo apt-get -f install

cause anything to happen? Are you able to install stuff now? You may also try removing and re-installing the ubuntu-desktop meta-package and see if everything is installed.

sudo apt-get remove ubuntu-desktop && sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

Still, without knowing what these "errors" you speak of are, nor the state of your apt or machine it's hard to know what else to recommend for you outside of a fresh install.


How to enable thumbnails for flac files in Nautilus?

Solved this problem by adding repository ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3 and upgrading the system.
Totem was updated: I think that was "it".
Hope it'll help.


Gimp.org
Gimpology
Libre Graphics Magazine
Mygimptutorial
Grokking the GIMP
Gimpvids
Ghuj.com
Gimp.pixtuts
Gimpworks
Gimpusers
Gimp.wisdomplug
Brainsongimp
Meetthegimp
Gimp-tutorials
Tux-Radar
Tutorial Geek
Iki.fi
Halley.cc
MultiGimpTutorials
Gimpguru
Weeaks
Emptyeasel
Surfnlearn
Vandelaydesign
Deviantart
Creativenerds
Gimptalk
Gimptalk User Submitted
Noupe
Unixmen
Templates.com
Ijaar.com
Sixrevisions
Allgraphicdesign
Techdrivein
Qbrushes


probably you don't have any user configured in smb.conf and/or your workgroup is not defined correctly.

Edit smb.conf with gedit or nano

sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf
Edit or Add workgroup, in Windows as default is: WORKGROUP

workgroup = WORKGROUP
Check if are directories to share declared in smb.conf

find a structure like this:

[folder_name_in_windows]
 comment = comment
 path = /home/public
 public = yes
 writable = no

Add user to SMB via shell after create an Ubuntu user without privileges and with your_user name.

sudo smbpasswd -a your_user

Then, enter password or hit Enter to create the user without password.

Hope this can help you.


For start you can refer this nice HowTo:

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

Often it is possible to boot a live CD image - the .iso file - almost directly over PXE but details may differ between versions - try to google something like "boot Ubuntu xx.xx live image over PXE", etc.