sashoalm's questions

GPG fails with gpg: problem with the agent: Permission denied when I invoke it after switching my user with su:

su - user2
gpg --symmetric --passphrase=foo foo.txt

If I invoke the command from my own user, it doesn't fail. Is there a workaround?

I found a thread a thread in their mailing list about it but it's unanswered. It speculates that the error is because:

the tty is owned by the original user I logged into via SSH, not the user I switched to via su

I'm trying to make Openbox send the Alt+Tab key combination to TeamViewer using this:

<keybind key="A-Tab">
 <action name="If">
  <title type="pattern">* - TeamViewer - *</title>
  <then><!-- Do nothing for foo --></then>
  <else>
      <action name="NextWindow">
        <dialog>icons</dialog>
        <finalactions>
          <action name="Focus"/>
          <action name="Raise"/>
          <action name="Unshade"/>
        </finalactions>
      </action>
  </else>
 </action>
</keybind>

That way Openbox won't show its own Alt+Tab menu when the TeamViewer window is focused.

The problem is that Openbox swallows the key, and I won't TeamViewer to receive the Alt+Tab key combination so it switches to the next window on the remote machine.

I need something like:

Is there a way to pass the Alt+Tab key combo to TeamViewer, something like:

  <then><action name="Send Keys">A+F4</action></then>

Yesterday I was copying a single, 8 GB file to a USB with a slow, 7 MB/s write speed, while my RAM is 3 GB. While copying the system froze, to the point where I couldn't even move the cursor.

I managed to log into the text console, and ran iotop, it showed that a process named kswapd0 was taking 99.99% of IO.

Are there workarounds so copying a large file doesn't make my system unusable?

On Ubuntu, I can choose between Edge scrolling, and Two-finger scrolling. But it's a radio button, so I have to choose between one and the other.

But is there any way to enable them both at the same time? Is this limitation because of the config GUI only?

When I start any Qt app, I get this message in the terminal, and the Qt app doesn't use the same theme as my Gtk apps:

QGtkStyle was unable to detect the current GTK+ theme.

How do I make QGtkStyle detect my current GTK+ theme?

It seems that LXDE is using a settings daemon, and there is no gtkrc-2.0 file in my home folder.

I wanted to change my own password, but instead of using sudo passwd myuser, I used sudo passwd by mistake, and so I set the password for root. Does that mean that my root account is enabled now? I know that it's supposed to be disabled in Ubuntu. What steps should I take to disable it again? It's currently set to the same password as my own user account, and it's kind of redundant, because my user is in the sudoers list anyway.

When I play a movie on VLC the screen turns off after 10 minutes. I used to run Ubuntu and this didn't happen there.

I can make VLC use hardware decoding with

vlc --ffmpeg-hw video.mkv

Is there an equivalent flag for mplayer?

I really don't like the sounds which Kubuntu plays during startup, or during thinks like moving a file to Trash. How can I disable all such notification sounds?

I found this option in CCSM. It's unchecked by default. There's a tooltip explaining that it allows drawing on fullscreen windows to not be redirected to offscreen pixmaps.

There's a post in mplayer's site from 2011-03-26, i.e. March 26, saying that mplayer is multi-threaded. So this is several months before Oneiric was released. Does this mean that the stock mplayer I get from "sudo apt-get install mplayer" in Ubuntu Oneiric is multithreaded, and I don't need to compile from SVN, or compile mplayer-mt, or do anything special?

Possible Duplicate:
What is the syntax for .desktop files?
How do I add a custom launcher?

I prefer to create new desktop launchers (.desktop files) using just a text editor, for example to create an iotop launcher I write:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=iotop
Exec=gksudo "gnome-terminal -x iotop"
Type=Application

But I haven't found any documentation on the format. Can someone give me a link to the format specification?

If I want to make minor changes to the source code of a Debian package, how do I go about downloading, incrementing the package version, building the (modified) source, and installing it on my computer?

I try to run a game under dosbox, but it has no sound, and in the terminal dosbox says:

MIXER:Can't open audio: No available audio device , running in nosound mode.
ALSA:Can't subscribe to MIDI port (65:0) nor (17:0)
MIDI:Opened device:none

Update

I changed the ports to 128:0 in the dosbox config file and now it says

ALSA:Client initialised [128:0]
MIDI:Opened device:alsa

but still no sound :(

I just upgraded to Oneiric Ocelot and a problem that was already present in Natty has become worse - namely, the audio and video are not in sync both in VLC and in mplayer. The problem only used to happen in VLC in Natty.

Some searching on the Internet seems to indicate that pulse-audio might be the problem.

I'm planning to buy a new LCD tv with Full HD and with HDMI inputs. My laptop (acer 5740) has HDMI output, but will Ubuntu support it?

I want to create a quick launch icon for MATLAB, but it won't start if the working directory is not the same as the directory where the executable is. Can I specify the working directory in the 'Custom Application Launcher'?

I don't want to upgrade to the new release, and I don't want to have the notification icon about the upgrade (red triangle with exclamation mark in it) sit on the tray constantly.

Using Gimp can I make all the black pixels with RGB(0,0,0) into blue pixels with RGB(0,0,255)?

When I click on a picture in Google Earth to view it in full-screen, it shows me this error message:

Could not launch any web browser. Please make sure you have set the $BROWSER environment variable to the filename of the web browser we should launch!

What is the best way to set this environment variable globally for all users?