If I encounter a situation where I suspect my machine's RAM might be going bad, I might need to launch memtest86+ to check it. How can I do this using Ubuntu? Are there different methods for launching it whether Ubuntu is already installed?
* (This is intended to be a canonical question easy for new users to follow.)
I have just gotten my Ubuntu 12.04 LTS desktop computer reassembled after a trip back home and connected it to my parent's wireless Internet connection. The connection seems quite shaky (disconnects half the time, likely an ongoing issue with the wireless card I have installed), and it struggled to download updates because of the constant interruptions. Eventually, it managed to download the updated packages and started installing them. I got up and left it to do its work.
When I came back, I saw it was still having trouble staying connected to the wireless (no surprise there), but then I noticed that it seemed like Update Manager had stopped making progress on the installation. I opened the Details pane to see what it was last doing:
My guess was that the installation script for flashplugin-installer couldn't complete the download until I stabilized the Internet connection. I hooked my Ubuntu laptop up to my desktop via Ethernet and shared its wireless connection using this guide, and as I am typing this now from my desktop you can see that the connection issue was successfully worked around.
However, even with a stable connection established, Update Manager seems "stuck" at its current position and won't go any further. It's not totally frozen, but I can't do anything beyond open/close the Details pane as the Cancel button is grayed out.
I know it can cause big problems if updates are stopped during installation, but I'm at a loss as to how this situation should be handled. I'm sure it should finish normally if I can just find a way to restart Update Manager, but the question is how this should be approached. How can I safely get my updates to finish installing?
I have an upcoming presentation I want to make in LibreOffice Impress on my Ubuntu 12.10 laptop. I was wondering if I could get ahold of an Android app which would act like a remote control, allowing me to switch between slides from my phone over WiFi without having to stay near the laptop (I've been told I need to move around more during my presentations).
A quick look on the Google Play store seemed to turn up a handful of PowerPoint remote apps for Windows or maybe Mac. I also took a look at Can an Android phone control Ubuntu like a remote?, but that seems more for controlling an Ubuntu media center. Is there anything which will work with LibreOffice Impress on Ubuntu?
My phone is a Samsung Galaxy Precedent on Straight Talk, running Android 2.2.2 (latest available version from the carrier). It's not rooted, and there's not much memory on it either, so the smaller and simpler the app the better. Also, it has to be free because I currently don't have a means to pay for an app I may/may not like.
I know you can theme the Unity menubar in GTK+3 using CSS, but is there a way to theme it differently depending on whether a window is maximized?
This would be useful for e.g. themes where the menubar should appear standalone in the absence of a maximized window, but then seamlessly blend into the top of such a window when there is one.
Preferably, I would like to be able to do this from within the theme files.
Firefox now has a Speed Dial you can use in its New Tab page, and it automatically populates it with sites that you visit often. These can then be pinned in there if you always want them visible.
But suppose I don't want to wait for a site to show up in there before I can pin it. Is there a way to manually enter a URL that I want to show up in the Speed Dial?
I have followed the directions listed at http://developer.ubuntu.com/packaging/html/getting-set-up.html to get my desktop computer set up so that I could work on bug fixing during 12.04's development.
Now I am trying to get set up again on my laptop computer (different machine) so I can help contribute to Ask Ubuntu badge integration with the Ubuntu Accomplishments system. However, when I try to run the first command listed to do a bzr branch, I get the following error in my terminal:
Permission denied (publickey).
ConnectionReset reading response for 'BzrDir.open_2.1', retrying
Permission denied (publickey).
bzr: ERROR: Connection closed: Unexpected end of message. Please check connectivity and permissions, and report a bug if problems persist.
What do I need to do to get set up and ready to work again on a new machine? Should I just follow all the steps in the first link again (even though they seem to assume it's your first time getting set up with Launchpad)? Or are there steps I should skip / do differently?
Note: I do not have access to my original desktop machine at this time.
I made a modified version of 12.04's Ambiance that uses a dark sidebar for Nautilus, and I would like to redistribute it via e.g. gnome-look.org.
From the Launchpad page for the light-themes package, it says the themes are available under a Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license. The way I understand it, I can distribute my modified theme so long as I provide proper attribution for it and place it under the same license.
In this case, who do I attribute as the author of the original theme and where/how should I display this attribution?
My laptop is a Windows 7 / Ubuntu 12.04 LTS dual-boot setup. I've been experimenting with alternative desktop shells on my Windows partition, such as KDE and Cairo.
After setting Cairo as my default shell, I decided to restart my computer and log back into Windows just to make sure everything was working properly. However, after logging in, I found myself left with nothing but the mouse cursor and a blank desktop filled with the default background color.
I know the registry setting I need to change in order to restore Windows Explorer as the default shell from my prior experimentation with KDE, but I obviously can't use regedit if I can't load into a working desktop. However, I can still use my Ubuntu partition with no problems.
This has me wondering if there is a way I can mount my Windows partition in Ubuntu and somehow edit the registry from there. How would I go about doing this, and do I need any extra packages for it?
System Settings can be run from the launcher (pinned by default), the Dash, or the power cog. But what command would I enter in a terminal window if I want to run it from there?
There are plenty of GNOME Shell themes with transparent panels, and I might want a transparent window border / titlebar theme to go with it. The closest thing I can think of is Emerald, but that only works with Compiz AFAIK and GNOME Shell only works with Mutter.
