How to create ubuntu server 16.04 autologin? Something has changed in server 16.04 LTS, I can't find tty1, but I need to make an auto-login on tty1 (in console mode), in 14.04 LTS I can make this work.

I can't find /etc/init/tty1.conf

How to, or a link?

In Ubuntu 16.04, which uses systemd, the method is slightly different. I'll quote the relevant bits of my related post How do I override or configure systemd services?:

  Say I want to have TTY2 autologin to my user (this is not advisable,
  but just an example). TTY2 is run by the getty@tty2 service (tty2
  being an instance of the template
  /lib/systemd/system/getty@service). To do this, I have to modify the
  getty@tty2 service.

  […]

  In particular, I have to change the ExecStart line, which currently
  is:

$ systemctl cat getty@tty2 | grep Exec
ExecStart=-/sbin/agetty --noclear %I $TERM

  To override this, do:

sudo systemctl edit getty@tty2

  And add:

[Service]
ExecStart=
ExecStart=-/sbin/agetty -a <USERNAME> --noclear %I $TERM

  […]

  Now:

$ systemctl cat getty@tty2 | grep Exec
ExecStart=-/sbin/agetty --noclear %I $TERM
ExecStart=
ExecStart=-/sbin/agetty -a <USERNAME> --noclear %I $TERM

  And if I do:

sudo systemctl restart getty@tty2

  and press CtrlAltF2, presto! I'll be
  logged into my account on that TTY.

I used this website to achieve auto-login: http://www.pcworld.com/article/259236/how_to_turn_your_laptop_into_a_typewriter.html.

sudo nano /etc/init/tty1.conf

Again, type your password if requested. You are now editing a
configuration file, the last line of which starts with an 'exec'
command. Replace that line with:

exec /bin/login -f USERNAME < /dev/tty1 > /dev/tty1 2>&1

Where USERNAME is your own username, of course. Be sure to type this
line accurately. Then save the file (Ctrl+O) and exit (Ctrl+X).

Now, let's test again to make sure everything is working correctly. Reboot the computer to see if automatic login works:

sudo reboot now


Meaning of "i" in "MiB"? I see the usage of "MiB" as measure to represent the size in Ubuntu. What does MiB stand for? In particular the "i"?

There are two ways (in common use) of denoting orders of magnitude to make large numbers easier to read, first you can use a power of 10.
10⁰ = 1
10¹ = 10
10² = 100
10³ = 1000

Or powers of two
2⁰ = 1
2¹ = 2
2² = 4
2³ = 8

Using these series as a base we arrive at the numbers 1000 and 1024 (10³ and 2¹⁰) for a kilo.
There are eight bits to a byte. So one kilobyte is 8×10³ = 8000 bits. Hard drive manufacturers use this method. In computer science, people usually use powers of two, so one kibibyte is 8×2¹⁰ = 8192 bits.
The difference only gets larger as the numbers get larger. Some have even mixed those two systems to get nice numbers to put on their packaging. This is why a 1.44MB floppy disk has neither 1.44 megabytes nor 1.44 mebibytes (they use 1024×1000).
The logic behind the i is that the terms are derived from the original si prefixes, kilo, mega, giga, but with the word binary put in in. So the i is the second letter of binary. The mnemonic for the kibibyte is "kilo binary byte", and "KiB" is pronounced "Kibibyte".
All of this is defined in the IEC_80000 Standard.
Note that a mebibyte is not defined as 2²⁰, but as (210)2, although they are equal. A gibibyte is (210)3, a tebibyte is (210)4 and so on.
Prefix       Bytes                      Prefix       Bytes
1 Byte     = (2^10)^0 = 1               1 Byte     = (10^3)^0 = 1
1 Kibibyte = (2^10)^1 = 1024            1 Kilobyte = (10^3)^1 = 1000
1 Mebibyte = (2^10)^2 = 1048576         1 Megabyte = (10^3)^2 = 1000000
1 Gibibyte = (2^10)^3 = 1073741824      1 Gigabyte = (10^3)^3 = 1000000000
1 Tebibyte = (2^10)^4 = 1099511627776   1 Terabyte = (10^3)^4 = 1000000000000

Keep in mind that, very often, the term kilobyte is used when the author means kibibyte. The binary unit was only introduced around 1999, as Randy Orrison points out.

As nealmcb found out in the comments, there is an official policy on this:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UnitsPolicy
In summary, this policy reminds developers to either use SI or IEC prefixes, but to never mix them. It goes on to say:

For file sizes there are two possibilities:

Show both, base-10 and base-2 (in this order). An example is the Linux kernel: "2930277168 512-byte hardware sectors: (1.50 TB/1.36 TiB)"
Only show base-10, or give the user the opportunity to decide between base-10 and base-2 (the default must be base-10).

They are binary prefixes, corresponding to the more common decimal prefixes. (That's a good article which explains the rationale well.)


How do I restore Xubuntu desktop to default? Before, I was using Gnome desktop on Ubuntu 14.04. Then, I installed Xubuntu desktop and, just recently, when I login it does not work. I don't know what's wrong.

When I drag something, its' image repeats many times (see below) and stays on the desktop and nothing works. Gnome is still ok.

How can I restore Xubuntu desktop to its' defaults?

If you want to revert back to Gnome, then you should first remove XFCE desktop then reinstall Gnome desktop.

Removing XFCE:

sudo apt-get purge xfce4
sudo apt-get autoclean
sudo apt-get autoremove

reinstalling Gnome desktop:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall gnome-shell
sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

sudo apt-get autoremove --purge xubuntu-\* xfce\*
sudo apt-get install xfce4

installing xubuntu-desktop may create duplication.


Install MS Truetype Fonts system-wide for all users I would like to install the MS Truetype Fonts that come through the package ttf-mscorefonts-installer, so I did:

sudo apt-get install ttf-mscorefonts-installer

Accepting the license, the process completes without any errors. The fonts end up in

  /usr/share/fonts/truetype/msttcorefonts

as expected. Just to be sure, I also did a

sudo fc-cache -f -s -v

which among other things says in its output:

  /usr/share/fonts/truetype/msttcorefonts: caching, new cache contents: 60 fonts, 0 dirs

So far, so good (and inline with question How do I install fonts?) However, when I then open any font dialog (e.g. in OpenOffice or the font dialog of the terminal) I don't see all of the new fonts. For Arial, the standard form is missing, but bold and italic are there. Times New Roman is missing altogether.

I can use nautilus to browse to the font directory, double click the Arial.ttf file and see the font in all its beauty. I can even click the install button then and the font is copied over to my personal ./fonts directory and from there on visible to my apps. But it is not picked up from the system directory.

How do I get these fonts available system-wide for all users?

Argh, by coincidence I just found the solution. There was a file called ~/.fonts.conf in my home directory that seems to come from Fontmatrix and had a list of rejected fonts, among them the ones I found missing. Simply deleting this file solved the problem. I
remember that I had played around with Fontmatrix but I'm not sure what caused it to create this file. Anyway, problem solved.

I found out, after having similar problems, that in my folder (/usr/share/fonts/truetype/msttcorefonts) there was a file, saying that my licens failed - it gave me a command to use in the terminal to get prompted another licens agreement, which this time made it work.

Netflix Desktop worked like a charm after that! (well... truth be told, installations was needed, but it was all automatically done after that!)


Installing java8 in ubuntu 14.04 I was trying to install java8 in my ubuntu 14.04 machine. I am getting the following errors. I have tried many solutions available in internet but the floowing error is repeating every time.

Oracle JDK 8 is NOT installed.
dpkg: error processing package oracle-java8-installer (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of oracle-java8-set-default:
 oracle-java8-set-default depends on oracle-java8-installer; however:
  Package oracle-java8-installer is not configured yet.

dpkg: error processing package oracle-java8-set-default (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
No apport report written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure.
                                                                                Errors were encountered while processing:
 oracle-java8-installer
 oracle-java8-set-default
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Thanks in advance..

I have tried many solutions but this worked for me Solution. I am posting this so that it may be helpful to others

Create an empty folder so that we can install java 1.8

sudo mkdir /opt/java && cd /opt/java
Now lets download java-1.8 version

wget --no-cookies --no-check-certificate --header "Cookie: gpw_e24=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.oracle.com%2F; oraclelicense=accept-securebackup-cookie" "http://download.oracle.com/otn-pub/java/jdk/8u45-b14/jdk-8u45-linux-x64.tar.gz"
Extract the tar file

tar -zxvf jdk-8u45-linux-x64.tar.gz
Now lets update the alternatives so that system will point to the location where java-1.8 is installed

cd jdk1.8.0_45/
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/java java /opt/java/jdk1.8.0_45/bin/java 100
Note: The 100 in above command represents the priority no.  which can set manually

sudo update-alternatives --config java
    Please enter the selection no. which is having the path as  “/opt/java/jdk1.8.0_45/bin/java” and press enter.

sudo update-alternatives –install /usr/bin/javac javac /opt/java/jdk1.8.0_45/bin/javac 100
sudo update-alternatives –config javac
sudo update-alternatives –install /usr/bin/jar jar /opt/java/jdk1.8.0_45/bin/jar 100
sudo update-alternatives –config jar
Now lets try to set up the environment variables


How to run scripts on start up? How can I run scripts automatically when Ubuntu starts up so I don't have to run them manually after startup?

One approach is to add an @reboot cron task:

Running crontab -e will allow you to edit your cron.
Adding a line like this to it:

@reboot /path/to/script

will execute that script once your computer boots up.

You should use upstart for this. Upstart is used for Ubuntu processes that are automatically started. It is an enhanced solution like the old System-V init.d scripts. It also allows you to put in prerequisites to the start of your script (i.e. do you need the network running? etc.)


How do I allow non-root access to /ttyUSB0? Since I updated from Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) to Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin), I am unable to access the device connected in /ttyUSB0 if I don't have root access.

To be more specific, I use a USB-to-serial com port converter to access and configure Cisco equipment with software called PuTTY. It happens that, since I upgraded to 12.04, PuTTY only sees the connected device when I run it as gksudo putty. If not, it says "unable to connect to port /ttyUSB0".

I have managed to change the permissions via chmod 666, and it works, but if I disconnect the USB device and reconnect, it goes back to root only. How do I permanently allow non-root access? I have a clue it might be via udev rules, but I have no idea how to do it.

Obs.: Manufacturer and drivers are "PROLIFIC"

The device is most likely attached to user group dialout. Just add your user to the dialout group so you have appropriate permissions on the device.

sudo usermod -a -G dialout $USER

(You may need to logout and back in for the new group to take effect.)

