How to run a checkdisk? I suspect there might be bad sector on a disk. I used ext3 filesystem.

What tool is the best equivalent of the error checking tool of Windows?

Disks

To check for bad sectors check the SMART data, probably the best accessible by launching the Disks utility (Palimpsest). Even if you don't see any bad blocks there, launch a self-test to be sure.

The program is bundled in the gnome-disk-utility package. Run gksudo gnome-disks

Or in Ubuntu 16.04 version (3.18):

Badblocks

You can also use badblocks

sudo badblocks -sv /dev/sda

to just check, or to check and fix first write the result to a temporary file:

sudo badblocks -sv /dev/sda  > bad-blocks-result
sudo fsck -t ext4 -l bad-blocks-result /dev/sda1

will check the whole disk and print out all bad blocks encountered on /dev/sda.

From badblocks manual:

  Important note: If the output of badblocks is going to be fed to the e2fsck or mke2fs programs, it is important that the block size is properly specified, since the block numbers which are generated are very dependent on the block size in use by  the  filesystem.  For this reason, it is strongly recommended that users not run badblocks directly, but rather use the -c option of the e2fsck and mke2fs programs.

fsck

fsck itself will not help you find bad sectors, worse still, if there are a lot of bad sectors it can damage your data even more. Use it only when the disk is healthy.

If you have a partition that you CAN NOT LOOSE THE DATA follow these steps

Determine which partition you want to check for bad sector using the

$fdisk -l commnd

Lets assume that the partition to check is called /dev/sdPTC (partition to check)
and that you have another partition to store the results mounted on /scan/resultPath/ folder

2.Then you can run this command

$sudo badblocks -v /dev/sdPTC > /scan/resultPath/badsectors.txt

which will determine what are the bad blocks of the given device and store them on a file called badsectors.txt

Now you can use fsck command to tell Ubuntu not to use the bad sectors mentioned in the badsectors.txt file.

$sudo fsck -l /scan_result/badsectors.txt /dev/sda

That way life of the hard disk is increased a bit until you get a new one for replacement.

If you have a complete partition that you want to check for bad physical sectors and you CAN AFFORD LOOSE ALL DATA on that partition or is EMPTY follow these steps

$sudo apt-get install gnome-disk-utility
$sudo gnome-disks
Check and double check that there is no important data on that partition
Using gnome-disks DELETE/REMOVE the partition by hand using the "-" sign
Using gnome-disks CREATE a new partition and select the "slow" option that will check the given space for errors


How can I adjust the mouse scroll speed? This question has been asked many times with no answer. I've used my basic Google skills and haven't come across a fix. This is system wide. My mouse simply scrolls too fast.

I'm new to ubuntu and linux in general. Would switching styles or whatever it is called (Ubuntu, KDE, Xubuntu) help at all? Is there a terminal code I can enter?

I removed the USB dongle that comes with my wireless mouse and plugged it back and fixed my scrolling speed instantly.

My problem was slightly different and I'm posting the answer here to assist other users as well. My issue was that the default mouse hardware added by VmWare Fusion or Workstation was not supporting scrolling in Ubuntu and other Linux distros, while the cursor was moving.

The issue seemed at first to be erratic scrolling, slow scrolling (which lead me here), while in fact, it was a different problem. This thread help me fixed it.

https://superuser.com/questions/1270811/inconsistent-and-erratic-mouse-wheel-in-linux-while-moving-the-mouse-pointer#

By moving evdev to a later "init" order, the scrolling came back to act as normal.


How to lock ubuntu device orientation in portrait or landscape from user input? I am working on a reader app to be used on Ubuntu-Touch. When reading books from the app it would be a helpful feature to lock the orientation in either portrait or landscape. This would be useful when reading in bed sideways.

I've tried to use automaticOrientation = false or true, however, the SDK currently locks the orientation in portrait when set to false.

Is there a way to lock the orientation of the device screen in one or the other and have it stay locked?

Update:

Newer releases of Ubuntu for Phone have a global option to lock orientation, however, I would still like to do this at the app level.

I am still looking for a way to do this.

Unfortunately there's no way yet to set a certain orientation programatically. You can however lock the orientation for your app on a certain one (portrait or landscape) in your app's desktop file. See the following link: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Unity8/FullShellRotation. The feature has been released some time ago, and perhaps you already use that.

Is this still a problem for you? Perhaps exposing the system level functionality through your app's UI might be the best way to go. I suspect locking at the app level would be considered a bug by the system developers so it's not offered.


My 256gb "Silicon Power" USB drive is fine when copying files normaly to and from it, but when I try and boot from it it becomes impossible to use I recently bought a Silicon Power 256gb USB drive from overseas (so the warranty isn't so good), and it's fine copying files to and from it (tested with fat32, ntfs, ext4, ext2). However, when I install ubuntu on it (or any other os, like windows), which takes ages, and I boot from it, it's so slow that it's impossible to use. It takes half an hour just to boot. What's the problem? Even though this isn't strictly ubuntu-related, I would prefer to install ubuntu on it, and I don't no where else to ask this question. So I'm asking here.

Not surprising that an overseas, relatively unheard of, cheap USB performs quite badly with a full-fledged OS.

According to reviews R/W speeds are around ~40 MB/s- pretty slow, indeed.

USBs are not meant to run complete OSes! Most have far lower tolerances than standard HDDs and SSDs.

However, in your case, it sounds like your USB is defective as you tested it on several OSes with the same level of success (very slow).

Are you sure secure boot is not enabled in your bios settings if it is a laptop? try installing a liveboot on it. then try installing a full os on it using vbox. try using another port


What is the default set of packages installed with Trusty? Where can I find a list of all the packages that get installed by default with Ubuntu 14.04?

Do you want explanation for all 1744 default packages or something in particular? You can find the full list here for Ubuntu 14.04.6 LTS.

Ubuntu comes with many preinstalled applications. See the link I provided. Those applications are recommended by ubunt. This is a cutting of that site:

Accessories – Various useful utilities.
Games – Information on games written for Ubuntu Linux, as well as
how to run Windows games in Ubuntu.
Graphics – Software for creating and manipulating images.
Photo – Software for viewing and editing photos.
Internet – Network applications like web browsers, email clients,
and instant messengers.
Other – Software for business, science, medicine, engineering, and
other professional disciplines.
Office – Software such as word processors, spreadsheet,
presentation, and database applications.
Productivity – Software such as organizers, schedulers, planners and
management applications.
Servers and Web Applications – Software for creating websites,
teleconferencing servers, learning management systems, and other web
applications.
Sound and Video – Software for playing, ripping, and burning music
and videos.
Multimedia – Software for playing and editing sound and video.
System Tools – Software for configuring and managing Ubuntu.


Help Installing propietary AMD Drivers on Ubuntu 18.04 I know that this question has been posted already (kind of) but those seems not to apply to my case, as with the tutorials I found online, seems to be different.

So I have a samsung laptop (AMD APU A6-1450 with integrated grapichs) i was trying to play some games, then i realised that CSGO for example runs at 15/20 FPS, which make me wonder, so i check and seems I'm using the ubuntu open source drivers.

I went to AMD website and download my drivers from their website, which for my current APU and GPU its "Crimson Edition 15.12 Proprietary Ubuntu 14.04 x86_64" so I downloaded and here is the first problem, I realize its a .deb package, not a tar.gz with a .sh file inside to run (which shows up in all the tutorials online to install propietary drivers), i check just in case the .pdf in AMD website which said would help to install the drivers, but that pdf is beyond complicated and misleading, (and also refers to a .tar.gz file with a run file inside, not a deb package). Anyway i thought it would be easier since its a deb, so i tried to install it by dpkg -i amdblablabla.deb fail becasue fglrx-core dependence not installed and other "libtq4" (something like this i forgot the name) also "missing dependecies or not installed".

So i tried, sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get check and sudo apt-get -f install

but it didnt help (dependecies didnt installed) it just suggets me to delete the fglrx deb I installed previously

I tried the following (according to AMD pdf file if missing dependencies) sudo apt-get build-dep fglrx-core and apt-get build-dep "libtq4" which are the dependencies missing, but fail because it didn't recognice the packages or doesn't found those packages.

So here is where I stop because I fail to find a tutorial for a .deb package to install AMD propietary drivers, I'm missing something here? or what I'm doing wrong, i ask becasue i'm not that knwoledged of ubuntu, i read somewhere that first you have to uninstall the open source drivers or purge it, but not Im not 100% sure if i have to do that for my case, since my ubuntu is very clean install...

Anyway thank you in advance. :)

I recently had the same problem. The answer is here (in Russian):

https://forum.ubuntu.ru/index.php?topic=311456.msg2424144#msg2424144

And the link with translation (ru->eng):

https://translate.google.fi/translate?hl=en&tab=TT&sl=ru&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fforum.ubuntu.ru%2Findex.php%3Ftopic%3D311456.msg2424144%23msg2424144

Shortly speaking, the user with the name Metal Militia is right. The latest LTS Ubuntu where you could use AMD Radeon HD 4000 series - Radeon HD 8000 series cards was Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, so there is no proprietary driver by AMD for your hardware


The new software center in Ubuntu 16.04 shows no application data found This is the error I get when I open the software center. I've tried rebooting and running sudo apt-get update but I see no improvement. It worked earlier but I don't know what went wrong since then. I'm using Ubuntu 16.04 final release on a Dell Inspiron 15R. Any advice will be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

EDIT: The problem magically solved itself without me doing anything special (or maybe inadvertently doing something, I don't know). So I'd still like to get to the root of this.

Just had this problem after using bleachbit to cleanup the system on moving from the beta to the official release. Cleaning out all the cache data also blanked out the software center (re:user533424 above).

It seems to "magically" reappear by anything that regenerates this data. So...

settings>region languages> ... and changing or reinstalling your current language

....also worked for me.

the Ubuntu Software Center on my PC is also showing "No application data found" but that appeared right after I was mounting /var/cache as tmpfs. I've experienced this issue with previous versions of the Ubuntu Software Center as well and therefore decided not to use a tmpfs for /var/cache any longer but I also couldn't figure out how to restore those files... Anyhow as per definition /var/cache is intended for cached data from applications. Such data is locally generated as a result of time-consuming I/O or calculation. The application must be able to regenerate or restore the data. Unlike /var/spool, the cached files can be deleted without data loss. The data must remain valid between invocations of the application and rebooting the system.

Files located under /var/cache may be expired in an application specific manner, by the system administrator, or both. The application must always be able to recover from manual deletion of these files (generally because of a disk space shortage). No other requirements are made on the data format of the cache directories.
see http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#THEVARHIERARCHY

Which, in this specific case is not true, since the Ubuntu Software Center won't be working correctly after deleting those files.

