Inspired_Blue's questions

I just shifted to Ubuntu Mate 20.10. I prefer to use i3 as my window manager. However I am unable to login into i3 through lightdm!

Even if I select i3 from the gear icon on the login screen, it keeps logging into Mate. It's been frustrating.

I tried the obvious

sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm

but that doesn't work!

So I suspect some config file in usr/share/lightdm or .dmrc is to be blamed for this behavior! I have tried tinkering around and changed mate to i3 on some of these files. But it has not worked so far!

Please help.

p.s.: just-venting-out: Why do Distros do this?! :(

I am trying to:

1. make some applications transparent using compton on i3wm such that
2. in tabbed/ stacked mode in i3wm the underlying windows are hidden (or are not drawn).

For example's sake, let us take the application to be zathura.

I tried the following in my compton.conf:

opacity-rule = [
"90:class_g = 'Zathura' && !_NET_WM_STATE@:32a",
"0:_NET_WM_STATE@:32a *= '_NET_WM_STATE_HIDDEN'"
]

This doesn't make zathura transparent, but zathura is hidden if it is beneath any other transparent window in tabbed/ stacked window.

Next I tried the following in compton.conf:

opacity-rule = [
"90:class_g = 'Zathura'",
"0:_NET_WM_STATE@:32a *= '_NET_WM_STATE_HIDDEN'"
]

This does make zathura transparent, but this draws zathura beneath other windows when in tabbed or stacked mode in i3wm.

I found this and tried the suggested solution. That is, I replaced "0:_NET_WM_STATE@:32a *= '_NET_WM_STATE_HIDDEN'" with

"0:_NET_WM_STATE@[0]:32a = '_NET_WM_STATE_HIDDEN'",
"0:_NET_WM_STATE@[1]:32a = '_NET_WM_STATE_HIDDEN'",
"0:_NET_WM_STATE@[2]:32a = '_NET_WM_STATE_HIDDEN'",
"0:_NET_WM_STATE@[3]:32a = '_NET_WM_STATE_HIDDEN'",
"0:_NET_WM_STATE@[4]:32a = '_NET_WM_STATE_HIDDEN'"

However this made no change. Please help.

=========================================

My entire compton.conf is as follows:

menu        = { shadow = false; };
dropdown_menu = { shadow = false; };
popup_menu    = { shadow = false; };
utility       = { shadow = false; };

# Shadow
shadow = true;
no-dnd-shadow = true;
no-dock-shadow = true;
clear-shadow = true;
shadow-radius = 7;
shadow-offset-x = -7;
shadow-offset-y = -7;
shadow-exclude = [
       "class_g = 'i3-frame'",
       "class_g = 'keynav'",           
       "name = 'Notification'",
       "class_g ?= 'Notify-osd'",
       "_GTK_FRAME_EXTENTS@:c"
];


opacity-rule = [
# "90:class_g = 'Zathura'",
"90:class_g = 'Zathura' && !_NET_WM_STATE@:32a",

# "0:_NET_WM_STATE@:32a *= '_NET_WM_STATE_HIDDEN'"
"0:_NET_WM_STATE@[0]:32a *= '_NET_WM_STATE_HIDDEN'"
,"0:_NET_WM_STATE@[1]:32a *= '_NET_WM_STATE_HIDDEN'"
,"0:_NET_WM_STATE@[2]:32a *= '_NET_WM_STATE_HIDDEN'"
,"0:_NET_WM_STATE@[3]:32a *= '_NET_WM_STATE_HIDDEN'"
,"0:_NET_WM_STATE@[4]:32a *= '_NET_WM_STATE_HIDDEN'"
];

# Fading
fading = true;
fade-delta = 5;
fade-in-step = 0.03;
fade-out-step = 0.03;
fade-exclude = [ ];

# Other
backend = "xrender";
mark-wmwin-focused = true;
mark-ovredir-focused = true;
detect-rounded-corners = true;
detect-client-opacity = true;
refresh-rate = 0;
vsync = "none";
dbe = false;
focus-exclude = [ "class_g = 'Cairo-clock'" ];
detect-transient = true;
detect-client-leader = true;
invert-color-include = [ ];

# GLX backend
glx-copy-from-front = false;
glx-swap-method = "undefined";

# Window type settings
wintypes:
{
  tooltip = { fade = true; shadow = true; opacity = 0.75; focus = true; };
};

tl;dr version:

How should I modify the keyboard shortcuts of Eye-of-Gnome (EoG)

===============

More info:

As noted here, Spacebar will not be supported as a shortcut for viewing the next image.