My mom's ancient Winbook laptop, using Windows XP Professional, was also hooked up to a wireless keyboard and mouse. Unfortunately, this caused it to only accept the account password at the login screen correctly when typed using the wireless keyboard, and after a software update the wireless keyboard stopped working, leaving only the laptop's own keyboard.
How can I use an Ubuntu LiveCD to reset a Windows XP password?
I have a laptop, a desktop, and a spare 5' Ethernet cable that I can use to directly connect one to the other. The desktop freezes every few days or so, seemingly at random, and when it happens I want to be able to ssh into it as mentioned here so I can make a proper bug report and get this fixed.
Unfortunately, the linked guide doesn't give any instructions on how to do this. Can someone provide a step-by-step answer on how to ssh from my laptop into my desktop when the latter freezes, and also how to conveniently retrieve the necessary files once logged in to attach to the bug report?
A couple things to keep in mind:
Since the availability of Unity and GNOME Shell, I have noticed widespread confusion over whether the more "traditional" version of the GNOME desktop environment should be referred to as "GNOME Classic" or "GNOME Fallback" in 11.04, 11.10 and later.
What is the correct terminology to use? Also, does it differ by Ubuntu version?
I cannot find an "About..." link or similar in the release version of Ubuntu One for Windows. How can I tell what version number of the client I have currently installed?
I was just idly mousing over folders in Nautilus on my laptop, when all of a sudden these window-dragging icons appeared and I was moving my window across the screen. Look at the screenshot to see what I mean.
What was that, and how do I turn it on again? Because that looked really cool. I tried, but couldn't get it to display again.
This is an unmodified Ubuntu 11.10 upgraded from Ubuntu 11.04, on a Toshiba Satellite A505. I was using the touchpad.
I'm trying to correct some GRUB2 and Plymouth display problems in 11.10 as part of an ongoing saga. I'm going to run the vbeinfo command to check supported display modes, but unfortunately from what I can tell this command can only be run from GRUB2, and hence the output is only visible while the command is run in it.
I would like to keep a copy of the output for reference or sharing. Is it possible to save this output somewhere I can access it after logging in, and if so, how would I do it? Alternately, if it is not possible to save the output, then why not?
And because I know someone might answer with this: no, I do not have a camera handy to take a picture of my screen (besides my laptop's webcam, which is an awkward solution at best), and I would rather not write it all down on paper if I can help it.
Whenever I try to log into Skype in Ubuntu 11.10 64-bit, it always says "Sign in failed" and "Another Skype instance may exist", thus preventing me from being able to log in.
I've had this kind of error in the past on previous Ubuntu releases where I would forget I already had Skype running and try opening it in the Dash again, and it was easily solved by just closing the extra window. But this time is different, and much more frustrating, because I get this error even after starting from a cold boot or running killall skype...times when AFAIK Skype should not even be running at all. Skype doesn't even show up in the Processes tab of System Monitor before I try starting it up, so I am pretty sure there is no second instance running.
I am using the 2.2.0.35-1 version of Skype from the Ubuntu Software Center. I have already tried reinstalling it to no avail. Any other suggestions?
Other things I've tried:
Tried the first answer to be posted to get the following output:
christopher@Xyz:~$ ps -ax | grep skype
Warning: bad ps syntax, perhaps a bogus '-'? See http://procps.sf.net/faq.html
10072 pts/0 S+ 0:00 grep --color=auto skype
christopher@Xyz:~$ kill -kill 10072
bash: kill: (10072) - No such process
I have also tried a suggestion from the comment to this answer for a very similar problem (specifically, running pkill skype and pkill -9 skype), but that didn't work either.
I have recently read about how Xorg is to blame for the infamous bug in which a user cannot copy and paste from a window after they have closed it. And I also know about the planned eventual switch to Wayland as a replacement for X.
If this bug is a result of X, and X will be replaced by Wayland, then is it possible that a fix will come at that time? I'm curious as to whether this is technically possible, and if it's currently in the plans for it.
I am trying to get additional functionality from a school website that can allow multiple file uploads/downloads via drag and drop between the site's Resources folders and my personal computer via a WebDAV client, versus downloading each individual file manually. However, this feature is only officially supported for Windows and Mac, or for 3rd-party clients for those operating systems. I would like to be able to use this feature with Ubuntu 11.04.
I have already taken a look at this question, but had no luck with its answer...probably because it never asks me for my school password, and I can't find a way to input one.
If there's a way to do this using what's already installed by default, or from some other application, please let me know.
UPDATE: When I try connecting through Nautilus, I get the following error message, regardless of whether I picked WebDAV (http) or Secure WebDAV (https):
And just to reiterate, at no point does it ever ask for my password.
I am looking for either a desktop recorder/screencast application that can output in WebM format, or a program that can convert the .ogv format generated by gtk-recordmydesktop into WebM.
I have selected WebM as the format I need because it seems to be the only free codec supported by YouTube, where my recordings will end up. I've tried uploading an .ogv in the past and got solid green video, so that won't work for me.
I live in the USA and I am conscious about trying to stay away from anything that might have software patent issues, like gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly or gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad. It was for this reason I was originally interested in Tibesti (for example), but that needed the installation of packages like the aforementioned.
I've done some searching online for a free (as in both money and freedom) solution, but so far couldn't find anything. Any suggestions?