Hope that's a good hint for the root cause but may not solve the issue.


Steam will not run (missing libGL.so.1) I'm trying to install Steam on the laptop my son is getting for christmas (running Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS), however when I try to run Steam for the first time (via the "Steam" desktop icon it creates), a Terminal window appears and I am told:

Steam needs to install these additional packages:
    libgl1-mesa-dri:i386, libgl1-mesa-glx:i386, libc6:i386

Entering the password does its thing, then I am told:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 libgl1-mesa-glx:i386 : Depends: libglapi-mesa:i386 (= 10.1.3-0ubuntu0.5)
 unity-control-center : Depends: libcheese-gtk23 (>= 3.4.0) but it is not going to be installed
                        Depends: libcheese7 (>= 3.0.1) but it is not going to be installed
N: Ignoring file 'steam.list.disable' in directory '/etc/apt/sources.list.d/' as it has an invalid filename extension
N: Ignoring file 'google-chrome.list.disable' in directory '/etc/apt/sources.list.d/' as it has an invalid filename extension
N: Ignoring file 'webupd8team-java-trusty.list.disable' in directory '/etc/apt/sources.list.d/' as it has an invalid filename extension
N: Ignoring file 'steam.list.disable' in directory '/etc/apt/sources.list.d/' as it has an invalid filename extension
N: Ignoring file 'google-chrome.list.disable' in directory '/etc/apt/sources.list.d/' as it has an invalid filename extension
N: Ignoring file 'webupd8team-java-trusty.list.disable' in directory '/etc/apt/sources.list.d/' as it has an invalid filename extension
E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.

I press "Enter" and am told in a pop-up dialog box:

You are missing the following 32-bit libraries, and Steam may not run:
libGL.so.1

I have followed the answer found here, however it had no effect...

Any help would be appreciated.

Its a fairly common problem with Ubuntu, you probably have all of the dependencies needed, but for unknown reasons Canonical adds the word ubuntu to most lib files.

An easy work around is to do an online search for ligGL.1, NOT IN THE SOFTWARE CENTRE, download and install IT.

It will then work, as it's what I had to do from 13.05 on.


install kamailio packages I wanna install kamailio packages on Ubuntu 11.10. I've found a tutorial for installing kamailio but I'm facing problems installing packages after adding the repository lines to /etc/apt/sources.list and using:

apt-get install kamailio kamailio-mysql-modules kamailio-tls-modules

The following message appear:

E: Unable to locate package kamailio
E: Unable to locate package kamailio-mysql-modules
E: Unable to locate package kamailio-tls-modules

this is the link for the
tutorial

you must update repository after adding the repository lines to /etc/apt/sources.list.

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

then install kamailio

apt-get install kamailio kamailio-mysql-modules kamailio-tls-modules

The packages in Kamailio's APT repository are for LTS versions of Ubuntu, at this time 10.04 Lucid and 12.04 Precise, details are at:

http://www.kamailio.org/wiki/packages/debs


Ubuntu 14.04 LTS installation error from wubi I am trying to install ubuntu 14.04 LTS via wubi on windows 7 system. after downloading is complete, in the end I am recieving the error.

09-18 15:06 ERROR  root: [Errno 13] Permission denied: u'C:\\ubuntu\\install\\ubuntu-14.04-desktop-amd64.iso'
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "\lib\wubi\application.py", line 58, in run
  File "\lib\wubi\application.py", line 132, in select_task
  File "\lib\wubi\application.py", line 158, in run_installer
  File "\lib\wubi\backends\common\tasklist.py", line 197, in __call__
  File "\lib\wubi\backends\common\backend.py", line 595, in get_iso
  File "\lib\wubi\backends\common\backend.py", line 441, in download_iso
OSError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: u'C:\\ubuntu\\install\\ubuntu-14.04-desktop-amd64.iso'.

I have downloaded the iso and wubi files and saved on the disk. Every time I run Wubi.exe, it downloads the iso file from internet. How can I Install Ubuntu from wubi, with selecting the image from hard disk instead of downloading from internet.

Download a full, fresh copy of the Ubuntu Karmic ISO. Put that in a temporary directory.
Copy the contents of the Ubuntu Karmic Live CD (the one burned from the ISO) into there. So, now you have the ISO used to make the CD, and the contents of the CD, all in that one directory.
Right-click on the ISO. Tell Windows 7 to unblock that file, in spite of it being from another computer
Run wubi.exe from the temporary directory as an Administrator.

Download it from here

Refer this link too


How do I reset my keyboard layout? How can I reset my keyboard layout after modifying it with xkbcomp?

Is there a way to do this without restarting X?

Try:
setxkbmap us

(Replacing us with the keyboard layout you want). If using a variant (e.g. intl), try
setxkbmap -layout us -variant intl

Here's a list of keyboard layouts.

Use setxkbmap -layout us. It looks to completely reset the changes


What replaces the software center? I get that the software center is going away, but what replaces it? I just installed ubuntu 15.10, mate, and its not here. Is there an alternative hiding some place? I installed synaptic for package management. Is there something I am missing?

Ubuntu Software Center is installed in Ubuntu 15.10 by default.

If it is not installed in your system for some reason, install it by running

sudo apt-get install software-center

In 16.04 it will be replaced by Gnome Software. The package is called gnome-software, but Ubuntu Software Center is still available there as well.

Command line really, apt-get is strong it lets you do pretty much everything you need to related to handling your packages, once you get a hang of it, you won't need to use any GUI manager.


Uninstall Ubuntu 12.04 I want to uninstall my Ubuntu 12.04 (installed using Wubi). My Ubuntu is on one of partitions that I don't want to delete my partition.i using win 7.
And I don't use grub

To uninstall Ubuntu (if you installed it using Wubi), simply go into Programs and Features from Control Panel in Windows 7, look for Ubuntu and uninstall it, just like you would uninstall any program in Windows (see image below). It will not delete the partition, it will only delete the files that it created on that partition.

If this did not work, or for more information about Wubi uninstallation (or general Wubi information), click here

From Win 7 simply format the hard drive.


Ubuntu 16.04, Acer laptop, Broadcom driver and wifi cannot be enabled Ingredients

Laptop Acer Aspire V11 Touch
Ubuntu 16.04 (kernel 4.4.0-45)
Additional driver 'Broadcom 802.11 Linux STA wireless device' in use
lspci -knn | grep Net -A2

  02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Limited BCM43142 802.11b/g/n [14e4:4365] (rev 01)
  Subsystem: Foxconn International, Inc. BCM43142 802.11b/g/n [105b:e07e]
  Kernel modules: bcma, wl

rfkill list

  0: acer-wireless: Wireless LAN
  Soft blocked: no
  Hard blocked: no
  1: acer-bluetooth: Bluetooth
  Soft blocked: no
  Hard blocked: no
  2: hci0: Bluetooth
  Soft blocked: no
  Hard blocked: no

Issue

I cannot see any option to enable the wireless device from the applet main menu bar. As a result I cannot activate and use the wi-fi.

Research

I am almost-fully aware of this extensive post on Installing Broadcom Wireless Drivers, but installation is not the point. However, I have followed the uninstall/install sequence:

sudo apt-get purge bcmwl-kernel-source
sudo apt update
sudo update pciids
sudo apt install firmware-b43-install
sudo reboot
sudo apt install bcmwl-kernel-source # corresponds to my PCI id 14e4:4365 (rev 01)
sudo rfkill unblock all # for good measure

to no avail. Note that at sudo apt install bcmwl-kernel-source a dialogue window asks permission to disable Secure Boot by typing an ad hoc password. It claims it will be asked later, although I did not see it being asked again.

Interestingly, from this bounty-winning answer https://askubuntu.com/a/199154/446253, I could see with lspci -nn | grep -i BCM that my network controller is a BCM43142 that might not be supported by the STA driver. This is way too esoteric for me, but it may provide a clue to the expert.

I am also aware of other posts that deal with earlier Ubuntu versions, but I would dearly avoid guesswork and find an answer that applies to 16.04 safely.

Question

Please could you provide a list of simple steps to regain the possibility to enable the wifi from the menu bar?

If you need to refer to verbose posts, please indicate which answer is applicable according to you and in which way it integrates the actions undertaken above.

In my experience the problem comes up for either of two reasons, or both:

secure boot in the boot set-up utility is enabled. It should be disabled instead. Thanks to user Pilot6 for pointing this out in the comments above.
a new kernel does not cope well with the network and wi-fi settings. In my case the solution 1 works with kernel 3.19.0-77-generic or 4.4.0-45-generic, but not with the later 4.4.0-53-generic. To splash into an older reliable kernel, at boot time I go into the 'Advanced Ubuntu Options' of the boot loader rather than using the standard 'Ubuntu'. I am presented with this choice at restart since I have a dual boot system: if you don't, you can press the shift key at boot time to have this choice presented to you.
See https://askubuntu.com/a/885850/446253 for a way to select an earlier kernel version as boot-time default automatically, using Grub Customizer.

To know which kernel the system is running on type uname -r in the command line (the output is a subset of uname -a).

This problem occurred with both Ubuntu 14.04 and 16.04. I then presume that the release specification is immaterial.

You need to install the 4.8 kernel and firmware. Run these 3 commands in a terminal:-

sudo apt install linux-generic-hwe-16.04-edge
wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/main/l/linux-firmware/linux-firmware_1.161.1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i linux-firmware_1.161.1_all.deb

Reboot.


Is there a better way to redact a PDF? I had to print a couple of PDFs recently to send to someone, but I wanted to redact (black out) a couple small bits of text.

A quick google search didn't turn up any tools for this specific purpose, so I fell back to imagemagick & gimp:

convert document.pdf document.png
gimp document-0.png
(use paintbrush to black out text)
print redacted page from gimp
print remaining pages from xpdf

The problem with this strategy is that the conversion process (from PDF to PNG or whatever other format) loses quality. I tried editing the PDF in gimp but it didn't work right away.

Is there a specific tool that permits redaction in this way? (It doesn't even need to be "real" redaction -- I'm not sending a softcopy so "fake" redaction will work because the hardcopy can't be hacked to reveal the underlying text.)

Or, is there a trick to being able to edit PDFs in gimp?

(originally I recommened Okular but it didn't work as I expected)

1. Edit the document in a vector editor

I was able to open a PDF file in Inkscape, draw a rectangle over a piece of text and print it out. Inkscape is a vector editor so no rasterization involved. Some fonts looked wrong though - probably because the document was created on Windows machine with fonts which are absent on mine.

Note that any method that does not involve rasterization is only acceptable if you're going to print the redacted document on paper and not distribute it electronically, as the text still can be retrieved from under blackouts.

