Kent Boogaart's questions

I've just installed and configured Mythbuntu 16.04.3 LTS on an Intel NUC. It worked fine (I watched some TV through a separate Kodi front-end) until I restarted the NUC, at which point I can access http://localhost:6544/ from the NUC just fine, but cannot access it from another machine on my network. My understanding is that this is due to the service starting too soon (when networks are not yet up) and therefore not binding to make itself available on the network.

My problem now becomes: how do I fix this?

I have been trying to figure out whether the system is using systemd or upstart. Some web pages I was reading suggest the system should be using systemd by now, but I could not find a systemd config file for mythbackend. I did find a /etc/init/mythtv-backend.conf file, which I think suggests upstart is in use...? However, when I try to control the service like this:

sudo initctl stop mythtv-backend

I get:

initctl: Unable to connect to Upstart: Failed to connect to socket /com/ubuntu/upstart: Connection refused

Even if I could control it, I'm not entirely sure how I should modify the /etc/init/mythtv-backend.conf file to ensure networks are up before starting the service (frankly, I'd just settle for a 10 second timeout or something simple).

Can anyone help?

UPDATE: I can confirm systemd is in use. By executing sudo systemctl stop mythtv-backend.service and then sudo systemctl start mythtv-backend.service, everything works. So I need to figure out how to delay the systemd service.

UPDATE 2: following the instructions on the wiki has not worked for me. I just see an error message in the log when I attempt to start/stop mythbackend.service.

I've been setting up a new install of Ubuntu on a Raspberry Pi 3. I started with the image from here, updated and upgraded all packages, upgraded the distro, and upgraded the rPi firmware.

All was going well, but at some point along this path I completely lost my networking. It's hard to say when because I did multiple steps before rebooting.

Since other weird things were happening (booting would sometimes work, sometimes not) I decided to re-pave taking detailed notes of my installation steps along the way. Here they are:

• write base image to SD card
• boot
• change password when instructed during login
• install rpi-update:
  • sudo curl -L --output /usr/bin/rpi-update https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update && sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/rpi-update
  • noticed a message "unable to resolve host ubuntu" so added 127.0.0.1 ubuntu to my /etc/hosts file
• reboot (just to be sure networking is still up)
• run rpi-update:
  • sudo apt-get install binutils
  • sudo rpi-update
• reboot to activate new firmware (and confirm that networking still works)
• sudo apt-get update
• sudo apt-get upgrade (85 packages upgraded, around 65MB download)
• reboot

At this point networking no longer works. I noticed these errors in the boot output (taken from /var/log/syslog):

Jul 14 01:18:34 ubuntu systemd[1]: Starting LXD - container startup/shutdown...
Jul 14 01:18:34 ubuntu lxd[18312]: error: open /var/lib/lxd/containers: no such file or directory
Jul 14 01:18:34 ubuntu systemd[1]: lxd-containers.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jul 14 01:18:34 ubuntu systemd[1]: Failed to start LXD - container startup/shutdown.
Jul 14 01:18:34 ubuntu systemd[1]: lxd-containers.service: Unit entered failed state.
Jul 14 01:18:34 ubuntu systemd[1]: lxd-containers.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
...
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu systemd[1]: Starting Raise network interfaces...
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu dhclient[887]: Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client 4.3.3
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu ifup[822]: Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client 4.3.3
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu ifup[822]: Copyright 2004-2015 Internet Systems Consortium.
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu ifup[822]: All rights reserved.
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu ifup[822]: For info, please visit https://www.isc.org/software/dhcp/
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu dhclient[887]: Copyright 2004-2015 Internet Systems Consortium.
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu dhclient[887]: All rights reserved.
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu dhclient[887]: For info, please visit https://www.isc.org/software/dhcp/
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu dhclient[887]: 
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu ifup[822]: Cannot find device "eth0"
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu dhclient[887]: Error getting hardware address for "eth0": No such device
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu ifup[822]: Error getting hardware address for "eth0": No such device
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu ifup[822]: If you think you have received this message due to a bug rather
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu ifup[822]: than a configuration issue please read the section on submitting
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu ifup[822]: bugs on either our web page at www.isc.org or in the README file
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu ifup[822]: before submitting a bug.  These pages explain the proper
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu ifup[822]: process and the information we find helpful for debugging..
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu ifup[822]: exiting.
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu dhclient[887]: 
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu ifup[822]: Failed to bring up eth0.
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu dhclient[887]: If you think you have received this message due to a bug rather
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu dhclient[887]: than a configuration issue please read the section on submitting
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu dhclient[887]: bugs on either our web page at www.isc.org or in the README file
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu dhclient[887]: before submitting a bug.  These pages explain the proper
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu dhclient[887]: process and the information we find helpful for debugging..
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu dhclient[887]: 
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu dhclient[887]: exiting.
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu systemd[1]: networking.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu systemd[1]: Failed to start Raise network interfaces.
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu systemd[1]: Dependency failed for Initial cloud-init job (metadata service crawler).
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu systemd[1]: cloud-init.service: Job cloud-init.service/start failed with result 'dependency'.
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu systemd[1]: networking.service: Unit entered failed state.
Jul 14 01:19:24 ubuntu systemd[1]: networking.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.

