Nav's questions

The actual problem:
This is on Ubuntu 20.04. I can't start playing Counterstrike GO (CSGO), because as shown in the screenshot below, the green start button is not visible in the viewing area of the screen. I can't even change the settings of CSGO, because after changing the settings, I'm required to click a button to confirm it, and the button is located outside the viewing area. This is a Dell 2030M monitor (20 inch) with a max resolution of 1600x900. I can't even report the problem to the CSGO team because Steam has this silly requirement that I need to spend at least $5 to use the support channel.

What I'd like to do:
In Ubuntu 16.04, if I moved a window partially out of my current workspace, I'd be able to see the other part of the window when I switched to the other workspace. But when I switch to the bottom workspace in Ubuntu 20.04, it does not show me any part of the window that belongs to the top workspace. What can I do to view part of the window that's outside my viewing area (and to be able to click the necessary buttons)? I tried using Gnome tweaks and using "static workspaces". No use.
An alternative would be to have a way to force the entire application window to fit into the current workspace.

The problem:
I first installed Windows 10. It created the following partitions:

• System partition (Primary partition).
• C: partition (Primary partition)
• Recovery partition (Primary partition).

Then when installing Ubuntu, I tried using the installer's partition tool to resize the C: partition to create a 10GB NTFS partition which would be accessible via Windows and via Ubuntu (I've done this in the past). However, I was informed by the software, that I'd have to create it as (I think) an extended partition. This meant that the 10GB partition would be a logical partition and I'd have to create any extra partitions only within the logical partitions of the extended partition, so I couldn't install Ubuntu into a primary partition. So I rebooted and selected the "Install Ubuntu alongside Windows" option, and did the install. Now I see that there are five primary partitions.

So why am I not allowed to create more than 4 primary partitions, but the system can create how many ever partitions it likes? I don't seem to have any "overlapping partitions" issues as this question mentions.

ps: What I really want now, is to be able to resize the 343GB partition and create a 10GB partition which will be accessible from Windows and from Ubuntu (to be able to share files between the OS'es).

Update: Checked on Ubuntu. So it was indeed an extended partition. Now I'm in a quandry about how to create that 10GB partition that's accessible by Windows and Ubuntu. I used to be able to create it when I was using Windows 8.1 and Ubuntu 16.04.

I see a lot of posts about how to recover deleted files. But I'm asking about how to make sure that deleted files are un-recoverable. On an HDD and/or SSD. Sometimes we end up doing a delete instead of a shred, and need to ensure that nobody can access the file if the device is stolen or lost.

This would basically follow the steps:

1. Search for recoverable files.
2. Overwrite them with zeroes or random bits.

Any way to do this?

Reason: It is just not practical to do a full disk/partition wipe or even a free space wipe for every time I want to get rid of a few recoverable files that I deleted instead of remembering to shred it. Even if an encrypted partition is used, the files would be recoverable by anyone who has access to the password, or can guess or brute-force the password.

What was done:
Had taken a backup of sda7 using dd (sda7 was around 100GB in size).
Formatted the disk.
Used GParted from a LiveUSB to create new partitions, but this time, created sda7 with 355GB.
Wrote the backup of sda7 to the newly created partition using dd.
Used grub tools to install grub and be able to boot.

The problem:

sda7 is showing a grey area (circled in red) which I assume isn't recognized by Ubuntu as writable area.
So once I finish using up the white area in sda7, I assume I won't be allowed to use more than the 96.2GB shown.

I tried resizing the partition using the handle (red arrow), but I couldn't resize it.

Is there any way I can make the grey area get recognized?

If I open a terminal and run the below script, it works fine. The values from the gdbus call get written to the lockScreenTest.txt file. The values are true when the screen is locked and the values are false when the screen is unlocked.

#!/bin/bash
while true; do 
    echo "$(gdbus call -e -d com.canonical.Unity -o /com/canonical/Unity/Session -m com.canonical.Unity.Session.IsLocked)" >> lockScreenTest.txt
    sleep 2
    echo "called" >> lockScreenTest.txt
done

But if I add this line ./lockScreenCheck.sh& to ~/.profile and restart the computer, the output of gdbus doesn't get written to lockScreenTest.txt. Instead, only the following output is written:

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called

called  

Why isn't the output of gdbus available when the script is run from ~/.profile?
I'm investigating this because I wrote a Java program which needs to check if the screen is locked, and I'm doing it with roughly the following commands:

String command = "gdbus call -e -d com.canonical.Unity -o /com/canonical/Unity/Session -m com.canonical.Unity.Session.IsLocked";
p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(command);
p.waitFor(); 

Like the bash script, the Java program also works fine if I run it from a terminal with java -jar program.jar, but if I invoke it from ~/.profile, the Java program runs, but the output from the gdbus command is elusive.

When inspecting the running processes on Ubuntu 16.04, I noticed few processes of Evolution.

However, when I opened Ubuntu Software Center to uninstall Evolution, it's shown as not even having been installed.

Why is this? How can I get rid of Evolution? I don't want such processes which I never use, unnecessarily consume RAM.

On a dual boot system with Windows and Ubuntu 16.04, the NTFS partitions on disk are shown with their label names when viewed in Ubuntu. A user has to click on it in Nautilus to mount it.

1. Why is the additional mounting step required at all? Is it some safety feature for some reason? If Ubuntu can 'see' an NTFS partition which has not been left in a Hibernation state by Windows, why can't Ubuntu just mount it automatically?
2. Why mount it on /media instead of /mnt? Is this part of any 'safety feature of some kind' as mentioned in the above question?