So I want to edit the keyboard shortcuts for EoG. Based on instructions on this unix.stackexchange post I tried editing the ~/.config/eog/accels

I got a sample accels file from github.

I tried un-commenting and modifying appropriate lines. It makes no difference to EoG shortcuts.

This problem of EoG not responding to changes in accels file is also reported in this reddit post, but isn't resolved and the thread is archived.

===============

EDIT: I am also open to a "hacky" solution involving modifying source code and compiling. As EoG is a huge project, I need help in identifying the region of the project that needs to be modified.

As instructed here I added the following lines to my emacs configuration file:

(set-frame-parameter (selected-frame) 'alpha '(85 . 50))
(add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(alpha . (85 . 50)))

But nothing changed. Every post that I checked on-line suggested that the above should work.

So I logged out of my i3 windows manager and logged in using Mate Desktop and viola the transparency worked!

So question now is: what else do I have to do to make emacs transparent on i3?

EDIT: I am using feh to set up my desktop background.

p.s.: I have the gnome terminal transparent on i3 and it works fine.

I want to convert:

A,p
B,q
C,r
D,s

Into:

A,p,q
B,q,r
C,r,s

Using sed.

I used this command:

mv Records/1711*D.org /media/geek/SimEx/5\ Data/17-18/Journal/

(this is the command I copy-pasted from the terminal. This session is still live on my terminal.)

This executed without any errors:

geek@simulator:~$ mv Records/1711*D.org /media/geek/SimEx/5\ Data/17-18/Journal/
geek@simulator:~$ mv Records/1711*D.org /media/geek/SimEx/5\ Data/17-18/Journal/
mv: cannot stat 'Records/1711*D.org': No such file or directory

The lines are directly from my terminal session. The first one was the last command I used last night. The second line is the command I tried to run after finding out today morning that files are missing. The first one executed (as seen in the terminal). The second one outputs error. And there is no other operation that has been done on this terminal session between the first and second line.

These were very important daily logs for the month of November. Now I don't find them either in the folder Records (which is on the hard disk) nor in the folder Journal (which is on the external hard disk).

My external hard-disk sometimes disconnects because of a loose connection. I suspect this is what might have happened! But mv executed without any errors!

(I tried to test this idea: I created a dummy file. Typed a mv command to move dummy file to external hard disk. I used TAB for completing the locations. The auto completion worked, which means the external hard disk was still mounted. But before pressing ENTER I unplugged the exHD. I got errors:

geek@simulator:~$ mv Records/Dummy.org /media/geek/SimEx/
mv: cannot move 'Records/Dummy.org' to '/media/geek/SimEx/': Not a directory

So I am not sure if the above could be a correct explanation)

(Edit: I could re-create the error. As before I created a dummy file. I used TAB to type a mv command. The auto-completion was working, implying the ExHD was still mounted. I pressed ENTER and instantaneously unplugged the ExHD. The command executed without errors on the terminal:

geek@simulator:~$ mv Records/Dummy.org /media/geek/SimEx/
geek@simulator:~$ 

However now the file Dummy.org is neither on ExHD nor on HD. So I suspect this is what might have happened. Any hope that I could find the files now? I have heard there are softwares that can recover accidentally deleted files. Need help!)

This is the output of ls command on Records:

