Ubuntu 12.04 --- grub-efi-amd64-signed failed to install into /target/ I have HP Pavillion 14-n009tu laptop (i-5, 4GB) with Windows-8 OS installed on it.
I am trying to install ubuntu 12.04 as a dual boot OS on Windows8.
I have disabled fast boot and secure boot options also.
I am facing following error while installing ubuntu 12.04:

grub-efi-amd64-signed failed to install into /target/. Without GRUB boot loader,
the installed system will not boot

I have created three partitions:

38GB-ext4- Root mounted
08GB-ext4- /home
10GB Swap area

Please guide me how to resolve this problem.

Hey Ramji Had the exact same problem.
What fixed my problem was that i went through the steps again and made sure I was connected to the Internet the second time.
go through the process again (don't partition again because the hard drive is still partitioned ) but this time chose the option to format the partitions so that you erase the information that was loaded before the installation failed.
look at the comments here
Why 12.04 Fails to install grub-efi to /target/?
if you are still having problems follow this instructions
http://www.everydaylinuxuser.com/2013/09/install-ubuntu-linux-alongside-windows.html

Disable the "Fast Boot" and "secure Boot" options in Boot Options menu. Select Legacy Boot. Restart the installation process. Create a boot partition >1MB during installation. This solved the issue for me in UBUNTU 16.04 LTS installation.
Partitions created:
/boot       - 2048 MB
swap        - 10000 MB
/           - 50000 MB
/home       - 100000 MB

Marked remaining to be unused.


problem occuring while creating .exe file I'm trying to run test problem in the mfix but got struck with an error sh: 0: Can't open ../../model/make_mfix.

bhaskar@admin2-Precision-T7600:~/mfix/run/tests/Added_Mass$ sh ../../model/make_mfix
sh: 0: Can't open ../../model/make_mfix

can anyone tell why it occurs and how to get rid of it.

Does the file exist and do you have read permissions on it. Is it executable, it's directory path needs to be executable. The commands ls -l and chmod will help.
Secondly your terminology is a bit microsoft, sh files which execute more like  .bat files and binaries which ms calls  .exe.


How to install the Web Apps in Ubuntu 16.04 Can't Install the Web Apps in Ubuntu 16.04
I tried to do this to resolve the problem
but got error message saying,

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?

You should remove the lock file. After that try again what you wanted to do.

sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/lock

Remove your /var/lib/dpkg/lock file.

sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/lock
sudo dpkg --configure -a

after this run sudo apt-get update.

It should work fine now.


Unable to ping box after logout I have a physical machine running ubuntu server 16.04, and I am having a bit of trouble interacting with it. When I run ifconfig I see it's public IP address, but when I try to ping it from another machine nothing happens.

What I have been able to do in order to interact with it, is on the server, login as some user, run sudo service networking restart and then I can interact with the machine remotely (ping for example). However, the second I run exit or logout on the server, I can no longer interact with it again.

It's also worth noting that I don't seem to be able to ping anything from the server until I restart the networking like I mentioned just above. Once I restart networking, I can ping out, but again once I log out and in again, I am back where I started.

How can I begin to have the networking setup such that it simply works on boot?

The contents of /etc/network/interfaces is:

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

source /etc/network/interfaces.d/*

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto enp8s0
iface enp8s0 inet dhcp

UPDATE:

It would appear that even after restarting the networking service, I can still only intermittently ping it.

I suggest the following /etc/network/interfaces file:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto enp8s0
iface enp8s0 inet static
address 192.168.254.120
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.254.1
dns-nameservers 8.8.8.8 192.168.254.1

Be sure to select an address outside the range used for DHCP in the router. Of course, substitute your details here.

Now get the system to read and use the changes:

sudo ifdown enp8s0 && sudo ifup enp8s0

Check that you can reach the internet:

ping -c3 www.ubuntu.com

You can try /etc/rc.local. To run a command at startup, use
sudo nano /etc/rc.local and at the first availble line, type sudo networking restart. hope this helps


GUI based options: Advanced Archiving "Zip 7z etc..." Does a graphical archive manager exist for linux that has the advanced settings that 7z and others have on windows?

Something with settings like "Use here as temp" "thread count to use" "Memory to use".

I want to start compressing my massive download and etc data into contiguous files.

For Linux, The default Archive manager, File Roller is present; Which is really efficient and comparable to the performance of 7zip under windows.

On the official download page of 7zip, you may also find alternatives for Linux (approximately in the middle of the page).

You may also run your windows softwares inside Ubuntu using the Wine Software.

The Archive Manager (default) is certainly one of the easy GUI archive manager available in Ubuntu right now. Or to find one with the specific options you need, you might have to look in the Software Center.


Mounting iPad/iPhone on Ubuntu 12.04 Is there an update on the issue about mounting IOS devices on Ubuntu that has the "trust this computer" message loop?

The issue was resolved after updating my 12.04 to 14.04. It might not be the best answer but it resolved the issue. I just hope there is an easier way to resolve this.

There are updated packages available in a PPA that might help with your problem. To install them, do the following.

$ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ingo/ios7support
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
$ sudo mkdir /var/lib/lockdown
$ sudo chmod 777 /var/lib/lockdown


Black screen after entering the password on Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 I'm having this issue where I enter my password and all I get is a black screen with the mouse cursor moving around, it's the same closed issue from here.

Purging package configuration doesn't do anything, and lately pressing CTR + ALT + F1 won't bring up the console like it should, so I have to shutdown the system and start again!

My kernel version is: 4.4.0.53 and I have an Intel graphics card.

Could it be related to the /dev/sda1: recovering journal? I've been getting that more often lately (we have electrical issues).

At times the boot logo would delay for several minutes as well, is that related?

Found this link on launch pad that is similar to my issue:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1559576

There seems to be an error in the last kernel update.
Try to use an older kernel version under extended boot options.

4.4.0.42 --> stable ! with Intel GPU.

I dont know surely, but had this problem once too when I was frickling with nvidia-driver in the past with Ubuntu 13.10.
You might try following three steps in terminal :

1.)

  sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop

2.)

  sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

3.)

  sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start

Instead of step 2.) you might try :

  sudo apt-get install --reinstall xserver-xorg

Hope this hits as solution to you.
In case gdm was lost before you might try too :

  sudo apt-get install --reinstall gdm

In the end you should clean up with :

  sudo apt-get autoremove

In case gdm was not installed with gnome together, then after:

  sudo apt-get install gdm

there should following :

  sudo service lightdm stop

and

  sudo service gdm start

Then reboot the machine.


Disk utility running for a long time I had a spare, old external usb hard disk which stopped working long time back due to improper removal of disk. I tried fixing it in windows (when I did not have ubuntu yet), however I couldn't fix it.

So I tried formatting the disk and creating a new partition using the disk utility in ubuntu. However it seems to keep running without any indication of the progress or whatsoever. I have no idea what is happening. I have attached a screenshot below to show what I mean.

As you can from the screenshot above it seems to be working on it but no indication on the progress or what it is doing. Any attempt to exit it or do any other task like safe removal or format partition leads to the the following dialog box.

What should I do? Wait or restart the computer..???

Update: I installed gparted as per the answer however when creating the partition of the type ext4 I had the same problem. It ran for hours (I waited around 10 hours) and when I checked it was stuck. The application froze. So I restarted and then deleted the disk and then created a new partition of the type ntfs and it was done in 5 minutes!!

The problem seems to be creating a ext4 partition. Any reasons why?

Install and use gparted to format the usb-drive. It is safish to simply restart your computer, considering you want to wipe the drive and it was "broken" before. Takes about a minute to format 2GB drive.

I know this is an old question but I had the exact same problem. The Disk Utility just carried on for ages without giving me any idea how long it was going to take.

In the end I gave up, attached the USB drive to a PC running Windows Vista and formatted it as Ext3 using Paragon Partition Manager 11, job done in under 2 minutes!


Is apt-get upgrade a dangerous command? When I use apt-get update and apt-get upgrade,there are some packages should installed in newest version,like below:

The following packages will be upgraded:
  accountsservice apparmor apport apt apt-transport-https apt-utils binutils
  cloud-init cpp-4.8 dpkg fuse g++-4.8 gcc-4.8 gcc-4.8-base gdisk gnupg gpgv
  grub-common grub-legacy-ec2 grub-pc grub-pc-bin grub2-common initscripts
  isc-dhcp-client isc-dhcp-common libaccountsservice0 libapparmor-perl
  libapparmor1 libapt-inst1.5 libapt-pkg4.12 libasan0 libatomic1 libbsd0
  libcurl3-gnutls libdrm2 libedit2 libfuse2 libgcc-4.8-dev libgd3 libgomp1
  libitm1 libjson-c2 libjson0 libnuma1 libpam-systemd libpolkit-agent-1-0
  libpolkit-backend-1-0 libpolkit-gobject-1-0 libquadmath0 libstdc++-4.8-dev
  libstdc++6 libsystemd-daemon0 libsystemd-login0 libtsan0 libudev1 libxext6
  linux-libc-dev ntpdate openssl overlayroot patch policykit-1 ppp
  python-urllib3 python3-apport python3-problem-report python3-update-manager
  rsyslog systemd-services sysv-rc sysvinit-utils tcpdump tzdata udev
  update-manager-core
75 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 4 not upgraded.

If I didn't know every one of there packages what will happen if there update in newest version.I shouldn't execute this command(apt-get upgrade).

For example:

This php version is before I upgrade

yzxu@ubuntu:/tmp/git-2.1.2$ php --version
PHP 5.6.6-1+deb.sury.org~precise+1 (cli)
Copyright (c) 1997-2015 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.6.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2015 Zend Technologies
    with Zend OPcache v7.0.6-dev, Copyright (c) 1999-2015, by Zend Technologies

and after I upgrade:

yzxu@ubuntu:/tmp/git-2.1.2$ php --version
PHP 5.6.10-1+deb.sury.org~precise+1 (cli)
Copyright (c) 1997-2015 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.6.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2015 Zend Technologies
    with Zend OPcache v7.0.6-dev, Copyright (c) 1999-2015, by Zend Technologies

The php version is changed.And if I didn't what what was change in two version,should I upgrade it?Is it will influence product?

apt-get update

Refreshes the repositories and fetches information about packages that are available online.

apt-get upgrade

Downloads and installs updates for all installed packages - as long as it doesn't bother dependencies (install new packages, remove old ones or crosses a repo source (switch a package from one repo to another)).

apt-get dist-upgrade

Does the same as "upgrade" but upgrades a package also when dependencies or sources are changed (something you want to avoid on servers without further testing).

To conclude - an update can break things but it is necessary!
So if you are on a desktop you should normally do a:

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

Without destroying something.

On a server most of the times a:

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

should be enough AND security updates should be installed automatically (on servers and desktops)

Update to 16.04

Meanwhile the "apt" wrapper is the standard way in Ubuntu, so the commands are now:

sudo apt update        #to update the repo-information

sudo apt upgrade       #to install all security fixes and changes that doesn't harm the system or change the behaviour

sudo apt full-upgrade  #the new "dist-upgrade" that installs newer versions that can break backwards-compatibility

TL;DR!