2. Increase the rasterization resolution when opening in a bitmap editor

Regarding "quality loss" when opening the page in Gimp: you can directly open a PDF file in Gimp. It will be rasterized in the process. The amount of quality loss in the process is a matter of resolution you choose when importing - 300 dpi should give you a very decent quality (the default is 100).

You can also get good results with ImageMagick's convert command if you tell it to increase resolution:

convert -density 300x300 ...

If using LibreOffice to create PDF file, open doc in LibreOffice , highlight text to be redacted, right click and select character, select Background and click on black. Export to PDF.


Devices list aren't show on Nautilus After updating 12.04, my HDD partitions and USB storage devices was removed from the devices list on Nautilus Sidebar, only the "floppy0" is there.

I can see all of them with Disk Utility. I can mount them and add them to computer list on Nautilus (not to device list).

I can't see any device in /media, only "floppy", "floppy0" and "cdrom" folders.

fstab file:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass> proc            /proc           proc    nodev,noexec,nosuid 0       0
# / was on /dev/sda3 during installation UUID=ec9a8bbb-4cf0-4599-bf0e-85f7e3de6302 /               ext4
errors=remount-ro 0       1
# swap was on /dev/sda6 during installation UUID=88002a18-0f7f-4e7a-87b7-ef8e9f6388c8 none            swap    sw
0       0 /dev/fd0        /media/floppy0  auto
rw,user,noauto,exec,utf8 0       0

You can mount your partitions automatically on startup.

A very good tutorial on Ubuntu wiki on how to achieve it is given here.

You can also edit your /etc/fstab file, however it is more complex and generally not recommended if you've less experience.

  /etc/fstab contains information of where your partitions and storage
  devices should be mounted and how.

The Ubuntu wiki also explains how you can edit the fstab file: here.

Additional References: http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/fstab.html

The program that causes the nautilus to show the devices is gvfs-gdu-volume.

Check if it's running:

sudo ps -e | grep gvfs-gdu-volume

I got the following output:

1983 ?        00:00:00 gvfs-gdu-volume

If not, reinstall the package gvfs:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall gvfs

I am sure you are running nautilus in root or else you logged in as root.
open terminal and check whether root@"name" is written that means you are logged in as root


Is there a way to edit the places menu in Ubuntu 12.10 gnome fallback? There is applications and places menus in the gnome fallback ubuntu 12.10, What I found that I only can edit the applications menu, and there is no way to edit the places menu, in gnome 2 there is a way to edit the bookmarks in nautilus and they are changed in the places menu, its not the same in gnome 3 fallback when I add bookmarks folders it dont appear in places menu.

Is there a way to add shortcuts to folders in places menu ??

Hover mouse pointer over the word "places"  -  control-right click  -  edit menus
might do the trick for you


How do I install the Cinnamon Desktop? I have read that there is a new Gnome-2 like interface called Cinnamon produced by the Linux Mint developers.

Is this available for Ubuntu users - and if so how do I install it?

Cinnamon is a Gnome-Shell desktop fork.  It is not strictly a Gnome-2 interface, although the developers aims are laudable - to produce a simpler more traditional desktop interface.

Development seems to be rapid.  It is usable and certainly fun to play with with a growing number of extensions to install to extend the base installation.

How to install

for 13.04 & 13.10, 14.10 & later

Cinnamon is now available in the Universe repository

cinnamon

Alternatively - from the command-line:

sudo apt-get install cinnamon-desktop-environment

Since it is in this repository, it is community maintained and thus it is up to the community to update  the packages as and when new releases and bug-fixes are released.

For Ubuntu 14.04, there is currently no cinnamon packages in the Universe repository.

Via PPA for 11.10 and later

EDIT: 22/05/2014 - the PPA ppa:gwendal-lebihan-dev/cinnamon-stable has been removed or hidden from public view.  I contacted the maintainer and the following is their reply:

  The stable PPA is indeed no longer being maintained.

  The nightly PPA is being kept for development purposes and should not
  be used on any sort of production machine (it can and will break at
  any time).

  To be honest, I don't have an alternative to offer Ubuntu users at the
  moment, apart from switching to a distribution that does support
  Cinnamon. There are many such distributions out there, and I'm only
  hoping for someone to (finally) step up on Ubuntu's side to provide
  proper packages to its users.

EDIT: 25/04/14 - Two alternative PPA's have now been created - both claiming to enable the stable version of Cinnamon for Ubuntu users.  I cannot vouch for the veracity of these PPAs

Option 1: 12.04 & 14.04 users only:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tsvetko.tsvetkov/cinnamon
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cinnamon

Option 2: 14.04 users only:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lestcape/cinnamon
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cinnamon

As an alternative you may wish to consider the unstable nightly automatic builds - please note Gwendal's warning above:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gwendal-lebihan-dev/cinnamon-nightly
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cinnamon

Option 3: In addition, you can also install cinnamon 2.2 in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and derivatives by adding Linux Mint 17 Qiana  repository in your system.

Open file /etc/apt/sources.list with nano command:

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following line at the end of file /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ qiana main upstream import

Update the repository then install the authentication key

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linuxmint-keyring

Update the repository again and install Cinnamon 2.2:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cinnamon

After installation

Logout and select the Cinnamon session:

Enter you password and you'll see the Cinnamon desktop

... showing the traditional start type menu and applet design from Gnome-2

Extensions/Applets

The Cinnamon desktop uses the same philosophy as Gnome-Shell - functionality can be added to by installing Extensions & Applets.

Cinnamon uses its own Settings tool.

Cinnamon Settings

Cinnamon Applets

Similar to gnome-shell extensions - you can install applets from a dedicated Mint website.

You can install Cinnamon 3.0 on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS via PPA.

Cinnamon 3.0 has been released in April 2016 with improved GTK+ 3.20 support, new accessibility and sound settings and more. Although Cinnamon 3.0 is not available to install on Ubuntu through its official PPA you can install it by adding a community PPA. So use it at your own risk.

Before installing Cinnamon 3.0 on your Ubuntu 16.04, please purge this PPA if you are already using it.

Use the following commands to install Cinnamon 3.0 on Ubuntu 16.04.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:embrosyn/cinnamon
sudo apt update
sudo apt install cinnamon blueberry

After the installation is finished log out and you can select Cinnamon desktop environment by clicking the icon next to your username.


Complete Installation Guide for Android SDK / ADT Bundle on Ubuntu What all needs to be done to install Android SDK / ADT Bundle on Ubuntu?

Each of the steps in the answer was found on some different forum as I encountered obstacles getting started with my Android SDK and posted questions in appropriate forums thereafter. So I thought this would be useful in that it is a one stop solution available, in case one ever needs to re-install Ubuntu and install the Android SDK / ADT Bundle from scratch!

Actually, I think you should use Android Studio to develop android application. However, if you have your reason to use eclipse, you can follow the following guide.

Target     : Super Newbies
IDE        : Eclipse
Description: Provide a GUI method to install Android IDE using Eclipse

1. Installing Java Runtime (JDK) and Eclipse IDE

Search Software on Ubuntu and launch Ubuntu Software Center

Search Java on Ubuntu Software Center and then install the OpenJDK Java Runtime.

Search Eclipse on Ubuntu Software Center and then install it.

If you have successfully installed eclipse and JDK, it will appear in the search result on your computer.

For the JDK, you can also press CTRL + ALT + T to open a terminal and type command java -version to check again.

Tips : Lock the eclipse icon on launcher.

2. Downloading SDK

Go to http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html to download the latest version of SDK.

Scroll down and click DOWNLOAD FROM OTHER PLATFORMS

Click android-sdk_r22.6.2-linux.tgz under Linux 32 & 64-bit of SDK Tools Only.

Tick I have read and agree with the above terms and conditions and click Download android-sdk_r22.6.2-linux.tgz.

Wait for the download process.

3. Preparing for Installation

Go to the location where you set to download the file.
Rigth click the file[.tgz] and select Extract Here.

Now you can see that a file called android-sdk-linux appears as if the following.

Enter the folder android-sdk-linux.

Enter the folder tools and then copy the folder location.

Press the keys CTRL + ALT + T to open a terminal and then use the following command. Where /home/casper/Downloads/android-sdk-linux/tools is the location I copied previously. You can just type cd and right click to past the location to the terminal.

    cd /home/casper/Downloads/android-sdk-linux/tools
    ./android

Now the Android SDK Manager will be run.

4. Installing Packages

Click Install [Number] packages....

Click Accept License and then click Install.

Wait for the installation process.

Finally, this message will be shown.

5. Editing ".bashrc"

Press CTRL + ALT + T to open a new terminal and type : gedit ~/.bashrc

Now the following text will appear.

Add the following to the top of the entire text and then save it. (Do not close the file)

    export PATH=${PATH}:~/android-sdk-linux/tools
    export PATH=${PATH}:~/android-sdk-linux/platform-tools

Example :

[Recommended] Move the whole file android-sdk-linux to your eclipse's workspace and under a folder that you create named Android. Moreover, you have to copy the location.

Now back to the ".bashrc" file and the replace the '~' with the location you copied previously and then save it and close it.

Logout and relogin your Ubuntu system.

6. Setting Up an Android Virtual Device

Press CTRL + ALT + T and type android avd to open  the Android Virtual Device Manager.

Click New.... Set up like the following and click OK.

Click your virtual device and then click Start....

Click Launch.

Launching your virtual device

7. Installing ADT Plugin on Eclipse

Start Eclipse and go to Help -> Install New Software...

Click Add....

Type the following and then click OK.

 Name     :    ADT Plugin
 Location :    https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/

Tick the checkbox of Developer Tools and then click Next>.

Click Next>.

Click "I accept the..." and click Finish.

Wait for the installation process.

Restart eclipse.

Click Open Preferences.

Copy your own SDK location (The location of the file android-sdk-linux).

Paste to the SDK Location: textbox and then click Apply and OK.

Enjoy to create any android application with your Ubuntu.

CLI approach

Tested on Ubuntu 15.10, Android 22.