geek@simulator:~$ ls -al Records/
total 7116
drwxrwxr-x  6 geek geek    4096 Dec  1 12:55 .
drwxr-xr-x 67 geek geek  258048 Dec  1 12:58 ..
-rw-rw-r--  1 geek geek    3240 Dec  1 12:55 171201D.org
-rwxrwxrwx  1 geek geek   45021 Nov 22 19:13 2017 EX 2.ods
-rwxrwxrwx  1 geek geek 1248423 Nov 22 19:13 2017 PL 2.ods
-rwxrwxrwx  1 geek geek 3712319 Nov 30 12:18 2017 TS 2.ods
-rw-rw-r--  1 geek geek      80 Nov 26 22:56 Contacts.org
drwxrwxr-x 10 geek geek    4096 Nov 20 08:02 Courses
-rw-rw-r--  1 geek geek     217 Nov 29 03:05 Firefox.txt
drwxrwxr-x  2 geek geek    4096 Nov 20 13:09 Latex
-rw-rw-r--  1 geek geek   71062 Nov 20 15:22 List.txt
-rw-rw-r--  1 geek geek      73 Dec  1 12:39 .~lock.2017 TS 2.ods#
-rw-rw-r--  1 geek geek     152 Nov 26 22:56 Resolution.org
-rw-rw-r--  1 geek geek     484 Nov 26 22:56 SBB.org
drwxrwxr-x  2 geek geek 1826816 Dec  1 12:58 Shots
-rw-rw-r--  1 geek geek     117 Nov 26 19:40 SSH.txt
drwxrwxr-x  2 geek geek    4096 Nov 24 02:39 Tickets
lrwxrwxrwx  1 geek geek      29 Dec  1 11:22 .#Times.csv -> [email protected]:1511886954
-rw-rw-r--  1 geek geek    2108 Dec  1 11:27 #Times.csv#
-rw-rw-r--  1 geek geek    2006 Nov 30 23:29 Times.csv
-rw-rw-r--  1 geek geek    1129 Nov 30 12:18 Times.csv~
-rw-rw-r--  1 geek geek   36002 Aug 14 23:54 Timetable.html
-rw-rw-r--  1 geek geek   14896 Aug 13 18:02 Timetable.ods

Output of ls command on Journal:

geek@simulator:~$ ls -al /media/geek/SimEx/5\ Data/17-18/Journal/1711*.org
-rwxrwxrwx 1 geek geek 10969 Nov 22 19:14 /media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171101D.org
-rwxrwxrwx 1 geek geek  8369 Nov 22 19:14 /media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171102D.org
-rwxrwxrwx 1 geek geek  5777 Nov 22 19:14 /media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171103D.org
-rwxrwxrwx 1 geek geek 11708 Nov 22 19:14 /media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171104D.org
-rwxrwxrwx 1 geek geek 11309 Nov 22 19:14 /media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171105D.org
-rwxrwxrwx 1 geek geek 14371 Nov 22 19:57 /media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171106D.org
-rwxrwxrwx 1 geek geek 19271 Nov 22 19:14 /media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171107D.org
-rwxrwxrwx 1 geek geek 18796 Nov 22 19:14 /media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171108D.org
-rwxrwxrwx 1 geek geek 12933 Nov 22 19:14 /media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171109D.org
-rwxrwxrwx 1 geek geek 10181 Nov 22 19:14 /media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171110D.org
-rwxrwxrwx 1 geek geek 10453 Nov 22 19:14 /media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171111D.org
-rwxrwxrwx 1 geek geek  9320 Nov 22 19:14 /media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171112D.org
-rwxrwxrwx 1 geek geek 12780 Nov 22 19:14 /media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171113D.org
-rwxrwxrwx 1 geek geek  8554 Nov 22 20:01 /media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171114D.org
-rwxrwxrwx 1 geek geek 12095 Nov 22 20:01 /media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171115D.org
-rwxrwxrwx 1 geek geek 18063 Nov 22 21:36 /media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171116D.org
-rwxrwxrwx 1 geek geek 14450 Nov 22 21:36 /media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171117D.org
-rwxrwxrwx 1 geek geek 12817 Nov 22 21:36 /media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171118D.org
-rwxrwxrwx 1 geek geek  6557 Nov 22 19:14 /media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171119D.org
-rwxrwxrwx 1 geek geek  4617 Nov 22 19:14 /media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171120D.org
-rwxrwxrwx 1 geek geek  6759 Nov 22 19:14 /media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171121D.org
-rwxrwxrwx 1 geek geek  7534 Nov 22 21:37 /media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171122D.org

The files listed above are not the original files but the ones I backed up into another place till 22nd November. I have manually moved them to this location now. So records for the remaining 8 days are missing. Also the files above wouldn't have the edits I did on them after 22nd November.