Yes, you should update PHP in this example because it is a security fix (this can be seen through the versioning scheme of PHP; it also wouldn't have been pushed into the "upgrade" channel of Ubuntu.)

sudo apt-get update

This only updates all your Installed Softwares.
This is Also Necessary when you Installed OS for the first time.. As it firstly needs Update, then only Enables you to use the Installed Softwares..

Edit:
And Upgrade is Used to Upgrade the packages which were not installed correctly..


Renaming hundreds of files at once for proper sorting I have a ton of files, all named stuff like 1.jpg, 2.jpg, 3.jpg, and so on up to 1439.jpg, however, I have a problem with one of my projects and alphabetizing. It will usually go in the order 1.jpg, 10.jpg, 11.jpg and so on.

What I need is some way to name the files so they are in the format such as 00001.jpg all the way up to 01439.jpg.

How would I be able to do this quickly and efficiently?

Ubuntu comes with a script called rename. It's just a little Perl script that features a number of powerful bulk-renaming features but the best (in this case) is the ability for it to run Perl during the replacement. The result is a truly compact solution:

rename 's/\d+/sprintf("%05d", $&)/e' *.jpg

This is similar to the other printf-style answers here but it's all handled for us. The code above is for a 5-digit number (including a variable number of leading zeros).

It will search and replace the first number-string it finds with a zero-padded version and leave the rest of the filename alone. This means you don't have to worry too much about carrying any extension or prefix over.

Note: this is not completely portable. Many distributions use rename.ul from the util-linux package as their default rename binary. This is a significantly stunted alternative (see man rename.ul) which won't understand the above. If you'd like this on a platform that isn't using Perl's rename, find out how to install that first.

And here's a test harness:

$ touch {1..19}.jpg

$ ls
10.jpg  12.jpg  14.jpg  16.jpg  18.jpg  1.jpg  3.jpg  5.jpg  7.jpg  9.jpg
11.jpg  13.jpg  15.jpg  17.jpg  19.jpg  2.jpg  4.jpg  6.jpg  8.jpg

$ rename 's/\d+/sprintf("%05d", $&)/e' *.jpg

$ ls
00001.jpg  00005.jpg  00009.jpg  00013.jpg  00017.jpg
00002.jpg  00006.jpg  00010.jpg  00014.jpg  00018.jpg
00003.jpg  00007.jpg  00011.jpg  00015.jpg  00019.jpg
00004.jpg  00008.jpg  00012.jpg  00016.jpg

And an example prefixes (we aren't doing anything different):

$ touch track_{9..11}.mp3 && ls
track_10.mp3  track_11.mp3  track_9.mp3

$ rename 's/\d+/sprintf("%02d", $&)/e' *.mp3 && ls
track_09.mp3  track_10.mp3  track_11.mp3

for file in `(find * -maxdepth 1 -type f -name "*.jpg")`
do
  mv $file "000"$file
done

This is crude, since it doesn't do the renaming intelligently, will need to think of a trick for that. But it should help you sort stuff.

Update: Well you have a more complete answer.


Ubuntu doesn't boot after 11.10 upgrade from 11.04 Had this problem earlier: Crash after update to 11.10, from 11.04; ran the solution and had everything updated and upgraded.

I get the following lines after booting with some of the preceding start, stop an [OK] lines as the other topic.

* Checking battery state...
[   21.640534] btusb_intr_complete: hci0 urb ffff88011e948480 failed to resubmit (19)
[   21.640690] btusb_bulk_complete: hci0 urb ffff88011e948cc0 failed to resubmit (19)
[   21.640734] btusb_bulk_complete: hci0 urb ffff88011e9480c0 failed to resubmit (19)

I run tty2 and execute startx to start the GUI that I'm using right now but Ubuntu won't boot without it.

Looks like the display manager is not loading. Try these commands,

sudo service lightdm start

If this works, it means lightdm is installed but not configured as default display manager. To set it as default display manager, use this command.

sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm

and choose lightdm as default display manager. If the above command does not work, try this

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install lightdm

In case it still doesn't work, try purging lightdm and reinstalling.

sudo apt-get purge lightdm
sudo apt-get install lightdm

I just entered sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm and selected
gdm and EVERYTHING WORKS! again... especially Google-Earth.
(after all else failed...)


Accidentally formatted partition, want to recover files I had elementary OS luna installed in my hdd, a few days before, I installed Ubuntu 12.04 in another partition (ext4) .  I accidentally formatted the partition containing ubuntu (to ext4) , I realised it instantly and unmounted the formatted drive and haven't written anything to it until now. How to get the partition back ?

Will my grub bootloader work ? I have ubuntu installed last , if it fails what should i do ?

    fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000361e8

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1       921059328   976773119    27856896   83  Linux
/dev/sda3   *        2046   419635199   209816577    5  Extended
/dev/sda4       419635200   921059327   250712064    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda5       251867136   252893183      513024   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6       252895232   419635199    83369984   83  Linux
/dev/sda7            2048   125042963    62520458   83  Linux
/dev/sda8       125044736   251867135    63411200   83  Linux

sda8 is the accidentally formatted drive.

you can set up your grub boot loader to start with defined OS.if you cannot do it,start computer with live CD and find grub boot loader file.edit that.it is impossible to recover back datas in formatted part.I suggest Remastersys to backup your OS clone as iso file perodicly.Anyway God help you man! I wish you did not have important files in that formatted part :)


What is causing Unity to be slow on startup? A few days ago I noticed that after I login in, the top panel and the dash took a bit more time to load and I noticed more disc activity than usual.

I thought that it might have been caused by some update or by the installation of pdftk. So I removed pdftk but the "problem" persists.

Is there a way to know what is using the disc (read/write operations) on startup?

If it were at a later time, I would use iotop but I can only launch iotop after I get control of the desktop.

I'm on Ubuntu 12.10 amd64.

Edit

I took a look at the logs and in the Xorg.0.log file I found the following lines:

[    36.230] (II) XKB: reuse xkmfile /var/lib/xkb/server-ED81635D9DABCAA502951B920776FB5895D92DC0.xkm
[  6683.340] (II) XKB: generating xkmfile /var/lib/xkb/server-7111F82C412662D491D0F0A3A5A74C8F62B59F29.xkm

Could this be the problematic step?

This is the same problem i "WAS" facing but solved it, seems like a startup application was causing that problem.

Ok here is what i did -

sudo sed -i 's/NoDisplay=true/NoDisplay=false/g' /etc/xdg/autostart/*.desktop

open startup application then uncheck - DISK NOTIFICATION (The Disk Utility notification is used to report disk failures using the SMART predictive technology). It explains your quote also

  I noticed more disc activity than usual

if u like u can also shutoff (it depends on your needs) -

  AT-SPI D-BUS BUS, Backup Monitor, Check for new hardware drivers,
  Desktop Sharing, Onboard, Ocra Screen Reader, Personal file sharing,

Before unity was taking near approx. about 20 seconds to load now it takes 3 seconds roughly.

You could try choosing "Advanced Options for Ubuntu" In the boot loader, choose the recovery mode and It should show some information. Sometimes you have to be quick reading it


Equivalent of Ctrl-a Ctrl-a in byobu (switching windows) In GNU screen, I could type Ctrl+A twice to switch between two windows.

In byobu, I can't see how to do that. F12+Ctrl+A doesn't work, and I can't find anything in the manual.

To be clear, I do not want to change the escape sequence to Ctrl+A. I want a key sequence that would switch between current and previous window.

I just moved my .screenrc out of the way and tried this.

On my machine (Oneiric) both F12-Ctrl-a and Ctrl-a-Ctrl-a worked exactly as I would expect.

I think you have another problem? Maybe something else is swallowing your key presses?

Toggle the menu by pressing F9.

Under Change keybinding set choose screen-escape-keys.


Ubuntu 12.10 Network LAN issues OK, so I recently started using Linux Ubuntu, and well I’ve been trying to for about a week now to LAN connect several computers at my house. But here's the issue I keep running into, 2 of the 3 computers can see each other since they have samba, yet they cannot see the third computer. And the third computer cannot see them. All of the computers have Samba, and are all on the same hub. I've been trying to troubleshoot it, but it seems a little harder than windows to fix. The OS I've been running on the computers is 2 of them have Ubuntu 12.10 and one has 12.04. One of the 12.10 and the 12.04 can see each other but the other 12.10 cannot see either one. Can anybody help?

It is difficult to tell from the information you posted. It could be anything from a firewall issue to misconfigured samba shares.

I suggest you start by turning your firewall off on all 3 computers.

Then if the shares do not show, debug your network using ping.

If ping is working, then manually mount the shares on the command line and post any error message.

smbclient -L //server -U user

sudo mount -t cifs //myserver_ip_address/myshare ~/mnt -o username=samb_user,noexec

You have to change "server" to your server name or ip address, "user" to your actual user on the server, "myshare" to the actual share name, etc.

For details see

Ubuntu shares not visible on the network

How to turn on Network Discovery and Share between computers with Samba

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Samba/SambaClientGuide

The way Windows shares files and printers is called SMB. The people from the SAMBA project have implemented all of Microsoft's protocols and specifications for Linux. Ubuntu therefore supports the same sort of file sharing as Windows, which is called Samba.

You can use SAMBA to share files between Linux machines. In fact, you might prefer it in case you have, for example, have a friend over with their Windows computer.

Alternatively, you can use The Linux Way of sharing files, which is NFS (Network File System) - This answer to a previous question explains how to do it. (but it's rather technical)

So, when the Sharing Options dialogue asks you to install the packages, you're not actually installing any Microsoft software or anything like that. Go ahead and do it, it's perfectly safe.


How do I restore my system back to windows 8.1 (from ubuntu 14.04)? Not knowing what I was doing I installed ubuntu 14.04 LTS over my windows 8.1, technically erasing everything off the hard drive and replacing it with linux. (I was trying to set up so I can dual boot windows and ubuntu, but I ended up replacing everything with ubuntu.)

How do I go back or reinstall windows on my laptop? I've got a flash/usb stick and I've got a windows .iso file. What is the simplest way to restore my system back to windows ONLY?

Please, any help would be greatly appreciated.

I'm new to all this - with very limited knowledge, but I'm willing to learn

you can burn the windows.iso in liunx. and reboot and reinstall windows that way.

so you boot in ubuntu, and launch brasero, burn the windows.iso and reboot.

another solution may be to reinstall using an OEM partition that contains all the file to reinstall windows. I don't know how. May be use boot the windows cd and look for a recover or reinstall option ?


How resilient is Ubuntu to repeated "power-off" shutdowns? My company is considering the use of Ubuntu as an OS for use on a hardware device.

It would be installed on compact flash drive - apparently this is not standard flash drive but a specific type of memory that is supposed to "cope" with immediate power shutdown (I am not sure how this is achieved but they are supposedly a "high end" card).

The units that would be run using Ubuntu are the type of units that will not be gracefully shutdown - the power cable would be removed and that is that.