One the device:

enable developer mode and USB debugging: http://www.syncios.com/blog/enable-developer-optionsusb-debugging-mode-on-devices-with-android-4-2-jelly-bean/
link device to computer with USB cable

Then:

sudo apt-get install ant gradle openjdk-7-jdk

cd

# Get device permissions.
# MANUAL find vendor ID on this table: http://developer.android.com/tools/device.html#VendorIds
# http://stackoverflow.com/a/5510745/895245
VENDOR_ID='054c'
UDEV_PATH='/etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules'
echo 'SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR'"$VENDOR_ID"'=="0bb4", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"' | sudo tee "$UDEV_PATH"
sudo chmod a+r "$UDEV_PATH"
sudo /etc/init.d/udev restart

wget http://dl.google.com/android/android-sdk_r24.4.1-linux.tgz
tar -xvf android-sdk_r24.4.1-linux.tgz

# MANUAL run the ./tools/android GUI and install the SDK versions you need
# Better: just download EVERYTHING to save you annoyances later on.
# Yes, it takes a ton of space (50Gib+).
# http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17963508/how-to-install-android-sdk-build-tools-on-the-command-line
# The automated command line should look something like:
#API=22
#N="$(android list sdk --all |& grep 'SDK Platform Android' | grep "API $API" | cut -d- -f1)"
#android update sdk -u -a -t $N

# Studio
wget https://dl.google.com/dl/android/studio/ide-zips/1.5.1.0/android-studio-ide-141.2456560-linux.zip
unzip android-studio-ide-141.2456560-linux.zip
cd android-studio/bin
./studio.sh

# NDK
wget http://dl.google.com/android/ndk/android-ndk-r10e-linux-x86_64.bin
chmod a+x android-ndk-r10e-linux-x86_64.bin
./android-ndk-r10e-linux-x86_64.bin
mv android-ndk-r10e android-ndk

Add to your ~/.profile: TODO: which of those are actually necessary?

export ANDROID_SDK="$HOME/android-sdk"
# Present on the default build.xml generated by "android create project [...] in Android 22.
export ANDROID_HOME="$ANDROID_SDK"
export ANDROID_NDK="$HOME/android-ndk"s
export ANDROID_NDK_ROOT="$ANDROID_NDK"
# Used by https://github.com/googlesamples/android-ndk/tree/3cd41e1f5280443665ca98463c7a76e80bf0b96c/native-codec
export ANDROID_NDK_HOME="$ANDROID_NDK"
export ANDROID_ABI='armeabi-v7a'
export ANDROID_JAVA_HOME="$JAVA_HOME"
export ANDROID_STUDIO="$HOME/android-studio/"
export PATH="$ANDROID_SDK/platform-tools:$ANDROID_SDK/tools:${ANDROID_STUDIO}/bin:${ANDROID_NDK}:${PATH}"

Logout and login. You may need:

sudo "$(which adb)" kill-server
sudo "$(which adb)" start-server

Test the installation

Get your hands on a minimal project like this one or look under $ANDROID_SDK/samples/.

If it is an Ant project (contains a build.xml file) run:

ant debug
ant installd

If it is a Gradle project (contains a gradlew file) run:

./gradlew assembleDebug
./gradlew installDebug

The app should be installed on your device.

Studio (ADT successor) can be launched with:

studio.sh

NDK samples can be found under $ANDROID_NDK/samples and you can build and install them with:

ndk-build
# Create build.xml, as per: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5572304/how-to-build-the-android-sample-projectsusing-ant-build-xml-does-not-exist
android update project -p . -t android-22
ant clean
ant debug
ant installd

State of official Debian packages

There is currently no official Debian package.

But there is a Google Summer of Code 2015 project trying to solve that: https://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/project/details/google/gsoc2015/seamlik/5707702298738688


How to identify Ubuntu's Release version via the GUI? I can identify Windows' Releases very easily even after the login process is over.

Ubuntu's Desktops are similar between releases.

Is it possible to identify the release by looking at Ubuntu's Default wallpaper / Desktop?

Gui : Go to system settings --> about system.

With commandline : lsb_release -d

This might be impossible in the case of most previous Versions, especially from a customized desktop.  It can be made possible in next versions by making slight changes in the bar on the desktop.  So, an expecting solution is:

Add the Version to the name -- 'Ubuntu Desktop', that we see on the left top corner. Add one star for a version released just after an LTS version...two stars for the next......four stars for the LTS.

Keep a minimum space to show at least Ubuntu's logo and the Version to give freedom (to the user) to add more icons on this bar upto a certain limit without losing the identity.

Use an entirely different Default wallpaper for each LTS version.

It will be useful if the Code name of LTS version is also added in the Log-in screen (not on the bar).  No need of Code name in Non-LTS


Dell XPS 15 9570: Dual Boot with Windows 10 x64 and Ubuntu18.04 amd64 Problem
Unable to Suspend my laptop. It goes into a half-baked suspend(When triggered from the command line or GUI) resulting in either power drain or comes back up without intervention in a moment.

I have been scouring through posts all over the internet and nothing seems to work.

System Information:

Processor: Intel® Core™ i9-8950HK CPU @ 2.90GHz × 12

Graphics: Intel® HD Graphics (Coffeelake 3x8 GT2)

[I have disabled Nvidia 1050 Ti due to power consumption and
    compatability concerns]

Kernel: 4.17.9-041709-generic

Edit 1: The System cam with Kernel 4.15, I upgraded Kernel to 4.17 using ukuu in the hopes that the bug might have been fixed upstream.

Thank you for your consideration, please let me know if you require more information.

Migrate to Dell xps15 9370 Bios update 1.3.1 recently -- helped with fans and has more than doubled time on battery battery ~9hrs & the Fans aren't going crazy now.

Ed. 9hrs on Intel GPU

following post install from https://github.com/JackHack96/dell-xps-9570-ubuntu-respin

in particular the grub line:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet acpi_rev_override=1 acpi_osi=Linux scsi_mod.use_blk_mq=1 nouveau.modeset=0 nouveau.runpm=0 mem_sleep_default=deep"

Dell XPS15 9570, 1.3.1 System BIOS

https://www.dell.com/support/home/uk/en/ukbsdt1/drivers/driversdetails?driverId=82MK9

Intel Dynamic Platform and Thermal Framework

https://www.dell.com/support/home/uk/en/ukbsdt1/drivers/driversdetails?driverId=591DK

I'm going to try to simplify the answer, which has been provided in other threads but a bit hard to come by in a straight forward form.

A lot of people are dealing with suspend issues in Ubuntu nowadays. The problem is baked into 18.04 at the moment. Here is the solution:

Open up /etc/default/grub in a text editor. For example:
sudo nano /etc/default/grub

At the line that starts with GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT, after the equals sign and inside the quotation marks, add the command scsi_mod.scan=sync

Then try suspend again, it should work. It did for me at least.


Switched from 18.04 to 20.04 cannot use Desktop icons normally So I've switched from 18.04 to 20.04, I copied my whole user data and recopied them back to 20.04. So that includes desktop as well, but now I cannot double click to open files, cannot move files to the Desktop from other folders, the Desktop reorganizes itself weirdly and stuff like that. I just installed the fresh 20.04 LTS.

Check you're the owner of all files under user data. Try this:
user@host:~$ ls -laR | less

if you see uid or gid differents from user, I think that's the problem. Try this
chown -R user.user *

Of course you have to change user with your user name in the exemple above


0 byte memory left after update since a few weeks, I faced the same problem several times. All of a sudden, I get a system message like "0 bytes memory left on hard drive". Naturally, programs stop working normally and I can't save my files any more. But the weird thing is that I normally use only <10% of my hard drive memory.

So I run

> sudo du -x / | sort -n | tail

which shows that most memory (around 316 GB) is used in /var/lib/apt/lists/partial.

> cd /var/lib/apt/lists/partial && ls -lS | head

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 323832110603 Jul  9 12:07 archive.canonical.com_ubuntu_dists_vivid_partner_binary-i386_Packages.bz2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     35325738 Apr 24 20:40 de.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_vivid_universe_binary-i386_Packages.bz2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     31033131 Apr 24 20:45 de.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_vivid_universe_source_Sources.bz2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     20363078 Apr 23 17:50 de.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_vivid_universe_i18n_Translation-en.bz2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     10157032 Okt 28  2014 de.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_vivid_universe_i18n_Translation-de.bz2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root      8294644 Apr 24 20:39 de.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_vivid_main_binary-i386_Packages.bz2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root      5114062 Apr 24 20:44 de.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_vivid_main_source_Sources.bz2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root      4235430 Apr 23 17:50 de.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_vivid_main_i18n_Translation-en.bz2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root      3456337 Okt 28  2014 de.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_vivid_main_i18n_Translation-de.bz2

Obviously there is one terribly large file archive.canonical.com_ubuntu_dists_vivid_partner_binary-i386_Packages.bz2.

I saw no other option but to delete this file manually. After that, everything worked fine. Since then, the same thing reoccurred 2 times about every two weeks.

Can anyone explain this strange behaviour, and what can I do about it?

Thanks in advance!

Regards,
Juri

If you really need to save these files, you will have to move (i.e copy, and delete originals) them to a different media. Thy appear too large to save on a DVD, so either a tape drive or a large memory stick.
OTOH the files look by their names like installation file, including sources. Why save them? Rather delete them and find a way to backup your currens working system (my personal choice is Remastersys)

Also look for a program call Bleachbit, which help clear away unused file: temporary downloads, old logs etc.

Try sudo apt-get clean to delete old update kits (not the updates themselves, just the downloded kits)

If you run Thunderbird, compact your folders, or whatever works on your email/nntp reader

And the easy & dumb solution: Buy disk space...


One by Wacom Pen Tablet installing in Ubuntu 17.10 I am trying to install One by Wacom Pen Tablet CTL-472 in Ubuntu 17.10. In the system settings it says 'No Tablet Detected'. I have tried all options that i could lay my hands on on the net. its working fine in windows 10.
thanks in advance

I am using CTL-472 in Ubuntu 18.04. And after I following the instructions on this page to install a new driver, the tablet can be detected and works well now.

Prerequisites

Before building, you'll need to ensure the necessary dependencies have been installed on your system:

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

Download

In general, you should simply download and untar the latest release from the releases page. If, however, you need to build a development version of the driver you will need to install and use the "git" tool to clone a copy of our repository. The developer should provide you with a git command to perform the necessary clone.

Build / Install

Open a terminal and navigate into the extracted/cloned input-wacom directory. Next, copy and paste the following command to build and install the driver. If you get a "Build Failed" message at the end if your output, please contact the linuxwacom developers for support.

if test -x ./autogen.sh; then ./autogen.sh; else ./configure; fi && make && sudo make install || echo "Build Failed"

Module Loading

The updated driver should automatically load after rebooting the system. You can verify the version number of the loaded kernel module by running the following command. Version numbers like "v2.00" indicate that the stock kernel module is still in use. A version number like "v2.00-0.38.0" indicates that version 0.38.0 of the input-wacom driver is loaded. Consult the "Troubleshooting" section below if the version number does not match what you expect.

grep "" /sys/module/wacom*/version

or, if you do not have a tablet attached to the computer:

modinfo wacom | grep version

Next Steps

Upgrading both the kernel driver and the X driver to the same version is recommended. Please see the instructions for updating the xf86-input-wacom driver.