This is the output of:

geek@simulator:~$ sudo find / -iname '1711*D.org'
/media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171101D.org
/media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171102D.org
/media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171103D.org
/media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171104D.org
/media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171105D.org
/media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171106D.org
/media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171107D.org
/media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171108D.org
/media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171109D.org
/media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171110D.org
/media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171111D.org
/media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171112D.org
/media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171113D.org
/media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171114D.org
/media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171115D.org
/media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171116D.org
/media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171117D.org
/media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171118D.org
/media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171119D.org
/media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171120D.org
/media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171121D.org
/media/geek/SimEx/5 Data/17-18/Journal/171122D.org
find: '/proc/17227': No such file or directory
find: '/run/user/1000/gvfs': Permission denied

I am On Ubuntu 16.04. I use emacs.

Since I use emacs, I wonder if it would have some recovery option for the files edited in the last 10 days

p.s.: Please don't tell me they are lost?! Super-panicked!

I like muPdf as it is very fast. How do I make muPdf to always open documents by default with inverted colors and fit to width settings?

Currently I press i to invert color and Shift+w to fit to width after I open any document.

Is there a way where instead of pressing the key combinations, I can activate a mode and type in the key combination in words? For example I would type in something like control shift s to mean the key combination Ctrl+Shift+S, without actually pressing the combination. That is, I want to create verbose aliases for some difficult to reach keys and when I just type out those aliases, the machine should behave as if I had pressed the key combination instead.

I would like this to work across applications. For example it should work on my browser, on my editor etc. It should work on any future application that I may ever install.

That is I need an interface/filter/translator between my keyboard and the OS, that will translate what I type into appropriate commands or key combinations.

For example say I am in Libre Office where Ctrl+P is used for Print command. Then I would want to do something like this: Type control p instead of pressing Ctrl and P together. And that should get translated to the correct key combination and fed into Libre Office.

In particular it shouldn't matter what application I am using.

This is how I imagine it to work (I am adding all these details to explain more clearly what I am looking for):

1. Say I want to press Ctrl+Shift+R
2. Press a special key combination say Alt+[ and that would activate this "translation" mode.
3. Type control shift r. While typing I may use backspace. For example the key strokes may be: com(backspace)ntri(backspace)ol S(backspace)shift,(backspace) r. Then that should just mean control shift r because if I were to type that out on an editor, it would be that.
4. Press a special key combination say Alt+]. That would then "translate" everything that was typed between the first special key Alt+[ and the last special key Alt+] and send the key combination Ctrl+Shift+R to the machine.

Is there a solution to the problem?

I prefer the preview in Firefox option for PDFs, rather than downloading PDFs and then viewing them. However the default white background on the preview hurts my eyes. So is there a way that I can: preview PDFs in Firefox without having to download them and with inverted colors?

p.s.: "Dark background and light text" extension for firefox does invert the pdfs and it is good. But my default global preferences for this extension are different. Is there a way to tell the extension to "always invert pdfs". I add this as a footnote, because a solution that doesn't rely on this method is also welcome.

I am using i3wm desktop environment on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. Everything was fine on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. Now when I use unity-control-center I see only the following settings:

1. Personal > Language Support
2. Hardware > Printers
3. System > Software & Updates

Where are the rest of the controls? I tried using the gnome-control-center. Still nothing better.

But if I use the Unity desktop environment everything works. I suppose, I need to run something before calling unity-control-center. What am I missing?

Please explain why this is happening.

It is too RAM-expensive to keep Libre-Office calc open all the time. And I find it a hassle to open calc everytime I have to add a few lines to my spreadsheet. Is there a way I could do it very minimally, by say opening the terminal and writing into my .ods files? I would like to add rows like these:

  A        B     C
1 03/02/16 09:00 Cooking
2 02/07/15 $225  New Clothes

I know I can write into .csv format. But I need my formulas. I could make the .ods file read from .csv file into which I write. But then I have to make too many changes to the .ods file.

I am very sure Arial is installed on my computer, because when I type fc-match Arial I see LiberationSans-Regular.ttf: "Liberation Sans" "Regular" as the output in the terminal.

However all the fonts in my LibreOffice Calc look horrible. As I hover over "Arial" in the fonts, I see "Font Name". The current font is not available and will be substituted`.

Why is this happening? How to stop this?

I am using i3 windows manager on Ubuntu 14.04. When I do lsusb I see:

Bus 001 Device 007: ID 04e8:6860 Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd GT-I9100 Phone [Galaxy S II], GT-I9300 Phone [Galaxy S III], GT-P7500 [Galaxy Tab 10.1]

When I try adb device -l I don't see anything.