Can anybody give me some advice on the potential problems that can occur? Is Ubuntu a good system that can deal with this kind of power outage and reboot successfully on next startup?

I realise that nothing is unbreakable, but is it a commonly used OS for an embedded setup? Is it asking for trouble to use Ubuntu in this kind of environment?

Note: this answer is from the perspective of a production environment where data loss or downtime can lead to loss of money, customers, industrial equipment malfunctioning, etc. If you are just tinkering with a Raspberry Pi at home, I'd say there's no problem... :)

I would not recommend Ubuntu in its default configuration, and the (default) ext4 filesystem by design, for an embedded environment where there would be repetitive "ungraceful" shutdowns like you suggest.

If I'm correct, you're using Ubuntu 8.04, which supports ext3 at best. While both ext3/ext4 use journaling as a way to maintain file (write) integrity and to aid in recovery, these should not be relied on when "pull the power cable" is the rule rather than the exception.

The ideal option, assuming that your system will not need dynamic reconfiguration once set up, is to mount its root filesystem read-only and to entirely use a temporary in-memory partition when operational (like the LiveCD does). In this case, the system would return to its "initial" configuration whenever booted up.
To store (a limited amount of) user data in a non-volatile way, you could create a secondary partition, perhaps using a filesystem optimized for flash media such as JFFS2 depending on the internal structure of the CF card.  To reduce the chances of data corruption by pulling the plug, you could disable hardware write caching for the device, and mount it in synchronous (sync) mode, disabling write caching by the kernel. These options may severely affect throughput and performance, even on a "high-end" CF card, so you would have to take the intended use into consideration too.

I have been using Ubuntu for about 18 months, and I've experimented with all sorts of programs and downloads. My opinion on Ubuntu is that it is far and away the the most stable operateing system available.

Programs and downloads that would have demolished windows OS's are just brushed aside by Ubuntu and Kubuntu, Ubuntu is really easy to use, has everything you could ever need, office and work applications are excellent, and it never gets a virus or trojens like Windows.

Kubuntu seems to have a few more toys, it's a bit harder to get to grips with but just as robust as ubuntu. The only downside with either is that you can't play 3d games or watch skygo like you can with Windows, but apart from that can't see any reason to use anything else.


Can I make new tabs open in my default Chrome(ium) profile? I am using Chrome and Chromium 16.0.912.75 (from the stable channels). I find the profile feature really useful. However, when new tabs are opened, or when I launch Chrome for the first time, the window/tab opens in the last profile I was using, not the default one.

Instead I'd like new tabs opened from external applications, and the first window opened by the launcher, to use the same profile every time. If there is already a Chrome(ium) window open for that profile, the new tab should appear there. If that profile does not already have a window, a new window should be opened for it.

My current workaround has been to make all my profiles in Chrome, and a single profile in Chromium. One profile in Chrome is synched with the Chromium one via my Google account. Chromium is my default browser. This way, all new tabs are opened in Chromium, in my preferred profile. If I want to access the other profiles, I use Chrome. I'd much prefer to keep it simple!

I know I could make my own Chrome .desktop file to force opening in the new profile every time, but the "memory" issue would remain for new tabs. According to this SuperUser question it is kinda possible in Windows with some registry editing. Is there any way to force new tabs to open in specific profile in Ubuntu?

ATTENTION!
The description below applies to Google Chrome. For Chromium instead of ~/.config/google-chrome  you have ~/.config/chromium!

In ~/.config/google-chrome/ you will see your profile folders. Let's say, you have beside the default (named Default) an another one called d3vid which you want to make default.

I give you two options:

Rename the Default to something else, and your profile to Default: mv Default Default_old; mv d3vid Default
Move Default to a better name, and create a symlink to your preferred profile: mv Default My_cool_profile; ln -s ~/.config/google-chrome/d3vid ~/.config/google-chrome/Default

See the answer here, https://superuser.com/a/1221551/333828 as it details the Local State file and the edits you need to make there to override the profile new links open in. Sadly this is probably something you would need to write a script to reset periodically (via cron every minute), because any activity in a non-desired account will probably write to the Local State file with the name of that profile.


Ubuntu One suddenly fails to sync U1 file sync between computers (laptops, desktop, running 12.04) after years of uninterrupted service suddenly fails (since at least a day, yesterday I noticed it for the first time). Last successful download sync was 21 Feb 10:00 CET.

Uploading directly using the Web interface does not work either; after 3 tries it fails with "No files were uploaded due to an error." (even with a tiny text file "u1test.txt" with just "test" in it). As long direct upload to U1 does not work, there is something seriously wrong with sync.

An "answer" giving in a separate post (install ubuntuone-couch is not relevant as it is already installed). Nor delete file names with spaces...

I rely on U1 as my daily cloud service of choice for quite some time now.

This is a server issue.

See the number of issues just raised in the past few days, several of which have comments indicating experienced users believe it to be a server issue:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/425271/ubuntuone-remains-paused
https://askubuntu.com/questions/425228/ubuntu-one-unable-to-sync-even-a-text-file
https://askubuntu.com/questions/425173/ubuntu-one-not-syncing-in-lubuntu-nor-bohi
https://askubuntu.com/questions/425271/ubuntuone-remains-paused
https://askubuntu.com/questions/424109/ubuntu-one-no-more-syncing

Update: Asked on Twitter for an announcement if there's a problem.  There's a notice on their status wiki page — https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOne/Status — but not clearly related to this.  (Also, i tried Nocturnalknight's solution and deleting and the device and reconnecting, and the signing in works but the sync doesn't.)

What Version kernel u have?
I too had the same issue form 22/02/2014 ..I tried unlinking and relinking the device (my Laptop) and it works again. After disconnecting from U1, plz reboot before re-connecting and be sure to delete the settings and cache after removing U1

$ sudo rm -rf ~/.local/share/ubuntuone
$ rm -rf ~/.cache/ubuntuone
$ rm -rf ~/.config/ubuntuone

Also PLz remove/rename the old Ubuntu One folder and retry with just a small txt file(as described by you)
Let me know if you need any further info.


Pitivi won't render in 12.04 I've recently upgraded 11.10 to 12.04 and then reinstalled Pitivi and Gstreamer codecs ecxept the extra codecs and regardless of which container,vid codec or aud codec the rendering bar wouldn't move any help would be helpful, and if your wondering if it used to work in 11.10 it only work in the first few tries before it also stopped rendering.

P.S: I'm still a nooby.

The version 0.15.1 installed via the repository has this problem, but do these steps will solve (by compiling 0.15.2):

Open a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and enter these commands (after each line typed below press "Enter"):

sudo apt-get build-dep pitivi
wget -c http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/pitivi/0.15/pitivi-0.15.2.tar.xz
tar Jxvf pitivi-0.15.2.tar.xz
cd pitivi-0.15.2/
./configure && make && sudo make install

I would recommend you completely remove Pitivi and reinstall through the terminal:

sudo apt-get autoremove --purge pitivi
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install pitivi

That should remove Pitivi and reinstall it :) Now if that doesn't help, I suggest you try a new editor. Pitivi has been known to have it's issues, that's why it was removed as a default application in Ubuntu. My favoured video editor is Open shot, available in the Ubuntu Software Center. There are however users who remote stability issues. It is powerful, versatile and fun to use. Most importantly the developers are actively improving it:  http://www.openshotvideo.com/

There is also Kdenlive, often hailed as the best free video editor on Linux. http://www.kdenlive.org/


How to add a directory to the PATH? How do I add a directory to the $PATH in Ubuntu and make the changes permanent?

Using ~/.profile to set $PATH

A path set in .bash_profile will only be set in a bash login shell (bash -l).
If you put your path in .profile it will be available to your complete desktop session. That means even metacity will use it.

For example ~/.profile:

if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then
  PATH="$PATH:$HOME/bin"
fi

Btw, you can check the PATH variable of a process by looking at its environment in /proc/[pid]/environ (replace [pid] with the number from ps axf). E.g. use grep -z "^PATH" /proc/[pid]/environ

Note:

bash as a login shell doesn't parse .profile if either .bash_profile or .bash_login exists. From man bash :

  it looks for ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, and ~/.profile, in that
  order, and reads and executes commands from the first one that exists
  and is  readable.

See the answers below for information about .pam_environment, or .bashrc for interactive non-login shells, or set the value globally for all users by putting a script into /etc/profile.d/ or use /etc/X11/Xsession.d/ to affect the display managers session.

For Ubuntu edit the ~/.bashrc and add the following line.

. ~/.bash_profile

Then edit your .bash_profile as you need.....


Tried to boot Ubuntu, but the GRUB rescue prompt shows up instead Tried to boot Ubuntu, but this shows up instead:

grub rescue>

If you were able to boot Ubuntu in the past, but not now, follow these steps to solve the problem.

First type ls command and Press Enter to see all the available partitions.
The entries will be shown as (hd0,msdos1) (hd0,msdos2) (hd0,msdos5) etc.

Then type ls (hd0,msdos1)/ to see the content of the drive. if you see entries like  vmliuz or initrd, it is your Linux partition. If you fail with (hd0,msdos1), try with (hd0,msdos2) and so on, until you recognize your Ubuntu partition.

When you correctly identify your Ubuntu partition, type root=(hdX,msdosX) , replace the X with correct identified number. For example, if you see vmlinuz and initrd entries by entering ls (hd0,msdos5), the command will be root=(hd0,msdos5).

then type configfile /boot/grub/grub.cfg and type Enter. This will bring you Previous Ubuntu grub menu.

Then choose the entry to boot Ubuntu.

After you booted up, Open a terminal and type sudo update-grub and press Enter. This will update the grub menu and prevent future problems.

In the case that you are not able to boot to Ubuntu after installation, re-installing Ubuntu is the best option. You can check this question:

How to install Ubuntu OS Having already installed Windows OS

For newer versions of ubuntu (16.04 ), this happens because ubuntu is trying to load in UEFI mode. But the usual install is Legacy mode, so go to BIOS->Boot Option->Select your Hard Disk and not UEFI Hard Disk.


After latest update for 14.04, cannot log in to any user account I just updated 14.04 to latest patches using the GUI: software update. After that, a restart was required, and now cannot log into any of my accounts. I am sure the passwrds are all correct, it just bounces me back to the same login screen (as opposed to when I really type a bad passwd, then ubuntu states that "Incorrect Passwd"). The only other thing I did was change my background image.

Information from my auth.log:

Apr 29 16:00:56 jj-home lightdm: pam_unix(lightdm-greeter:session): session closed for user lightdm gnome-keyring-daemon[2449]: couldn't set environment variable in session: The name of the org.gnone.SessionManager was not provided by any .service files gnome-keyring-daemon[2449]: g_dbus_connection_real_closed: Remote peer vanished with error: Underlying GIOStream returned 0 bytes on an async read (g-io-error-quark, 0). Exiting. lightdm: pam_unix(lightdm-greeter:session): session closed for user lightdm

This is a known bug with lightdm. There are ways to possibly fix it, along with ways of working around the problem. Make sure your computer is connected to the internet and enter a TTY by pressing Ctrl + ALT + F2. Log in here, then try the following:

Purge and reinstall lightdm:
Run sudo apt-get remove --purge lightdm. Once that's done, run sudo apt-get update and then sudo apt-get install lightdm && sudo dpkg --configure lightdm.
Reconfigure lightdm:
I've never had much much luck with this, but you might.
Run sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm.
Install another Display Manager, such as gdm:
Run sudo apt-get install gdm.
When you are asked which Display Manager to use by default, choose gdm.

