Is there a way to setup a directory such that files and directories

• can be read
• written to
• created

but NOT deleted. This is for my photo archive. I want to avoid accidentally deleting photos. Is there a way to do this?

PS/ I have set the archive up using bindfs if that is any help. Two users and one group have 0750 access.

How can I configure the steps of font size changes in the terminal? I now use 10pt and the next step when using keyboard shortcuts is too big. How can I configure the step size?

How can I batch rename file names so that they do not include characters that clash with other file systems as for instance,

Screenshot 2015-09-07-25:10:10

Note that the colons are the issue in this file name. These will not be digested by Windows or Mac.

These files could be renamed to

Screenshot 2015-09-07-25--10--10

I have to move a large amount of files from Ubuntu to another OS. I copied them to an NTFS drive using Rsync, but that lost some files. I also copied them to an ext4 drive.

The following list are the reserved characters:

< (less than)
> (greater than)
: (colon)
" (double quote)
/ (forward slash)
\ (backslash)
| (vertical bar or pipe)
? (question mark)
* (asterisk)

Another issue is that Windows is not case-sensitive when it comes to file names, (and most OS X systems as well).

I make a lot of backups. I do so on different disks, which are stored on different places. I am looking for a type of backup, but I can't find its name (which I need in order to figure out whether rsync or another ubuntu tool can help me with it).

Here is what I am trying to achieve.

• Always keep an identical copy of the current state of the home folder (in other words, the backup and the home folder are identical after each back up)
• On each backup every file that is changed or deleted in the home folder is taken out of the backup and is stored in a folder that contains all changed and deleted files on the particular day of the backup.

For instance,

Day 1

/home/joey/1.txt
/home/joey/2.txt
/home/joey/3.txt

Regular old-school Backup:

/media/backup/joey/1.txt
/media/backup/joey/2.txt
/media/backup/joey/3.txt

Day 2

/home/joey/1.txt
/home/joey/3.txt
# D /home/joey/2.txt is deleted

Backup with an exact copy of joey, but with a new diff folder:

/media/backup/joey/1.txt
/media/backup/joey/3.txt
/media/backup/day2-diff/joey/2.txt

Day 3

/home/joey/1.txt
/home/joey/3.txt # A /home/joey/3.txt was changed
/home/joey/4.txt

Backup with again an exact copy of joey, and with a diff folder for a changed file:

/media/backup/joey/1.txt
/media/backup/joey/3.txt # the new version
/media/backup/joey/4.txt
/media/backup/day2-diff/joey/2.txt
/media/backup/day3-diff/joey/3.txt # the old version of the backup is copied here

The logic is the following: currently I have so many backups that I need to delete them at some point. This is bad luck, because I want to keep at least the files that I deleted and that I changed. This type of backup would allow me to do so.

So I was thinking of

• a dry run rsync TARGET -> SOURCE to get a list of changed files from the perspective of the TARGET
• a script to copy these files to specific folders with the time and date in the folder name
• a regular rsync SOURCE -> TARGET

I know this is altering the backup, but I think that given the number of backups I have, this should not be a problem.

Is there a name for this type of backup (main question). If possible, how would one achieve it on ubuntu?

_{I am not sure whether a file that is deleted, should be part of every single diff afterwards. This is a bit a choice between a diff for each backup or one big diff that is incremental. Again, not sure about terminology.}

This might already be answered, but I can't find it.

I am getting a bit bored of the traditional purple feel of unity and I would like something new. Where can I find more Unity themes?

I have already tried synaptic, but could not find anything. I would rather avoid people's personal PPA's.

I have a large number of odt reports in one folder.

How can I merge them into one odt document from the command line?

I have found that this was possible in ooo_cat, but that seems deprecated (or at least I don't know where to start to use it).

Is it possible to merge odt documents from the command line? Does ooo_cat do the trick, if so, how can I install and use it?

I have a number of scanned documents in pdf and I want to be able to search them. How can I do that?

Essentially I have to OCR the pdf and then blend the extracted text back into a new pdf. I have unsuccesfully tried a number of different solutions (including the ones found in Adding OCR info to a PDF).

1. pdfocr (which gives me this issue: https://github.com/gkovacs/pdfocr/issues/7)
2. pdfsandwich (of which the software center says it is a poor package and I should not install it)
3. OCRfeeder (in the software center) exports to odt nicely, but does not react when exporting to pdf.
4. Gscan2pdf exports an all black (but searchable) image as reported in this discussion.
5. I don't think Pdfxchange viewer can handle doing ocr on the fly on files over 500 pages.

