nutty about natty's questions

Starting with find and rsync? and How to rsync files / folders from a specific date forward?, how to rsync photos from a specific date, namely from the date on which the photo was taken (i.e., from the photo's meta data, i.e. EXIF, e.g., exif:DateTime, which may well differ from the file's "last modified date") forward?

One idea would be to make use of identify -verbose IMG_20200430_113445.jpg | grep -i date and exif:DateTime within, another would be to use exiftool (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48582185/only-get-datetimeoriginal-with-exiftool) for that. Maybe this and elements of the two Q&A's quoted above would work?

That is, combining the ideas from the two above quoted Q&A's (and perhaps also this one) with this

identify -verbose IMG_20200430_113445.jpg | grep -i date, returning exif:DateTime

or this

exiftool -DateTimeOriginal IMG_20200430_113445.jpg

might be "the" way...

See also:

• rsync
• find
• identify
• exiftool

I transferred fotos etc from Android 11 (Samsung S10e) to Ubuntu via USB; then, after completion, tried to unmount (I think) which then stalled (if I remember correctly) then pulled the plug and since then I can't properly mount/connect via USB again as before. - Of the USB connection options presented to me by Android, I can now only connect via "Transferring images" (also known perhaps as "PTP via USB turned on") instead of "Transferring files" (which worked before).

How to fix / reset the connection so that also the other connection mode ("Transferring files") will work again as before?

• I already rebooted both the phone and the laptop: no change.
• /var/crash contains _usr_libexec_gvfsd-mtp.1000.crash

After finally taking the plunge and upgrading from 18.04 to 20.04 I think I've hit the first snag:

• 2-Finger-Touchpad-Scrolling (Thinkpad X1) on Win10 Guest has become very choppy / unusable (Ubuntu 20.04 Host).
• In contrast to the touchpad, scrolling with a USB mouse wheel works well/normally/smoothly.
• Guest Additions on the Win10 Guest are installed.

Google so far yielded two relevant hits:

1. https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=93857&start=15 and
2. https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2444679.

The solution propounded by the former (running QT_XCB_NO_XI2=1 VirtualBox in terminal) unfortunately did not do the trick yet for me... The latter does not yet offer a (bug?) fix / solution, but only confirmation of the problem, as it were.

How to fix?

This is the proposed solution from number 1. above (which doesn't seem to work for me):

The problem is that XInput2 smooth scroll events are not being received by the guest.

To see this, listen for XInput2 events on the host and the guest by

xinput --test-xi2

When scrolling, only the ButtonPress and ButtonRelease events generated by the host will be received by the guest. The smooth scroll Motion events are never received. This is why scrolling vigorously allows some scrolling to work, since this is the only time that ButtonPress and ButtonRelease events are generated by the host.

To work around this issue, you can run VirtualBox with the QT_XCB_NO_XI2=1 environment variable set. This disables QT's usage of XInput2 and has it fall back to using vanilla XInput scrolling behavior. In other words, to work around this issue, from a terminal, you can run

QT_XCB_NO_XI2=1 VirtualBox

This works because for vanilla XInput clients, the X server is required to emulate smooth scrolling using only ButtonPress and ButtonRelease events, which are the ones, at present, capable of being received by the VirtualBox guest.

Update

The official Release Notes appear to have been updated recently (as of writing this the last update appears to have taken place on 3rd of June) to include the following statement:

The -d switch is necessary to upgrade from Ubuntu 18.04 LTS as upgrades have not yet been enabled and will only be enabled after the first point release of 20.04 LTS.

Also note that 20.04.1 appears to have been pushed back (~ a week ago) to 6 Aug 2020.

TLDR (as of 15 Aug 2020):

This page is the canonical tracking document for the first Focal Fossa point-release (20.04.1). It’s a live document. The Ubuntu release team will be updating it as we work on releasing 20.04.1. […] Upgrades from 18.04 to 20.04.1 are still disabled as we are working through a few upgrade blockers

Edit

The answers (so far) do not answer the question. The question is pretty simple. Ubuntu.com points to a "FinalRelease", which turns out to be a "Development Release", see evidence below. I'm not asking how and when to upgrade. I'm pointing out what seems to me to be an apparent inconcistency (in semantics, linguistics, logic) in the way Ubuntu names or labels its releases.

From an answer to the question I'd except someone to pick up and acknowledge this inconsistency. An answer could start with a "Yes, ..." or a "No, ...", for starters.

(Moreover, a good answer could distinguish between the release being in dev stage and/or the upgrade process (e.g. from LTS to LTS) being in dev stage, if appropriate.)