I also now have instability during boot. Sometimes it works, sometimes I get an exception trace with a final message of:

Fixing recursive fault but reboot is needed!

I've seen this and running sudo service lxd restart did fix the LXD issue (after a very long delay), but the networking issue remains.

I've also seen this, which seemed like my exact issue until I tried bringing the misnamed ethernet network up:

ifconfig enxb827eb0ecff3 up
SIOCSIFFLAGS: Operation not permitted
sudo ifconfig enxb827eb0ecff3 up
(no output)
sudo ip link set enxb827eb0ecff3 name eth0
RTNETLINK answers: Device or resource busy

So at this point I'm well and truly out of my depth when it comes to Linux trouble-shooting. Can anyone tell me how to revive networking on my system? And perhaps why this happens in the first place on a fresh install?

Output of ifconfig:

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:65536  Metric:1
          RX packets:1600 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1600 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1 
          RX bytes:118400 (118.4 KB)  TX bytes:118400 (118.4 KB)

Output of ifconfig -a:

enxb827eb0ecff3 Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr b8:27:eb:0e:cf:f3  
          BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:65536  Metric:1
          RX packets:1600 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1600 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1 
          RX bytes:118400 (118.4 KB)  TX bytes:118400 (118.4 KB)

sit0      Link encap:IPv6-in-IPv4  
          NOARP  MTU:1480  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr b8:27:eb:5b:9a:a6  
          BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

Output of networkctl:

IDX LINK             TYPE               OPERATIONAL SETUP     
  1 lo               loopback           n/a         n/a       
  2 sit0             sit                n/a         n/a       
  3 enxb827eb0ecff3  ether              n/a         n/a       
  4 wlan0            wlan               n/a         n/a       

4 links listed.

I am trying to mount an NFS share on my Mythbuntu installation, but am getting this error:

mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on
192.168.10.190:/share,
       missing codepage or helper program, or other error
       (for several filesystems (e.g. nfs, cifs) you might
       need a /sbin/mount.<type> helper program)
       In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
       dmesg | tail  or so

dmesg | tail yields nothing of interest, but if it does seem that I am indeed missing /sbin/mount.nfs:

ls /sbin/mount*
/sbin/mountall  /sbin/mount.cifs  /sbin/mount.fuse  /sbin/mount.lowntfs-3g  /sbin/mount.ntfs  /sbin/mount.ntfs-3g  /sbin/mount.smbfs

Why would this be missing, and what should I do to rectify?

I have a headless Ubuntu 12.10 server. I'm logged in as administrator via SSH. I cannot create a directory in my home directory:

administrator@Leo:~$ cd ~
administrator@Leo:~$ mkdir Test
mkdir: cannot create directory `Test': Permission denied

The equivalent as root does work:

administrator@Leo:~$ sudo mkdir Test

administrator@Leo:~$ ls -al
total 12
dr-x------ 3 administrator administrator 4096 Jul 14 21:14 .
drwxr-xr-x 6 root          root          4096 Oct 26  2011 ..
lrwxrwxrwx 1 administrator administrator   56 Sep 11  2011 Access-Your-Private-Data.desktop -> /usr/share/ecryptfs-utils/ecryptfs-mount-private.desktop
lrwxrwxrwx 1 administrator administrator   39 Sep 11  2011 .ecryptfs -> /home/.ecryptfs/administrator/.ecryptfs
lrwxrwxrwx 1 administrator administrator   38 Sep 11  2011 .Private -> /home/.ecryptfs/administrator/.Private
lrwxrwxrwx 1 administrator administrator   52 Sep 11  2011 README.txt -> /usr/share/ecryptfs-utils/ecryptfs-mount-private.txt
drwxr-xr-x 2 root          root          4096 Jul 14 21:14 Test

I am unsure where the ecryptfs-related stuff comes from. I don't believe I requested encryption of my home directory, but perhaps that is causing things to go awry? Can anyone explain what's gone wrong here and/or provide a solution?

I was surprised to find that the discard option still isn't added automatically to my fstab, even though I have an SSD. Thus I have to follow these instructions to add it.

Why doesn't the installer do this automatically? Is there some hidden drawback to using discard? Are there issues reliably detecting SSDs?

The power button on my headless 11.10 server appears to do nothing unless I hold it in for 5 seconds or so, in which case it switches the machine off instantly.

What I'd like it to do if I press it briefly is a normal shutdown (shutdown -P now). How can I allow this?

I have seen this question but it is for desktop installations.

I have a server that has a number of CIFS shares that need to be accessed on a per-user basis. For example, I have a Music share which I have full access to, but my wife has read-only access.

When either myself or my wife log into our Ubuntu 11.04 laptop I would like these shares to be automatically mounted per user. Now I understand that if I mount as -t cifs without specifying a user then it will use the USER environment variable. However, I also need to specify a password, so how can I do that when each user has a different password?