No need to mess around with permissions or udev rules.

navigate to /etc/ folder and edit the group file
add your username like this  dialout:x:20:USER

worked perfect for me :)


Firefox will play videos of this website but Chromium won't The website is SBS OnDemand in Australia. When there is a program that I want to watch, I know that it won't work in Chrome, won't work in Chromium, probably will work in Firefox, and when Firefox doesn't work, I use Chrome in Windows XP in VirtualBox (which also, very occasionally, won't play the video).

The website video uses Adobe Flash Player. The browsers use the following versions of Flash Player:

Firefox: 11.2.202.378
Chromium: 13.0.0.206
Chrome: 14.0.0.125
VirtualBox>Windows XP>Chrome: 14.0.0.125

Why would Firefox (using older version of Flash Player) work, while Chromium and Chrome don't? I ask this question purely out of curiosity. It's been occurring for a year or two on several different computers using various Linux distros, so I'd love to get to the bottom of it. My main computer uses Ubuntu 14.04.

Chrome and Chromium have now changed to PepperFlashPlugin to run all flash and while it seems to be a newer version, has quite a few problems when playing content on certain sites and providing hardware acceleration for streaming videos on certain vide cards...

Personally I prefer Firefox because of the fact it still works with the original flash plugin and gives my much needed hardware support and seems that bit more stable...

This solution has worked for me . Try it and see if it does for you .
Go to software centre and remove chromium and all its plug ins . Open your firefox and follow this link https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/ . Once its downloaded open it with software centre and instal it . That installs Google Chrome stable for 64bit Ubuntu , not that crap that chromium is . All flash video works for me now ( FB , Youtube , et.. )


The requested URL /phpmyadmin was not found on this server When I was restarting the apche2, I was getting this message..

sudo service apache2 restart
 * Restarting web server apache2                                                                                AH00558: apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1. Set the 'ServerName' directive globally to suppress this message

and when I was typed the localhost/phpmyadmin, it showing the message

  -NOT FOUND The requested URL /phpmyadmin was not found on this server. Apache/2.4.7 (Ubuntu) Server at localhost Port 80

Please help me in this.

Have you tried to:

sudo -H gedit /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

Then add the following line to the end of the file:

Include /etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf

Then restart apache:

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

just went through this myself with a clean install of 20.04 in a VM ... I believe the 404 issue has to do with my creating a /var/www/[someotherdomain] ... all of the instructions with regards to apache, lamp and PHPMyAdmin appear to expect users to be using /var/www/HTML ... based on the instructions in this thread, after I substituted [someotherdomain] for [html] in the ln command, PHPMyAdmin now works from an intranet web request ... Mamp and Xampp kind of make us lazy by doing all this setup automatically ... not sure if someone has already written a dependency thread for PHPMyAdmin but would make it easier for those of us that don't do this every day ... trying to create a test environment for some GitHub PHP and Java stuff and just spent several days to get something set up that is usable ... Xampp has the latest PHP which for some reason isn't backward compatible and it wasn't clear if Xampp could load an older version of PHP ... Mamp is ok in that it has the correct version of PHP but the PHP stuff I downloaded only has instructions related to a Unix platform ... so I started with 16.04 32b and ran into irreconcilable configuration issues ... tried 18.04 64b again with multiple configuration issues ... now finally have a working 20.04 64b with PHP and MySQL DB
What I had to do to get PHPMyAdmin working was:

Install and configure mySql
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-mysql-on-ubuntu-20-04
Install and configure apache2 and lamp
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-linux-apache-mysql-php-lamp-stack-on-ubuntu-20-04
Install and configure PHPMyAdmin
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-secure-phpmyadmin-on-ubuntu-20-04
reading between the lines debug the 404 issue
The requested URL /phpmyadmin was not found on this server


Cannot find winemenubuilder.exe when trying to run StarCraft 2 Recently I've installed StarCraft 2 via playonlinux. The installation was absolutly no problem, everything was fine. But if I want to start the game now, it crashes.
If I start it on the Terminal I get following error:

optirun /usr/share/playonlinux/playonlinux --run "StarCraft II Wings of Liberty"
[POL_Wine_SetVersionEnv] Message: Setting wine version path: 1.3.27, amd64
[POL_Wine_SetVersionEnv] Message: "/home/gernot/.PlayOnLinux//wine/linux-amd64/1.3.27" exists
[POL_Wine] Message: Running wine-1.3.27 StarCraft II.exe
wine: cannot find L"C:\\windows\\system32\\winemenubuilder.exe"
rm: Cannot remove »*“ : Can't find directory or file.

Has anybody an idea what to do?

Starcraft2 is one of the program affected by the Ubuntu 12.04 kernel bug.
here is my answer to the same problem with another program

Problem with Wine on Kernel 3.2.0

I also found this:

  If the problem persists, remove your folder "home/documents/starcraft II"
  Problems may remain on highest graphics setting.

ON this page about half way down


How to rename photo filename to include the date? I have a group of photo files that are named with only a sequence number like: Imagexxxx.jpg (xxxx is just a sequence number) what I am trying to search but sadly no results, is to add the date of the file to the filename as the following yyyy-mm-dd-Imagexxxx.jpg.

All what I can find on the net is either replacing certain character or changing the letters case.

Krename is one possible tool for what you are trying to accomplish.

Install with:

sudo apt-get install krename

Then:

Select the files you want to rename
Choose rename input files in the destination path
Enter [creationdate;yyyy-MM-dd]$ in the advanced Filename template.

If creation date (of the file) is not what you want, krename can also use exif data.

A slight modification of this question's answer will do it.
Run this in a terminal in the directory your photos are in, changing [date] as appropriate (no brackets are needed):

for file in *; do mv "$file" "[date]$file"; done

Note that this will prepend whatever you choose for [date] to all files in that directory.


Why doesn't my cron work? I have an Ubuntu 14.04.5 installed and I'm trying to run a cron but it does not work.

$ whoami
root

$ crontab -e
#append at the end of the file
* * * * * env > /tmp/env_root.output
#save and quit :wq

$ less /var/log/cron.log
......
Sep 22 20:15:01 myserver CRON[2993]: (root) CMD (env > /tmp/env_root.output)

$ ls -la /tmp/env_root.output
ls: cannot access /tmp/env_root.output: No such file or directory

Why is this? I am root and I should be able to edit files, the Cron log shows it as being changed, but no file is there. If I run the command in the current GNU BASH shell or even in /bin/sh it works but not in Cron.

What am I doing wrong? Does Ubuntu have something like SELinux that I might have enabled by mistake? I provision my server with Ansible and I am not the only person working on the Ansible roles.

Thank you

EDIT: This is how my /etc/crontab looks and it runs /usr/bin/myscript.sh
https://paste.fedoraproject.org/433591/74650461/

The best way to troubleshoot cron jobs is to watch the cron output in near-real-time.

This Q&A describes the process of breaking out syslog to make the system create a cron.log and to monitor it:

16.04: How do I make cron create cron.log and monitor it in real time?

It is very helpful to change the log level to 15 so it not only shows start times but also errors and stop times:

How to change cron log level?


beep not working since upgrade to 20.04.1 LTS I've just finished upgrading to Ubuntu Server 20.04.1 LTS, and so far, only one issue has come up: The beepcommand returns beep: Error: Could not open any device when run as user. Running sudo beep does not work, as expected. After a little bit of research, I have found that no beep group is existent on the system, as expected by the man page. I have tried reinstalling and reconfiguring without success.
To make things even stranger, beep works during boot via rc.local; at some point, however, it stops working and returns the error, thus breaking my rc.local-routine. Also, this command works just fine:
sudo env -u SUDO_GID -u SUDO_COMMAND -u SUDO_USER -u SUDO_UID beep
For clarification: I am running a headless home server that is not connected to any speakers; the simple noise-making-speaker is used for simple feedback during boot and if errors occur that require intervention. My setup used to work fine under Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS.

Adding my user to group input worked for me

Bad solution:
I'm pretty sure this is a permissions issue, but I am not sure how to solve it. I tried creating udev files and groups according to the ArchLinux Wiki, but that wouldn't work.
Then, I changed permissions on the device itself:
sudo chmod 777 /dev/input/by-path/platform-pcspkr-event-spkr

While this does work, it's surely a bad idea to make devices just writeable for anyone.


Ctrl+C does not quit a running program in terminal Ok,
 I don't know why, but I've seen this question been asked many times, but none of the answers seem to be helpful, yet the problem is quite obvious, because I verified it on several computers.
 Ctrl+C does NOT kill a running program in terminal (Ubuntu v10) even though it's supposed to. I wonder if anyone can actually point a solution that actually works.

So far I've tried Ctrl+\, Ctrl+SysRq+K, and much more - nothing works!

The only thing that did work, sort of, is Ctrl+Z, but it doesn't actually kill/exit the program, but simply puts it in a background and then you still have to do kill %1 to actually kill it.

Thanks!

Note:  Answer andded after comments...

I'm pretty sure it will kill most terminal programs; of course, it won't kill the ones that fork a new process, then return the prompt immediately.

Some programs may catch this interrupt and handle it however they want, or even ignore it. It may depend a lot on whether the program is designed to be run in a terminal or from a GUI.

A few of the programs I just tried in 10.04 and 11.10 that will end are:

ping - which runs continuously by default, so this is the only way to stop it;
find - often takes a long time, so it's useful to be able to end it.
gedit

First: top (See the PID number of the program that you want to kill its run.)

Second: kill PID


How to assign free space to only Ubuntu running machine? My problem is that I have an installation of Ubuntu 16.04 and there is not enough free space. My HDD has 3 parts: Ubuntu system(ext4), FREE SPACE(fat32) there I have all my big files and around 40GB which was originally windows. It is formatted now in ext4 format and I want to add it to my Ubuntu installation how it is possible trough gparted?

Note: I wouldn't have set up sda4 as fat32, but rather NTFS. You may decide to change this at a later time.
Make sure that you have a good backup of your important Ubuntu files, as this procedure can corrupt or loose data.
The use of an extended partition (sda3) makes this a little difficult. I'll outline the easiest way first, and we can add more to the procedure if we have to.
Keep these things in mind:

always start the entire procedure with issuing a swapoff on any mounted swap partitions, and end the entire procedure with issuing a swapon on that same swap partition

a move is done by pointing the mouse pointer at the center of a partition and dragging it left/right with the hand cursor

a resize is done by dragging the left/right side of a partition to the left/right with the directional arrow cursor

if any partition can't be moved/resized graphically, you may have to manually enter the specific required numeric data (don't do this unless I instruct you to)

you begin any move/resize by right-clicking on the partition in the lower part of the main window, and selecting the desired action from the popup menu, then finishing that action in the new move/resize window

Do the following...
Note: if the procedure doesn't work exactly as I outline, STOP immediately and DO NOT continue.

boot the a Ubuntu Live DVD/USB
start gparted
disable swap on sda5
assuming that sda1 is empty, use gparted to delete sda1
resize sda3 all the way to the left
move sda6 all the way to the left
resize sda6 all the way to the right
click the Apply button
reboot the computer

As I perceive, you want to add a single drive to your system for more storage... If this is the case follow the below commands...