This question, as I see it, is not a duplicate. Futher, I think it is a question which deserves a non-patronizing answer. Thanks.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FocalFossa/ReleaseSchedule indicates that today (23rd April 2020) the new Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is to be released.

See "condensed screenshot" here:

Indeed, it seems that that's what happened, see https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop and https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FocalFossa/ReleaseNotes:

However, when following the instructions to upgrade (from 18.04 LTS to 20.04 LTS) found here and elsewhere (edit: actually in the official release notes, too!), even prior to the July point release, I'm a bit confused to see that the instruction is to use update-manager -d which also points to the "Development Release" (see screenshot below) rather than the "FinalRelease" (see screenshot and link above).

Is the "Final Release" (which I'm after) the/a "Development Release"? Why isn't it called something like "Production Release" or "Final Release"? When will it no longer be referred to as "Development Release"? In July? I'm confused :(

Perusing thousands of photos from my smartphone transferred to my computer is a bit of a challenge. Separating the wheat from the chaff is a time consuming late-night endeavour. What makes this particularly challenging is WhatsApp, as it is configured on my phone (by default) sends/receives compressed, lower-res images, rather than full-res. Sharing a photo taken by one's own smartphone would, to my understanding, leave the full-res photo on the phone and additionally create and save a compressed, lower-res and renamed copy of the sent photo in a WhatsApp directory, effectively creating a lower-res duplicate.

As the first iteration of my envisaged workflow I'd like to select unique photos only (over a range of folders and sub-folders). If a given photo exists more than once (either at the same size (same resolution) or at different sizes (different resolutions), I'd like to select only one copy and explicitly only a copy of the highest available resolution (ignoring all lower-res copies).

Building on these two related questions

• How can I find duplicate photos? and
• How does Shotwell detect duplicates?

how could I accomplish this in a jiffy?

tldr;

The upshot / meaning of this exercise would be to include in the initial photo selection also photos received in WhatsApp - as long as these are unique and no higher-res copy exists elsewhere (on my phone / computer).

Further related links / resources:

• https://www.linux.com/learn/how-sort-and-remove-duplicate-photos-Linux
• http://www.visipics.info/index.php?title=Main_Page ("VisiPics has been tested successfully with Wine on Linux")
• https://www.howtogeek.com/117559/how-to-banish-duplicate-photos-with-visipic/
• https://pictureecho.com/ (Windoze only)
• https://www.techpout.com/best-duplicate-photo-finder-and-cleaner-software/
• https://blogs.systweak.com/5-duplicate-photo-finder-tools-to-delete-duplicate-photos/
• https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/40552/i-need-a-program-that-can-find-duplicate-images-different-resolutions-and-repl
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13091603/find-duplicate-images-of-different-sizes
• https://www.mindgems.com/products/VS-Duplicate-Image-Finder/VSDIF-About.htm
• https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/duplicate-cleaner-free/9nblggh4rrr3
• https://sourceforge.net/projects/gdupfinder/

I tried to follow Luis Alvaro's instructions (on How to install and configure Wine?) but still can't get Foxit PhantomPDF Business to install, let alone run.

• I tried both versions 7 and 8 (available as free trial download from the link above).

• I tried loading all sorts of winetricks.

• In the install, I chose "custom" and unticked everything to get a minimum dependency installation (I also tried the full installation, too).

This is an example of an error message which pops up, prematurely ending the *.msi installation (there were / are others, depending on the attempt variations):

err:msi:extract_cabinet_stream FDICopy failed
err:msi:ACTION_InstallFiles Failed to extract cabinet: L"#media1.cab"
err:msi:ITERATE_Actions Execution halted, action L"InstallFiles" returned 1603

Any ideas if there currently is a way to get this thing to work?

For added clarification / distinction:

• NB: Foxit Reader ( = a pdf reader) is NOT Foxit PhantomPDF ( = a pdf editor).

How do I end all processes with the same name in a more gentle way than killall does? I don't want to interrupt the processes, but leave them time to properly quit.

See also:

How do I kill processes in Ubuntu?

In System monitor, what is the difference between Kill Process and End Process?

Why does killall (sometimes?) needs to be applied twice?

_tl;dr

I'd like to fully disable the fingerprint sensor on my IBM X41 Thinkpad. The first place to look which comes to mind is BIOS (version 2.09, 74ET64WW): I just checked again: as far as I can tell there is no BIOS option to fully disable the fingerprint sensor: only to set fingerprint passwords etc, but not an option to "electronically disconnect" / pull-the-plug of the sensor itself.