I think my questions are:

1. Is there a way for me to have a per-user /etc/fstab?
2. If not, is there a way to specify that a mount is only applicable to a certain user?
3. Also, the share password is always the same as the local password. Is there a way to specify that this password should just pass through from the client to server rather than having to specify it in a credentials file somewhere?

Or maybe I'm missing something and there's a completely different solution. Can anyone help?

I have a headless Ubuntu Server 11.04 box. If I use:

sudo shutdown -P now

It works every time. However, if I instead want to simply restart the machine:

sudo shutdown -r now

It fails to do so. Here's a screenshot of what I get when I attempt to shutdown with restart (couldn't figure out which log to get this from). It simply spits this out on the screen and then doesn't progress any further. I have to hold the power button in to turn the machine off after this:

(link to full-size image)

Can anyone surmise what might be the problem here? Or perhaps provide some guidance as to how I might diagnose this?

Following on from this question, I have written a simple upstart service (/etc/init/pms.conf) for my headless Ubuntu Server 11.04 box as follows:

start on filesystem and net-device-up IFACE=eth0
stop on runlevel [016]
respawn

exec /home/administrator/pms-current/PMS.sh

I can start (or stop) this service at will from the command line:

service pms start

And I can see that it is indeed running.

However, when I first boot my machine the service does not start. If I SSH into the box and check the service status I get:

$ service pms status
pms stop/waiting

My question is why is this happening? Why isn't my service starting on boot?

UPDATE 1: unsure whether my service was being started and subsequently dying or just wasn't being start at all, I added the following to PMS.sh:

echo "STARTED" > $STARTLOG

This obviously just gives me something to look for. I tested this by starting the service myself and then checking start.log. I then deleted the start.log and rebooted. It wasn't there after the restart, so it seems as though upstart definitely isn't starting my service. I suppose it could be dying at an earlier point in the process, but that seems rather unlikely given the simplicity of it all.

UPDATE 2: I've just upgraded to 11.10 which includes an upstart upgrade, but this problem still occurs.

UPDATE 3: As requested, I've booted with --debug. The output of cat /var/log/syslog | grep init is too long to place in the question, but you view it here.

UPDATE 4: More logs, this time the upstart conf is included at the top. Run 1 and run 2.

I have a script that I would like to run as a service on my Ubuntu Server 11.04 headless box. That is, I want to have the correct files under /etc/init.d/ and to be able to control it via the service command.

Is there any guide available that will show me how to do this?

Is it possible to integrate Gmail tasks with Evolution 2.32.2 running on Ubuntu 11.04?

I've had my calendar and contacts integrated for quite some time now but have been unsuccessful in getting tasks integrated. From what I've read it may not even be possible, but I'm unsure whether it's a limitation of Gmail or Evolution, or whether it's supposed to be fixed in the near term.

Thanks

I'm using Shotwell 0.9.2 on Ubuntu 11.04. If I select 5 photos, click Publish, and then Publish again I get a message saying:

Uploading 1 of 5

However, once the progress bar gets to the end it still reads "1 of 5" and the operation completes at that point, saying:

The selected photos were successfully published.

But only the first one in my selection is ever published!

This seems like a rather obvious bug to have been missed. Does anyone have any information or a workaround for this? Couldn't find anything obvious with google.

I am using Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and Evolution 2.28.3. I have Evolution configured to use my gmail contacts.

When composing a message, entering addresses does not automatically resolve in any way. In order to use an address from my contacts, I need to click on the To: button and select contacts from the list. The list itself is fine - all my contacts are present.

Is there any way to have Evolution automatically resolve email addresses as I type? I've looked through the preferences and found nothing helpful.

The situation with TRIM in Ubuntu has me utterly confused. I don't know whether I need to manually run it or not. Sources I've found are disparate and unclear.

I have Ubuntu 10.04 with latest updates (including kernel 2.6.32-26). I have an Intel X-25M drive with latest firmware, and it is formatted as ext4.

So, does TRIM support run automatically? If not, how do I check if I need to run it, and then how do I run it if necessary?

I have a TrueCrypt container on a Windows share that I'm trying to mount from Ubuntu. However, I consistently get a "Permission Denied" error.

I am using /home/kent/.gvfs/share on server/path/to/container as the path. I have tried mounting with the default options, mounting as read-only, and mounting to a specific directory. I get the same error regardless.

If I copy the container to my local Ubuntu machine then I can mount it and access it without issue. On a Windows desktop, I can mount it over the network without issue.

How can I mount this container from Ubuntu over my network?

I have this issue where the entire text in text boxes is selected whilst I'm typing in it. For example, in FireFox search box I'd try to type "foo" but end up with "o" because I managed to type "fo" before everything was selected, and then typed "o" which replaced the "fo".

When it happens, it is incessant - not just a one-off. But it doesn't happen all the time, and I haven't managed to figure out what causes it to start and stop.

Is this a known problem with an easy solution?

EDIT: this has nothing to do with touchpad. I get this occasionally even on a machine without one. I can usually rectify the issue just be alt-tabbing about a few times.