19.10 - Reset system policies Is there a way to reset all the system policies to their factory defaults without reinstalling ubuntu?

In fact, my problem is that it asks for my password literally for everything I try to do, even for wifi scans. It also asks for my passwords like ~15 times when I log in for something related to color profiles.

BTW I'm logged in as a sudo user (admin).

I don't know if it matters but I just got out of a login loop by reinstalling ligthdm. It wasn't doing this before.

Do you have chrome-remote-desktop installed?
I had the same problem, and uninstalling chrome-remote-desktop was the fix, as per this question


Ubuntu 14.04, Docker(left sidebar) does not show in auto hide mode on Virtual Box I have never used Linux before and I want to switch to Linux Ubuntu. I like how Unity desktop environment looks.

I installed Ubuntu 14.04 LTS version in Virtual Box and when I clicked the option to auto hide the docker(left sidebar)on it does not appear when the pointer of the mouse goes on left side of the screen.

Is it going to work properly when Ubuntu is installed on a PC instead of  Virtual machine ? Is it not working only in the virtual box ?

Launcher bar "auto hide" option does not work on VirtualBox.

Auto hide option is  running perfectly and it's smooth when Ubuntu is installed on a PC(at least for me), instead on virtual machine.


Suspend to RAM and encrypted partitions Normally I don't shutdown my notebook any more in favour of using suspend-to-RAM. The downside is that my encrypted home partition is completely accessible after resume without entering the passphrase. A bad idea if someome steals your notebook...

Looking at cryptsetup's manpage. I've learned that LUKS now supports the luksSuspend and luksResume command. Has luksSuspend and luksResume been integrated in the scripts doing suspend-to-RAM and resume?

Current problem
When using Ubuntu Full Disk Encryption(that is based on dm-crypt with LUKS) to set up full system encryption, the encryption key is kept in memory when suspending the system. This drawback defeats the purpose of encryption if you carry around your suspended laptop a lot. One can use the cryptsetup luksSuspend command to freeze all I/O and flush the key from memory.
Solution
ubuntu-luks-suspend  is an attempt to change the default suspend mechanism. The basic idea is to change to a chroot outside of the encrypted root fs and then lock it (withcryptsetup luksSuspend)

Actually, you just need to ensure that your screensaver passphrase is required on resume from suspend, and you'll be safe.

This will ensure that someone resuming your laptop from suspend will have to enter a password before they can get into the computer.


Mount SMB / AFP 13.10 I cannot seem to get Ubuntu to mount a mac share via SMB or AFP. I've tried the following...

AFP:

apt-get install afpfs-ng-utils
mount_afp afp://user:password@localip/share /mnt/share

Error given: "Could not connect, never got a reponse to getstatus, Connection timed out". Which is odd as I can access the share just fine via Mac.

SMB:

apt-get install cifs-utils
nano /etc/fstab
added the following line "//localip/share /mnt/share cifs username=user,password=pass,iocharset=utf8,sec=nltm 0 0"
mount -a

Error given:

root@Asrock:~# mount -a -vvv
mount: fstab path: "/etc/fstab"
mount: mtab path:  "/etc/mtab"
mount: lock path:  "/etc/mtab~"
mount: temp path:  "/etc/mtab.tmp"
mount: UID:        0
mount: eUID:       0
mount: spec:  "//10.0.1.3/NAS"
mount: node:  "/mnt/NAS"
mount: types: "cifs"
mount: opts:  "username=user,password=pass,iocharset=utf8,sec=nltm"
mount: external mount: argv[0] = "/sbin/mount.cifs"
mount: external mount: argv[1] = "//10.0.1.3/NAS"
mount: external mount: argv[2] = "/mnt/NAS"
mount: external mount: argv[3] = "-v"
mount: external mount: argv[4] = "-o"
mount: external mount: argv[5] = "rw,username=user,password=pass,iocharset=utf8,sec=nltm"
mount.cifs kernel mount options: ip=10.0.1.3,unc=\\10.0.1.3\NAS,iocharset=utf8,sec=nltm,user=user,pass=*
mount error(22): Invalid argument
Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g. man mount.cifs)

I don't really care which it uses I just want it to work! Am I doing something wrong?

for me it worked without sec=nltmssp:

//localip/share /mnt/share cifs username=user,password=xxx,nounix 0 0

I was able to get this to work with an fstab of

//localip/share /mnt/share cifs username=user,nounix,sec=nltmssp 0 0


"Error: 0x80080005 Server execution failed" while installing Ubuntu on Windows While installing Ubuntu app on Windows, I'm encountering this error:

Installing, this may take a few minutes...
WslRegisterDistribution failed with error: 0x80080005
Error: 0x80080005 Server execution failed

How do I install Ubuntu app successfully on Windows?

Try restarting the manager for the linux subsystem by opening command prompt as admin (cmd) and running:

sc stop LxssManager
sc start LxssManager

and then query it to make sure the state is 4, RUNNING.

sc query LxssManager

Now try to open the Ubuntu app again, if it gives a different error this time, try uninstalling and reinstalling the app.

I have also checked on this webpage some solutions as I did not want to do over fixing manipulations.
I have checked if there were some Windows 10 updates on going on my computer and that was the case : my pc has downloaded the latest version but did not install it yet. I did the installation and now Ubuntu works.


Why doesn't .mkv files play properly with ubuntu-restricted-extra? I am running Ubuntu 10.04 with ubuntu-resticted-extra installed. When I play .mkv with the default player, totem it causes the player to stop suddenly without any warning after a random amount of time!

Anybody else is having this problem? Is there any workaround other than installing vlc??

What I want to know is, Is it a bug in gstreamer? or I'm the only one facing this issue!

Its a BUG....in the meantime...

Install VLC

VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVD, Audio CD, VCD, and various streaming protocols.

Open Synaptic application

Click on System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager.
In Settings -> Repositories, make sure you have an universe repository activated.

Search for vlc and install it, as well as vlc-plugin-pulse. You may also want to install mozilla-plugin-vlc.

If you are interested in streaming or transcoding, you should additionnally install libavcodec-extra-52 from a multiverse repository.
Command line way

You need to check that a universe mirror is listed in your /etc/apt/sources.list file.

% sudo apt-get update
% sudo apt-get install vlc vlc-plugin-pulse mozilla-plugin-vlc

The above error is happening because there is no libde265 plugin, run the following and it will work. I just did it:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:strukturag/libde265
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install vlc-plugin-libde265


Lost access of Ubuntu partiton I have installed Window 7 on Ubuntu 14.04.1 pre installed Laptop. Then  Windows written GRUB with it's own BOOTLOADER. Now it's only booting Windows 7.
I have done these..
Booted in live mode(try mode). Then sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt(My Ubuntu partition),Then sudo chroot /mnt
Then grub-install /dev/sda, Which was a successful grub installation, Then update-grub.
Successfully detected all bootloader including Windows 7(Loader), But when I rebooted it's again going straight to Windows 7. What to do ?

I love boot repair but ONLY as a live CD.  The one and only time I ever installed it on an installation intending to fix that installation, it rendered the installation completely unbootable, so I beg you, please do not install boot repair on the drive you are trying to fix.  Always run boot repair from a live booting boot repair cd or self booting usb flash drive.

Pulled from here
2nd option : install Boot-Repair in Ubuntu

either from an Ubuntu live-session (boot your computer on a Ubuntu live-CD or live-USB then choose "Try Ubuntu") or from your installed Ubuntu session (if you can access it)
connect to the Internet
open a new Terminal, then type the following commands (press Enter after each line):

For Ubuntu 12.04

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair

For Ubuntu 14.04 and newer

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kranich/cubuntu

then type:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair && (boot-repair &)
After using the tool in an installed Ubuntu session, remove the PPA from your Software Sources.

Using Boot-Repair

Recommended repair
launch Boot-Repair from either :

the Dash (the Ubuntu logo at the top-left of the screen)

or by typing 'boot-repair' in a terminal

Then click the "Recommended repair" button. When repair is finished, note the URL (paste.ubuntu.com/XXXXX) that appeared on a paper, then reboot and check if you recovered access to your OSs.

If the repair did not succeed, indicate the URL to people who help you by email or forum.


Bonding TUN interfaces I am trying to do VPN tunnels bonding as explained by Simon Mott - VPN bonding. But after doing the steps, and when I tried to start the bonding I got the same error message as in https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9357365/bonding-two-tun-device-connected-to-openvpn .

Is there any solution for bonding TUN interfaces?

My other options:
Is there alternative to bonding?
Can I assign MAC address to TUN interface?

After research I found the following:

There is no way to bond tun devices. TUN devices are layer 3; while bonding works on layer 2.

And no you can't assign MAC address to TUN devices.

The solution to bond openvpn virtual interfaces is to use openvpn TAP instead on TUN. It has higher network overheads (bigger header and will send many broadcasting over the TAP) but it works fine with bonding.

This is easily doable, however don't follow Simon Mott - VPN bonding completely as ifenslave is deprecated and only works properly for bonding TUN connections on some kernels.

This is reliable:

echo "+tun0" > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/slaves
echo "+tun1" > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/slaves

Where tun1 and tun0 are the interface names of your SSH tunnels.


How to Access Boot Options 12.04 Live USB EDIT: I've now gotten to the point where I can type in a boot line. I just need to know what to enter. Does anybody know what the default boot line for the Ubuntu Live CD is? After that I think I just need to add nomodeset and it should boot.

I'm attempting to install 12.04 on my computer but booting from my USB drive results in a blank screen. This has happened since 10.04 and has always been fixed by putting nomodeset in the boot command, but now I can't access the boot options with F6 for some reason. How can I access the boot options?

I booted into the live image on a different computer and it worked fine. I'm sure it's because of my Nvidia graphics.

When I boot into the live image it shows a small gray box in the lower left corner of the screen and that's it. I can't edit the boot options or do anything else.

Thanks in advance.

As soon as you start to boot from the USB, hit any key and the Ubuntu Menu will come up...

If you press F6 you will get the other boot options (in the gray box in the corner) selecting one or more will append it to the boot command automatically.  If nomodeset doesn't work the next one to try would be apci=off.  After selecting the extra boot commands select "Try Ubuntu" and see if it will boot.

You are likely right about the problem being your Nvidia card but solving that problem is beyond me.  I think I was able to answer you initial question at least.

Personally, I use this Live USB software, works great. Worth givin it a try.

URL: http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/


Retrieving gpg Key timed out - What does this mean? I am unable to install any packages thru the terminal. After doing sudo add-apt-repository, the terminal seems to run normally (after about 5-10 minutes however) and am asked to hit enter. After I hit enter, I receive an error saying "Error: retrieving gpg key timed out.". Does anyone know what this error means and what I need to fix?