Is there a software package I am unaware of? Or a script that does this?

I have had bumblebee working since 13.04. It took me some messing around though and now on 14.04 it is not working anymore.

How can I purge it completely and reinstall it?

The question says it all. I had a working icon set on LibreOffice 4.1 that got messed up due to an upgrade to 14.04.

How can I install my Faenza icons again?

The question says it all. I have a NAS which was working quite well for quite some time. For some or other reason I started using smb instead of ftp.

Now I can no longer access the configuration dashboard of the NAS. I am not sure what I messed up, but I do not know the IP address of the NAS anymore.

How can I find the IP address of the NAS?

I think I am misunderstanding something here. I have made an easy python testing file to see how permissions affect the use of python files. I did so in order to be able to answer 64bit ubuntu 12.04 python cannot run an existing python file

SetUp

I have made a test.py file with the contents

print 'I am working'

Test case 1

ls -al test.py 
-rw-r--r-- 1 joey joey 25 Dec 24 11:11 test.py
python test.py
I am working

• How come python is executing this file even though I did not do chmod +x test.py?

Test case 2

chmod 400 test.py
ls -al test.py 
-r-------- 1 joey joey 25 Dec 24 11:11 test.py
python test.py
I am working

So apparently python only needs read permission in order to execute my file?

Test case 3

chmod 200 test.py
ls -al test.py 
--w------- 1 joey joey 25 Dec 24 11:11 test.py
python test.py
python: can't open file 'testo.py': [Errno 13] Permission denied

Write permissions are insufficient (and for the record, only executable permissions are insufficient as well).

• How come python executes files without executable permissions?

How can I optimize Ubuntu for minimal energy usage? I use my laptop for development, but also for writing. I have a 9 hour flight coming up and a 6 hour battery life when already using

• limited screen brightness
• no usb devices
• no networking
• bumblebee installed and the nvidia card switched off
• TLP set on powersave

How can I now increase my battery life knowing that I only want to write (using LibreOffice)? I essentially want a very minimal system for a sort of 'writing mode.'

• Should I limit my quadcore to one core?

• Should I disable some services? Here is the list of service --status-all

  [ + ]  acpid
  [ + ]  anacron
  [ + ]  apache2
  [ - ]  apparmor
  [ ? ]  apport
  [ + ]  atd
  [ + ]  avahi-daemon
  [ ? ]  binfmt-support
  [ + ]  bluetooth
  [ - ]  brltty
  [ + ]  bumblebeed
  [ + ]  console-font
  [ + ]  console-setup
  [ + ]  cron
  [ + ]  cups
  [ + ]  cups-browsed
  [ - ]  dbus
  [ ? ]  dns-clean
  [ - ]  elasticsearch
  [ - ]  fancontrol
  [ + ]  friendly-recovery
  [ - ]  grub-common
  [ ? ]  irqbalance
  [ - ]  kerneloops
  [ ? ]  killprocs
  [ + ]  kmod
  [ ? ]  lightdm
  [ - ]  lighttpd
  [ - ]  lm-sensors
  [ ? ]  mysql
  [ ? ]  networking
  [ + ]  nmbd
  [ ? ]  ondemand
  [ - ]  openvpn
  [ + ]  postgresql
  [ ? ]  pppd-dns
  [ + ]  prey-trigger
  [ - ]  procps
  [ - ]  pulseaudio
  [ ? ]  rc.local
  [ + ]  resolvconf
  [ + ]  rfkill-restore
  [ + ]  rfkill-store
  [ - ]  rsync
  [ + ]  rsyslog
  [ + ]  samba
  [ + ]  saned
  [ - ]  selfcontrol
  [ ? ]  sendsigs
  [ + ]  setvtrgb
  [ - ]  smartmontools
  [ + ]  smbd
  [ ? ]  speech-dispatcher
  [ - ]  sudo
  [ - ]  timidity
  [ ? ]  tlp
  [ - ]  udev
  [ ? ]  umountfs
  [ ? ]  umountnfs.sh
  [ ? ]  umountroot
  [ - ]  unattended-upgrades
  [ - ]  urandom
  [ + ]  winbind
  [ - ]  x11-common
  

  • Should install a more lightweight desktop environment? Can I do this in a nice and clean way (after all I have my laptop nicely set up and do not want to have to reinstall before 14.04).
  • Should I do something else?

One last thing: I would like to activate or deactivate all these options with one script (which I will run only when working on battery). Please be as kind as to include suggestions on how to do what you suggest.