First, we will need to find the drive name in order to mount it... We can do this by running:

sudo fdisk -l

Next, you will have to find the drive's name relative to its size(Ex: /dev/sda1)...

Finally, you can simply mount this newly found drive by running:

mount drive_name_here location_here

What?

drive_name_here is basically the drive name you found while using fdisk

location_here is the location you want to mount the drive to... If you're not sure, I recommend mounting to /mnt...

Important

Now it is important to note that for you to be able to access this new storage instance you will have to store files to wherever you mounted to(Ex: /mnt)...

It is also important to note that you will have to re-mount this drive each time you reboot as it automatically unmounts when the machine is turned off... If you want this to be automatic, I recommend creating a startup script that does so...


X keeps restarting without getting to login screen I am running Ubuntu 13.10 in my PC. Two days ago, oneconf crashed while I was working and I had to restart the computer. Since then, I haven't been able to go past the black screen to the login screen, after booting.

I used the CLI console tty1 (Ctrl+Alt+F1) to check syslog, Xorg.0.log, dmesg, etc. I got the following message repeated over and over in syslog:

Apr  9 00:40:11 atul gnome-session[16679]: WARNING: IceLockAuthFile failed: Permission denied
Apr  9 00:40:11 atul gdm-simple-slave[16479]: GLib-GObject: g_object_ref: assertion 'object->ref_count > 0' failed
Apr  9 00:40:11 atul gdm-simple-slave[16479]: GLib-GObject: g_object_unref: assertion 'object->ref_count > 0' failed
Apr  9 00:40:12 atul acpid: client 16484[0:0] has disconnected
Apr  9 00:40:12 atul acpid: client 16484[0:0] has disconnected
Apr  9 00:40:12 atul acpid: client connected from 16752[0:0]
Apr  9 00:40:12 atul acpid: 1 client rule loaded
Apr  9 00:40:12 atul acpid: client connected from 16752[0:0]
Apr  9 00:40:12 atul acpid: 1 client rule loaded
Apr  9 00:40:12 atul gdm-simple-slave[16747]: Failed to give slave programs access to the display. Trying to proceed.

Moreover, my (Ctrl-Alt-F1) session keeps getting interrupted by the main GUI (Ctrl-Alt-F7).  It looks like the X/gdm keeps restarting in an infinite loop.

I wasn't able to find any direct solution on the web. But I tried some solutions given for similar problems. I tried reconfiguring gdm, xserver-xorg. I tried reinstalling xserver-xorg, gdm, gnome-shell, gnome-session, etc. I tried removing ubuntu-gnome-desktop entirely and use unity instead. None of them worked. When I tried using lightdm instead of gdm, I got "System running in low graphics mode" error. When I tried recovery mode with failsafe GUI, my failsafeX did not start.

When I tried startx in my CUI (Ctrl-Alt-F1), I get a GUI at Ctrl-Alt-F78. But I still get interrupted by (Ctrl-Alt-F7) when gdm restarts. When I stop gdm service, my applications start crashing in my GUI.

Any suggestions?

This happened to me when I installed the samba package before I knew about:

smbpasswd -a zero

Press CTRL-ALT-F1

Login.

Check it:

$ ls -la /home/zero

Change ownership back to the default scheme:

$ chown zero:zero .
$ chown zero:zero ..

Press CTRL-ALT-F6

Login to xwindows.

If you read that, syslog says: WARNING: IceLockAuthFile failed: Permission denied. Now it should be able to create the file with the default scheme in place. lol


Will upgrading my Windows 7 partition to Windows 10 affect GRUB? On my laptop, I had Windows 7 Home Premium preinstalled. A year or so ago, I dual-booted it with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.

I now want to upgrade Windows 7 to Windows 10 (it's free, so why not?) when it's released.

However, I'm unsure whether this will affect GRUB and stop me from accessing my Ubuntu partition. I need both operating systems and can't afford to lose either.

If this will affect GRUB, how can I restore GRUB so I can access both operating systems?

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Just to be clear, I already have a dual-boot set up, where Ubuntu was installed alongside a pre-existing Windows installation. I now want to upgrade Windows (from 7 to 10) but am worried it will affect GRUB and my ability to boot into Ubuntu.

UPDATE:
I installed Windows 10 and it ended up leaving GRUB alone. Selecting the Windows 7 option booted me into Windows 10.

Short answer: Yes.

Short solution: After you upgrade, boot into Ubuntu (this will still work) and run this in Terminal:

sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

That's assuming your GRUB installation is on you Ubuntu drive.  If that doesn't work, then it's on your Windows drive, and you'll instead need to run this:

sudo grub-install /dev/sda

(replace '/dev/sda' with whatever drive Windows is on; you can see this in the output of the first command)


How do I install/uninstall software when I am not the administrator? I bought a laptop from a guy who has reprogrammed it and is still the device administrator, which means I can not install or uninstall any software or programs and I have no control over my device.

Your best option would be to reinstall ubuntu. If the person is a friend you could ask for the password. Otherwise there is the possibility that some form of malware was added to the installation. follow one of the many guides online to backing up your files and reinstalling ubuntu.

Simple insert an live USB/dvd and delete the existing system. If you do want to use Ubuntu or Windows.


How do I get a Mac-like Gnome panel/menu bar (which changes accordingly to the active window). So in Firefox, I would have the top panel change to

File Edit View ... etc

and in Photoshop it would be File Edit Image Select ... etc.

On top of that, this function would make those menu bars in the windows themselves obsolete, so I need to get rid of those.

Can you provide more information? Unity already comes with a global menu.
But if you use GNOME2 or GNOME3 you can use the globalmenu package.
You can find more information here:

http://code.google.com/p/gnome2-globalmenu/

And install instructions over here:

http://code.google.com/p/gnome2-globalmenu/wiki/Installation

This adds the same global menu as in Unity.

Check this article http://www.cornext.com/2012/08/activate-global-menu-using-gnome.html


Using my AMD Radeon™ HD 8750M Graphics in 13.04 I have been trying to get my dedicated graphics (AMD Radeon™ HD 8750M Graphics) working on my Samsung series 5 laptop. It just shows Intel® Ivybridge Mobile in the system details and gaming performance is much worse on the integrated card. Both fglrx and fglrx-updates broke unity completely. I don't mind using open source AMD drivers as long as I can activate my dedicated card (and preferably be able to switch to it only when gaming either manually or automatically). How can I activate my dedicated graphics?

Download the latest BETA drivers from the AMD website. Here's a link

Extract the file somewhere in your Home folder and make the file executable:

chmod +x amd_xxxxx.run

Then:

sudo ./amd_xxxxx.run

Install the drivers following an automatic setup. After the installation is complete make sure you run this command before restarting:

sudo aticonfig --initial

Restart you laptop and the ATI Catalyst drivers should be installed and working.

Remember that these are BETA drivers so you may encounter some issues. For more information about the drivers read here

Maybe this AMD page might help:

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/linux/Pages/radeon_linux.aspx

Perhaps you might be able to disable the integrated graphics in the BIOS. It might avoid confusion for the OS or graphics drivers.


HDMI Audio crackling only in Google Chrome I just installed Ubuntu 14.04 64bit and it's awesome. I use an HDMI cable: video and audio work flawlessly, except on Chrome 64bit (not chromium). Unfortunately, the audio crackles a lot. This happens both with flash videos as well as html 5 ones, so I guess it's not pepper related. Any suggestion? Ubuntu runs on a machine with AMD APU E-450 with open drivers.
Thank you guys! :D

In a terminal window

sudo nano /etc/pulse/default.pa

look for

load-module module-udev-detect

and add tsched=0

load-module module-udev-detect tsched=0


How to check Intel iGPU frequency on Linux? I own Intel Haswell G3420. At stock its iGPU has 1,15 GHz turbo frequency. In my UEFI I overclocked the iGPU to 1,5 GHz and added voltage. However the framerates in both benchmarks and games are the same after the OC. I once read that Intel iGPU OC doesn't work on Linux because of some problems with turbo boost in Linux kernel. I want to check if the frequency while gaming hits 1,5 Ghz or if it stays unchanged at 1,15 GHz. So I need a way to check current Intel iGPU frequency. I know that Nvidia binary drivers are capable of that, however I have no idea how can I check it using Intel iGPU.

TL;DR

How can I check Intel iGPU current frequency on Linux?

Option #1

sudo apt install intel-gpu-tools
sudo intel_gpu_frequency

Option #2

sudo find /sys -type f -name gt_cur* -print0 | xargs -0 cat

cat  /sys/kernel/debug/dri/0/i915_cur_delayinfo

CAGF will give the the current fz to 100Mhz resolution.


How do I automount a SD Card on /opt? I just bought a brand new Dell Inspiron 3185 with a massive 1.6 GHz dual-core AMD Radeon R4, a whopping 32gig SSD and a mind boggling 4 gigs of memory; a veritable rocket marked down from AUD $380 to AUD $180. It came with Windows 10 but it started bitching about space so I dumped it and have now installed Ubuntu. I spent the day reading about Bitcoin and I want to install bitcoin core but there is not enough space in my root directory to store the blockchain ledger so I have decided to download it onto a SD Card that I leave there permanently and for beauties sake I want to have it mounted on /opt.

I have found out how to disable automount and I can mount the drive on /opt manually but I can't find a post about how to change the automatic mount point for a drive named opt from /media/opt to /opt. Is there somewhere that I can place a script that would have this effect? How about you post yours as an example.

I know it's a waste of time but I'm on a pension and I have plenty to waste, the last time I played with Linux it took me a whole day to get Debian to automount a CDROM and something like three months of weekends to configure a 486 router with ipmasquerade, ipchains, dhcpd and sshd; apt-get was a nightmare too. It was before Gnome and you had to configure the X11 Server and set up a Window Manager manually, I got Window Maker going on my Pentium II but I never used it much and I didn't bother with X11 for the router.

I'll mess around with bitcoin core's configure script as a starting point and to try to work out how to get it to download the ledger into /opt and with a bit of luck someone will have given me a tip-off about this problem by the time I am ready to sync my wallet.

It should keep me busy for quite a while, I just need to build up a head of steam. Sort the right click on my mouse pad out, then finish this bitcoin book, then work out Open VPN, then a few books on the Tor, maybe I'll splash out and get an i7 desktop that can run Virtual Box and play a few games if I'm still chugging along after that.

First things first, the I/O won't be brilliant but how do I mount this little sucker on bootup.

Linux again, it's come a long way.

Do not do this!