I see this question has been asked before on here but no answers unfortunately.  Error: retrieving gpg key timed out

+Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

+Processor: Intel Core i5-4590 CPU @ 3.30GHz

+RAM: 8GB

I had the exact same problem that you've described. I found that sometimes repositories can behave as if censored by your internet service provider (it's quite weird). I solved this problem by using a VPN. It will work the minute you hit Enter. No wait, no fuss, smooth sailing. I hope it works for you. If you're not sure what VPN works on Linux, check out ProtonVPN. It's free and fast.


Sound Input device (microphone) not working I have recently updated my laptop OS from Ubuntu 12.04 to 14.04

After updating the OS, my laptop's input device ie., microphone is not working.

Earlier it was working with Ubuntu 12.04.

Also there is no sound input device driver detected

I am using Dell Vostro 1014.

after running command $ gstreamer-properties, output is:

I think my microphone is working but is not being betected by ubuntu as in above screenshot.

But after running Pulse Audio Sound Control, it shows input sound progress, it means input device is working but not being detected. Even by Sound Recorder.

After running alsamixer the output is:

I had a similar problem - no sound input device driver detected. I used pavucontrol, as explained here and it solved the problem:

Install pavucontrol: sudo apt-get install pavucontrol
Run: sudo pavucontrol
Go to the "Input Devices" tab
Click the lock icon to unlock the channels
Under "Port", select the correct microphone (front or rear)

I had a similar problem on 14.04, sound input source was blank in the 'Sound Settings'.
I did the following, what did the trick is installing 'Audacity', for more info check the following link

sudo apt-get remove --purge alsa-base pulseaudio
sudo apt-get install alsa-base pulseaudio
sudo apt-get install audacity


How to change/fix system's locale when you setup in a language not official in your country? How do I set up a global locale for the computer?

I have recently installed Kubuntu 14.04LTS in english but since I am in Spain, I chose Spain as a country and then changed locale options so that I get all country specific configuration such as digit grouping, decimal separator, date format, etc. I also added the spanish language.

Now all applications complain that locale is wrong. check-language-support tells me I'm using en_ES.UTF-8 as system's locale, and that locale is indeed wrong, there is no locale for english language in Spain.

I tried using Kubuntu's country/region & language settings but it doesn't fix it. I tried using export LANG=en_GB.UTF-8 and export LC_ALL=en_GB.UTF-8 and then sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales and that caused check-language-support to say that I now have a correct configuration but if it is, it's only in that konsole session. This problem also prevents konsole from showing unicode characters and I cannot use dead keys or enter any 'international character' such as ñ or ç (those work on other applications such as Firefox, that I'm using to post this question).

So the question is: How do I set up a global locale for the computer?

This is not a bug report, I will probably reinstall my computer eventually if I can't fix it. But I really want to know how I can perform this REALLY basic task.

Thank you.

$ check-language-support
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
        LANGUAGE = "en:es:en",
        LC_ALL = (unset),
        LC_PAPER = "en_ES.UTF-8",
        LC_ADDRESS = "en_ES.UTF-8",
        LC_MONETARY = "en_ES.UTF-8",
        LC_NUMERIC = "en_ES.UTF-8",
        LC_TELEPHONE = "en_ES.UTF-8",
        LC_IDENTIFICATION = "en_ES.UTF-8",
        LC_MEASUREMENT = "en_ES.UTF-8",
        LC_TIME = "en_ES.UTF-8",
        LC_NAME = "en_ES.UTF-8",
        LANG = "en_ES.UTF-8"
    are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_MESSAGES to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_COLLATE to default locale: No such file or directory
hunspell-en-ca libreoffice-help-en-gb libreoffice-l10n-en-gb libreoffice-l10n-en-za mythes-en-au wspanish

$ cat /etc/default/locale
LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="es_ES.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="es_ES.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="es_ES.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="es_ES.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="es_ES.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="es_ES.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="es_ES.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="es_ES.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="es_ES.UTF-8"

$ locale
locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_MESSAGES to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory
LANG=en_ES.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=en:es:en
LC_CTYPE="en_ES.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC=en_ES.UTF-8
LC_TIME=en_ES.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE="en_ES.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY=en_ES.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES="en_ES.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER=en_ES.UTF-8
LC_NAME=en_ES.UTF-8
LC_ADDRESS=en_ES.UTF-8
LC_TELEPHONE=en_ES.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=en_ES.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=en_ES.UTF-8
LC_ALL=
$ update-locale
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
        LANGUAGE = "en:es:en",
        LC_ALL = (unset),
        LC_PAPER = "en_ES.UTF-8",
        LC_ADDRESS = "en_ES.UTF-8",
        LC_MONETARY = "en_ES.UTF-8",
        LC_NUMERIC = "en_ES.UTF-8",
        LC_TELEPHONE = "en_ES.UTF-8",
        LC_IDENTIFICATION = "en_ES.UTF-8",
        LC_MEASUREMENT = "en_ES.UTF-8",
        LC_TIME = "en_ES.UTF-8",
        LC_NAME = "en_ES.UTF-8",
        LANG = "en_ES.UTF-8"
    are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").

Bug is reported here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/kde-runtime/+bug/1322968 - "Changing country leads to invalid locale"

Workarounds:

Select country British English - not American English (and then
language Spain)
Or manually edit ~/.kde/env/setlocale.sh after having changed Country/Region & Language settings

Guys guys why are you going crazy?? All you need is to go to Search bar or Unity Lens (if Ubuntu)  type "Language" you will find "Country/Region & Language" Application.
In the "Country" Tab Choose your desired locale language.

If you want to keep current locale and change some other options like date format, or imperial to metric measurements, just use the other tabs! :)

This is available in Ubuntu distro 14.04 LTS and later.


After upgrade to Ubuntu 17.10 Suspend, Restart and Power Off does not work I have this very annoying problem, I have a laptop and when close the lid and reopen again, the computer does not start any more, showing a list of services loaded with "[OK]" but nothing more. I need to press the power button some seconds to power off completely closing all applications.

On the other hand, when I try to restart or Power Off after click on the icon in the topbar, then the message "The system will power off.." and buttons to select the action to do, take over 30 seconds to appear the first time. Anyway selecting Restart or Power off close the session, showing a loading screen but the computer does not Power off or restart never.

Tried:

[X] Different versions of Nvidia Driver.
[X] Disable Nividia drivers and using only Intel
[X] Wayland, Xorg

Details:

Any suggestion will be very welcome, I really need help with this annoying problem, I can't move with the laptop without closing all applications :X

After many tests the following solution works for me:

Login using Xorg does not use Wayland has many errors yet, anyway the login screen still uses Wayland, to disable the Wayland in the login screen:

sudo nano /etc/gdm3/custom.conf

Uncomment the line WaylandEnable=false to force the login screen to use Xorg

[daemon]
# Uncoment the line below to force the login screen to use Xorg
WaylandEnable=false

Restart!

Ran into the same thing with Ubuntu 17.10 on an Asus X550J laptop. Originally had upgraded from 17.04, tried to a clean install of 17.10. Tried all of the various driver suggestions; updating grub; etc. Finally found the solution -- BIOS settings.

On Asus computers you boot into BIOS settings by holding down the Escape key while the computer powers up. Once in BIOS tab to the Advanced settings and you'll see Wake on Lid Open and Power Off Energy Saving. I disabled both of those, rebooted, and now I can finally shut the lid on the laptop without it just powering off the system or getting frozen.

Hope that helps someone else avoid some hair pulling.


How to sync a folder to Ubuntu One cloud via command line? I'm writing a shell script to back up my databases and send that backups to my Ubuntu One cloud. Basically, it dumps the databases into a sql file named after current date, putting it in a folder under /var/backups.

I need to make this folder /var/backups/whatever syncronizable to Ubuntu One, and make it sync every time a new file is posted there, all by commandline. How can I do these?

u1sdtool - command line utility for controlling ubuntuone-syncdaemon

First hit on Google when I search for "Ubuntu one from command line". Is it what you're looking for?

After reading and reading which I LOOOVE  to do this link when followed correctly will allow you to sync internally whatever folder to your home ubuntu one shared folder and from there it will sync.

rsync -a /source /destination

If you want to maintain ownership/permissions/privileges/attributes (-a) OR

rsync /source /dest

You might need to do it as root if your source is owned by root.

source of info: https://serverfault.com/questions/259938/cron-job-to-copy-file-from-one-location-to-another-for-new-files-daily


How to make a script in init.d run later A package installed /etc/init.d/ccpd which is a script run at start up. I would like this script to be run as very last of all my start up scripts, how can I achieve this?

When your computer starts up, it doesn't run the init.d scripts directly.  Instead, depending on what's called the "runlevel", it runs the scripts in /etc/rcN.d (where N is the runlevel).  You can determine the current runlevel with the runlevel command; mine returns 2 in normal operation.  That means that when the computer started up, it ran the scripts in /etc/rc2.d.  The contents of rc2.d are just symlinks to scripts in /etc/init.d, named according to whether they should be started or stopped, and the order they should be run.

Use the runlevel command to find out what runlevel your computer is at (probably 2), then look in /etc/rc2.d for a link named SNNccpd, which will be a symlink to /etc/init.d/ccpd, and rename it to S99zzzccpd - or whatever it takes to get it to sort after the other entries - that will cause it to run last.

There's more information about init.d scripts and runlevels at https://www.linux.com/news/enterprise/systems-management/8116-an-introduction-to-services-runlevels-and-rcd-scripts

Rather than putting it as a service which always keeps running, what you can do remove it as a service from /etc/init.d

and make a script and put it in /root/bin or /usr/local/bin

Inside that script,

#!/bin/bash sleep 300
#call your service and run it in background
/usr/bin/ccpd &

the startup will continue and your stuff will run after 5 minutes

Now the last step is to make your script run on startup,
either add your script to /etc/fstab or to profile


How to restart GNOME Shell from command line? I would like to implement a keyboard shortcut to restart gnome-shell whenever this one crashes (some bugs aren't currently fixed just yet). For this I would need a command line to restart the shell.

The Alt+F2 and restart command won't work when the shell is crashed because the prompt is implemented in the shell.

Hence, how to restart the gnome-shell from command line?