Reboot after all of these.

I had the same problem after the latest update. I fixed it by disabling the secure boot in the bios .. a few other people have had the same problem.


How to install an Ubuntu remix on a separate computer? I installed Ubuntu 10.10 to my laptop. My friend says he wants a copy of Ubuntu (just like mine) because I have already installed ubuntu-restricted extras, Chromium, Compiz, KDE, Cairo-dock, and much more cool open source software.

So I installed Remastersys and ran this command on Terminal:

sudo remastersys dist

After that, I got an .iso file which I could use as a custom Ubuntu distro. The problem is, how do I install that .iso file on my friend's hard drive? I am sure that Ubiquity is not on my .iso file, so what other options do I have?

Burn the iso (which is a disc image) to a dvd and you will have a live disc you can install your own unique version of Ubuntu from.  Alternatively you can go to system/admin and use startup disc creator to make a live USB and install from that.


How to remove the "ubuntu desktop" role after applied in mythbuntu control center Hi i want to know How to remove the "ubuntu desktop" role after applied in mythbuntu control center.  So im back with my default desktop and programs.

Im running Mythbuntu 11.10 64 bit

does anyone know what packages it installs so i can uninstall them?

It installs the ubuntu-desktop metapackage, so removing it would be quite difficult. You would need to remove ubuntu-desktop, and anything that depends on that isn't already depended on by something else on the system.

open your terminal and do this

sudo apt-get remove activity-log-manager-common activity-log-manager-control-center adium-theme-ubuntu apg appmenu-gtk appmenu-gtk3 appmenu-qt apturl apturl-common bamfdaemon baobab bluez-gstreamer branding-ubuntu brasero brasero-cdrkit brasero-common checkbox checkbox-qt cmap-adobe-japan2 compiz compiz-core compiz-gnome compiz-plugins-default compiz-plugins-main-default compizconfig-backend-gconf deja-dup duplicity dvd+rw-tools empathy empathy-common eog evolution-data-server evolution-data-server-common example-content folks-common gedit gedit-common geoclue geoclue-ubuntu-geoip ginn gir1.2-gnomebluetooth-1.0 gir1.2-gnomekeyring-1.0 gir1.2-gst-plugins-base-0.10 gir1.2-gstreamer-0.10 gir1.2-gtksource-3.0 gir1.2-indicate-0.7 gir1.2-peas-1.0 gir1.2-rb-3.0 gir1.2-totem-1.0 gir1.2-totem-plparser-1.0 gir1.2-ubuntuoneui-3.0 gnome-bluetooth gnome-control-center gnome-control-center-data gnome-desktop3-data gnome-disk-utility gnome-font-viewer gnome-icon-theme-symbolic gnome-media gnome-menus gnome-nettool gnome-online-accounts gnome-orca gnome-power-manager gnome-screensaver gnome-screenshot gnome-session gnome-session-bin gnome-session-canberra gnome-session-common gnome-settings-daemon gnome-system-log gnome-system-monitor gnome-terminal gnome-terminal-data gnome-user-share growisofs gstreamer0.10-gconf gwibber gwibber-service gwibber-service-facebook gwibber-service-identica gwibber-service-twitter hwdata indicator-appmenu indicator-datetime indicator-power indicator-printers indicator-session intel-gpu-tools landscape-client-ui-install libatk-adaptor libatk-adaptor-schemas libaudio2 libavahi-gobject0 libavahi-ui-gtk3-0 libbamf0 libbamf3-0 libboost-serialization1.46.1 libbrasero-media3-1 libcamel-1.2-29 libcanberra-gtk-module libcanberra-gtk0 libcanberra-pulse libcmis-0.2-0 libcompizconfig0 libcurl3 libcurl3-nss libdbusmenu-qt2 libdconf-dbus-1-0 libdconf-qt0 libdecoration0 libdiscid0 libdmapsharing-3.0-2 libebackend-1.2-1 libebook-1.2-12 libecal-1.2-10 libedata-book-1.2-11 libedata-cal-1.2-13 libedataserver-1.2-15 libedataserverui-3.0-1 libexempi3 libexttextcat-data libexttextcat0 libfolks-eds25 libfolks-telepathy25 libfolks25 libfreerdp-plugins-standard libfreerdp1 libgail-common libgdata-common libgdata13 libgdu-gtk0 libgexiv2-1 libglew1.6 libglewmx1.6 libgmime-2.6-0 libgnome-control-center1 libgnome-desktop-3-2 libgnome-media-profiles-3.0-0 libgnome2-common libgnomekbd-common libgnomekbd7 libgoa-1.0-0 libgoa-1.0-common libgpgme11 libgpod-common libgpod4 libgtksourceview-3.0-0 libgtksourceview-3.0-common libgtkspell-3-0 libgweather-3-0 libgweather-common libgwibber-gtk2 libgwibber2 libhyphen0 libidl-common libidl0 libjson-glib-1.0-0 liblircclient0 liblouis-data liblouis2 libmetacity-private0 libmission-control-plugins0 libmtp-common libmtp-runtime libmtp9 libmusicbrainz3-6 libmysqlclient18 libmythes-1.2-0 libneon27-gnutls libnux-2.0-0 libnux-2.0-common liboauth0 liborbit2 liboverlay-scrollbar-0.2-0 liboverlay-scrollbar3-0.2-0 libpackagekit-glib2-14 libpeas-1.0-0 libpeas-common libprotobuf7 libprotoc7 libproxy1-plugin-gsettings libproxy1-plugin-networkmanager libpth20 libqt4-dbus libqt4-declarative libqt4-network libqt4-opengl libqt4-script libqt4-sql libqt4-sql-mysql libqt4-sql-sqlite libqt4-svg libqt4-xml libqt4-xmlpatterns libqtbamf1 libqtcore4 libqtdee2 libqtgconf1 libqtgui4 libquvi-scripts libquvi7 libraw5 libreoffice-base-core libreoffice-calc libreoffice-common libreoffice-core libreoffice-draw libreoffice-emailmerge libreoffice-gnome libreoffice-gtk libreoffice-help-en-us libreoffice-impress libreoffice-math libreoffice-style-human libreoffice-style-tango libreoffice-writer librest-0.7-0 librhythmbox-core5 librsync1 libsdl1.2debian libssh-4 libstlport4.6ldbl libsyncdaemon-1.0-1 libtelepathy-farstream2 libtelepathy-logger2 libtimezonemap1 libtotem-plparser17 libtotem0 libubuntuoneui-3.0-1 libunique-3.0-0 libunity-2d-private0 libunity-core-5.0-5 libunity-misc4 libvncserver0 libwacom-common libwacom2 libwmf0.2-7-gtk libzeitgeist-1.0-1 light-themes linux-headers-3.2.0-24 linux-headers-3.2.0-24-generic-pae linux-headers-generic-pae media-player-info metacity metacity-common mousetweaks mysql-common nautilus nautilus-sendto nautilus-sendto-empathy nautilus-share notify-osd notify-osd-icons nux-tools obexd-client overlay-scrollbar plymouth-theme-ubuntu-logo protobuf-compiler pulseaudio-module-bluetooth pulseaudio-module-gconf python-aptdaemon.pkcompat python-brlapi python-configglue python-dateutil python-dirspec python-egenix-mxdatetime python-egenix-mxtools python-libproxy python-louis python-mako python-markupsafe python-packagekit python-protobuf python-pyatspi2 python-pyinotify python-speechd python-twisted-names python-ubuntuone-client python-ubuntuone-control-panel python-ubuntuone-storageprotocol python-uno python-zeitgeist qdbus qt-at-spi remmina remmina-common remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox rhythmbox-data rhythmbox-mozilla rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder rhythmbox-plugin-magnatune rhythmbox-plugin-zeitgeist rhythmbox-plugins rhythmbox-ubuntuone seahorse shotwell sni-qt ssh-askpass-gnome telepathy-gabble telepathy-haze telepathy-idle telepathy-indicator telepathy-logger telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut thunderbird-gnome-support totem totem-common totem-mozilla totem-plugins ubuntu-artwork ubuntu-desktop ubuntu-docs ubuntu-mono ubuntu-sounds ubuntu-system-service ubuntu-wallpapers ubuntu-wallpapers-precise ubuntuone-client ubuntuone-client-gnome ubuntuone-control-panel ubuntuone-couch ubuntuone-installer unity unity-2d unity-2d-common unity-2d-panel unity-2d-shell unity-2d-spread unity-asset-pool unity-common unity-greeter unity-lens-applications unity-lens-files unity-lens-music unity-lens-video unity-scope-musicstores unity-scope-video-remote unity-services uno-libs3 ure vino whois whoopsie wodim xdiagnose xfonts-mathml zeitgeist zeitgeist-core zeitgeist-datahub && sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop && sudo /usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm-set-defaults -g lightdm-gtk-greeter

That will remove Ubuntu-desktop and keeps your Mythbuntu desktop.

all the best.


"ERROR: File doesn't exist" when trying to transfer files to iPhone I am running Ubuntu 14.04 and want to transfer some videos to my iPhone 5 (iOS7) to it.

When I connect the phone it is mounted correctly and I can see all the DCIM, Photo... folders in nautilus. But where do I copy my .mp4 files?

I have searched the net but all is related to syncing music files (mp3).
here, here, here.

Also, when I try to copy something in Document Folder or inside any app (2nd mounted iPhone point) it gives me an error:

ERROR: File doesn't exist

So, is there any folder in 1st mounted point (like DCIM, Photo etc..) where I can simply copy my MP4 files and watch it in my iPhone?

(NOTE: I don't need sync function but will not harm if it can be achieved).

EDIT:

Now I see two more problems:

For some reason my Document Folder is not mounted any more (even after unmounting and restarting). Only the Picture, DCIM etc. folders are mounted.
I sometimes get this:

EDIT 2:
When I tried the troubleshoot method in 1st link of duplicate I get
Error: Pairing with device xxxxx failed with unhandled error code -20.
(And my phone was not locked)

Also, I get on re-connecting:

The answer here should help here.

To summarise it:

Install a video player app on the device such as "Flexplayer".
Plug the device into your computer via USB
Navigate to "Documents on My iPhone" in your file browser.  If you do not see this under mounted devices, make sure the libimobiledevice-utils and ifuse packages are installed on Ubuntu.
Find the folder for the video player you installed, eg "Flexplayer".
Drag the video files into this folder.
You may need to close and re-open the video player app on the device before the new videos appear.