/opt/ is one of the Ubuntu system folders. This means Ubuntu expects this folder be available at all time. Mounting an external USB drive as /opt means that when the SD Card/USB drive is not connected the /opt/ folder will not be available to the system.

Many third party applications like bitcoin core, and Google Chrome, are installed in the /opt/ folder. If you lose your USB drive or if the USB drive breaks, or gets corrupted then the third party apps won't run and system may not work as intended. For example, if you set up bitcoin core to run at startup, that won't work.

Now that you have been warned, lets do this!

How to use external SD card as /opt system partition

Choose a reliable drive

You may want to use a SSD based USB rather than an SD card if you want a reliable and fast drive that is less likely to die on you. I suggest you look for SSD based USB 3.0 drives. The SSD based drives are more reliable than the run off the mill USB drives. USB 3.0 (or better) drives allow faster input and output provided your computer has an USB 3.0 port.

Format the SD card/USB drive

This SD card/USB drive should be dedicated for /opt partition. That is you should not use it for anything else. Since you want to use it as a system partition, the partition must be formatted in a way that allows Ubuntu to use it as such. In particular, the partition format must allow for setting file ownership, permissions, and executable settings for the files in this partition that Ubuntu can handle. Windows partition formats such as FAT32 and ntfs do not normally handle these things in Ubuntu friendly manner.

Open gparted (install it if needed) with the SD card/USB drive plugged in, and navigate to the SD card/USB drive using the top right drop down list of drives.

Unmount the single partition. Format the single partition in the SD card/USB drive as ext4. This is the default partition format for Ubuntu and is needed for Ubuntu system folders such as /opt/. You may be able to use ext2 or ext3 formats, but FAT32 or ntfs are not recommended.

Apply the changes you have made in gparted.

Use the gparted menu to go to Partition > Information and note down the UUID of the partition you created in the SD card/USB drive.

Exit the gparted program.

Alternately use the command line:

Open a terminal using Ctrl+Alt+T and enter:

df -h

This will list all the partitions. Identify the SD Card/USB drive. I will assume it is /dev/sdb1. You may have something different.

Use the following command to unmount the partition. A partition must be unmounted before formatting.

sudo umount /dev/sdb1

Use the following command to format the partition.

sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb1

Note: Even though we want to format the whole drive, we don't use /dev/sdb. In this case the first partition spans the whole drive.

Setup /etc/fstab to mount the partition at boot

I am not sure you can change the automount config so that it works one way for a specific SD card/USB drive but differently for all otherSD cards/USB drives.

The automount is primarily for removable media such as a SD card/USB drive, so that these are mounted automatically when they are inserted. Since we want the /opt partition to be permanently mounted at boot time, rather than mounted when inserted, I think editing the fstab is the right approach.

Open a terminal using Ctrl+Alt+T and enter:

sudo nano /etc/fstab

This will open the file fstab in the /etc/ folder using the nano editor. You will be prompted for your password. When you enter the password, nothing will happen in the terminal. The cursor will not move, you will not see any stars. This is normal.

Add a new line in /etc/fstab that will look like:

UUID=ABCD-MNOP /opt    ext4    defaults        0       2

where ABCD-MNOP is the actual UUID of the partition inside the SD card/USB drive you have copied in the step above.

To save the changes and exit nano, use Ctrl+X followed byY and Enter.

Use the following command to mount the new /opt partition:

sudo mount -a

If you don't see any errors your /opt partition is mounted correctly.

Reboot the computer and use gparted to double check that the /opt partition is mounted after reboot.

Never ever unplug this SD card/USB drive!

Hope this helps

If I understand this correctly your USB-drive is named opt.
On my system /opt is being used by other programs (ex. TeamViewer config files), so if you mount a USB drive to /opt these config files would be written to your USB drive, and maybe only work with the USB-drive connected. I would not recommend mounting the drive to this folder, as this is a system folder.

The easiest way would be to let it mount to /media and create a symbolic link to your destination:
https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/creating-soft-link-or-symbolic-link/

$ ln -s {source-filename} {symbolic-filename}

I don't have the bitcoin-core wallet installed but according to this link:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Data_directory
The data directory is located at: /home/yourusername/.bitcoin/

So you could link your USB to that wallet using

ln -s /media/opt /home/yourusername/.bitcoin

Where "your username" is the username you log in with.

But if there already exists data in this folder you would have to remove the existing directory before creating the link. This will also remove the wallet.dat which holds your wallet private key, so if you have any funds in your wallet backup the wallet before experimenting. Hope this helps :)


Trying to use gnome-shell but it will not work It acts like it wants to work, but all I get is the bar across the top with "activities", the time, my name, and the background. After that my computer will do nothing else.

I installed it following the directions here, detailing how to install it on Ubuntu (have tried the repository version and the PPA version).

Graphics card information:

$ lspci | grep VGA

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)

You can report such bugs by pressing Alt+F2 and then entering ubuntu-bug gnome-shell. This will allow the developers to help improve Ubuntu. (The same procedure is used for any application.) This automatically adds your hardware information to the report.

Note: you need to remove the PPA version, and have the version from the standard repositories installed to do this.

Try this, press alt+f2 and type:

  gksudo gedit

When gedit opens, open the file "/etc/environment". Paste the following text on a new line:

  export CLUTTER_VBLANK=none

Save the file and reboot. This works enabling some clutter related features for me, and I have this exact chipset. Though I will say Gnome Shell works for me by default so.. :/


Is Groupwise not supported in Evolution? After upgrading to Ubuntu 11.10, existing Groupwise accounts do not work in Evolution.
If I try to create a new account, there is no option to choose a Groupwise account.
It appears that this functionality is no longer built in to Ubuntu 11.10 and the package "evolution-groupwise" is not available in the repositories...

Transcribed answer from the Ubuntu forums:

Start by installing git

sudo apt-get install git

Next, download the source code (several commands)

git clone git://git.gnome.org/evolution-groupwise
cd evolution-groupwise
git checkout -b 3.2.0-patch EVOLUTION_GROUPWISE_3_2_0

# This is the patch for the SOAP port bug
git cherry-pick 3aae80f55d5fd565274f19210564e74d5350a66c

Using any editor, edit configure.ac at about line 48 add the line

AC_CHECK_LIB(gthread-2.0, g_thread_init)

Install the dependencies

sudo apt-get build-dep evolution

Compile

./autogen.sh
make
sudo make install

Last, using any editor, edit /etc/services add in the lines

groupwise 1677/tcp
groupwise 1677/udp

I created a temporary solution: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1859907


Why does my Live-USB fail to boot with "Syslinux..."? I having trouble getting to boot from a Live USB pendrive explained in Ubuntu.com website. I downloaded various ISO images and only had success in booting from Live a CD or DVD.

I've gotten newer hardware which it should be able to boot from USB. I set the BIOS option to boot from USB FDD first and I get something like in the following scene but it remains stuck in: Syslinux... Peter Avin.

I tried booting from USB with pendrivelinux.com and UNetbootin on my older machine before and I have never been able to do it successfully. In fact the only time I was able to boot a Linux distro through USB was Puppy Linux and back then I had to do a legacy Puppy Linux option done to the USB stick for my older hardware to boot from the USB.

Make sure you have in the bootable usb a folder called syslinux and not isolinux. If so, rename it and change isolinux.bin to syslinux.bin and isolinux.cfg to sysinux.cfg;  you'll find them in the syslinux folder.


How can I satisfy Audacity asking for libavformat.so.53, while Ubuntu 14.04 has libavformat.so.54? I am using Audacity 2.0.5. I have been trying to edit video files. I know that Audacity is an audio DAW, but I recently learned that it was possible to import a file through ffmpeg and seperate the audio from the video. I followed the Audacity instructions about setting up Audacity so that it would do this. Then I found instructions on where to locate the libraries when this was done, but I got an error message.

I am using Ubuntu 14.04. What I discovered is my computer has libavformat.so.54. Is there a way to change it to 53?

There's a good chance, that libavformat.so.54 contains all the symbol needed by Audacity. Tell Audacity to work with that. If necessary trick it, by creating a symlink somewhere, e. g.:

ln -s /usr/lib/$(uname -m)-linux-gnu/libavformat.so.54 ~/libavformat.so.53

You can remove the package. wget the correct deb package for your system from:

http://pkgs.org/

sudo dpkg -i <package>


I need to permanently disable the touchscreen input - Ubuntu 16.04 Recently I installed Ubuntu 16.04 on my HP Envy 17t and everything works fine. However, I need to disable the touchscreen input permanently and I tried everything I could found but nothing works.

The closest thing I could manage was to make a shell script that will run at startup (the shell script calls xinput set-prop "Touchscreen Input Name" "Device Enabled" 0 command).

However, this script will not run until I log in. My touchscreen needs to be disabled at the log-in screen.

How can I solve this? I tried modifying the 10-evdev.conf file but all I got is a purple screen and a broken Ubuntu setup.

Try finding your touchscreen XID with xinput --list, then add the following command to your startup applications: xinput disable [touchscreen XID] (for example, if the XID is 9, then the command would be xinput disable 9).

Had the same issue, but fixed it:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2322662


How can a Debian package install Python modules from PyPI This question tries to complement this one .
I have a python app which uses third party modules from PyPI. I want to package my app into a debian package, but don't know how to handle python dependencies which are not in debian/ubuntu repositories(packed as debian packages too)
Solution #1:
build the modules from PyPI right into my debian package.
Solution #2:
create debian packages for all PyPI modules I need using stdeb and add them to debian/ubuntu repositories.
I actually need a Solution #3 because I want to install PyPI dependencies when I install my debian package, preferably into a virtualenv!
What would be Solution #3? Do I need to tweak DEBIAN/preinst  maintainer script?

I've spoken with some maintainers at the Debian IRC channel irc://irc.debian.org#debian-mentors, asking for the exact same thing, and the general consensus was:

Solution #1:

Integrating dependencies in your package by copying their source files over as a single codebase is very frowned upon. It would defeat the purpose of a packaging system that handles dependencies, updates, versioning, etc.

Solution #3:

Downloading non-debian packages on-the-fly when installing a binary (.deb) is a serious security risk, definitely a no-no. You wouldn't even be able to inspect  the dependencies by extracting the deb, because they are downloaded and installed at install time. It's an approach that completely bypass the repositories system. No concerned user would be happy with a package that, behind the scenes (and as root, remember!), downloads additional untrusted software from untrusted sources. Yes, that would require fiddling with DEBIAN/postinst (or preinst) and issuing a wget (or, in your case, pip install), and that is the approach taken by Flash, Oracle Java, Steam and others. But that is proprietary, closed source software, so their security is none anyway.