GNOME Shell 3.30.1 on Ubuntu 18.10
The command to replace gnome-shell would be sending a SIGQUIT signal to it with:
killall -3 gnome-shell

or:
killall -SIGQUIT gnome-shell

As of GNOME Shell 3.30.1 on Ubuntu 18.10, the solution below no longer works, and will kick the user to the login screen, losing all of their work.
Before GNOME Shell 3.30.1
The command to replace gnome-shell would be:
gnome-shell --replace &

The ampersand is added to return the shell prompt after running the command; pressing Ctrl+C or closing the terminal instead would make the desktop unusable, and require a full restart.
From the manual page of gnome-shell:

-r, --replace
       Replace the running window manager

Unsure which version you are using?
The command to check your GNOME Shell version is:
gnome-shell --version

I came up with this function to logout users (see at the bottom)

It assumes

you have sudo permissions
you have bash
the users have 1 running X session (although you should be able to issue the same logout command multiple times to get rid of remaining sessions)

You can give it multiple usernames:

logout john jane mike elisa

And you can give it additional options:

logout john --force

So, I have the following helper function:

function forcelogout() {
    logout "$@" --no-prompt --force
}

Notes:

This is a blunt instruments and works by just copying the entire session environment. This could be more selective.
Sometimes logout seems to take a while
In rare occasions the session keeps being reported until someone visits the vt where the session ran, but nothing is there anymore)

CODE

function logout() {
    local USERNAME
    export USERNAMES=( )
    while [ -n "$1" ]; do case "$1" in
        -* ) break ;;
        *) USERNAMES+=( "$1" ); shift ;;
    esac; done

    for USERNAME in "${USERNAMES[@]}"; do
        local SESSION_PID=$(pgrep -fu "$USERNAME" gnome-session|head -1)
        if [ -n "$SESSION_PID" ]; then
            (
                sudo -u "$USERNAME" cat "/proc/$SESSION_PID/environ" | xargs -0 -n 1 echo export
                echo "gnome-session-quit --logout $@"
            ) | sudo -u "$USERNAME" sh -;
        fi
    done
}


How can I check dependency list for a deb package How can I check dependency list for a deb package. I am running Ubuntu 11.10 and I have backed up all deb packages from var/cache/apt/archives. I want to format my pc and re-install selected applications only. Also how can I get the list of installed packages and dependencies.

This will show you all the information about the package:

dpkg -I package.deb

Here is some sloppy, and probably not very encompassing post-processing you can do to dpkg -I output to get dependency items as a list:

Condensed for computers

# dpkg -I package.deb | python -c "import sys, re; t=re.split(r'\n(?= ?[\w]+:)|:', sys.stdin.read()); print '\n'.join([i.strip() for i in {key.strip(): value.strip() for key, value in zip(t[::2], t[1::2])}['Depends'].split(',')])"
#

Expanded for humans:

dpkg -I package.deb | python -c "
    import sys, re;
    # Split keys and values into pairs (zipped together later)
    t=re.split(
        r'\n(?= ?[\w]+:)|:',
        sys.stdin.read()
    );
    # Newline separate each dependency
    print '\n'.join([
        # Trim each dependency value
        i.strip() for i in {
            # Build assoc array from package metadata
            key.strip(): value.strip()
            for key, value in zip(t[::2], t[1::2])
        }['Depends'].split(',')
    ])
"


How to combine/merge pages in pdf file (GUI)? I want to combine two pages in pdf file into single page.

Consider I have a pdf file in which there are two pages, now I want to combine two pages into (single) one, No-matter for (how-long) page-size!

How to do that?

Note: This question is not about combine two pdf files or merging pdf files or adding pages in pdf files.

Also visit Question about scaling page in pdf.

PDFJam (Not a GUI app)

Multiple pages can be combined with it.

sudo apt-get install pdfjam

Then you need to use the pdfnup command to combine pages:

pdfnup -2 [INPUT].pdf [OUTPUT].pdf

This will combine two input pages per one output page.

Refer to man pdfnup for more details.

Also refer this Stackoverflow question.

You can use ghostscript to combine various pdf documents into one, using the following command in terminal:

assuming we have two pdf documents named doc1.pdf and doc2.pdf and we want to combine them into a newly document named combined.pdf

gs -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOUTPUTFILE=combined.pdf -dBATCH doc1.pdf doc2.pdf

or for all files in directory

gs -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOUTPUTFILE=combined.pdf -dBATCH *.pdf


Google chrome account broken I have been experiencing this problem ever since I re installed ubuntu 14.04

I can not force google sync account to work properly

I get this error every time I start chrome

First I thought it was fault of "passwords and keys" (I am talking about the password, you set after you install chrome)
 Well I disabled it and no go it still would give me that error.
Then I've tried to re install chrome multiple times, even tried to install beta version, Still no go.
 While installing and re installing chrome I've signed in and signed out multiple times from google chrome but nothing helps.
I even deleted chrome's folder from ubuntu file

Nothing seems to work, does anyone knows what to do in a situation like this ??

THank you in advance

ls -al .config/ | grep chrom shows this:

drwx------  7 levan levan 4096 სექ 11 03:52 google-chrome

her is (ls -al .config/google-chrome/) output

    ls -al .config/google-chrome/
total 7508
drwx------  7 levan levan    4096 სექ 11 04:00 .
drwx------ 27 levan levan    4096 სექ 11 03:15 ..
-rw-r-----  1 levan levan  213973 სექ 11 03:50 Certificate Revocation Lists
-rw-------  1 levan levan       6 სექ 11 03:15 Channels
drwx------  2 levan levan    4096 სექ 11 03:15 Crash Reports
drwx------ 12 levan levan    4096 სექ 11 03:24 Default
drwx------  2 levan levan    4096 სექ 11 03:16 Dictionaries
-rw-r-----  1 levan levan       0 სექ 11 03:15 First Run
-rw-------  1 levan levan   49236 სექ 11 04:00 Local State
drwx------  3 levan levan    4096 სექ 11 03:35 pnacl
drwx------ 16 levan levan    4096 სექ 11 03:56 Profile 1
-rw-rw-r--  1 levan levan 5163740 სექ 11 03:33 Safe Browsing Bloom
-rw-rw-r--  1 levan levan 1009218 სექ 11 03:33 Safe Browsing Bloom Prefix Set
-rw-r--r--  1 levan levan    6144 სექ 11 03:33 Safe Browsing Cookies
-rw-r--r--  1 levan levan    4640 სექ 11 03:33 Safe Browsing Cookies-journal
-rw-rw-r--  1 levan levan  113284 სექ 11 03:33 Safe Browsing Csd Whitelist
-rw-rw-r--  1 levan levan 1016684 სექ 11 03:33 Safe Browsing Download
-rw-rw-r--  1 levan levan   14532 სექ 11 03:33 Safe Browsing Download Whitelist
-rw-rw-r--  1 levan levan   36664 სექ 11 03:33 Safe Browsing Extension Blacklist
-rw-rw-r--  1 levan levan     696 სექ 11 03:33 Safe Browsing IP Blacklist
lrwxrwxrwx  1 levan levan      20 სექ 11 03:29 SingletonCookie -> 15826594184631451903
lrwxrwxrwx  1 levan levan      12 სექ 11 03:29 SingletonLock -> Genesis-3672
lrwxrwxrwx  1 levan levan      46 სექ 11 03:29 SingletonSocket -> /tmp/.com.google.Chrome.gBPfaM/SingletonSocket

Sign out of your Google Chrome account if signed in.  And quit the browser.
Delete the user data with this command: rm -r ~/.config/google-chrome/Default
Relaunch Google Chrome.  The error should now be gone, re-signin to your Google Chrome account and let it sync back your personal settings, extensions, and bookmarks.

Edit: Warning.  If you don't have your bookmarks and such synced to your Google account then #2 will delete them with no recovery.

I get this now and then.
Usually there are leftover/crashed chrome processes still open.

Kill them via Terminal/System Monitor, reopen chrome and the account-error is gone.
At least for me this does the trick.


Visual Artifacts when using nVidia Prime on Intel driven monitors I've got a Dell XPS 15 which has 2 display outputs, one HDMI which is apparently driven by the onboard intel graphics card, one DP driven by the nVidia card. I've tried to setup a triple screen setup (onboard monitor, HDMI and DP) and its all working nicely except that the two monitors driven by the Intel card have some horrible visual artifacts permanently flickering on the screen.

They do not appear when taking a screenshot so its got to be something to do with the graphics card/driver. I've gone a bit retro and taken a photo of one of the screens to illustrate it.

I think I got a bit unlucky with the photo, most of the time there are way more dotted lines than that, covering the screen. They flicker around quite a lot. Interestingly while they don't appear on the nVidia-driven screen usually, if I drag a window over there then the artifacts appear around the outside of the edge of the window.

These visual artifacts do not appear when the nVidia card is disabled (so the intel card is not just broken). Its only when using nVidia prime to display on both sets of screens.

Any ideas for what I can try? It feels like I've tried every imaginable setting on nVIdia settings and on Compiz.

Thanks...

There is a solution of mine with this cuda-SDK-beta-1.1 package of NVIDIA ... but this is not for beginners, and it is risky to test it, but it cannot damage your hardware ... Here I post this link, where my workout, worked on my little laptop a good while - BUT you should first wait for new upcoming answers, if somebody has a better solution. Test this posted contribution at the end of all answers.

How can I Install Nvidia Driver GT 520 and Cuda 5.0 in Ubuntu13.04?

Your Dell-Laptop is only different by BIOS and that it is optimized for Win'8 ... not sure
if this solution would work, probably you would have to modify the steps.

Also test this at the end of all answers.


grub-efi-amd64-signed package failed to install into/ target on installation from 16.04.4 live usb on Dell Inspiron 3180 I am trying to install Ubuntu 16.04 on my laptop (Dell Inspiron 3180). I tried a live 18.04 USB first of all but it kept freezing after a few seconds, keypad or touch pad wouldn't work both when trying the installer and running live. Windows 10 was pre installed on the laptop

I made a 16.04.4 USB, when I tried this live, the touchpad wouldn't work, but I was able to navigate and use the keypad. I figured if I could complete the installation it would free up the USB slot for me to try a wired mouse which might work. I began the installation and everything worked until I received the error:

  'grub-efi-amd64-signed' package failed to install into/ target/. without the grub boot loader....

I couldn't read the rest as the installation was trying to move on and the screen faded and powered down. When I restarted the PC it was running a hardware diagnostic.

Any ideas on what to try would be appreciated?

Here are some photos showing how I tried the installation step by step

How's it going, I have tried every series of ubuntu 18,16,14, budgie, bodhi, lubtuntu. The only one that I could get to work right out of installation was ubuntu 14.04. Every time I upgrade it freezes etc.

Hope this helps.


