samarasa's questions

I have LibreOffice 3.4.3 (Build:302) installed on my Ubuntu 11.04 machine as shown below. I have learnt that a new version of LibreOffice 3.4.4 is released recently. Could some one tell me how can I upgrade it through command-line. I have already tried apt-get update & apt-get upgrade, but no use. Thanks.

$ sudo apt-cache policy libreoffice
libreoffice:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 1:3.4.3-3ubuntu2~natty1
  Version table:
     1:3.4.3-3ubuntu2~natty1 0
        500 http://ppa.launchpad.net/libreoffice/ppa/ubuntu/ natty/main i386 Packages
     1:3.3.4-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty-updates/universe i386 Packages
     1:3.3.2-1ubuntu4 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty/universe i386 Packages

I am running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on a Dell PowerEdge T410 and using a wired network connection. Whenever system becomes idle, it looses network connection.

I needed to either logout or restart the machine in order to make network connections work. However, I have another Dell server running 10.04 LTS and it is working fine.

$ lspci 
... ...
01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme II BCM5716 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 20)
01:00.1 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme II BCM5716 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 20)
... ...

$ uname -a
Linux ubuntu-user 2.6.32-34-server #77-Ubuntu SMP Tue Sep 13 20:54:38 UTC 2011 x86_64 GNU/Linux

 $ tail -300 /var/log/kern.log | grep "Nov  4"
Nov  4 12:36:34 ubuntu-user kernel: [161497.534069] npviewer.bin[17951]: segfault at eeb740a4 ip 00000000f5d74c83 sp 00000000ff8d4ed0 error 4 in libflashplayer.so[f58f7000+fc7000]

$ tail -10 /var/log/pm-powersave.log
/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/powersave-policy-hda-powerdown false:success.
/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/sched-powersave false:**sched policy powersave OFF
success.
/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/95hdparm-apm true:success.
/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/anacron true:stop: Unknown instance: 
success.
/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/powersave-policy-dirty-writeback true:success.
/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/powersave-policy-hda-powerdown true:success.
/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/sched-powersave true:**sched policy powersave ON
success.

What is the problem and how can I solve it?

I would like to install perfmon for using performance monitoring events on my Ubuntu 10.04 LTS server machine. I have read that Ubuntu kernel 2.6 comes with perfmon support. However, as we can see below, it looks like kernel2.6.32 doesn't have perfmon support. Could someone tell me how can get perfmon support. However, I have installed PAPI library and able to run all the tests successfully.

$ pfmon

host kernel does not have perfmon support

$ uname -a

Linux ubuntu-user 2.6.32-34-server #77-Ubuntu SMP Tue Sep 13 20:54:38 UTC 2011 x86_64 GNU/Linux

I am drawing a state transition diagram using LibreOffice draw on Ubuntu 11.04. I am able to get almost everything that I needed except the final state. Typically we use two circles embedded in for showing a final state of a state transition diagram. Could someone help me to do that? Please also let me know if there are any better tools for drawing state transition diagrams on Ubuntu. I have looked at Dia, but it is not also useful to draw final state of a state transition diagram like in this.

Is there any utility or command on Ubuntu for checking spelling errors in a pdf file? Or a way to integrate spellcheck in Evince?

I would like to buy a Thinkpad T420 with 8GB RAM configuration and install specifically 32-bit Ubuntu Desktop with PAE as I heard that 64-bit version has some issues such as providing support for applications based on Flash. Theoretically more RAM gives better speed, but practically there could be some issues such as consuming more power etc. Therefore, I am not sure whether I can get improved speed if I use Ubuntu 32-bit PAE with 8GB RAM instead of 32-bit PAE with 4GB RAM or not, specifically for watching streamed movies, playing videos, video encoding etc. Therefore, I am in dilemma whether to buy T420 with upgarded 8GB RAM or not?

By default programs run with Time Sharing (TS policy) on Linux. How to run a program with SCHED_RR policy on Linux from command line?

Thanks for giving information about chrt(1) command. I have used the command to run Firefox with RR policy, but as you see below, only main thread of Firefox runs with RR policy. Could you tell me how to run all other threads of Firefox also with RR policy.

$ ps -Lo pid,tid,class 2051
  PID   TID CLS
 2051  2051 RR
 2051  2055 TS
 2051  2056 TS
 2051  2057 TS
 2051  2058 TS
 2051  2059 TS
 2051  2060 TS
 2051  2061 TS
 2051  2063 TS
 2051  2067 TS
 2051  2068 TS
 2051  2069 TS
 2051  2070 TS
 2051  2072 TS
 2051  2073 TS
 2051  2074 TS
 2051  2075 TS
 2051  2077 TS
 2051  2078 TS
 2051  2080 TS
 2051  2356 RR
 2051  2386 TS
 2051  2387 TS

Edit: I ran the following simple pthreads program and tested like the above. Unfortunately chrt command only changes the class of the main thread. Please see below.

