Ibuntu's questions

In past versions of Ubuntu I have always been about to find a folder for external usb drives in /mnt or /media/username after they have been mounted. Since upgrading to Ubuntu 15.10 I have noticed this to be missing.

Normally not an issue because I can create a new file manager instance which shows me the usb drive, however when trying to add files in a piece of software through a file browser (e.g., adding files/folders to a playlist in VLC) there is no option to choose a device other than the computer and I was unable to add files from my external drive because I cannot find a folder on my computer for it.

Is there a new location other than /media or /mnt that I need to look for this in Ubuntu 15.10? Thank you.

I am running Ubuntu 14.10 on a Lenovo Ideapad y410p. I have a pretty fresh install, less than a week old. Fully up to date.

At first I was just having this issue with Ubuntu Touch on my Nexus 4, I would connect it to the computer via USB and start a file transfer or just leave it charging (doesn't matter whether or not I interact with it on the computer) and then it would disconnect on its own for some reason and then Ubuntu would try to re-mount it automatically and come up with an error pop-up saying it was unable to mount and a nautilus window would pop open trying to show the phone's internal storage. I guess Ubuntu is locked out or something but then it keeps trying to mount and keeps opening Nautilus windows and gets stuck in a loop unless I disconnect the USB.

I have been using the Ubuntu phone for a couple of months now and noticed this every once in a while. I thought it was the phone and that the problem had progressed as now it happens most times the phone is plugged into the laptop. I have also reformatted the laptop since first experiencing this issue and still experience it on a fresh Ubuntu 14.10 install.

I figured the problem was related to Ubuntu touch until my friend plugged in his Nexus 5 to charge last night and it started doing the same thing. It was fine for a bit and we didn't pay attention to it, then an hour or two later there there are dozens of nautilus windows open along with dozens of unable to mount pop ups.

I am not sure how to recreate the issue. It seems to happen randomly. I don't get any kind of error reports from the system, the unable to mount pop up is the same that you get when you stick a cd/dvd into a drive (from my reading on the internet it seems that almost everyone gets that popup in Ubuntu for the last couple years or something).

Right now I am just borrowing different people's smart phones and leaving them connected via USB to see if I can find a definitive way to recreate the problem. I would appreciate any suggestions anyone can offer.

Thanks for reading (I have tried googling the issue but have not been able to find anything).

I am having an issue with my Lenovo Ideapad y410p with the speakers popping and making a ringing sound which I can't seem to figure out how to fix. I found one solution on Ask Ubuntu but I am unable to complete the necessary steps.

The solution is here: Popping noise from laptop speakers

But the second half of the solution requires me to edit two files that I cannot seem to edit.

I have tried editing them in 3 different ways with 3 different editors. I will describe the errors below

using gksu gedit I am able to open the files and change the values but cannot save them in gedit and get the following error:

Could not create a backup file while saving "/sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save"
Could not back up the old copy of the file before saving the new one. 
You can ignore this warning and save the file anyway, 
but if an error occurs while saving, 
you could lose the old copy of the file. Save anyway?

and every time I click save anyway, the same message appears and it will not let me edit the file. I have to close without saving.

Online people have suggested unchecking the option in gedit preferences to create backups, which I did in a non-root instance of gedit but it is checked again in the root instance. If I try to uncheck it in the root instance of gedit it will not save the preference change. When I go back into my preferences it is checked again.

Now if I try gksu mousepad (my preferred editor anyway) I am not even able to open the file and get the following error:

Failed to open the document.

Failed to map /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save' 
/sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save': mmap() failed: No such device.

And finally if I try to use sudo nano or sudoedit when I got to write out to the file after saving changes I get an error that says invalid argument. No numbers or codes or letters following that, just invalid argument.

Can anyone tell me how to edit these files?

Update: I also tried using sudo chmod 755 and sudo chmod +w on the files to make sure I had write permissions and then tried

sudo echo 0 > /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save

but I just got permission denied.