In a dual boot system with Windows 8 and Ubuntu 18.04, two partitions (let's call it the Data drive and the Media drive) are NTFS, and are accessible to both Windows and Ubuntu. To be able to access files on those drives via Ubuntu, I had to click on the Drive icon in Nautilus and Ubuntu would mount the partition onto /media/ and if I deleted any files from those partition, the files would go to Trash.

Since it was cumbersome to click the icon to mount it everytime, I wanted the partitions to auto-mount when I login to Ubuntu. I followed these steps and it works.

However, if I try to delete any file from the Media drive, the only file deletion option shown to me in the right-click menu is "Delete permanently".

How can I have the move to Trash option re-appear? Also I'd like to understand why it only allows permanent deletion?

Another developer created partitions, one with mount point as root and another with mount point as home. Home is full, so I have no option other than to store new files in root.

Problem is, folders created in root always need sudo permissions. Even for copying files into it.

Is there a reason it is this way? For now, I just used sudo mkdir to create a folder in root and did a chmod 777, but I'm sure that's not the right way to deal with this.

A family member got an 8GB Sandisk USB pen drive from someone, and wants me to check if there are any files on it and whether he can use the pen drive after formatting it.

I know it would be unwise to trust a USB from an unknown source. I found one source of how to tackle this situation in a Mac, but how do I do it in Ubuntu/Linux?

Is it really impossible to identify and clean a USB of malware?. Even if impossible, what would be the safest way to check it for files and format it?

I downloaded Firefox from the official website.

I've extracted the tar.bz2 and moved the folder to /opt/firefox. My questions are:

1. Is opt the right place to place the Firefox folder?
2. I don't want to always open up a terminal to run firefox. Is there a way I can launch Firefox from the Unity toolbar (and be able to see it as the standard firefox icon)?

UPDATE:
It's an Ubuntu 14.04.4 LTS. Release: 14.04. Important note: I'm not asking about installing from PPA. I'm asking about being able to launch the tarball extracted version from the Unity toolbar, but the icon shown on the toolbar should be the Firefox icon.

I downloaded and installed the JDK+Netbeans bundle from the Oracle website, but when I type java -version at the terminal, I get this output:

$ java -version
The program 'java' can be found in the following packages:
 * default-jre
 * gcj-4.8-jre-headless
 * openjdk-7-jre-headless
 * gcj-4.6-jre-headless
 * openjdk-6-jre-headless
Try: sudo apt-get install <selected package>  

Firstly, what does this mean? Are there multiple versions of java installed on my system?
Secondly, there is a JDK folder that got created after I installed Netbeans+JDK. These are the contents of the folder:

$ pwd
/usr/local/jdk1.8.0_65
$ ls
bin        javafx-src.zip  man          THIRDPARTYLICENSEREADME-JAVAFX.txt
COPYRIGHT  jre             README.html  THIRDPARTYLICENSEREADME.txt
db         lib             release
include    LICENSE         src.zip

Thirdly, Android Studio isn't able to find JDK_HOME even though I gave export JDK_HOME=/usr/local/jdk1.8.0_65 in bashrc. What could be done?

I'm considering deleting the jdk1.8.0_65 folder and using sudo apt-get install default-jre and sudo apt-get install default-jdk, but am apprehensive if deleting the jdk folder would mess up something, or whether the apt-get commands would download the latest version of Java.

UPDATE:
Tried adding the bin folder to PATH, but although the java version is being shown properly, android studio isn't able to find the JDK.

$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/jdk1.8.0_65/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games
$ java -version
java version "1.8.0_65"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_65-b17)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.65-b01, mixed mode)
$ android
[sudo] password for nav: 
ERROR: Cannot start Android Studio
No JDK found. Please validate either STUDIO_JDK, JDK_HOME or JAVA_HOME environment variable points to valid JDK installation.
$ echo $JAVA_HOME
/usr/local/jdk1.8.0_65/bin
$ echo $JDK_HOME
/usr/local/jdk1.8.0_65
$  

I saw the sudoers manual and plan to eventually give the user only rights to run specific programs, but tried testing it with ALL permissions and it isn't working.

sudo -l shows this:

[sudo] password for nav: 
Matching Defaults entries for nav on this host:
    env_reset,
    secure_path=/usr/local/sbin\:/usr/local/bin\:/usr/sbin\:/usr/bin\:/sbin\:/bin

User nav may run the following commands on this host:
    (ALL : ALL) ALL
    (ALL : ALL) ALL

But yet when I try apt-get install firefox I get this:

E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (13: Permission denied)
E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), are you root?

My actual aim is to run Truecrypt without having it to ask for the Ubuntu login password, but before that I'd at least like to be able to run other commands without having to type sudo. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?
Also tried this solution and it didn't work.

Tried installing netbeans and eclipse but both give the following errors (is this caused because the server is down and will be restored soon? I've not been able to use apt-get to install the missing packages either. Also tried http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk7-downloads-1880260.html but it says that ls, mkdir etc are missing when it is not actually missing):

Err http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main icedtea-netx-common all 1.2-2ubuntu1.3   
  404 Not Found [IP: 91.189.92.201 80] Err http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-security/main icedtea-netx-common all 1.2-2ubuntu1.3   
  404 Not Found [IP: 91.189.92.202 80] 
Err http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-security/main icedtea-netx
i386 1.2-2ubuntu1.3   
  404 Not Found [IP: 91.189.92.202 80] 
Failed to fetch http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/i/icedtea-web/icedtea-netx-common_1.2-2ubuntu1.3_all.deb
  404 Not Found [IP: 91.189.92.202 80] Failed to fetch
http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/i/icedtea-web/icedtea-netx_1.2-2ubuntu1.3_i386.deb
  404 Not Found [IP: 91.189.92.202 80] 
E: Unable to fetch some archives, maybe run apt-get update or try with --fix-missing?