PS: the info in some of the possible duplicates is dated for 13.10.

I want to download a website that uses php to generate its pages. If I use

wget --convert-links --mirror --trust-server-names the_website.com

the php files are downloaded as php files. When I open the webpage locally, FF gives me a popup box asking whether I want to open the php file of a page with gedit.

Is there any way to download a full web page as plain html so that I can access them in a browser locally?

In a comment on the question Does Ubuntu deliberately contaminate its binaries to help NSA?, Jorge Castro notes that debian is thinking about working with reproducible builds. They state

Why do we want reproducible builds?

1. Independent verifications that a binary matches what the source intended to produce.
2. Help Multi-Arch: same packages co-installation (as they need every matching file to be byte identical).
3. Be able to generate debug symbols for packages which do not have a “debug package”.

• Is there any indication that Ubuntu plans on implementing reproducible builds as well?

In tutorials and how-to's I often see commands combined. For instance,

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install pyrenamer

There seem to be four possible connectors: &, &&, || and ;. Though the & connector is clear to me (it sends a process to the background and leaves the terminal available), it is not clear what the difference is between && and ;. And I did not know of || until Kaya's comment.

The following questions deal with the difference between the two connectors, but do so mostly in the comments:

• How to start two Ubuntu applications in one go?

• How to combine multiple commands in terminal?

So here are a number of related questions:

1. What is the difference between ; and &&?
2. When should you use them respectively? It would be nice to see some use cases: if I want to run a command and then after it shutdown my computer, which connector should I choose?
3. What are their advantages and dangers? Robie Basak mentions in a comment to this answer that a command like cd /somewhere_else; rm -Rf * can have destructive consequences if the first element in the command chain fails, for instance.
4. If relevant, where do they come from?

I want to block all, but one or two websites. This question is therefore relatively close to, but different from the following

• Parental controls with different settings for different users (difference: Parental control is not really a good flashship.)
• How to block websites temporarily? (difference: This is on how to block a particular website. I want to block everything except the ones I need.)

I know that this can be done with leechblock (for FF) or something similar for other browsers. I think that is not a very clean solution, because it is browser-based. I know this was both possible and easy with Firestarter but that package is deprecated.

I am looking for something which is both easy (not manually editing hosts, but a script for instance) and systemwide. It can use the CLI.

I would love a relatively detailed answer rather than just links to other websites - screenshots would be most welcome.

The question says it all. I want to copy files in the terminal, but there are a few big files I don't want to copy (because they are backups). Is there a command to do that?

Something like cp --max-size=200MB?

I know rsync has such an option. Is that the way to go?

How to "properly" downgrade LibreOffice versions deals with a downgrade from 3.5 to 3.4.*. Is there any way to nicely downgrade LibreOffice 4.0 to 3.6? The latter is not in the package lists.

Background: It is because of this bug which is about the incompatibility of an extension which should really be core functionality. Essentially, 4.0 just does not deal with templates in an intelligent way. You cannot fully apply a template to an existing document.

Update: based on apt-cache showpkg libreoffice (found on How to Downgrade a Package via apt-get?) one can confirm that only LibreOffice 4.* is in the repositories.

I own a Lenovo EasyPad Z580 running Ubuntu and I'd like to manage more of the power management (battery). I found answers in this question about battery management on Lenovo systems: How can I limit battery charging to 80% capacity?

So, I've installed tp smapi using the following command:

sudo apt-get install tp-smapi-dkms

Aquaherd's answer seems to settle the problem for some users. In the comments however it is clear it throws the following error for other users (me included):

sudo modprobe tp_smapi
FATAL: Error inserting tp_smapi (/lib/modules/3.5.0-17-generic/updates/dkms/tp_smapi.ko):
 No such device

DKMS reports (dkms status):

tp-smapi, 0.41, 3.5.0-21-generic, x86_64: installed

I checked the following sources, but they all seem too advanced for me. Is there a way to install tp_smapi without messing too much with kernels and source code etc? If there is not, can someone explain the various steps proposed in some of these howto's

• Cannot set tp_smapi thresholds on a Thinkpad
• http://www.ubuntu-unleashed.com/2007/09/howto-extend-life-of-your-thinkpads.html
• http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1752993
• http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1752993
• https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/11670/how-to-load-tp-smapi-on-thinkpad-x120e

On a clean install I get a file called missfont.log in my home directory as well as in other directories in which I open pdfs. I don't want it there.

How can I avoid this log to be created? One of the following bug reports speaks of installing tetex-bin, but I cannot find it: bug1 and bug2.