Could there be some command line option to do just that?

The reason I'm asking: the sensor surface does get quite hot which is annoying (and a waste of energy, too).

~$ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 002: ID 0483:2016 SGS Thomson Microelectronics Fingerprint Reader

~$ usb-devices

T:  Bus=01 Lev=00 Prnt=00 Port=00 Cnt=00 Dev#=  1 Spd=480 MxCh= 8
D:  Ver= 2.00 Cls=09(hub  ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS=64 #Cfgs=  1
P:  Vendor=1d6b ProdID=0002 Rev=03.02
S:  Manufacturer=Linux 3.2.0-67-generic ehci_hcd
S:  Product=EHCI Host Controller
S:  SerialNumber=0000:00:1d.7
C:  #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=e0 MxPwr=0mA
I:  If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 1 Cls=09(hub  ) Sub=00 Prot=00 Driver=hub

T:  Bus=02 Lev=00 Prnt=00 Port=00 Cnt=00 Dev#=  1 Spd=12  MxCh= 2
D:  Ver= 1.10 Cls=09(hub  ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS=64 #Cfgs=  1
P:  Vendor=1d6b ProdID=0001 Rev=03.02
S:  Manufacturer=Linux 3.2.0-67-generic uhci_hcd
S:  Product=UHCI Host Controller
S:  SerialNumber=0000:00:1d.0
C:  #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=e0 MxPwr=0mA
I:  If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 1 Cls=09(hub  ) Sub=00 Prot=00 Driver=hub

T:  Bus=03 Lev=00 Prnt=00 Port=00 Cnt=00 Dev#=  1 Spd=12  MxCh= 2
D:  Ver= 1.10 Cls=09(hub  ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS=64 #Cfgs=  1
P:  Vendor=1d6b ProdID=0001 Rev=03.02
S:  Manufacturer=Linux 3.2.0-67-generic uhci_hcd
S:  Product=UHCI Host Controller
S:  SerialNumber=0000:00:1d.1
C:  #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=e0 MxPwr=0mA
I:  If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 1 Cls=09(hub  ) Sub=00 Prot=00 Driver=hub

T:  Bus=04 Lev=00 Prnt=00 Port=00 Cnt=00 Dev#=  1 Spd=12  MxCh= 2
D:  Ver= 1.10 Cls=09(hub  ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS=64 #Cfgs=  1
P:  Vendor=1d6b ProdID=0001 Rev=03.02
S:  Manufacturer=Linux 3.2.0-67-generic uhci_hcd
S:  Product=UHCI Host Controller
S:  SerialNumber=0000:00:1d.2
C:  #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=e0 MxPwr=0mA
I:  If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 1 Cls=09(hub  ) Sub=00 Prot=00 Driver=hub

T:  Bus=04 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=01 Cnt=01 Dev#=  2 Spd=12  MxCh= 0
D:  Ver= 1.00 Cls=00(>ifc ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS= 8 #Cfgs=  1
P:  Vendor=0483 ProdID=2016 Rev=00.01
S:  Manufacturer=STMicroelectronics
S:  Product=Biometric Coprocessor
C:  #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=a0 MxPwr=100mA
I:  If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 3 Cls=ff(vend.) Sub=00 Prot=00 Driver=(none)

T:  Bus=05 Lev=00 Prnt=00 Port=00 Cnt=00 Dev#=  1 Spd=12  MxCh= 2
D:  Ver= 1.10 Cls=09(hub  ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS=64 #Cfgs=  1
P:  Vendor=1d6b ProdID=0001 Rev=03.02
S:  Manufacturer=Linux 3.2.0-67-generic uhci_hcd
S:  Product=UHCI Host Controller
S:  SerialNumber=0000:00:1d.3
C:  #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=e0 MxPwr=0mA
I:  If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 1 Cls=09(hub  ) Sub=00 Prot=00 Driver=hub

Edit (@Tim's comment)

~$ xinput
⎡ Virtual core pointer                      id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint                     id=12   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                     id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard               id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                              id=6    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                                 id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Sleep Button                              id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard              id=11   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ ThinkPad Extra Buttons                    id=13   [slave  keyboard (3)]

acroread and qpdfview already perform as desired: if an instance of acroread or qpdfview, resp., is already running this instance will open any pdf files, irrespective of the workspace from which these files are "launched".

Now here's the catch: okular, alas, behaves differently:

"launching" (read: opening) a pdf file from a given workspace will create a new instance of okular in that workspace, unless that particular workspace already has an instance of okular up and running.