Note that iPhones and iPads do not act like regular drives on your computer where you can access all files as if it's a USB drive or MTP device - if you try this all you'll be able to do is see photos taken by the device camera.  Instead you need special drivers such as those used by iTunes.  However, Ubuntu now has built-in support at least for the ability to access document storage on iDevices, as described above, and that's what provides the "Documents on my iPhone" mount point.


How does the Ubuntu upgrade process work? How does Ubuntu upgrade seamlessly to a newer distribution, while the operating system is still running? I'm upgrading from 10.10 to 11.04, and I've upgraded several times before, and it's as simple as running update-manager -d and downloading and installing them, then rebooting.

How exactly does this work though? How is the upgrade manager able to update the operating system while it is still in use?

Here a more detailed description of the process. Sorry the text got so long.

My experience stems from Debian, for which the entire packaging and upgrade system used in Ubuntu was originally invented. The daily Ubuntu security upgrades correspond to running apt-get upgrade which normally doesn't remove any software. The big release upgrades correspond to a apt-get dist-upgrade during which software packages can be exchanged completely.

Actually the very low level components are normally not exchanged during a release upgrade. Immediately after the upgrade you should find two kernel and initrd images in your /boot directory. This is because unlike programs kernel components are not interchangable so well. If the need arises to load new device drivers during the upgrade, those must be compatible with the running kernel. After the system boots up with the new kernel, the old one can be removed. Last time I checked this one thing had to be done manually, I don't know how the current updater handles this. This is BTW. the main reason, why the kernel image bears its version number in the file name - so you can have different kernel versions installed at the same time. Same for the module path (/lib/modules/...)

Software packages are upgraded one by one, starting with the lowest packages in the dependency hirarchy. Those are normally program librarys like libc and other ones. The sequence in which packages are updated is however not hardcoded but dynamically calculated as package dependencies are resolved. In most cases old programs can function with new librarys, so it's not so problematic if those librarys get replaced first.

You have to understand here, that the system differentiates between manually installed packages (i.e. the packages which installation you directly requested yourself, i.e. chromium) and automatically installed packages, which where only installed to fulfill dependencies of manually installed packages (and dependencies of those dependencies).

For each manually installed program, the updater just looks for a newer version. Often those programs are just meta packages like "ubuntu-desktop", which contains no data, and just dependencies. New versions of dependent libraries will be pulled in, as they are requested by directly updated (manually requested) programs. The updater will always try to install the newest usable version of any dependent package (during any upgrdade not just release upgrades).

Programs which cannot function with the new library versions cannot be started during the time after the library is upgraded, and before the program itself is upgraded as well. If those programs should already be running before the library upgrade they will however continue to run, because the old library version remains in memory as long as it remains in use. Same goes for programs which were started before they get upgraded. Those will not provide new features until they are terminated and restarted.

After the update some libraries (or dependencies in general) will be orphaned. Those are libraries which were required by old program versions, but are no longer required by the new versions. Since these packages are marked as automatically installed, and since no manually installed prgram relates to them anymore these packages can easily be located and removed. You can even observe this as the last step of the update process (the updater sais "removing obsolete packages" or something similar).

Some packages will be installed, which where not installed before, those are simply new dependencies, which are marked as automatically installed, and can be removed, should the requirement for them vanish in the future.

This mechanism even allows the exchange of entire user programs. Like for example switching from Gnome2 to Unity. Since both are just automatic dependencies of ubuntu-desktop, which is one of the few packages, for which new versions are actually requested in the first place.

Programs do normally not depend on a specific version of the OS kernel, so they will normally work fine with the running kernel.

Apart from all this I suspect the Ubuntu updater throws some specific fixes and  workarounds into the mix, to circumvent situations where this theory breaks.

As you can see during the update there are very well conditions in which the system is only usable to a limited part. Should something go wrong during the update you will most likely be left with a broken system. Often even one which cannot easily be repaired, since the upgrade program can be affected as well. Remember, programs with broken dependencies can continue to function, but not be restarted, as long as the dependencies are broken, this goes for the updater as well.

You can use the command line program apt-mark to find out which packages are marked as manually installed and which have been automatically installed. You can also switch those marks using the same program. This will directly affect the update process.

In a more complex software setup the Updater will sometimes ask you to resolve a dependency manually. I.e. when one manually installed program gets updated and requests a new version of a library while another manually installed program depends on the old version of the same library and cannot work with the new one. You will then have to make your choice, either to relinquish one of those programs or to refrain from upgrading both. Since dependencies are often complex this can get very messy very fast (you might have heard of the term "dependency hell").

Now to the specific questions:

When low-level infrastructure is changed (low-level as in kernel, drivers, libraries, etc anything that a user doesn't directly interact with), what happens to the deprecated binaries?

OK... I already covered this one

What happens to an app that has been completely deprecated? For example, Unity 2D (or any other software abandoned/no maintainers whose package is not in new repo).

If the App was once manually installed it will remain in the system, often causing the dependency hell I described.

ubuntu-desktop is a metapackage that pulls default Ubuntu applications as dependencies. If I removed Firefox and installed Chrome, will Firefox still get pulled in as part of upgrades?

As long as it is the standard browser of the new Release, yes. Chromium will also be upgraded. I am not sure if you can remove Firefox without removing ubuntu-desktop. Note that apart from strict dependencies, the package system knows also the concept of recommendations, where a software will normally be installed like a dependency, but can be uninstalled later without affecting anything else but its own sole dependencies.

Moreover, what happens if a single app used to depend on package-x and no longer does so in new release; will package-x be upgraded alongside the rest of the packages despite being orphaned?

Nope.

Just ask me if you still have any more questions.

This is similar to another feature. Hope this helps to understand the basic process.

I am referring to the capability to "switch root" when the operating system boots.

When the operating system is booting, the root filesystem (read: "/") is initially available only in RAM. While this boot process is running, it switches / from the RAM to the / filesystem on the hard disk.


mokutil - failing for almost all options In the past I've successfully created a certificate and signed the virtualbox kernel modules for use.  Now, other than --sb-state, all other parameters I try when running mokutil fail miserably.

Basic info:

Ubuntu 17.10 64bit on an Asus X99-E motherboard.
All commands run as root..

Sample results:

--reset
Failed to write MokAuth
Failed to issue a reset request

--list-enrolled
Failed to read MokListRT: No such file or directory

--password
input password:
input password again:
Failed to write MokPW: Invalid argument

--import MOK.der
input password:
input password again:
Failed to enroll new keys

Possibly related info:

dmesg | grep -i mok
[    9.114419] MODSIGN: Couldn't get UEFI MokListRT

Does anyone have any suggestions what I'm doing wrong?  Where are MokAuth, MokListRT, MokPW, etc.. stored that it is failing to write to them?

One possibly related bit of info.  The previous, successful, use of mokutil was prior to a hardware change.  I had a raid controller that was randomly ejecting drives out of my array so I cloned the partitions on the array to an external drive, replaced the card, recreated new arrays and restored the partitions.  This included Ubuntu's root partition.

Other than that - the machine is as it was when things were working..

Any thoughts most welcome.

Steve.

It appears to be a UEFI bug in the motherboard. Some other UEFI/BIOS also fail to implement one of the methods required for mokutil to work. I also have an issue with an Asus X99-E USB3.1 mobo.

You can manually enroll the key, by saving it on a USB stick, booting into the bios setup and importing the key. There's a goofy interaction involving the mouse and enter key, such that it doesn't import when you think it should. But you can do so nonetheless.

You should run above commands with sudo privilege.

eg: sudo mokutil --password to set new password


Why do I get a "the location is not a folder" error when trying to open files using Dash or Synapse? Within the last few days, I've encountered errors when trying to open files using Unity Dash, Synapse, or even the Gnome Search Tool.

These methods will let me launch applications and folders, but not files of any time, including mp3, doc, odt, and txt. With any method, the same error dialogue results: "the location is not a folder". Is there something I can do on my end to correct this, or is this a bug in Natty that is still being corrected?

sudo apt-get remove exo-utils

this is from xfce. You might need to remove thunar as well.
Fixed it for me anyway.

Try to run computer janitor. For me, it solved the problem. I think it must be related to an old version of a panel or menu, or unneeded libraries.


Opening an .sh file from DVD Drive I'm running XFCE 4.12 and I got a CD with an .sh file I have to run. I don't know how.

Can I do this over the graphical interface or do I have to open the file in the terminal?

The dvd-drive is not shown in the "thunar file manager".

You can use the terminal and execute the script.

Open the terminal by Ctrl+Alt+t, then
you can change directory (using cd to go to the directory where your script is, for example,

cd /path to /DVD drive

then

./script.sh to execute the script.

Or you can just execute by

./full path/to/DVD drive/script.sh to run the script.

One simple way to open the folder (in which your script is) is to right-click that folder and select Open in terminal. Then the terminal will open up and you can just run script as ./script.sh

If you just cannot access your DVD disk using terminal or file-manager then you need to create a mount point (a folder in your file-system) where the contents of the disk is shown.

To do that:
You first decide where you want to mount the DVD drive.
/mnt or /media are appropriate.
Then create a folder under the /mnt or /media like following.

sudo mkdir /mnt/dvdrw

Next, you need to find out the location of the dvd-drive under /dev ,

sudo lsblk -f

It may give output as /dev/CD-ROM drive or /dev/DVD-RW drive or /dev/dvdrw etc...

Finally, mount the DVD rom drive on the file-system by by entering the location under /dev and the path of the newly created folder ( for example, under /mnt) :

    sudo mount </dev/path to cd dvd disk>  <path to the folder for mounting>

for example,

sudo mount /dev/dvdrw /mnt/dvdrw

Issue resolved. Answer found. Had to create a mount point.


can anyone help me with this error? ./trimmomatic-0.36.jar: line 1: $'PK\003\004': command not found
./trimmomatic-0.36.jar: line 2: $'\bi\203uH': command not found
./trimmomatic-0.36.jar: line 3: syntax error near unexpected token `$'\a\217\245\234D\312\017\265\026\234\311{\234T\315.\204\024\266ת\353\2179\343\354\003PK\003\004''
./trimmomatic-0.36.jar: line 3:h�uH��\��META-INF/MANIFEST.MFM�=� w���GSS�V;7.ƕ�ҧ�h��{�����F��N����R<    ���>��~A�$��-U�ِ    +�������i�}M���i@�F���;������zC�K�X]�L�=g#�(���D����{�T�.��ת��9��PK'

These are character encoding errors. The jar file was built with assumption about character set that are not true in the system where you are trying to run it. All of that backslash stuff is your system's way of showing characters it does not understand


Alien-arena does not appear in the launcher I have installed the alien-arena via ubuntu programs central and it does not appear at the launcher (press super and type alien),I need always run alien-arena on terminal.
how I can make it appear in the launcher?