I installed Ubuntu Touch about 2 months ago on my Nexus 4 following these instructions:

http://developer.ubuntu.com/en/start/ubuntu-for-devices/installing-ubuntu-for-devices/

I unlocked my device and connected it to the computer and installed using the following command:

ubuntu-device-flash --channel=ubuntu-touch/ubuntu-rtm/14.09 --bootstrap

Everything has been working fine until Monday afternoon when I restarted the phone and could no longer connect to my cellular network. I am using WIND Mobile and I live in Toronto.

In the network settings under the cellular section, where it would display the network name and connection strength, instead it just says "Denied" with a blank connection status (or 0 bars of connectivity; the triangle outline).

I have tried restarting and powering off, and leaving the phone off for a day, etc. nothing has seemed to work. I swapped out SIM cards with my Mom who is with Fido and her sim card connects to her network perfectly.

I also tried my house-mates SIM (he is with Koodo) and he got the same thing, his network is Denied.

I have also tried my WIND sim card in other phones and it has no issue connecting to my network.

I know that Koodo, WIND, Mobilicity, etc. use the same range of frequencies to connect

And that Bell, Rogers, Fido use a different range of frequencies.

It seems that a recent update or something for Ubuntu Touch has given it an error in connecting to the frequency ranges for Koodo/WIND/etc. while the frequencies for the big wig companies are unaffected.

What can I do about this? My ubuntu phone has become unusable.

phablet@ubuntu:~$ system-image-cli -i
current build number: 12
device name: mako
channel: ubuntu-touch/ubuntu-rtm/14.09
last update: 1969-12-31
version version: 12
version ubuntu: 20141218
version device: 20141119
version custom: mako-1.1

My phone says it is up to date. Please let me know if I can provide any more information or how I can troubleshoot this issue. Thanks.

I'm using an Lenovo Ideapad y410p and (hoping someone at Lenovo sees this) for some stupid reason, Lenovo decided to put the Fn key on the left side of the keyboard while most of the keys with extra functions bound to them are on the right side of the keyboard.

My main issue with this is that I can't adjust the volume with one hand. I need to use left hand to hold the Fn key and right hand to arrow left or right (up/down for brightness).

Now I've done my research on using xmodmap and xev to remap keys. And I've also done enough research to know that xev cannot pick up the Fn key and it cannot be remapped.

All I could find was people hoping to make their Fn key do something else and they were left SOL. I actually want to do the opposite and bind another key (specifically my menu key which mirrors the Fn key on the right side of the keyboard) to do the same as Fn.

Right now I have to press:

Fn + Left Arrow - volume down
Fn + Right Arrow - volume up
Fn + Up Arrow - brightness up
Fn + Down Arrow - brightness down

And I would like be able to do the following:

Menu + Left Arrow - volume down
Menu + Right Arrow - volume up
Menu + Up Arrow - brightness up
Menu + Down Arrow - brightness down

Preferably I would like to be able to do this while still leaving the Fn commands in tact, but I could live without it. I could also live without changing brightness, it is not as important to me as being able to adjust volume with one hand.

In the system settings and keyboard shortcuts I could see how to rebind volume up from "audio volume up" (which is Fn + Right Arrow) to another key, but it binds after a single key and won't seem to let me do key combinations. This is the closest I have come to figure it out.

The most ideal situation would be to make the Menu key do what the Fn key does. I'm doubting this is possible so I would just like to set up a shortcut where 'Menu + Left Arrow' turns volume down and 'Menu + Right Arrow' does turns volume up.

Just to clarify, the Menu key is a key I have between my alt and ctrl on the right side of the keyboard, it makes context menus appear when pressed. Its keycode is 135 and its action is Menu.

Thanks for reading. Your help is appreciated.

Over the past couple years when I've been looking at guides for installing ccsm (compiz config settings manager) I've seen some of them suggesting the package compiz-plugins for extra plugins and some recommend compiz-plugins-extra but I've never really seen both recommended.

I was wondering if it is as simple as it sounds and compiz-plugins-extra contains more additional plugins than compiz-plugins? And my primary question, other than the difference between the two packages, is it safe to install both?

Thanks.

Is there a good way to list or find out the keybindings that are currently in use on your computer? I'm changing some keybindings in compiz (particularly because I don't have a keypad) and I didn't want to take away from other plugins that are already using a particular keybinding. I know it isn't particularly a big issue as I could always assign a new binding as I need a command, but it can be difficult to keep track of.