Anything I can add to /usr/bin/okular to do the trick?

man okular doesn't give any hints to this and also from within okular I see no indicative option in the native settings.

• Are Linux Headers installed by default?
• How to check - via command line - if they're installed?

_{(in Ubuntu and Lubuntu 14.xx)}

Building on a question from 2010 (3 years ago) I'm trying to achieve the exact opposite: I want to disable the Ctrl+Alt+← keyboard shortcut to kill the X server. For me, it appears to be disabled in System->Preferences->Keyboard but practically it's still up and running.

_{dontzap doesn't seem to be "active" (as in actively developed) either, and it seems counterintuitive to have to install it in order to disable this key-combo.}

Any other ways to properly disable the shortcut?

PS: I think it's a bug.

PPS: Some time ago, I enabled it cuz I thought it was kinda cool - not knowing that it was a one-way street without a functioning / reliable option to disable it again.

From the same Ethernet-socket from the same machine (IBM Thinkpad X41) I get

• 40 Mbps from Win XP

• ~ 18 Mbps from Ubuntu

Apart from the fact that I'm officially paying for 50 Mbps and that for most intents and purposes anything above 10 Mbps is "good enough" for me, why does my internet speed roughly double if I boot Win XP?

Note: I'm not using wifi in this setup.

Could it be a driver / firmware issue? If so, how to check?

1. My router's got the latest firmware.
2. My modem's brand new (mfg a year ago in a Chinese sweatshop for Cisco) and from what I can tell the firmware's up-to-scratch here, too.
3. In Win XP, the latest updates are installed from Micro$oft and from the Lenovo "ThinkVantage" System Update tool.

4. Ubuntu Software Center has all the latest (LTS) updates installed.

5. I also connected it to the modem directly: internet on Ubuntu was as slow (or even slower) than when connected through the router.

6. Currently, there are no other devices connected to the router and currently online (i.e., the bandwidth is currently not being shared; and no, this router does not support wifi).

Which drivers and/or settings could I possible (and sensibly and safely) tweak within Ubuntu?

For older Q&A's see, for instance:

• Internet slow on Ubuntu but not windows using a RTL8111

• Ubuntu restricting download speed to 15kbps

• Why is my download speed slow on Ubuntu 11.10?

• Ubuntu 11.10 network speed

• Slow internet browsing in Ubuntu

Note that I didn't yet test the suggestions on How to check Internet Speed via Terminal? but instead relied (for now) on the (seemingly quite reliable) speedtest.net.

Edit

Don't take the above values as carved in stone. I do not claim to have performed robust, standardized or extensive benchmark testing. There is significant measurement error involved, which (to my knowledge) cannot be avoided entirely. I shall update my findings, if I happen to discover or test something new. In particular, I shall keep an eye out for the top speed reached surfing with Ubuntu (relative to > 40 Mbps with Win XP) on this machine/network.

As printing is sometimes unusually slow on my system, I'd like to check which driver my printer is using. I'm not sure if the driver version and the PPD version amount to the same thing; if you know the difference, plz briefly explain.

Neither http://localhost:631/ nor the standard printing config GUI seem to be offering any insights re driver / PPD version numbers.

I'm new to LaTeX, but want to get started for real; settled for Texmaker; now checked the version (and changelog) and noticed a discrepancy between what I've got installed (3.4) and what's been released (4.0.1) -- just a few days ago.

I found an outdated PPA, but nothing else so far. So far, I've either installed things through Ubuntu or via a PPA, but hardly ever downloaded from a dev website, let alone compiled stuff from source.

1. Does anyone know of a PPA or an official Ubuntu way of upgrading to the latest release of Texmaker?
2. Are there any reasons I should not go ahead and simply download Ubuntu 12.04 i386 package : texmaker_ubuntu_12.04_4.0.1_i386.deb (Qt4) ?

Please provide some guidance or a link to a good discussion/explanation on what to do a with a deb-file... i.e.,

• How does it differ from directly installing through Ubuntu Software Center;
• What needs to be considered / taken care of / maintained;
• Why should one (generally) avoid a "manual" deb-installation (especially if one does trust the source)?

Usually, I'm pretty happy using pdfcrop, even though the cropped output usually consumes significantly more disk space. Note that comparable code does exist, which addresses and resolves this issue. However, if wanting to crop a scanned (image) pdf file, my impression is that pdfcrop simply fails. I imagine that ImageMagick is capable of doing the trick, possibly by (also) making us of pdftk.