Open gedit and add the following:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=alien-arena
Comment=alien-arena
Exec=alien-arena
Icon=alien-arena
Terminal=false
X-MultipleArgs=false
Type=Application
Categories=Game;ArcadeGame;

Save this file as alien-arena.desktop on your desktop or in the folder you want.
Give it the permission to be executed as program; in konsole (or terminal), type:

chmod +x /path to file/name of file

example, if it is on desktop, type:

chmod +x ~/desktop/alien-arena.desktop

(If you receive a prompt "acces denied" or something like this use sudo:
 sudo chmod +x ~/desktop/alien-arena.desktop).

Or you can do this graphicaly by right clicking on the shortcut icon then property then permission tab then check: Allow executing file as program.

If you want to have an icon on unity lateral launcher bar, you can drag the game shortcut to the place you want on that launcher and release the mouse button.

That's all, I hope this help.


Ubuntu 19.10 , What causes a login loop error? Let me put you in context, you see this is the third time I install ubuntu on my laptop (Asus Laptop, running NVDIA GTX 1050), althought this installation was different because I once for all removed the original Windows 10 that came with my Laptop.

My first attempts were on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and were in a dual booting manner yet I did not had a great time, you see I ran into the login-loop problem twice!, some fellas of mine told me that the reason of it might have been because Ubuntu 18.04 was not the kindest with NVDIA graphics card, anyways I never knew exactly how did I got involved with the login loop problem and I never solved it even tho I did try many posible solutions.

6 months has passed since the last attempts and yesterday in my insanity I installed Ubuntu 19.10 for good throwing Windows away, since I heard that Ubuntu 19.10 fixed the problems with NVDIA graphics and so far I have no problems with it, Im actually happy and amazed, it runs so smoothly.

But deep inside im scared of the login loop curse that i have, does any of you guys know how to PREVENT the login loop from happening, what causes the login loop?

One of the most common things that can cause a login loop is the use of sudo to start a graphic application... like:

sudo gedit filename

The way to prevent this is to use sudo -H... like:

sudo -H gedit filename.

See man sudo for more details about -H.

And because of this, what can happen is that these two files get changed to root ownership... and you get a login loop.

ls -al .*authority

-rw------- 1 username username 451352 Nov  2 13:34 .ICEauthority
-rw------- 1 username username     58 Jun 23  2017 .Xauthority

Then you would have to boot into Recovery Mode, and manually set the file ownership back to the proper username using the sudo chown command.

Update #1:

Instead of booting into Recovery Mode, an alternate way is you can simply go to another virtual console (e.g., Ctrl+Alt+F2 to go to tty2), log in there, run ls -l to see what files are affected, and then run whatever sudo chown ... command is appropriate.

Changing the file /etc/fstab if you dont know exactly what you are doing would give you the login loop, if you're looking for causes, but I think you are more into preventing the login loop at all, and I think you can never know for sure. Don't be discouraged tho there is a way to avoid it and that is everytime you're going to touch some config file or system file, cp the file into a file.old and that way if you get the login loop you just have to press Ctrl+Alt+F3 in the login screen and revert the change you did using the shell.


How to download YouTube videos? There is any good program to download YouTube videos? I am using Ubuntu 14.04 32-bit.

To install youtube-dl:

Recommended way (latest version):

Open a terminal with Ctrl+Alt+T or searching Terminal in the dash.
Install youtube-dl with this command (you'll be prompted for your password):

sudo wget https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -O /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl && sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl

Not recommended way (older version):

Open a terminal with Ctrl+Alt+T or searching Terminal in the dash.
Install youtube-dl with this command (you'll be prompted for your password):

sudo apt-get install youtube-dl

To use youtube-dl:

To select where to save the video, you can follow these steps:

Type cd on the terminal.
Press Space
Drag the folder from File Manager and drop it on the terminal.
If you skip this step, the video will be saved on your home folder.

To download the video you can use one of these procedures:

2.1. Run youtube-dl video_url where video_url is the URL of the video.

2.2. If you want to download many videos, you can follow these steps instead of 2.1:

Run the below command:

xargs youtube-dl

Repeat the following procedure for each link:

Paste a link.
Press Enter

Press Ctrl+D

2.3. If do you have a plain text file with a list of links, you can download them this way:

Type cat on the terminal.
Press Space
Drag the file form the File Manager and drop it on the terminal.
Press Space
Type | xargs youtube-dl
Press Enter

Now the video(s) will download to the selected folder.

Some final thoughts:

On the method 2.3 the final command should look like this:

cat '/home/foo/Desktop/myawesomevideos.txt' | xargs youtube-dl

You can also use the URL of a channel and youtube-dl will save the entire channel.
You can update youtube-dl with sudo youtube-dl -U
You can see all the options of youtube-dl with youtube-dl --help

Thanks to user185719 and Michael Grünewald for their contributions to this answer.

simply open an additional tab in the same browser and search for savefrom.net and open the website.
Now open the youtube video and copy the URL when it starts playing.
Paste that in the space given for URL in the savefrom.net website.


Nvidia driver activated but currently not in use I have just finished an install of ubuntu 11.04 beta 2. At the end of the installation I got a message informing that I do not have the required hardware for unity, and that I should choose "ubuntu classic".

Could someone please shed some light on how to fix this? I have tried adding the "experimental 3d xyz" driver but still no luck. When I log out and try log back in there is no option for unity.

My graphics card is an nvidia 240gt or gt240, I cant remember now which way around it goes.

I enabled "experimental 3d support for nvidia cards" - this is what I was reffering to above, not a driver - sorry about that.

There is bugs reports for this issue at launchpad: jockey/+bug/771788 e nvidia-graphics-drivers-173/+bug/772207.  Add your card details then mark it to report that you have the issue.  Hopefully, it will be fixed soon!

You can check unity-2d as it will be the fallback environment from 11.10. As far as I understand, your graphics card does not meet unity 3d requirements which is the default desktop environment. You may try gnome classic desktop which is still available.

See here for information on hardware requirements.

Checkout this for installing unity-2d. In 11.04 you can install unity-2d:

How do I install and switch to the Unity 2D desktop?

EDIT: As I see the screenshot, I can only recommend a single active driver rather than both. I think there are a lot of issues regarding newer Nvidia and Ubuntu


Trying to install MATE desktop enviroment, getting "Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages" So like the title says, Im trying to install the MATE desktop enviroment with the terminal, and I'm using the wiki instructions at http://wiki.mate-desktop.org/download - but everytime I enter "sudo apt-get install mate-core", I get stuck with this..

username@computer:~$ sudo apt-get install mate-core
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:  mate-core : Depends:
mate-control-center (>= 1.6.0) but it is not going to be installed
             Depends: caja (>= 1.6.0) but it is not going to be installed
             Depends: marco (>= 1.6.0) but it is not going to be installed
             Depends: mate-session-manager (>= 1.6.0) but it is not going to be installed
             Depends: mate-panel (>= 1.6.0) but it is not going to be installed
             Depends: mate-settings-daemon (>= 1.6.0) but it is not going to be installed
             Depends: mate-terminal (>= 1.6.0) but it is not going to be installed
             Depends: mate-desktop (>= 1.6.0) but it is not going to be installed
             Depends: libmatekbd (>= 1.6.0) but it is not going to be installed
             Depends: libmatedesktop (>= 1.6.0) but it is not going to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

I'm not really sure what this means since im a complete noob with Ubuntu..can anybody help?

This means that the other software required to install mate-core is not available on the servers. Try running theses commands: sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://packages.mate-desktop.org/repo/ubuntu precise main" && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo apt-get install mate-core


Maltego on Ubuntu 14.04 How to install Maltego CE on Ubuntu 14.04 ? I have it installed but it does not load up.
Perhaps ,someone would help me with installation and settings. thanks

Maltego does not seem to work with java 8. If you have openjdk 7 installed, you can start maltego with

/usr/share/MaltegoTungstenCE/bin/maltego --jdkhome /usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk-amd64/jre/

You can also tell maltego to always use this JRE by modifying /usr/share/MaltegoTungstenCE/etc/maltego.conf

add the following line

jdkhome="/usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk-amd64/jre"

Dowload the Maltego file from the Official Site

https://www.paterva.com/malv35/community/MaltegoCarbonCE.v3.5.3.deb

cd /Dowloads

sudo dpkg -i MaltegoCarbonCE.v3.5.3.deb

and that's it


cp: cannot create directory '/home/rexxi/usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins': No such file or directory I tried to move files from downloads dir

cp -r ~/Downloads/flash_player_npapi_linux.x86_64 ~/usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins

And I got a error message

cp: cannot create directory '/home/rexxi/usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins': No such file or directory

But if I open another terminal and write

$ /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins
bash: /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins: Is a directory

What am I doing wrong?

Nb: I am a Windows user trying to switch to Linux.

~/usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins

and

/usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins

are different paths.

The first one is relative and is actually

/home/$USER/usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins

The second is absolute.

The correct command seems to be

sudo cp -r ~/Downloads/flash_player_npapi_linux.x86_64 /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins

But it's not clear for me what are you trying to achieve.

Rather using command lines, You can open file manager with root access in order to alter or make changes in directories like usr, share et.c...

Nautilus is default filemanager in Ubuntu 18.04.

so use sudo nautilus, type password, BANG!.

so I`m not sure if same method work for some other FM like dolphin, spaceFM e.t.c..


How do I add the mainline kernel PPA? How can I add the mainline kernel ppa to the synaptic software sources?

I have the url:
http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/

but I am missing the ppa: line.

Note: test/debug kernel versions higher than your default kernel, e.g. 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, etc. are only provided via deb files, not via this PPA.

