crenshaw-dev's questions

I have more than 1400 APT packages installed which specify their architecture as amd64. Around 180 are i386. At least some of the i386 packages have their amd64 counterpart installed as well.

I assumed only amd64 packages would be installed on a 64bit machine. Why do I have some i386 packages installed?

And, for bonus points, how does APT handle dealing with the same package in two architectures? Does it have some way of knowing those exact instances where it must install both?

FYI, I learned all this about the state of installed packages from my APT status file.

I have installed libdvdcss2, but I still get this error when trying to play DVDs:

libdvdread4 was installed by default (This is a new System76 Pangolin Performance). I ran the install-css.sh script, and it completed with no problems.

I can confirm that libdvdread4 and libdvdcss2 are installed:

mac9416@charlotte:~$ dpkg -l | grep dvdcss
ii  libdvdcss2                                 1.2.12-0.0medibuntu1                    Simple foundation for reading DVDs - runtime libraries
mac9416@charlotte:~$ dpkg -l | grep dvdread
ii  libdvdread4                                4.2.0-1ubuntu3                          library for reading DVDs

I have set up an IRC account in Empathy - the default server is, of course, Freenode. Empathy tries to connect and after a few moments reports, "Authentication failed".

I have tried with and without a password (My nickname is registered with Freenode.).

What could I possibly be doing wrong?

Update:

I was able to connect when on another network. Could the problem be with my Verizon Mobile Broadband?

Before upgrading to 10.10, I was able to execute a binary in my home directory simply by double-clicking it. Now when I double-click it, I am told that no program is installed to run that type of file.

Here is my attempt to make it run via the command line.

~/blender25$ ls -l
total 37272
-rwxr-xr-x 1 mac9416 mac9416 38076379 2010-04-22 00:58 blender
-rw-r--r-- 1 mac9416 mac9416     5716 2009-06-18 12:31 copyright.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 mac9416 mac9416    17992 2010-02-12 11:31 GPL-license.txt
drwxr-xr-x 6 mac9416 mac9416     4096 2010-02-12 13:24 icons
drwxr-xr-x 5 mac9416 mac9416     4096 2010-02-18 11:59 plugins
-rw-r--r-- 1 mac9416 mac9416     2396 2009-06-18 12:31 Python-license.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 mac9416 mac9416     6441 2010-03-09 00:39 readme.html
~/blender25$ uname -m
x86_64
~/blender25$ file blender
blender: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.15, not stripped
~/blender25$ ./blender 
bash: ./blender: No such file or directory

As you can see, the file certainly exists, yet I am told that it does not.

This has happened with another binary; but with the other one I was given a permissions error. Running chmod +x on it got me past that error, but I still get "No such file or directory".

So, what is preventing execution of these binaries in my directory in 10.10?

Ubuntu 10.10 does not allow double-click execution of files such as binaries or Python scripts if they are on a flash drive, even when the file is marked as executable.

I believe it is probably a security measure new to 10.10; 9.10 allows double-click execution.

How can I revert this behavior?

I'm a bit of a fan of the interrobang (‽), but it obviously is not on my keyboard. How can I map that character to a key combination?

I've seen some folks have errors relating to files in /var/lib/dpkg/updates. All I can find about the directory is that the files in it are numbered 0000, 0001 etc. and that the error messages often mention "trouble parsing one of the files".

/var/lib/dpkg/updates folder is empty on my system, so I can't see what's in the files. I've not been able to find information about what is stored in this directory, only many forum posts and bug reports mentioning the directory.

So, what is this directory for?

sudo apt-get upgrade installs all updates, not just security updates. I know that I can use Update Manager to select only important security updates, but is there a way to do this from the command line?