Solution #1.5:

You didn't mention it, but you could integrate the dependencies only at build time, ie, in the source package (the .orig.tar.gz, .debian.tar.gz, .dsc triad), by downloading from PyPi when creating the "binary" package (the .deb). The instructions for the pip install would go into debian/rules (notice the lowercase debian, as opposed to the binary package), and would be executed when you issue debuild or dpkg-buildpackage.

This is a middle-ground between #1 and #3. It mitigates (but not solve!) some of the issues of #3: at least you can inspect the final product, and the .deb would not require internet access at install time. All the risks and burdens are transferred from final user to the package maintainer. But, has the same problems as #1, as it bypasses most of the packaging system infrastructure. Afterall, handling dependencies (versions, updates, requirements, conflicts) is why dpkg/aptwas created in the first place! :)

Solution #2:

The One True Right Way™. You create debian packages for your dependencies, list them as requirements in your package, and ship all the .debs or source packages.

From there, you have a number of options:

Submit the source packages, both your software and its dependencies, for inclusion to Debian. If accepted, they would be automatically available to all Debian users, including all derivatives like Ubuntu.
Upload the source packages to Launchpad, thus creating a PPA that any Ubuntu user (and its derivatives like Linux Mint) could easily add and install
Host your own debian repository in your website, that users from any Debian-based system could add to their /etc/apt/sources.list.d and use the apt infrastructure to download, install and keep updated, (like the above!)
Host the .deb files for direct download and install. No apt or automatic updates involved thought.

As for how to package your PyPi dependencies (and your python software too!), there are a number of tools and references that make the process easy:

stdeb, as you mentioned. Oldie and goodie.
Pybuild, a new, amazing tool from Debian that supersedes stdeb.

And many useful references:

Style Guide for Packaging Python Libraries
Debian Python Policy

Need help? Check those out:

Debian Mentors FAQ
Python Packaging Team

They don't, is like cpan in perl, if you have in repositories , you may install with apt-get , if not you may install with pip , the difference should be that pip install in /usr/local.

To install with pip you may do:

apt-get install python-pip
pip install foopackage

for example:

pip install MultipartPostHandler2


How to watch Apple keynote videos from the website I just noticed that I am unable to watch Apple's keynote videos on Ubuntu 12.10. Neither Firefox nor Google Chrome works.
I am however, able to view all the advertisement videos for all products on Apple's website. The link to the keynote video is here
Any help would be appreciated.

Where there is a will, there is a way.  Apple changes links and their website around frequently, but in general, what you have to do is this:  open the page source.  Look for urls or javascripts that seem like they will open the video stream.  They used to have bare urls, but now there is usually some javascript that does the job.  I would look for something with edgesuite.net (or events.apple.com) in it.  I found http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/1210pibasdfvoihbadsv/event/url.js

I opened the js file and found:

/*snowLeopard url*/
var slURL = "http://qthttp.apple.com.edgesuite.net/1210pibasdfvoihbadsv/sl_vod_mvp.m3u8";

/* non-snowLeopard url*/
var nonSlURL = 'http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/oct/1210pibasdfvoihbadsv/12poibnasfdvpiajbafvpihjbasfvpiubfsv10_350_vod_ref.mov';

etc.

I took the Snow Leopard URL and tried opening it in VLC (using "open network stream") and it didn't work initially.  So I tried running it via command line, got some libav error, googled around a bit, and finally tried:

vlc --ffmpeg-threads=1 'http://qthttp.apple.com.edgesuite.net/1210pibasdfvoihbadsv/sl_vod_mvp.m3u8'

which worked perfectly.

They cant be actually..

Because, if you click on the videos, below you will see the requirements which clearly indicate the need of an apple device or atleast software(quicktime in case of windows)..

but one workaround is to install wine and install the safari browser on wine...

but that seems like a way too large workaround! rather wait for a week maybe and watch them on youtube then ;)


Preview of CAD files in format .dwg I'm looking for a utility or a program for Ubuntu, and possibly even for Windows that is able to convert a CAD file format .DWG to PDF.

My need is to provide a preview of CAD files, and I thought that the easiest way is to convert them into PDF format, but I'm open to suggestions, even if there is only the possibility to convert them to JPG image file type or PNG would be fine.

What interests me is only to find some solution, no matter if it is commercial or free

You can use QCAD, an open source AutoCAD replacement or the community fork LibreCAD made to work using the newer Qt4 framework. You can install LibreCAD from the Ubuntu Software Center. Using one of these two programs you import DWG files, edit the drawing and export it to PDF.

QCad offered a command line tool to convert DWG to PDF directly - I'm guessing it's also available in LibreCAD.

./dwg2pdf.sh drawing.dwg

Try bricscad, is the best software out there for linux, it has the same features as autocad and more, its much better and low resources.

https://www.bricsys.com


After upgrade to 16.04 the Desktop UI is broken Here is a screenshot of some of the windows and how they look since I've upgrade to Ubuntu 16. It's the Ambiance theme, but the Radiance theme looks the same. The High Contrast there sort of works but it has other problems.

Things of note

Background is black but it's set to be the default Ubuntu wallpaper
Inputs (text, checkboxes, sliders, etc) ui missing borders and background
Borders around windows and buttons are missing
Hover states of various ui elements such as drop downs don't work
There is no padding between list/tab items

Things I've tried

rebooting
updating && upgrading
restarting unity
tried changing gtk-window-decorator to compiz-decorator
ensured ubuntu unity plugin was enabled
tried changing themes
re-installing ubuntu-desktop

System Specs:

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (64 bit)
16 gb ram
i7-4790K @ 4 ghz
Geforce GTX 970

Does anyone have any idea what's going on and how to solve this?

For anyone having the same issue in the future, I had the exact same UI problem after trying out gnome3-staging ppa's gnome-terminal. Here's how I fixed it.

Try resetting compiz and unity configurations first (be sure to backup config files first!)

dconf reset -f /org/compiz/
setsid unity
unity --reset

For me that didn't work. However, I remembered I added gnome3-staging ppa right before so removed it

sudo ppa-purge pa:gnome3-team/gnome3-staging

Removing gnome3-staging ppa fixed everything for me

I experienced the same issue when I upgraded from Ubuntu 16.04 LTS to 16.10. I solved it by changing the theme provided by Unity Tweak Tool from arc-dark which is what I was using to a paper theme. I also realized that the radiance theme equally solved the issue


Snappy Ubuntu Core, no Docker or Owncloud in 'store' I downloaded the image of Snappy Ubuntu Core for the Beaglebone Black, Alpha 2. When I now try to install Docker or Owncloud it cannot be found. Nor are the apps/framework available through the WebDM 'app store'. Numerous guides online refer to both these applications as being available already, some from January some from all way back in December.

I should add that I am using the latest available version of Ubuntu Core (there are no updates when checking - updating has worked in the past, so that is not the issue) with the build number 2. Which is odd, often in guides people are using 1XX etc. I am also using the 'channel' (which I assume is the 'repository') ubuntu-core/devel. Also, there are other apps available (5-6 meaningless example apps) but not Docker or Owncloud.

Does the precompiled image for the Beaglebone have a different repository than the regular Snappy Ubuntu Core, or have they been pulled?

EDIT: I was looking for information as to what happened to the packages on the armhf platform

At least the 15.04 release (dated 13-Nov-2015) has docker available if you do a 'snappy search docker'.

ownCloud has two packages: a snappy package and a docker package, but the former is not available for BeagleBone Black.

And after you install docker, you can find ownCloud as a docker package. It's interesting that it doesn't show up before installing docker.

OwnCloud was pulled from Ubuntu at the request of a developer. There were apparently security issues in the repo's version of ownCloud that weren't getting addressed in a timely matter, if at all.

http://www.webupd8.org/2014/10/owncloud-ubuntu-package-affected-by.html


How to extract files to another directory using 'tar' command? I thought tar archive.tar /users/mylocation would work, but it doesn't. How can I do that?

To extract an archive to a directory different from the current, use the -C, or --directory, tar option, as in

tar -xf archive.tar -C /target/directory

Note that the target directory has to exist before running that command (it can be created by mkdir /target/directory).

Read the manual page (command: man tar) for other options.

What I found interesting in relation to extraction is, that it depends how you created the archive, see this example

cd /tmp
mkdir folder
touch folder/file.txt

when you do tar -zcvf folder.tar.gz folder everything is as expected = when you untar it now it will be untarred (folder will be create, if you removed it) as /tmp/folder/.

But, when you will create tar as tar -zcvf tmp-folder.tar.gz /tmp/folder and you untar it in /tmp folder, the result will be /tmp/tmp/folder directory ! In such case you have to untar it to / - tar -xf tmp-folder.tar.gz -C /


Ubuntu not booting properly with GTX 970 I'm having a problem with booting into Ubuntu 14.04 through my GTX 970 graphics card. I had installed it previously onto my system along with the NVIDIA driver and it was working fine for the most part despite some hiccups but I recently tried to update some drivers but it didn't update correctly. I can't boot correctly anymore; all I get is either a black screen or a a screen with a text blinker on it (the proper name for it escapes me at the moment). I can get to the GRUB menu sometimes and have tried to update but get the errors shown here: errors. Entering through recovery mode can get me to the login screen but trying to login just brings me back to the login screen! I don't have much experience in fixing Ubuntu in this way so please help if you can. I have tried other solutions but they haven't seemed to work for me.

I had the same problem for a while with my GTX 970 and I fixed it by using the boot-repair.

First you need to somehow get the ubuntu to boot in recovery mode. If that doesn't work try logging into the shell by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F3

Once you log in, then you should run boot repair:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair

For some reason, everytime I use the GTX 970 driver to run my monitors, I had to do boot-repair...

I just turn off secure boot in the BIOS.


Unable to mount Windows partition - fast boot is already off - still get the problem i have installed windows 8.1 and ubuntu on my new computer, and get the following error when i try to mount the device. I already googled and turned all the hibernation / fastboot options off, but i still have this problem. The option secure boot is disabled in the UEFI-BIOS aswell. Does anyone have an idea, what might cause the problem? And is there a chance to overwrite the Ubuntu error and mount the device -w to do some testing?

Thank you,

here's the error-message:

Error mounting /dev/sda2 at /media/simon/9A3E3EEF3E3EC453: Command-line `mount -t "ntfs" -o "uhelper=udisks2,nodev,nosuid,uid=1000,gid=1000,dmask=0077,fmask=0177" "/dev/sda2" "/media/simon/9A3E3EEF3E3EC453"' exited with non-zero exit status 14: Windows is hibernated, refused to mount.
Failed to mount '/dev/sda2': Operation not permitted
The NTFS partition is in an unsafe state. Please resume and shutdown
Windows fully (no hibernation or fast restarting), or mount the volume
read-only with the 'ro' mount option.

I had this issue and found the solution here.