I found this question: How to list Compiz keybindings in use?

which gives two different codes in two different answers to supposedly list the bindings just for compiz, but it's severely outdated and both return a:

No value set for `/apps/compiz-1/general/screen0/options/active_plugins'

Also I didn't want to mix compiz bindings with ubuntu bindings or other bindings, so I was wondering if there was a way to list all bindings together. I thought it might be more efficient if there was a way or piece of simple software that could be run in the terminal and then output the command of any bindings. That way you could enter a key combination and it would give you the command of whatever it is bound to, or output nothing if that key combination is free.

Does anyone know of anything?

On a slightly unrelated note (but surely not worth its own topic/question), does anyone know what the begin key is? I came across some bindings with KPBegin, KPEnd, etc. and I know that end is obviously the end key. But begin is not the home key, that gives its own name, and I tried to look online but couldn't really find anything except some things suggesting it was the enter key, but this is return.

Back in Ubuntu 13.10 if you had multiple windows of the same application open and scrolled over that application's launcher icon it would bring up all the open windows one by one.

Now in Ubuntu 14.04 it will only focus one window at a time while minimizing the rest.

How can the previous behaviour be restored?

I mainly use this feature to bring up multiple file manager windows to transfer files from one window to the next or many other similar situations to view multiple windows at once. The new behaviour is much less practical.

Thank you.

Edit (thanks to fossfreedom for suggesting clarification):

(example)

In 13.10 if I'm in Firefox and I have 3 nautilus windows running behind Firefox and I scroll over the Nautilus icon 1 click brings the first window in front of Firefox, 2 clicks the second window, 3 clicks the third window, 4 clicks puts the first window back in focus but all 3 are visible in front of Firefox. In 14.04 I can only see the window that is in focus in front of Firefox, when I scroll to the next window, the previous one goes back behind Firefox. After 4 clicks, only 1 window is visible

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3To8z81Ygw

Since I'm not getting any response or help using Ask Ubuntu, here is a link to the forum post: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2227315

I've also noticed with multiple different applications open sometimes multiple windows come up in front or behind of other applications. I would describe this feature now as severely broken.

example: with multiple file manager windows open and firefox in the background and using, say, a text editor, if the text editor is in focus, then I bring a fm window in focus, then go back to firefox, if I scroll on the fm launcher icon it will bring up one window at a time, putting each one back behind firefox as I go to the next, but the one that had the text editor behind it will bring up the text editor in front of firefox, behind the fm window.

What is the difference between the two ATI drivers fglrx and fglrx-updates, and what one should I install with a machine with an AMD R7 260X video card? I have found outdated information on the Steam Forums that said there were the same driver, and where can I find up to date information on these two drivers?

I have a file server that seconds as a media centre. Lets call the server Barton. It has 2 external hard drives plugged into it. It also constantly has video files playing on it which are outputting to a TV.

Now I have a laptop (both machines are running Ubuntu 13.10) on the same LAN and I would like to organize my files on the two external hard drives connected to Barton, without having to use the actual machine Barton because it is being used to watch video files. So I've trying SSH and Samba connections with the laptop, which is fine for moving files around on the same disk, but when I want to transfer a folder from one external drive to another, this is where I have an issue.

If I copy a folder from one external hard drive to another from the local machine Barton I get a transfer rate of around 10-20mb/s (which is pretty much the maximum that Barton will allow given it's hardware specifications. Now if I do a similar transfer from my laptop using SSH or Samba I get a transfer speed of around 100kb/s and this is not usable for trying to organize files.

So I figure when using SSH or Samba that the files have to get transferred over the network and that is why they are so slow. Is there any way to get my laptop to tell Barton to do the file transfer locally instead of trying to do it over the network? As in, some way I can run commands from the laptop and have Barton carry out the transfer at 10-20mb/s? Thank you.

I'm trying to SSH another machine on my LAN using the hostname because the local IP address gets re-assigned somewhat regularly (we have issues with our ISP and frequently have to reset our network).