I'm looking for an efficient one-liner of code (a multi-line script would also be ok...) to crop such a pdf file from Top-Bottom-Left-and-Right by x cm each (or, better yet, by a b c d cm, individually), going all the way from input.pdf to output.pdf.

ps: the solution needn't involve ImageMagick; I'm happy as long as it works (cleanly, reliably and efficiently)... ;)

Starting from (notice the wildcards before and after "some text")

find . -type f -name '*some text*'

how can one exclude/ignore all hidden files and directories?

I've already been googling for far too long, came across some -prune and ! (exclamation mark) parameters, but no fitting (and parsimonious) example which just worked.

Piping | to grep would be an option and I'd also welcome examples of that; but primarily I'm interested in a brief one-liner (or a couple of stand-alone one-liners, illustrating different ways of achieving the same command-line goal) just using find.

ps: Find files in linux and exclude specific directories seems closely related, but a) is not accepted yet and b) is related-but-different-and-distinct, but c) may provide inspiration and help pinpoint the confusion!

Edit

find . \( ! -regex '.*/\..*' \) -type f -name "whatever", works. The regex looks for "anything, then a slash, then a dot, then anything" (i.e. all hidden files and folders including their subfolders), and the "!" negates the regex.

Minimum system requirements for Xubuntu (...)

• 5 GB of disk space
• With Lubuntu, you can use computers with even less memory.

I read the above as Xubuntu and Lubuntu both requiring a minimum of 5 GB free disk space. For argument's sake, let's say the free disk space requirement were indeed 5 GB for the regular, non-virtual installation of Lubuntu.

• Would a virtual installation (e.g. in VMWare, VirtualBox, Xen) then necessarily require 5 GB of real, physical space, too?

Back in the day, I worked a little with MS Windoze Virtual PC, but don't recall the "conversion factor" of virtual to physical disk space; but I'm pretty sure it's not "unity" ;) ... but please do correct me if I'm wrong !!

ps: Futher, I'm aware of two installation methods: standard and alternate, the latter designed especially for systems short of memory (RAM). I didn't yet check the exact options the alternate installer would offer, e.g. selecting which programs not to install, thus reducing the free disk space requirement.

Now that finally docking seems to be fully supported on my system, hurray!, I can address a relatively minor issue (or even a bug ?):

Normally, I have (all) four workspaces populated with my standard applications. Whenever I dock back into my docking-station (e.g. from standby-mode), all the open applications from separate workspaces land on a single -- the one "active" whilst re-docking -- workspace.

"Fixing" that, i.e., getting my stuff back in the correct order and every application back into its respective and pre-ordained workspace, takes me about 5 - 10 seconds, so I can live with that... but clearly it's sub-ideal.

Any comments & help much appreciated.

Edit / Addendum

This also occurs when connecting an external monitor / beamer / projector (via VGA).

Edit 2

Related (and possibly related) posts:

• Workspace stays fixed on external monitor when switching workspace (note, however, that I normally dock with the laptop closed and leave the laptop's monitor while docked; that is, I don't expand the desktop to two monitors at the same time; if anything, it's mirroring or just one monitor on and the other off)
• https://superuser.com/a/176893/183485
• https://superuser.com/questions/297819/move-window-to-another-monitor-in-ubuntu-using-keyboard
• https://askubuntu.com/a/195201/16023 <<< < < < nota bene ! < < < <<<
• How to move all windows to another workspace
• https://linux.die.net/man/1/wmctrl

Like many other natty users on a university/academic network, I'm experiencing annoying frequent disconnects/hangs/delays.

See, for instance here.

I would like to learn how to add fast_reauth=0 to the wpa_supplicant.conf file.

This file, it seems, does not exist by default, and needs to be manually created first: README

You will need to make a configuration file, e.g. /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf, with network configuration for the networks you are going to use.

Further, I installed wpa_gui which probably needs to be launched with parameters, else it's pretty blank...

What I'm hoping for is this:

That creating a wpa_supplicant.conf file with fast_reauth=0 in it, saving it to the relevant path, will work and make my uni wireless (more or even completely) stable.

I read mixed reviews about wicd (as an alternative to the network manager).

Also note that on my basic wlan at home (with bog-standard wpa encryption) the connection is stable.

Thanks!

I just learned about "whereis" in terminal as a way to find a command to launch a given application. However, I still can't find (a way to find) the command to launch the "Workspace Switcher" in natty / unity.

I'd be interested in both the method(s) for finding the command as well as the command itself.