  The only surefire method of disabling Hibernate, and thus removing hiberfil.sys, on Windows Vista and Windows 7, is through the command prompt and the following steps:

  Open a command prompt with administrative privileges.
  Enter "powercfg.exe -h off" (see Figure D).
  Exit the command prompt.

I had fast boot and hibernate unchecked but apparently that hiberfil.sys was still in my file system! Open a command prompt within Windows in administrator mode and run "powercfg.exe -h off". This should delete that file if you have it and hopefully solve the issue.

After looking at your error log its clear that your pc is on Fast startup .In Windows 8 and 8.1, there is a function known as hybrid shutdown that  is enabled by default to make booting faster . Just because of this it leaves the filesystem on hibernate and it cant shutdown properly and this kind of error prompts.

To resolve this issue boot into windows and do the following -

Open the Control Panel then direct to Hardware and soundand click on Power Options
Click on Choose what the power buttons do
Click on Change settings that are currently unavailable
Under Shutdown settings, check the Turn off fast startup box, and click Save changes button.

restart your pc and see if it works. Information gathered from http://www.techulator.com/resources/5201-How-enable-or-disable-Hybrid-Boot-Windows.aspx

If still that partition is not mounting install Gparted then restart and check  and paste the screenshort of it here.

Hope it helped you.


How can I make 'man' more gui friendly? When I type man bash it shows the info in the terminal itself.

How do I tell "man" to open up the info in gedit instead? Is this possible?

Use this function in .bashrc:

man () { yelp "man:$@"; }

Source

This will create a temporary file with the manual page for bash in your home directory entitled "man" and open it with gedit. As soon as you close gedit the file will be erased too. Just replace bash with whatever man page you want to open.

man bash >> ~/man && gedit ~/man && rm ~/man

Hope this helps :)


How should BlueZ 5 be installed? I'm trying to get a bluetooth keyboard paired via terminal in Ubuntu Touch (see here for more details). For this purpose, I need the executable bluetoothctl, which appears to be provided by BlueZ 5 (as opposed to BlueZ 4).

I have tried installing BlueZ 5 on desktop and it caused many problems with the package manager and nuked the sound of the computer (forcing a purge of BlueZ 5 and reinstalling BlueZ 4 fixed things). I have tried installing BlueZ 5 on my Ubuntu phone (Aquaris E4.5) and it bricked it (necessitating a reflash), so I'm really not sure how I should try to install this. What I've tried to do is as follows:

sudo apt-get remove bluez
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:vidplace7/bluez5
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install bluez bluez-tools

I note that others appear to be seeing problems with BlueZ 5 also.

What should I do instead?

On desktop, I am using Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and on phone, I am using Ubuntu 15.04 - armhf (20151118-205525).

I would try a Live version of Ubuntu 15.10 as it has Bluez 5 and see if it functions to your liking using the "Try without Installing Ubuntu" option

The Ubuntu Touch OTA9 release includes Bluez5 and it enables pairing with ThinkPad keyboards. Here's the little BQ Aquaris E4.5 acting almost as a palmtop.


How to download multiple files using a script I have to download multiple files from here in googlecode. Currently I open each folder and download each file by saving it using my browser. Is there a way to automatically download all folder/files?

wget is the command line utility you want:

wget -r http://tinyos-main.googlecode.com/svn/tags/release_tinyos_2_1_2/

It downloads everything in:

http://tinyos-main.googlecode.com/svn/tags/release_tinyos_2_1_2/

and all subdirectories - folder(s) and file(s) - in release_tinyos_2_1_2/

Further Reading:

GNU Wget 1.15 Manual: Top

Home Page:

GNU Wget

In Ubuntu terminal try this using wget

wget -r -i http://XXXX/XXX/XX

But if you have a specific file type then

wget -r -l1 -A.txt https://xxxx/pub/data/xx/products/xx/2012/

.txt is the file extension


What Programming Language Would Be Best For Ubuntu Programming? Hi I've recently switched from Windows 7 to Ubuntu 12.10 and love the OS. However I have had trouble deciding which programming Language would be the all-around best for Ubuntu programming. I have no problem learning a harder language, I already know a good amount of C++ and C#. I really like C# but I've heard it doesn't mix well with Ubuntu.

What would be the best-integrated languages for Ubuntu, and good IDEs for them?

@ShockWave: I would say python, via quickly http://developer.ubuntu.com/resources/tools/quickly/. Ubuntu provides some pretty neat tools to get you started. c++, via qtCreator, is also a good choice.

Python? You could use the gedit text editor. Search 'gedit' in the dash.

Hope this helps!


How to clear password history? I recently changed my Ubuntu login password. But now I want to change it back to the old password. But when I try that. It shows "Not good enough".

It was a strong password when I had set it for the first time.

You can just alt to root and change your password like that:

root@hello:~# passwd Your_Name
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: password updated successfully
root@hello:~#

It doesn't care about the password history.

Or, you can chose a random password this time(like asdkjhavbaudifsd) and then change it back to your previous password.

Open the Dash by clicking the Ubuntu icon in the upper-left, type "terminal", and select the Terminal application from the results that appear.

In the terminal, type

  sudo passwd

You will be prompted for your current password, enter that. Then you will be prompted for a new password and also to confirm the new password.


Download Ubuntu as Zip? iso download blocked I sit behind the most poorly set up network ever. However, it blocks certain file extensions like .iso, .exe or .msi (thankfully I don't need the last 2 mentioned ones).
My problem is, that the ubuntu downloads are no longer .zip and that prevents me from upgrading to 13.10. I don't trust any others pages so I think it might be a good idea to offer both, .iso AND .zip for all versions on ubuntu.com, or is it already?

Thanks for listening.

If there were a totally official Ubuntu mirror that used HTTPS, that might be your best bet: unless you have configured your computer to recognize the proxy you're required to use as its own certificate authority (which would be insecure unless you totally trust the proxy and controversial anyway), the software that restricts what you may download cannot distinguish filenames by extension, through HTTPS.

Unfortunately, the current official mirrors for Ubuntu ISOs are http, ftp, and rsync only.

Fortunately, HTTP mirrors occasionally support HTTPS as well. By going through the list, you'll often find a small number that do. In particular, you can download Ubuntu ISO images from https://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu-releases/.

(The HTTP version of that site actually isn't listed--I got it by removing the "us" subdomain prefix from http://mirrors.us.kernel.org/ubuntu-releases/. The HTTPS version of that site should work too but you'll get scary warnings in your browser because its security certificate is for the unprefixed domain instead.)

Note that, once Ubuntu is installed, you may have some trouble updating it and installing software in it, depending on what extensions you can download via HTTP. In particular, you must be able to download .deb files. Hopefully the block is limited to just a few extensions rather than blocking everything but just a few extensions.

You can also make Ubuntu use HTTPS download mirrors to update and install software, same as with HTTP. I don't know of any HTTPS sites mirroring Ubuntu's official software sources--those mirrors aren't, in general, all the same as the mirrors for ISO images--but if you need that, you could post a new question about it. (In your question you should explain why you need it, as otherwise it will likely be answered with an explanation of how APT operates securely even though archives are downloaded via HTTP.)

Just save the "ubuntu.iso" as "ubuntu.zip" and then re-change the extension back after you've downloaded the file.


Is there any way to turn off a USB HDD manually? I have a USB-powered external HDD connected to my DELL laptop. Some times, after clicking on "Safely remove" item in pop-up menu of its icon in side bar, the drive is un-mounted and is removed from /dev/ folder (sdb and sdb1 both are removed) and lsusb do not show the device, but the HDD remains spinning and I could sense the vibration by putting my finger on it. But some times a few second after clicking on "Safely remove", it stops spinning and has no vibration. Is there any way (may be a CLI command) to turn it off?

Try this:

udisksctl unmount -b /dev/sdXY
udisksctl power-off -b /dev/sdX

on Linux Mint or Ubuntu

I have three equally valid solutions from which you can take your pick.

My personal solution is to buy a use hub featuring a power switch for each port.  I find it amazingly handy.  If I recall, it cost only about $6 on amazon.  I'll see if I can find you the item for sale before I post this, but it is enough to tell you such an affordable device exists.  Found it!

In this other discussion it was determined that there is a terminal command which can be used to literally disable power from select usb ports.  The question came up because the user who asked the question was using a battery operated tablet and his inconsiderate cow-orkers were plugging their cell phones in to charge, thus running down his battery.  Check out the bloke who discovered the solution! ;-)

Finally, depending perhaps on the brand and features of said drive, there should be a "spin down" command you can send to the drive before unmounting it.  I've never manually used such a command but back in the days of DOS, before energy saving features were common place, that was how you had to do it, so it stands to reason there's a way to do it today, and figuring it out may be as easy as writing to the drive manufacturer, looking at their website, or googling the correct question, ie "spin-down command for hard drives".  I do not stand by the following solution.  I did a casual search and found this.  Your mileage may vary.  Do let me know if it works for you.


Can't install Nvidia drivers on Ubuntu 15.04 I have the gtx670 and I'm trying to get any of the Nvidia drivers installed. No matter which one I try to install, be it nvidia-current or any of these numbers from the Synaptic Package Manager.

As soon as I install them, reboot, I'm stuck in an infinite crash-reboot loop. I have to do a recovery start, go into console and do sudo apt-get purge nividia* to get it working again.

Only driver that seem to work flawlessly is the Nouvuem one.

What can I do?

Try this

     sudo apt-get install xorg-xserver-video-all

and it might work fine this way.


After trying to Install Ubuntu Touch on a Nexus 10 the device won't turn on the only reaction the device shows is the charging symbol, when i connect it to my pc.
No magic button pressing or something else helped. Is there anything i can do to bring it to life again?

i think it is dead.

thanks for helping.
Uwe

Can you boot to the bootloader by both volume buttons and power button?

If yes, try boot to recovery by menu in booloader.

If you can go to recovery, then is easy flash original Android ROM.

Or you can post tutorial which you follow at installation?

I have the same problem and it seems to be two problems:
1. Nexus 10 problem
2. Ubuntu Touch Install problem

=> 1.: Nexus 10 seems to sometimes do this, when the battery is very empty. Try to recharge it. Try to press the Start button for about 30sec. With recharging I could move on and get to Problem 2.
More Infos I found here: http://forums.androidcentral.com/google-nexus-10-tablet/248372-nexus-10-wont-turn.html

For Problem 2 I also still need a solution, but I guess this is not the topic here.


How do I bind 'Menu key' to right 'Win key'? I have a keyboard with two "Win" keys but without "Menu" key. I'd like to bind my right Win as Menu. I tried do used xev in terminal and get keycode for .Xmodmap file but can't take code of right Win. Just always open system menu of ubuntu. How I can do it?

This should be do-able using xmodmap.