You probably want to add this PPA-- the only active one the kernel team maintains -- containing the latest pre-proposed kernel for each release:

ppa:kernel-ppa/pre-proposed

/*tested code already ,
whipped this right up hope it works for you, it downloads the latest kernel from the daily mainline ,
and checks if its on your sys if not installs it
tested and working :) simply compile as anything .c with your gcc
download at : [here](http://ubuntuone.com/0mLWYLhGPJlHGFXONz6EcO)
*/
//code below ----------------------
// it doesn’t show the imports so put them as comments to the side for who ever just does
// copy paste
#include <stdio.h> //stdio.h
#include <stdlib.h> //stdlib.h
#include <string.h> //string.h

void getpage(void)
{
system("mkdir ./kup;cd ./kup;wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/daily/current/;cat ./index.html|grep -i deb|grep -i linux>>./list;cd ./..");
printf("\n\nwhich archetype would u like to grab \n1: 32 bit\n2: 64bit\n(1/2 1 is default) : ");
char c;
system("uname -i>>./kup/p");
FILE* arch=fopen("./kup/p","r");
c=fgetc(arch);
if(c!='a'){
c=1;}
if(c=='a'){c=2;}
if(c=='2'){
system("cd ./kup;cat ./list|grep -i amd64 >> ./list2;cd ./..");
}
else{
system("cd ./kup;cat ./list|grep -i i386 >> ./list2;cd ./..");
}

system("cd ./kup;cat ./list|grep -i _all >> ./list2;rm -rf ./list;rm -rf ./index.html;cd ./..");

}

int install(void){
printf("\nnow getting ready to check the current kernel install the newest kernel if newer\npress anybtton to continue or q to quit\n");
char c;
c='\n';
if(c=='q'){return 0;}else{
system("dir ./kup>>./kup/test");
char *t=malloc(sizeof(char)*256);
t[0]='d';
t[1]='p';
t[2]='k';
t[3]='g';
t[4]=' ';
t[5]='-';
t[6]='l';
t[7]='|';
t[8]='g';
t[9]='r';
t[10]='e';
t[11]='p';
t[12]=' ';
t[13]='-';
t[14]='i';
t[15]=' ';
int tn=16;
FILE* f2 = fopen("./kup/test","r");
char c;
c=fgetc(f2);
while(c!='_'){
t[tn]=c;
tn++;
c=fgetc(f2);
}

t[tn]='>';
tn++;
t[tn]='>';
tn++;
t[tn]='.';
tn++;
t[tn]='/';
tn++;
t[tn]='k';
tn++;
t[tn]='u';
tn++;
t[tn]='p';
tn++;
t[tn]='/';
tn++;
t[tn]='a';
system(t);
FILE *f3 =fopen("./kup/a","r");

char check;
check = fgetc(f3);
printf("\"%c\"",check);
if(check !='i'){
printf("\nthere is a newer version , press enter key to update\n");
system("sudo dpkg -i ./kup/*deb;rm -rf ./kup;sudo update-grub;");
return 0;
}else{printf("\nyour system is up to date\n\n exiting \n");}
system("rm -rf ./kup");
return 0;
}
}

void download(char* url)
{
char *com=malloc(sizeof(char)*256);
com[0]='c';
com[1]='d';
com[2]=' ';
com[3]='k';
com[4]='u';
com[5]='p';
com[6]=';';
com[7]='w';
com[8]='g';
com[9]='e';
com[10]='t';
com[11]=' ';
int i=12;
int l =1;
while(l==1)
{
com[i]=url[i-12];
if(com[i]=='b'&&com[i-1]=='e'&&com[i-2]=='d'&&com[i-3]=='.'){
l=0;
}
i++;
}
system("rm -rf ./kup/list2;");
system(com);

}

void getkernel(void){
char links[3][256];
//start writing//
links[0][0]='k';
links[0][1]='e';
links[0][2]='r';
links[0][3]='n';
links[0][4]='e';
links[0][5]='l';
links[0][6]='.';
links[0][7]='u';
links[0][8]='b';
links[0][9]='u';
links[0][10]='n';
links[0][11]='t';
links[0][12]='u';
links[0][13]='.';
links[0][14]='c';
links[0][15]='o';
links[0][16]='m';
links[0][17]='/';
links[0][18]='~';
links[0][19]='k';
links[0][20]='e';
links[0][21]='r';
links[0][22]='n';
links[0][23]='e';
links[0][24]='l';
links[0][25]='-';
links[0][26]='p';
links[0][27]='p';
links[0][28]='a';
links[0][29]='/';
links[0][30]='m';
links[0][31]='a';
links[0][32]='i';
links[0][33]='n';
links[0][34]='l';
links[0][35]='i';
links[0][36]='n';
links[0][37]='e';
links[0][38]='/';
links[0][39]='d';
links[0][40]='a';
links[0][41]='i';
links[0][42]='l';
links[0][43]='y';
links[0][44]='/';
links[0][45]='c';
links[0][46]='u';
links[0][47]='r';
links[0][48]='r';
links[0][49]='e';
links[0][50]='n';
links[0][51]='t';
links[0][52]='/';
//done writing//
char c[5];
int l=1;
FILE* file = fopen("./kup/list2","r");
c[0]=fgetc(file);
while(c[0]!=EOF && l ==1)
{
int u=0;
if(c[0]=='h'){
c[1]=fgetc(file);
if(c[1]=='r'){
c[2]=fgetc(file);
if(c[2]=='e'){
c[3]=fgetc(file);
if(c[3]=='f'){
c[4]=fgetc(file);
c[4]=fgetc(file);
int i=53;
c[4]=fgetc(file);
while(c[4]!='\"'){
links[u][i]=c[4];
i++;
c[4]=fgetc(file);
}

download(links[0]);
u++;
if(u==3){
c[0]=EOF;
l=0;
}
}
}
}
}
c[0]=fgetc(file);
}

}

int main(void)
{
getpage();
getkernel();
install();
}


Installing YADR on Ubuntu 14.04 error - prezto: old shell detected I have a fresh install of Ubuntu 14.04 on VirtualBox, and I am trying to install YADR (https://github.com/skwp/dotfiles), which works really well on Mac OS X. However, after I finished installing and restarted my terminal, the YADR configuration doesn't seem to get applied. Thus, I tried doing

source ~/.zshrc

Yet I get this:

Error: no such file "prezto: old shell detected, minimum required: 4.3.11"
bash: /home/afif/.zshrc: line 15: syntax error near unexpected token `('
bash: /home/afif/.zshrc: line 15: `for config_file ($HOME/.yadr/zsh/*.zsh)
source $config_file'

A quick check on my bash --version shows that I actually have GNU Bash 4.3.11.

Anyone knows what's going on?

I know this is a pretty old question but for future reference for (U/Ku/Xu/...)buntu users I would like to answer this question.

After installing YADR respository(skwp one), just run the following commands in your terminal and you'll be up and running with YADR

sudo apt-get install zsh

This will install Zsh on your system and will allow you to use YADR.

To use it in your current session run:

zsh

Or to make this change permanent run:

chsh

It will ask you for your password and it will ask the new value for your login shell, enter this there:

/bin/zsh

And reboot!

If everythin runs smoothly then the configuration file(~/.zshrc) will be automatically loaded by Zsh, if not then just run:

source ~/.zshrc

YADR is not meant to work in ubuntu., you may wish to try an ubuntu variant, such as : https://github.com/renoirb/ubuntu-yadr


I can't install Ubuntu 20.04 along side windows 10 i am trying to install Ubuntu along side Windows but when the instalation ends and I reset the computer it goes directly to windows, when I review the the partition in the disc it says that is not asigned and I don't know if Ubuntu where installed or not. I tried solutions that had to do with the GRUB but nothing seems to work

I don't know exactly how you partitioned your disk, but the proper way is to create a separate partition for Ubuntu formatted with ext4 file system. You will need to shrink your Windows partition first, then create a new primary partition in unallocated free space on your disk drive, format it with ext4 and set it as "/" (root file system). You can also create a separate "swap" partition or set the "swap" file on the "root" partition. When Ubuntu is installed, after reboot you should see both Ubuntu and Windows available as boot choices.


Can I make the launcher Icons smaller than 32 pixels? Why can't the "Launcher" Icons be made smaller? At the smallest setting, they are still 4 times bigger than they need to be on a 10" Netbook. The Icons in the "Top Panel" are much smaller and we users don't have a problem selecting them.

12.04 and later
Am guessing that when you say "smallest setting" you mean the Unity plugin in the CCSM (CompizConfig System Manager). For the moment the 32 value in the Experimental Tab for the "Launcher Icon Size" is the smallest that is available. I also believe a smaller value should be available. 28, 24, 20, 18 to a minimum like 8x8 (For people like me with insect precise eyes).
There is an option with gconf-editor in the schemas/apps/compiz-1/plugins/unityshell/screen0/options/icon_size address. But the value is  and currently is not editable. It will soon be however.
UPDATE - Starting with 13.04, users will be able to resize the icons from 8 to 64 through the CCSM.
First install the CCSM (Compiz Config Settings Manager) if you have not yet done so:
sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager`

In Dash, type cc which should show the Compiz Config Settings Manager app. Open it and go to the Unity plugin:

Select the Launcher tab:

Change the value in the Launcher Icon Size option:

You can change it from 8 to 64. The only deal is, if you right click the Desktop and select Change Desktop Background, the value for the icons found there will be the one applied. Right now, both, the CCSM Icon size and the Desktop Icon size or not using the same variable for this.
As suggested by Ben Lutgens in the comments you can easily accomplish the same by typing the following in the termina:
dconf write /org/compiz/profiles/unity/plugins/unityshell/icon-size "24"

where the 24 will be the icon size. You can change this value from 8 to 64 depending on your TV, Monitor or Display. In my case 20 is perfect.

Have you tried CONFINITY
http://sourceforge.net/projects/confity/files/confity_1.0/confity_1.0.deb/download

I have not tested it but it may work for unity 2D

Atul Kakrana


Network doesn't work after upgrading to 13.10 I upgraded from 13.04 to 13.10, and a number of things stopped working.

Most importantly, I don't have internet access anymore. When I go to the network settings, I receive the following error: The system network services are not compatible with this version. The only settings that show up in the network settings are the proxy settings.

I tried sudo service network-manager start and sudo service network-manager restart, but it told me the service was already running.

In addition, the menu bar is missing all of the indicators (such as keyboard layout, sound, network, clock, and the gear icon). Is this related or a separate issue?

Try running the following command to see if it solves the issue:

sudo service network-manager restart


GTK+ in Kubuntu apps look bad I have installed Evolution email client on Kubuntu 11.10 and it's not so cute as expected.

Eclipse also looks bad. I have the GTK+ Appearance plugin in KDE System Settings and already tried QTCurve and Oxygen option, no help. When the GTK+ skin was working, this appearance still showed when I ran an application as root.

Tried:

sudo apt-get install oxygen-molecule gtk2-engines-oxygen

There is a problem with KDE/GTK relation. How can I solve it?

Make sure you have the following packages installed (they should have been installed by kubuntu-desktop, but may have gotten missed):

sudo apt-get install gtk2-engines-oxygen kde-config-gtk

Then go to the KDE Control centre and make sure that the checkbox for using KDE themes in GTK apps is checked.

get the package for your distribution here:

https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Packages

systemsettings > appearance > application style (or smth like that> gnome gtk menu entry


Is there a Paint.NET alternative? Does anyone know of a simple Image Editor, with functionality comparable to Paint.NET,  for Ubuntu?  I've always found GIMP to be overkill and too complicated for what I want to do.

Yes, try Pinta

  Pinta is a drawing/editing program modeled after Paint.NET. It's goal is to provide a simplified alternative to GIMP for casual users. It is currently early in development.

Homepage
PPA

uh. now there are many, here is my list:

pinta
inkscape
paintsupreme3d
kolourpaint
krita
pixelorama
paintPP
rx
vectr

and if you want paint for 3d objects here is another list:

goxel
blender
openscad
titania x3d

PS: you can also use libre/open office draw to create graphics ;)


Can I use every .deb file, whatever my Ubuntu version or architecture? Sometimes I want to download programs that are not proposed in the Software Center but only on the developer's website, like for example World of Goo Demo. But the website proposes only one .deb download link usable by Ubuntu.

Is it possible for me to use this file, even if I use an old version of Ubuntu or an architecture that still remains more or less exotic, as a 64-bit one? If yes, can I encounter any difficulties running the program, once installed?