$ ps -Lo pid,tid,class 3552
  PID   TID CLS
 3552  3552 TS
 3552  3553 TS
 3552  3554 TS
 3552  3555 TS
 3552  3556 TS
 3552  3557 TS

$ sudo chrt --rr -p 30 3552
 ...
$ ps -Lo pid,tid,class 3552
  PID   TID CLS
 3552  3552 RR
 3552  3553 TS
 3552  3554 TS
 3552  3555 TS
 3552  3556 TS
 3552  3557 TS

---- Program----

#include <pthread.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#define NUM_THREADS     5

void *PrintHello(void *threadid)
{
   long tid;
   tid = (long)threadid;
   printf("Hello World! It's me, thread #%ld!\n", tid);
   long k = 1;
   long a[10000];
   int i = 1;
  long b[10000];

   for (k = 0; k < 400000000; k++) {
        if (i == 9999) {
       i = 1;   
    } 
    a[i] = ((k + i) * (k - i))/2;
    a[i] = k/2;
        b[i] = i * 20;
    b[i] = a[i] - b[i];
        i++;
    int j = 0;
    for (j = 0; j < i; j++) {
        k = j - i;  
    } 
     } 
    
   pthread_exit(NULL);
   
}

int main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
   pthread_t threads[NUM_THREADS];
   int rc;
   long t;
   for(t=0; t<NUM_THREADS; t++){
      printf("In main: creating thread %ld\n", t);
      rc = pthread_create(&threads[t], NULL, PrintHello, (void *)t);
      if (rc){
         printf("ERROR; return code from pthread_create() is %d\n", rc);
         exit(-1);
      }
   }
   pthread_exit(NULL);
}

I have created a pdf file using the pdflatex command but some fonts are not embedded into it. Please see the output of pdffonts. I have also checked "updmap --edit" to see whether the option "pdftexDownloadBase14" is true or not. It is true. But, still some fonts are not emebedded. Please help me to resolve this.

How do I install the perf monitoring tool?

I am getting the following error while doing spell check in nano editor. Please help to resolve this.

Spell checking failed: Error invoking "spell": Bad file descriptot

Is there any utility available on Ubuntu to check whether laptop battery is in healthy condition or not?

Please let me know if there are any efficient English grammar checkers available for gedit or LibreOffice on Ubuntu 11.04.

Do I need desktopcouch-se service? It seems that it is eating my thinkpad computing resources. Please see below that powertop confirms this. "Ubuntu with no-effects" is running on my thinkpad. Please also take a look at the output of powertop and let me know if there are any unnecessary services are running.

I am getting the message box shown in the screenshot below when watching videos on YouTube using Firefox 4.0.1. Also, Adobe Flash is crashing very often. It's not only YouTube, I can see this message on almost all streaming videos. I am running Ubuntu 11.04 on a ThinkPad x300.

How can I know the version of texmaker running on a remote server?

Unable get my wireless network connection when I switched to awesome window manager. However, automatically I get wireless connection under Ubuntu 11.04 classic. Could someone tell me how to get wireless connection under awesome window manager.

When I am watching streaming movies on Firefox 4.0.1 running on Ubuntu 11.04 (Ubuntu classic desktop), firefox is stuck/hung, and I am unable to close/kill it through GUI such as closing the window etc.

However, sometimes I could hear the dialogues of the movie, but the firefox is still hanging. Rebooting seems to be the only option in this situations. Therefore, I needed to go to console (through CTRL+ALT F1) and need to reboot the machine.

Please let me know a solution for this problem.

I think that the maximum resolution I can get is 8192x8192.

Could you tell me how can I SAFELY increase the screen resolution?

Actually I wanted to try with xrandr command, but I am afraid that it may create some problems as there is not much support for the video drivers (Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960) of my machine. I am not sure though.

The output of xrandr command on my Thinkpad x300 running Ubuntu 11.04 is as follows. $ xrandr

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1440 x 900, maximum 8192 x 8192
LVDS1 connected 1440x900+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 287mm x 180mm
   1440x900       60.0*+   59.9     50.0  
   1360x768       59.8     60.0  
   1152x864       60.0  
   1024x768       60.0  
   800x600        60.3     56.2  
   640x480        59.9  

VGA1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

Some more information:

$ uname -a

Linux user-thinkpad 2.6.38-8-generic-pae #42-Ubuntu SMP Mon Apr 11 05:17:09 UTC 2011 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

I have been using WinFF tool to convert panasonic default .MTS videos into mpeg videos. However, I am not happy with the quality of the mpeg video output. Could some one tell me if there are any other tool for Ubuntu or the options that should I use in WinFF for getting high quality mpeg output.

Please let me know how to remove certain repositories in Ubuntu 11.04. I am getting the following errors while updating.

sudo apt-get update

Err http://ppa.launchpad.net natty/main Sources                                   
  404  Not Found
Err http://ppa.launchpad.net natty/main i386 Packages                             
  404  Not Found
......

E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.