First, find the keycode for your Win-key: Enter terminal using Ctrl+Alt+T, and type xev. Now press your Win-key and note down the keycode shown.

(If you have problems obtaining the keycode, you may first have to change the Win-key from being a one-key shortcut for Dash. How this can be done has been answered here.

Once you obtain the keycode, say xxx, execute in terminal

xmodmap -e "keycode xxx = Menu"

This should map you Win-key to Menu. You can test it using e.g. xev again: a little after the keycode, it should now write something like (keysym 0xff67, Menu).

To automate setting it on startup, see e.g. this.

The Win key in Ubuntu is a modifier. It treated just like the Alt and Ctrl keys and as such cannot be used as a standalone key.


How do I format my ubuntu partition(ext4) and keep my windows partition? I want my old family pc to use only windows xp now that I don't use it anymore. However, I have a 200GB ext4  partition, containing ubuntu. Windows does not detect ext4.

I also don't want it booting into GRUB: I want it to boot directly into Windows XP.

How do I do it?

Windows does not detect ext4.

True but it does detect partitions that are not Windows' fat or ntfs.
So you can delete the Ubuntu partition from within Windows with a partitioner. No idea what the name is but I do recall Partition Magic from my Windows days.

You can also do this from a Ubuntu live cd with gparted.

  also don't want it booting into GRUB

Have a look at the Windows tool fixmbr

A safe way would be to download and burn gparted  : http://sourceforge.net/projects/gparted/files/gparted-live-stable/

Boot the cd. Change the boot flag on the ntfs partition to active.
Check to see if you now go directly into Windows. Reboot gparted cd
Delete unwanted partitions. Grow NTFS to full size.


Cannot boot: "No init found. Try passing init=bootarg" After losing power, my machine rebooted to this error:

  “error: no init found. Try passing init=bootarg”

Per similar threads on this site and others, I've tried booting from a CD and selecting "Try Ubuntu". Then open a terminal and typing:

  sudo fsck-y /dev/sda1.

The response is:

  Device or resource busy while trying to open /dev/sda1. Filesystem
  mounted or opened exclusively by another program?

This is on Ubuntu 10.10.

Any ideas on what I can try next?

Disk Utility from Live CD

LiveCD or use a Live USB (your personal preference)
Dash -> Disk Utility
Mount Volume (try this first, if it mounts skip to #6 otherwise go to #4)
Check FileSystem (this will run a check and repair anything it needs to)
Mount Volume (second attempt, should work after Filesystem check if it didn't before)
Close Disk Utility & Shutdown/Restart your computer.
Remove the LiveCD (before shutdown) or the LiveUSB (after shutdown)
Restart (may or may not go to GRUB menu, if it does choose the first option).

*Note - steps 4. & 5. are only for if the first Mount Volume attempt fails.
source: http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1728611.html

1.Create Puppy linux Live usb or live cd

2.Boot from live usb and go to console

3.run fsck to fix filesystem


How To Use i18n.tr in Ubuntu Touch Projects I have been using i18n.tr for a while in my Ubuntu-Touch projects. I know what this function is about but I don't know how to add a translation to my project.

Where do I have to place my translation file?
With what name?
How must its content be written?
How should I connect it with my app?
How do I test it with qmlscene ?

Take a look at TouchWriter code and especially its README, where all needed commands are given.

Quick summary

You need to bind the text domain before using gettext. In C++ you can do it like this:

bindtextdomain("domainname", "somedir");
textdomain("domainname");

In Qml you can probably do something like this:

i18n.bindtextdomain("domainname", "somedir");
i18n.domain = "domainname";

Be sure to do that before 18n.tr is used.
To generate .pot template and source .po files, use these commands:

xgettext -C --qt --keyword=tr -p somedir -o messages.pot
msginit -i somedir/messages.pot -o somedir/somelanguage.po

(replace somedir with the directory your domain is bound to, and somelanguage with the language you want to translate to).
To generate .mo files from source .po files, use msgfmt po-file -o mo-file command.
Compiled .mo files should be placed inside a directory you bound the text domain to, more specifically in

somedir/somelanguage/LC_MESSAGES/domainname.mo

(replace somedir, somelanguage and domainname with your values).

The best answer seems to be in the doc. http://developer.ubuntu.com/api/ubuntu-12.10/qml/mobile/qml-ubuntu-components0-i18n.html

It seems to be a function that translates the word passed to the user's language.


How to access a usb flash drive from the terminal? I only have access to the command line.
I need to backup my data (on the user folder) to a pen (USB DOK).

How can I mount a flash drive manually?
What should be the copy command?

1. Find what the drive is called

You'll need to know what the drive is called to mount it. To do that fire off one of the following (ranked in order of my preference):

lsblk
sudo blkid
sudo fdisk -l

You're looking for a partition that should look something like: /dev/sdb1. The more disks you have the higher the letter this is likely to be. Anyway, find it and remember what it's called.

2. Create a mount point (optional)

This needs to be mounted into the filesystem somewhere. You can usually use /mnt/ if you're being lazy and nothing else is mounted there but otherwise you'll want to create a new directory:

sudo  mkdir /media/usb

3. Mount!

sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /media/usb

When you're done, just fire off:

sudo umount /media/usb

This answer is almost 6 years old and while the core of it still works, things like fdisk -l aren't the most user-friendly options. There are also new mechanisms in higher stacks for mounting devices in a sane and standard way which might not always be available.

So I've added some polish from the other answers. While you're reading this footnote and you're doing this on a desktop system, there definitely are  arguments for using udisksctl, per wecac's answer. This mounts in the same way the desktop does —creating your own /media/$USER/device directory— but I think there are still arguments for a static mountpoint, especially when you don't want the path to change.

Udisks also relies on D-Bus, so might not be available everywhere.

That's simple. When I want to use a usb drive in terminal I do this:

Create a folder in /media with:

mkdir /media/mountDrive

This folder will be used for the mount point. Use this command:

sudo mount /dev/sdd1 /media/mountDrive

sdd1 is the first partition of my USB. Then you can navigate to folder you already mounted with

cd /media/mountDrive

If you want to list the files in drive you can use the ls command.

To unmount the drive you can use

sudo umount /dev/sdd1

Note that in my system the usb drive is /dev/sdd1, but in your system it may be something different. To find out what it is use the df command to see all disks connected at the present time.


Problem while updating shotwell The last update of Shotwell is causing me troubles while updating my system. I tried with sudo apt-get install -f and I got this error message:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  shotwell
The following packages will be upgraded:
  shotwell
1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 12 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/7,511 kB of archives.
After this operation, 25.3 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
(Reading database ... 299243 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../shotwell_0.18.1-1~trusty1_i386.deb ...
Unpacking shotwell (0.18.1-1~trusty1) over (0.18.0-0ubuntu4.1) ...
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/shotwell_0.18.1-1~trusty1_i386.deb (--unpack):
 trying to overwrite '/usr/share/shotwell/icons/shotwell-16.svg', which is also in package shotwell-common 0.18.0-0ubuntu4.2
dpkg-deb: error: subprocess paste was killed by signal (Broken pipe)
Processing triggers for man-db (2.6.7.1-1) ...
Processing triggers for menu (2.1.46ubuntu1) ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/shotwell_0.18.1-1~trusty1_i386.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Is there any chance of fixing this?

I submited question on Launchpad and got answer, so just in case someone else have similar problem here is how I solved it:

sudo dpkg --force-all -i /var/cache/apt/archives/shotwell_0.18.1-1~trusty1_i386.deb

https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/qt4-x11/+question/252665

I have installed shotwell_0.18.1 successfully, by running these commands:`

sudo apt-get remove --purge shotwell*
sudo apt-get install shotwell


Enable virtualization (Vt/x) from VirtualBox - Install 64-bits virtual machine I'm having trouble with VirtualBox within Ubuntu. I want to create a 64-bit virtual machine, but VB only gives me 32-bit options (see screenshot). I installed VirtualBox on macOS, and it works fine. However, when I installed VB within Ubuntu I got this problem.

In fact, I wanted to install gnome-software (with Virtualbox) on Ubuntu in following this YouTube tutorial, but it is not possible so far.

I have a Macbook Pro (Mid-2012, 13-inch), and Ubuntu 64-bit with installed with VirtualBox

The problem seems to be the Vt/x is disabled. I thought it was the one on the OS X. According to the Apple Support, it couldn't be modified from OS X. So we have to enable from VB.

Question : Could anyone be able to tell me how to enable virtualization from VB?

P.S. It is a bit weird, but I installed Ubuntu with VB on macOS, and now I want to install gnome-software with VB within Ubuntu.

Try this link https://forum.parallels.com/threads/how-to-enable-vt-aka-vtx-or-vt-x-with-refit-and-vmx-var-set-efi.3273/ It should work.


Showing a message with Crontab We are looking for a solution that every day of the week, the pc does a shutdown at 8 p.m.

The pc has multiple user accounts but always only one person will be using it. There will be several accounts because of the different jobs inside the company.

Ex. Person 1 uses Account A , but Person 2 , who has her own pc , but with the same image, logs on to another account because she has a different function. Person 1 only nows the login to his account and person 2 also only for her account. So 1 pc, several accounts but still one user at a time.

Using Crontab (in the admin account) was the best way to let this work for all users.
Now we also want that at 7.50 pm a message (like alert or notify send, or zenity) appears to warn the user of the shutdown. (WHO WILL NOT BE ABLE TO PREVENT IT).

I know it's not possible to ask Crontab for * * * * * /path/to/notify-send "Pc will shut down".
We tried a .sh with following code :

   #!/bin/sh
   DISPLAY=:0.0
   /usr/bin/notify-send 'shutdown warning'

(The shutdown warning is not what we want but just for the test'.

We tested this .sh in the terminal and with no errors. Works perfectly.
When we add it to the Crontab , like this:

  sudo contrab -e

  * * * * * /home/administrator/sluiten.sh

(and yes this is 100 percent sure the correct directory) it doesn't work.

So can someone please tell me what my .sh file should look like and how to add it to crontab so it works?

An example script to get all users logged in and send a warning to them. After the first time the script is run the log must be checked to see if the cut field needs adjustment, due to potential differences in who's output. On subsequent uses the logging echo lines can be commented out. The while loop is overkill for a single user system but may prove useful.