Unity automatically mounts my android devices, but i3 doesn't.

I see some solution ideas here and here. Both require me to install new things. Since Unity could mount my devices by itself, I wonder if I really need to install anything new. May be there is a more natural solution. And I am already using udisk-glue to auto-mount my external HD.

So question is: How do I mount my android device without having to install too many new things, given that I already have Unity and udisk-glue

Here is a related question.

EDIT: I tried the above anyways. Here are issues: 1. Go-mtps is available only till Ubuntu 12.04. I can't install it on 14.04. 2. I am unable to find my idVendor and idProduct as instructed here because what the hell is mtp-detect? mtp-detect is not available on 14.04! And since I intend to be mounting my phone on i3 I suspect the USB system handler will be different from what is given in the instructions. I would still need help! Lot of help! Please help!

I have an amazing USB transfer rate when I use unity. But when I am running gnome with i3 or only i3, I get terrible USB transfer rates. How to fix this?

p.s.: i3 is a windows manager, and not the processor.

I am on Ubuntu 14.04. I installed wmctrl using sudo apt-get install wmctrl.

Now in the terminal when I try wmctrl -s 0 or wmctrl -s 1 nothing happens. I don't even get any error.

Suppose I have the following two scripts:

#!/bin/sh
while true
do
    #Do something
    sleep 1m
done

and

#!/bin/sh
while true
do
    #Do something else
    sleep 1m
done

called First.sh and Second.sh respectively.

Now I want to create a script called Start.sh which would run both of them at the start of the computer:

#!/bin/sh
/path/to/files/First.sh
/path/to/files/Second.sh

The problem with the above is: First.sh runs forever and Second.sh never gets executed. Second.sh runs only after I kill First.sh. How to start them both simultaneously?

p.s.: In place of First.sh one could have put chromium-browser in Start.sh. Second.sh wouldn't start unless chromium-browser is killed.

I am using a bash file with a line chromium-browser http://www.gmail.com to create a browser instance. This browser instance doesn't cycle with ALT+TAB. How to fix this?

Sometimes it does. And in this case the code below doesn't get executed. I noticed that the arrow to the browser instance on the sidebar looks different in two cases. So I am attaching screen shots:

• The one with the solid arrow, which is on the left cycles. But the code below it doesn't get executed. The subsequent lines get executed only after I close this browser instance.
• The one with a hollow arrow, which is on the right doesn't cycle.

As it happens: none of the stackexchange sites open on my laptop, but they work fine on my tablet.

I have tried the following:

1. Cleared all cache cookies browser data. Didn't work.
2. Used another browser. Didn't work.
3. Tried browsing in incognito mode. Didn't work.
4. Disabled add-ons and extensions. Didn't work.
5. Restarted computer. Didn't work.

From these my diagnosis is that it is the device and not the browser. So here are facts about my device:

1. I am on ubuntu 14.04. I have installed a lot of things over time. But I don't remember installing anything harmful. Could it be because I haven't installed something essential yet? On chromium I use pepper flash. Firefox is unaltered since installation.
2. Sometimes the stackexchange websites do load. But most of the time it would not. Could it be some malware?

p.s.: the tablet and the laptop use the same network. So its not the network. And I don't think my network admin would block stackexchange on my laptop!

If I would like to select a window for scrot this could be easily done with:

scrot -s name.jpg

But if I want to ask scrot to keep taking screenshots from a selected window, then I don't know how to do this. The following is what I tried:

#!/bin/sh
while true
do
   scrot -s "$(date)".jpg
   sleep 5
done

The problem with the above is: after every 5 seconds I have to tell scrot which window by clicking it.

If only I could pass the window by clicking it only once the first time it would be perfect.

If not, could I tell scrot which window by telling it the window name?

Edit: I also want it to work even when the window is minimised. How to do this?

I installed xcalib using:

sudo apt-get install xcalib

Then I could invert color using:

xcalib -i -a

However after I restarted my computer this is not working. Why?

I tried removing xcalib using both:

sudo apt-get remove xcalib

and

sudo apt-get purge xcalib

and re-installed xcalib.

Still xcalib isn't inverting colors. How do I fix this?

Thanks!

p.s.: My question is different from this as I don't get any error message.