I encountered the following two errors when trying to install .deb files:

Wrong architecture
Unmet dependencies

So no, sometimes if you want to install a Jaunty Package in Maverick (for example) it won't install, because it depends on an OLDER Version of a package than the Version available in Maverick. (however, there are tools to change dependecies-list within a deb file...)

I don't know about the architecture problem, as normally a 64-bit system should support 32bit binaries (however, I don't think it works the other way around)

Yes you can AFAIK, Linux mint, debian, ubuntu and other flavors all would accept the .deb file.


Gnome 16.10 - Kernel Panic - not syncing VFS: Unable to mount root fs after trying to open my computer, I realised that it showed me the grub menu instead of direct booting. After some tries, this error message is what comes up:

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

How do we fix that?

Start with a livecd, open a a terminal

sudo fdisk -l
sudo mount /dev/sdax /mnt
sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
sudo mount --bind /dev/pts /mnt/dev/pts
sudo mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc
sudo mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys
sudo chroot /mnt

and now you can make update-initramfs and update-grub without errors.

update-initramfs -u -k 2.6.38-8-generic (or your version)

If you don't know your version. Use:

dpkg --list | grep linux-image

And just update Grub.

update-grub2

Reboot your system.


Samsung printer ml-2545 I can't find a driver for my Samsung ml-2545 monochrome printer that will work. I tried getting it from Samsung but when I install it it says:

  missing file /usr/lib/cups/filter/rastertosplc

which is in my downloads folder but I can't get it into the /usr/lib/cups/filter/ folder. I am not good with terminal. Any ideas?

If I understand it correctly you need to do this in command line:

sudo cp ~/Downloads/rasterosplc /usr/lib/cups/filter/

You just need to link /usr/lib/cups/filter/rastertosplc to rastertospl:

sudo ln -s rastertospl /usr/lib/cups/filter/rastertosplc


What is the recommended way to empty a SSD? I've just received my new SSD since the old one died. This Intel 320 SSD supports TRIM. For testing purposes, my dealer put Windows on it, but I want to get rid of this and install Kubuntu on it.

It does not have to be a "secure wipe", I just need the empty the disk in the most healthy way. I believe that dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda just fills the blocks with zeroes and thereby taking another write (correct me if I'm wrong).

I've seen the answer How to enable TRIM, but it looks like it's suited for clearing empty blocks, not wiping the disk.

hdparm seems to be the program to do it, but I'm not sure if it clears the disk OR cleans empty blocks. From its manual page:

  --trim-sector-ranges
          For  Solid State Drives (SSDs).  EXCEPTIONALLY DANGEROUS. DO NOT
          USE THIS OPTION!!  Tells the drive firmware to discard  unneeded
          data  sectors,  destroying  any  data that may have been present
          within them.  This makes those sectors available  for  immediate
          use  by  the firmware's garbage collection mechanism, to improve
          scheduling for wear-leveling of the flash  media.   This  option
          expects  one  or  more  sector range pairs immediately after the
          option: an LBA starting address, a colon, and  a  sector  count,
          with no intervening spaces.  EXCEPTIONALLY DANGEROUS. DO NOT USE
          THIS OPTION!!

          E.g.  hdparm --trim-sector-ranges 1000:4 7894:16 /dev/sdz

How can I make all blocks appear as empty using TRIM?

ATA Secure Erase

You should use the drive's security erase feature.

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

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

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

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

Issue the ATA Secure Erase command

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

Note:

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

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

Just remove the partition, you do not have to clear the whole disk, old data will be overwritten when the storage is needed for something else.

To enable TRIM:

gksudo gedit /etc/fstab

Change "ext4    errors=remount-ro 0" into "ext4    discard,errors=remount-ro 0". (Add discard)

Save and reboot, TRIM should now be enabled.

Check if TRIM is enabled:

sudo -i
dd if=/dev/urandom of=tempfile count=100 bs=512k oflag=direct
hdparm --fibmap tempfile

Use the first begin_LBA address.

hdparm --read-sector [begin_LBA] /dev/sda

Now it should return numbers and characters. Remove the file and sync.

rm tempfile
sync

Now, run the following command again. If it returns zeros TRIM is enabled.

hdparm --read-sector [begin_LBA] /dev/sda


Accidentally deleted Win 8 while installing Ubuntu 14 My problem is that I accidentally deleted Win 8. But actually I don't need it and I don't want to buy Recovery disk. I need to install Ubuntu. So when I installing Ubuntu I just Erase my disk and install Ubuntu. The is happening at the end of installation. It's coping files, but at the end it's showing me a message

"We are sorry;the installer crashed. After you close the window, we'll allow you to
file a bug using..."

I don't know what to do. Help please :(

From what information you provided you have three options:
1 Buy a new computer
2 Take your computer into a repair place
3 Take a USB stick to a friend with a computer and download Ubuntu into the USB stick then install on your computer.
Your online asking a question so you have something to get online with, can you download and write a file to an USB thumb drive from the unit your using to post this question?
If you have issues creating the USB linux bootable image:
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/downloads/Universal-USB-Installer/Universal-USB-Installer-1.9.5.8.exe


Desktop shows a white or black background instead of wallpapers After the upgrade from 12.10 to 13.04 my desktop background turns black after I try to set a image for that. How to fix it?

This is my desktop screen:

I tried this and it worked!

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.background active true

Same thing happened to me. To resolve I removed the Nautilus (with purge to remove the configuration files), and then installed again. Problems arose broken packages, but it was enough to remove them all and install again also. I ended the session and everything was normal.


Installation doesn't start I wanted to try out ubuntu on my desktop PC. I downloaded Ubuntu 12.04 64 bit version and burned it on a CD. When boot the CD and got those option to chose if I want to install ubuntu or run it from the CD. I chose to install ubuntu. When I press enter it's going to load and you'll see a "-" sign in the top left corner of my screen. After that nothing happends.

edit
I may not answer my own questions so i'll edit this one but i tried to run the installation with acpi=off and now the installation starts. If its still needed my graphic card is GTX550 ti and my processor is Q8400 @ 2.66 ghz

Check the MD5SUM of your CD? Sometimes when you burn an ISO the data get corrupted. Check this How To MD5SUM.

You can also try burning cd again and make sure that your internet connection is unplugged while burning the cd.This might help


Error with gzip while used along with tar I am new to ubuntu. I have an error when using tar function along with gzip.
I usee the following code :

find -type d -name 'doc*' | tar -czvf /path/where/gz/file/is/stored/file.tar.gz -T-

But the process begins, starts zipping and it is interupted in between showing this:

gzip: short write
tar: write error: Broken pipe

and creates a empty tar.gz. How can I rectify this?

tar -zcf /path/to/be/stored/file.tar.gz *

This worked. But you have to be in the particular folder of the files to be gzipped

You're assuming that tar accepts a list of files to save from STDIN. It does not. See man tar and info tar.

A better way is, if your list of directories isn't too long, through command substitution:

tar -czvf /path/where/gz/file/is/stored/file.tar.gz \
    $( find . -type d -name 'doc*' -print)


How to reduce high GPU temperature in ubuntu 12.04/12.10/13.04 I've been having this problem since maybe 4, 5 months ago. I've search in the forums and tried every given solution. Please help.

I have an ASUS G73JH with an ATI Mobility Radeon HD5870 Graphic Card. The GPU idle temperature is around 95°C, but after some time of use it rises over 100°C after some time of use (even using a fan base). It rises quicker when watching videos, achieving even 110°C.

I've tried:

Fresh install of ubuntu 12.04, 12.10, even 13.04
Using default drivers, or property drivers (both fgrlx and fglrx-updates) (Catalyst 9.00, 9.01, 12.100)
Using every kernel since 3.5 to 3.8
Downgrading xorg xserver from 1.13. to 1.12
Using the Jupiter power manager applet
Modifying the grub (Modifying this line: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash " for this one GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 i915.i915_enable_fbc=1 i915.lvds_downclock=1 pcie_aspm=force")

However, for sure i'm missing something. My father has the same machine working with temperatures around 82°C. He did change too many things that he doesn't remember which made it work. Does someone has the same machine or at least the same Graphic Card working perfectly?

Couple of checks you need to do:

Eliminate Hardware Issues :
- Using Windows and latest drivers, does your GPU shows normal temperatures.
- Is the laptop fan and vents free of dirt and lint. If not, get it services or using a air blower clean them. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0BQ6YUFaoY)
- Are you using proper thermal paste on the GPU. Arctic silver etc. are known good ones. Please get this done from a service center.

Use the proper ATI drivers
- At the ATI site, download the latest driver for your card and the architecture (64 bit / 32 bit) and check for temepratures.
- Use the open source driver from the Ubuntu built in drivers.

Switch to low graphics mode
- At Ubuntu login, use the Ubuntu 2D option (if available)

Graphics intensive programs
- Do not load any graphics intensive prorgrams - games etc. on this machine.
- Reinstall compiz. (sudo apt-get --reinstall compiz)

Switch to other Distro
- Debian is the best option. Very stable.

Let us know.

Best Regards,

Gurmeet Arora

.

It is solved now. I needed to clean the fans. I still can't believe the temperature rised so high because of that.

Thanks for the help and support.


Installing an application on Ubuntu (new user) I am not familiar with Linux and have a very simple question. Also couldn't find a similar thread.

I'm connected to Linux remotely from Windows. Whenever try to install an application, it returns 'authentication failed' error. I asked the admin and he answered "try ssh x forward". I read a little bit about ssh but couldn't figure out how and why ssh works for this problem. Thanks for your help.  What is the exact command that I should try to install a program?

as your administrator have advised,x forwarding means we can get a graphical output through ssh.you can do it simply as,

ssh user@serverIPaddress -X

then you can try

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install yourPackageName

Depends upon how you are connecting to the linux machine.
If you are connecting via ssh, then ssh X forwarding means:
ssh -Y user@server
(or equivalent).

However, this will not work, for you have no X server running on local machine (which is Windows). You should still get a terminal though.

Next, about the part on installing apps, since you do not have any GUI, you can install apps via apt.

Do this first:

sudo apt install aptitude
aptitude search <program_name>

This will generate a list of packages providing the program. Chose a package from the list, then:

sudo apt install <package_name>

And you are done.


VLC media player not working : Ubuntu 18 I tried everything for 4 days.
VLC media player looks funny with no menu buttons. I've tried to install it with snap, ppa, version 3.0 version 4.0 but nothing works.
I want to play DVD the matrix with external LG DVD drive. I installed libdvd, even installed with synaptic; nothing works, how can I fix this?

i didn't want to do it,but i solved the problem by downloading wine and its front-end interface which allowed me to download vlc 2 and I watched Matrix with no problems. Until I can find a fix for vlc 3.0 4.0 this will have to be a workaround

I had days ago same problem like you and below are the steps I used to solve it:

1- Uninstall the snapd that came by default with Ubuntu 18:

sudo apt autoremove --purge snapd

2- Reinstall it:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install snapd

3- Install VLC:

sudo snap install vlc

4- Launch VLC for the first time via terminal by typing:
vlc

Works well for others packages also.
Regards!