#!/bin/bash
###
USERLIST=($(who | sed -e 's/[)(]//g' -e 's/  */ /g' | cut -d ' ' -f1,5 | sort -u | tr -d '\n'))
LOG=/tmp/"$(basename $0)".log
###
echo "$(who | sed -e 's/[)(]//g' -e 's/  */ /g')" >> $LOG
echo "${USERLIST[@]}" >> $LOG
C=0
while [ $C -lt ${#USERLIST[@]} ]
    do
        D=$((C + 1))
        export DISPLAY="${USERLIST[$D]}"
        export XAUTHORITY="/home/${USERLIST[$C]}/.Xauthority"
        export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/$(id -u ${USERLIST[$C]})
        /usr/bin/notify-send 'shutdown warning'
        C=$((C + 2))
    done

First, root crontabs are not like user crontabs, and are NOT edited with sudo crontab -e. Read the original /etc/crontab file. root cronjobs are stored in /etc/cron.d, /etc/cron.daily, /etc/cron.hourly /etc/cron.monthly, and /etc/cron.weekly. They are controlled with a differently formatted /etc/crontab (it has a userid field), not the /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root file created by sudo crontab -e.

To answer your question, see man shutdown:

xenial (8) shutdown.8.gz
Provided by: upstart-sysv_1.13.2-0ubuntu21_i386

NAME
       shutdown - bring the system down

SYNOPSIS
       shutdown [OPTION]...  TIME [MESSAGE]

DESCRIPTION
       shutdown arranges for the system to be brought down in a safe way.  All
       logged-in users are notified that the system is going down and,  within
       the last five minutes of TIME, new logins are prevented.


Where is search history stored in Firefox and how to disable it? Firefox stores my search history, but I would like to know exactly what it is storing. So is there a file or something where these entries are logged? Also is there a way of disabling the search history?

I am already aware that one can disable search and form history in the Preferences, but I am only looking to disable search history. Is this possible?

I am running Ubuntu GNOME 16.04 with GNOME 3.20.

Disable the search history

Update: It looks like there is no way to record the form history and disregard the search history at the same time. To change the setting for both:

Open the Firefox Preferences and open the Privacy panel.

  (source: mozilla.net)

>

  When Firefox will is set to Use custom settings for history, the following settings will be available:

  […]

  Remember search and form history:
  If selected, the text you enter into form […] the search bar will be remembered so you can use those entries again. […]

(source: Settings for privacy, browsing history and do-not-track: Use custom settings for history)

Delete the search history

  Click the menu button , choose History, and then Clear Recent History….
  Select how much history you want to clear:

  Click the drop-down menu next to Time range to clear to choose how much of your history Firefox will clear.

  Next, click the arrow next to Details to select exactly what information will get cleared. Your choices are described in the What things are included in my history? section above.

  Finally, click the Clear Now button. The window will close and the items you've selected will be cleared.

(source: Delete browsing, search and download history on Firefox: How do I clear my history?)

Reviewing the search history

  How do I find my profile?

  Click the menu button , click help
   and select Troubleshooting Information. The Troubleshooting Information tab will open.
  Under the Application Basics section, click on Open Directory. A window with your profile files will open.

  Finding your profile without opening Firefox

  (Ubuntu) Click the Places menu on the top right of the screen and select Home Folder. A File Browser window will appear.
  Click the View menu and select Show Hidden Files if it isn't already checked.
  Double click the folder marked .mozilla.
  Double click the folder marked firefox. Your profile folder is within this folder. If you only have one profile, its folder would have default in the name.

  What information is stored in my profile?

  […]

  Autocomplete history: The formhistory.sqlite file remembers what you have searched for in the Firefox search bar and what information you’ve entered into forms on websites. […]

(source: Profiles - Where Firefox stores your bookmarks, passwords and other user data)

Since Firefox stores the (search) history in an SQLite database file you'll need an SQLite database editor to view or manipulate them. It is critical that you do not do this on Firefox profiles that are currently in use by a running Firefox instance.

I'll list a few suitable editors below:

sqlite3 – Command line interface for SQLite 3
sqlitebrowser – GUI editor for SQLite databases
sqliteman – GUI tool for SQLite3 admin and developers alike

Can I view Firefox history with the terminal? has some info on how to use the command-line tool sqlite3 to view Firefox' profile database files.

I do not know where the history is stored, but you can turn search history off if you click on the three bars on the far left of the menu bar, then press preferences, and navigate to the privacy section. Here, you can turn off history and request that sites don't track you.


Where is the flash whitelist and blacklist on Firefox? In Tools--->Add-ons-->Plugins-->Shockwave Flash I selected Ask to activate. Now I need to explicitly allow flash to play on every website I visit. It is possible to Allow and Remember or block flash permanently for particular websites. The question is where is this whitelist/blacklist located?

Check https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1011980 :

  by jscher2000 posted 7/23/14 7:46 AM

  When you are on the page, call up the Page Info dialog using one of
  these methods:

  right-click and choose View Page Info > Permissions
  (menu bar) Tools > Page Info > Permissions
  click the padlock or globe icon > More Information > Permissions

  You should find a list of permissions for each of your plugins. Can
  you fix it there?

Simply type:

about:permissions

into the address bar. This should pop up a window where you can choose these permissions.

Thanks hope this helps.


How to install "PC Companion" software of Sony Xperia? I've successfully installed "PC Companion" Sony Xperia in Windows. Has anyone been able to install pc companion sony xperia in within Ubuntu or any other Linux distro?

Others have been using a virtual machine for this, sadly there isn't any support for Ubuntu on PC Companion (i just tried).

WINE support seems limited and running it on this end seems incredibly glitchy, but if it's only for the storage purpose then you can change the settings on your phone to USB Storage mode if you want to get into the contents on your device.

regarding installing PC Companion in Ubuntu (Linux)

Might be redundant, for sync and backup of phone contacts, calendar etcetera simply get a Google+ account and all these matters are solved. Works perfectly calendar functions simple aswell as more hardcore fex mailing a meeting to other participants that use Google+ and have Android phones, the reciepent answer and tells if they are taking part of it or not, if yes the booking appears in ther phone aswell :-)

For filebackup simply connect your Android smartphone (fex Experia S) via USB cable and all files appear in Ubuntu as a portable USB disc, just drag and drop.....
or, connect your Sony Xperia S to a USB portable disc using OTG (On the go) USB cable and move all files to that memory or harddrive :-) really simple.... Go Sony...

When in need of Android update of OS, well, depends on the carrier, Ive got Telia in Sweden and so far all updates have been via the phones internet connection. So choose your provider based on that.

Well, thats about it, think that most things are covered by that..

BR

Lars Lundblad


How to install ubuntu without any extra packages that are currently installed by default? I'm just looking to install Ubuntu 11.10 + DE (Unity and it's dependencies). All the other extra packages such as firefox/thunderbird/video player/etc and any other package that is not a dependency of a core package I don't want to install.

What you want to do does not make much sense. Ubuntu is generated from a debian fork and aimed to became a desktop friendly distribution with a specific behaviour, Ubuntu is also a brand and the latest trand is pushing this way much more than ever.
Technically speaking, in my experience, removing packages from a standard Ubuntu installation can only generate problems, Ubuntu it's not designed to be "modular", it's simply not its goal.

I suggest to do a basic installation of a Debian and install Unity from the source.


Not a valid JAR when running HADOOP example I have installed hadoop-2.4.0 in my 14.04 LTS,
I have followed this link, I have done upto start and stop services successfully,
but when I tried to execute example,
$ /bin/hadoop jar hadoop*examples*.jar wordcount /user/hduser/gutenberg /user/hduser/gutenberg-output

and I am getting response as,
Not a valid JAR: /hadoop*examples*.jar

EDIT 1
I have installed JAVA 7(i.e JDK 1.7) and when I used Hadoop-1.0.3 it works fine.
Problem cause when I try to execute with Hadoop-2.4.0.

NOTE
From this tutorial my system differ the following,

I am using JAVA 7 instead of JAVA 6.
I am using Hadoop 2.4.0 instead of Hadoop-1.0.3
I am usinh Ubuntu 14.04 instead of Ubuntu 10.04.

And I can successfully execute HAdoop-1.0.3 with JAVA 7 on 14.04.
My question why can't I run the same for Hadoop-2.4.0.

I had the same problem. Here is the solution.

OS - Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit
Java - OpenJDK 7
Hadoop - Hadoop 2.4.1

Step 1: create a hdfs directory for input: hadoop dfs -mkdir -p /usr/local/hadoop/input
Step 2: now paste the jar file into this folder using hadoop command.
hadoop dfs -copyFromLocal /home/hduser/Desktop/sample.txt /usr/local/hadoop/input
Step 3: Go to $HADOOP_HOME/share/hadoop/mapreduce folder in terminal.
cd $HADOOP_HOME/share/hadoop/mapreduce
hadoop jar hadoop-mapreduce-examples-2.4.1.jar wordcount /usr/local/hadoop/input/sample.txt /usr/local/hadoop/output

Here /usr/local/hadoop/output folder will be created. Each time you have to give a new name.
NOTE: you cannot simply list the folders input and output using ls in terminal.

Step 4: To view the output, use this:
hadoop dfs -cat /usr/local/hadoop/output/part-r-00000

I am using the hadoop-2.7.2 and to handle this problem, simply go to the directory hadoop-2.7.2 and instead of writing directly hadop*exaples*jar write the following:

share/hadoop/mapreduce/hadoop-mapreduce-examples-2.7.2.jar


LibreOffice does not detects my fonts I installed some truetype fonts in following folder:

/usr/share/fonts/truetype/bfonts

Some softwares such as thunderbird detect my fonts and I can use them in those software's, but LibreOffice does not detect newly installed fonts.
I tried restarting LibreOffice and restarting Ubuntu as well, but no success.
Any one could help me?

The correct path for installing fonts manually is /usr/local/share/fonts. I did so and libreoffice picked up my fonts just fine. However ~/.fonts, /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts and /usr/share/fonts---the latter two being exclusive to fonts provided by .deb packages---are equivalent from fontconfig's perspective.

I suspect a permissions problem. Take care that the font files are world readable. If they're not and you copy them with sudo they end up unreadable by libreoffice. That does not happen when copied into ~/.fonts by the user who then launches LO.

LibreOffice doesn't detect (I don't know why) fonts in /usr/share/fonts/, you have to put them in ~/.fonts and clear the cache with sudo fc-cache -f -v


No keyboard layout switch after reboot Since the "Applications -> Settings -> XFCE Settings Manager -> Keyboard" dialogue does not allow to assign a new key for the "Change keyboard layout" action, I have added a "Keyboard layouts" plugin to the upper panel (near the clock).

It lets me to assign Caps Lock to the change layout action.

But unfortunately, each time after I reboot, the following happens:

the "keyboard layouts" applet disappears from the upper panel;
I can not use Caps Lock to change the layouts on the keyboard anymore.

How can it be fixed?

P.S. My system is Xubuntu 10.04 LTS, 2.6.32-40-generic

Settings Manager - Keyboard - Layout. Uncheck "Use system defaults".
http://ubuntu.sabza.org/2006/10/13/xubuntu-easily-switch-keyboard-layout/