I just installed 12.10 and how do I update unity? I can't access the launcher, unity, or anything and have to use basic terminal commands to do anything. I keep getting this error when trying to update manually:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 libqtgui4:i386 : Depends: libtiff5:i386 (> 4.0.0-1~) but it is not installed
 libsane:i386 : Depends: libtiff5:i386 (> 4.0.0-1~) but it is not installed
 libtiff4:i386 : Depends: libjbig0:i386 but it is not installed

Please help. Thanks.

try  :

sudo apt-get install --reinstall ubuntu-desktop ,
     sudo apt-get install --reinstall unity
Restart Unity: setsid unity
Restart Compiz: setsid compiz --replace
Restart X Display Manager:  sudo -s , setsid service lightdm restart

Change your repository to main, I got the same issue when I tried installing Skype which needs these files, seems like not all repositories have been synced right.


"method driver /usr/lib/apt/methods/https could not be found" update error sudo apt-get update
E: The method driver /usr/lib/apt/methods/https could not be found.
michael@Ubuntu:~$ sudo apt-get clean
michael@Ubuntu:~$ cd /var/lib/apt
michael@Ubuntu:/var/lib/apt$ sudo mv lists lists.old
michael@Ubuntu:/var/lib/apt$ sudo mkdir -p lists/partial
michael@Ubuntu:/var/lib/apt$ sudo apt-get clean
michael@Ubuntu:/var/lib/apt$ sudo apt-get update
E: The method driver /usr/lib/apt/methods/https could not be found.
E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), is another process using it?
michael@Ubuntu:/var/lib/apt$ sudo apt-get update
E: The method driver /usr/lib/apt/methods/https could not be found.

Why am I getting these errors when doing an apt-get update?

Try:

sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https

Check the files in this directory: /etc/apt/sources.list.d

One of the files addressed a repository starting with HTTPS. Comment that line by adding # in the beginning and try:  apt-get update


Is Xubuntu really faster than Ubuntu? I installed xubuntu desktop on top of ubuntu 12.04. The usage of RAM and CPU is in general lower than in ubuntu. But when it comes to some serious computations I did not see much of a difference between the two. For example, I ran a Matlab program that took 99 seconds to run on ubuntu and 98 seconds on xubuntu. Then I ran Geekbench benchmarking and the overall scores ubuntu and xubuntu are 2996 and 2997, respectively. My laptop is a 4 year old dell 1535. Would things run faster on a clean install of xubuntu?

The Kernel is the same, the underlying system is the same, the tools are the same, the desktop is different. it's the same Operating System it's just using  different Desktop Environment.

My friend,
Matlab would be slower on any system that's what it is. Matlab is written in C++ and you are not compiling it from source for your system to build binaries. Its all compiled code and it is one of the slowest scientific computation environment. It doesn't really matter whether you run it on an RHEL, ubuntu or xfce version of Ubuntu. Don't look for these kind of bench marks. Look for things like sensor outputs throughout the day for normal and extreme usage in your system. Smart data is available for sensors. Just see how the resources are being used through out the day. Don't do benchmarks with Matlab. Atleast write a real scientific code in c++ and fortran and run it in both environments and see if there is any difference (would be pointless still if you are gonna do something stupid do it right). If you are the looks person use Ubuntu. If you are the stability person go for xubuntu. It hardly crashes unless you do something stupid.


What does "Ctrl + Alt + F12" do? I accidentally pressed Ctrl+Alt+F12 and my display turned to black... I then had to make a reboot.. What did it do to my system? Also what does Alt+ F8 to F10 do?

Pressing Ctrl+Alt+Fn (or just Alt+Fn when not in X11, the GUI) switches to the nth virtual console (ttyn).

Often we talk about a virtual console as a usable text console. So we often say there are six virtual consoles, accessible with Alt+F1 through Alt+F6 (holding down Ctrl too if you're in the GUI when you want to switch). And we often say that then, separately, is the GUI, which can be switched (back) to with Alt+F7.

But in fact, tty7, where the GUI typically runs, is a virtual console too. It's just not usable as a text console, because it doesn't have getty running for it. getty runs for tty1 through tty6 (by default). getty sets a virtual console up to be used like a terminal and runs login to prompt for a username and password.

You can see the getty commands that are running by filtering the output of ps:

ek@Kip:~$ ps ax | grep -v grep | grep getty
 1127 tty4     Ss+    0:00 /sbin/getty -8 38400 tty4
 1150 tty5     Ss+    0:00 /sbin/getty -8 38400 tty5
 1171 tty2     Ss+    0:00 /sbin/getty -8 38400 tty2
 1172 tty3     Ss+    0:00 /sbin/getty -8 38400 tty3
 1175 tty6     Ss+    0:00 /sbin/getty -8 38400 tty6
11231 tty1     Ss+    0:00 /sbin/getty -8 38400 tty1

Since tty7 is the first virtual console that is not set up to behave like a terminal (i.e., no getty is running for it), that's the one X11 (which provides the GUI) uses.

Virtual consoles higher than tty7 exist also. It's just that, ordinarily, they neither have getty running for them, nor do they have X11 using them. The first 12 virtual consoles are accessible with the key combinations described above using function keys (because a keyboard typically has only 12 numbered function keys). They are accessible even if nothing is happening on them.

Thus, when you press Ctrl+Alt+F12, you get a blank screen because you are now on tty12, which has nothing at all running on it.

As an interesting exercise, you might try running:

sudo /sbin/getty -8 38400 tty12

Then press Alt+F12 (or Ctrl+Alt+F12 if you're in the GUI rather than one of the first 6 virtual consoles).

This will bring you to tty12, which now has a login screen and is usable as a terminal.

(If you wanted to permanently create usable text-based consoles on higher-numbered virtual consoles, then you should configure init to run getty for them automatically. When getty is run manually as above, or even if you were to add that line to a startup script, you won't get the ability to login again after logging out on the virtual console, because getty won't automatically run again. Furthermore, there are some other problems running getty in that way for production use--for example, bash job control might not be available in your login shell, after you log in. If you want to make more virtual consoles usable as text-based terminal emulators, I recommend asking a separate question about that.)

I've had several system freezes recently, mostly when running wine applications. CTRL+ALT+F12 is the only key combination that lets me do a warm reboot.


error while loading shared libraries: libmysqlclient.so.15: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory I'm getting this error when I execute my db_server

**root@v-8966:/home/talisman/db# ./db_server

./db_server: error while loading shared libraries: libmysqlclient.so.15: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Can anyone help me?

libmysqlclient.so.15 is no longer available in any supported version of Ubuntu. Ask your program's developers if a more recent version, linked against a more recent version of libmysqlclient, exists. If not, you might be out of luck.

You didn't install the MySQL client for PHP.
Try installing it

sudo apt-get install php5-mysql

I am assuming that you are using the default PHP 5 that comes with Ubuntu.


flash getting struck in 14.04 from 1 day From 1day, I am unable to watch videos in firefox(I think its 33 version that time).
So, today I installed latest version of firefox, chrome, flash.

Now, firefox not showing that warning, but the video gets struck every few seconds.  I have to move a few seconds ahead to get it working.

sudo apt-get install flashplugin-installer

Same struck happening in chrome.

I donno if its really flash problem but I have done one extra thing.
I download a deb file for some screensharing and installed that. while installing it said it had no proper standards(just warning), so I proceeded. I think its not problem as the installed software is working properly, but mentioning.

Any faced this problem recently ?

Any solution ?

It sounds to me as as though something is interfering with your internet speed.  Several causes are possible.  If you have cable as opposed to FIOS, comcast in particular is well known for dialing back your performance if you exceed their predetermined expectations of your "unlimited internet".

Other possibilities include wifi interference if you are using wifi.  If a neighbor installs a new wifi router and it is on the same radio frequency channel, especially a popular default one like 6 or 11 and that's what you have, the interference will cause internet dropouts.  To diagnose that I recommend installing "WIFI RADAR" and letting it sit for at least 30 minutes to see what channels are being used near you.  When you find out, you can log into your wifi router and manually change your channel.

Also if you have a cell phone or cordless phone handy... like the rest of us, please try to keep it as far from your wifi device and router as possible as it too can result in slowness.

I'm guessing one of these is right, and if so, please tell me which one worked for you.

i used to solve it with forcing flash player instead of html5 - eventhough you have flash plugin installed, many websites turned to html5 by default.

there used to be an option on youtube.com/html5 to turn on/off the html5 player, but nowdays its gone. try to use some browser plugin which forces to use flash instead of html5


Boot problems after installing package `android`. How do I fix it? I was thinking to play with my android phone through usb, so I did an apt-get install android* on my laptop. This this broke my boot. I can not boot it normally, but if I go into recovery and then resume, it boots OK (though graphics are running slower).

I then removed the android packages with apt-get remove android*, but this didn't fix it. The boot hangs as pictured below.

The logs for the boot are nowhere to found. But I found this in /var/log/dmesg

[   21.073633] init: Failed to spawn lxc-android-config main process: unable to execute: No such file or directory
[   21.081249] init: adbd-emergency-shell pre-start process (894) terminated with status 2
[   21.785001] init: udev-fallback-graphics main process (917) terminated with status 1
[   23.425461] init: ureadahead-touch main process (664) terminated with status 1
[   23.456583] init: lxc-android-boot main process (1012) terminated with status 127
[   23.546875] init: friendly-recovery post-stop process (658) terminated with status 1
[   23.547479] init: failsafe main process (1010) killed by TERM signal
[   24.375532] init: set.pretty-hostname main process (1157) terminated with status 127

What did I do and how to fix this. Any suggestions?

I experienced this recently whilst playing around with Ubuntu Touch and Android linux containers (lxc). the symptom was my system would hang on the boot-up splash screen (after entering my LUKS passphrase).

I fixed this by going into recovery mode and deleting /etc/ureadahead-touch.conf and doing a complete removal in Synaptic of android-tools-adb, android-tools-fastboot lxc-android-config and ubuntu-device-flash.

From the command line the following should work:

sudo rm  /etc/ureadahead-touch.conf
sudo apt-get purge android-tools-adb android-tools-fastboot lxc-android-config ubuntu-device-flash

I'm not sure which of these was causing the problem, but they were all putting stuff in /etc which may have been causing the problem. After this my system booted up normally. Most likely it was the lxc-android-config stuff causing problems.

Hopefully this will save other people from the same issue in the future. It was also helpful to disable the Ubuntu splash screen, by disabling plymouth.

You have to uninstall android-tools-adbd

And then reboot


I solved it by purging, then reinstalling the nvidia drivers

sudo apt-get purge 'nvidia*'
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers
sudo apt-get update

Then using the Software & Updates tool's Additional Drivers tab and installing the latest nvidia drivers

I connected my external monitor through VGA and went to Settings > Devices > Displays choose Mirror and then Apply. was asked if I wanted to keep this Setting choose Yes and everything connected. Simple and Beautiful.