I have a laptop with the login freedom@flex15 and currently local IP 192.168.1.11

and I have a desktop I am trying to connect to for file transfer with the login freedom@barton and local IP 192.168.1.153

I think I just need some formatting clarification on how to connect using hostname. All the guides I read say to use something like:

ssh://username@hostname

but if I try:

ssh://freedom@barton 

I get this error:

Oops! Something went wrong.
Unable to find the requested location. Please check the spelling or the network settings.

However, when using:

ssh://[email protected]

It works fine. So I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong here because all the documentation says I can use ssh://hostname or ssh://username@hostname or something like that. It would be ideal to have some way to specific this machine that does not involve the IP address. Thank you.

So I'm making my own document of codes to run after a fresh install of Ubuntu 13.10 and I want to try and keep everything in the command line (as opposed to having to open a browser to download files).

So I've got

wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i google-chrome*.deb

for downloading google chrome and wanted to make something similar for Opera, so I have this link to download the opera browser .deb install file

www.opera.com/download/get/?id=35889&location=360&nothanks=yes&sub=marine

and have tried a variety of different things with wget but I can't seem to get it to download the .deb file. I would really like to do this from the command line instead of opening a browser to download the file.

Thanks.

I just bought a Lenovo Ideapad Flex 15 and ripped Windows out of it to put Ubuntu 13.10 on. For other people with Ideapad Flex's, if you have the issue where Ubuntu loads with 0 brightness, try adding:

echo 85 > /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness

before the 'exit 0' line of your /etc/rc.local file.

The only other problem I've noticed is that the touchpad drivers do not load and the touchpad reacts essentially as a simple mouse with left and right click, no scrolling and no multi-touch capabilities. The touchscreen seems to work fine, but I don't know what to really expect from a touchscreen in Ubuntu.

Here is my xinput:

freedom@flex15:~$ xinput list
⎡ Virtual core pointer                      id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ eGalax Inc. eGalaxTouch EXC7910-1026-13.00.00 id=9    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ PS/2 Generic Mouse                        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)]
    ↳ Power Button                              id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Lenovo EasyCamera                         id=10   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard              id=11   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Ideapad extra buttons                     id=13   [slave  keyboard (3)]

My dmesg info on my touchpad/touchscreen:

freedom@flex15:~$ dmesg | grep -i touch
[    1.900295] usb 2-1: Product: eGalaxTouch EXC7910-1026-13.00.00
[   18.021041] psmouse serio1: alps: Unknown ALPS touchpad: E7=73 03 0a, EC=88 b6 06
[   18.212564] input: eGalax Inc. eGalaxTouch EXC7910-1026-13.00.00 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb2/2-1/2-1:1.0/input/input5
[   18.212704] hid-multitouch 0003:0EEF:A111.0001: input,hiddev0,hidraw0: USB HID v2.10 Device [eGalax Inc. eGalaxTouch EXC7910-1026-13.00.00] on usb-0000:00:14.0-1/input0

And if I try to use synaptiks for anything I get:

freedom@flex15:~$ synclient -l
Couldn't find synaptics properties. No synaptics driver loaded?

Also if I install synaptiks from the Ubuntu Software Centre, it installs okay but trying to launch synaptiks gives the error that no touchpad is detected.

Obviously Lenovo doesn't offer support unless you use Windows 8, but according to their website the touchpads are either made by Synaptics, Elantech or ALPS. After looking here: Mouse/Touchpad Settings for Samsung Series 9 in Ubuntu 13.04 I found a solution for Elantech touchpads, which I tried but had no effect. It looks like, from dmesg, that I have an ALPS touchpad. Also that the patch was already committed to an earlier kernel. I used these intructions:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2111236&p=12692065#post12692065

with no errors, but I still get the same outputs from dmesg, synclient and xinput. So from what I can gather, the touchpad drivers are not loaded? Or there is a lack of support for this laptop with the current version of Ubuntu. Could anyone advise please? Thank you.

Also

sudo modprobe psmouse

returns absolutely nothing.

The keyboard function to toggle the touchpad on and off works fine.

Update: I tried this guide for 13.04: http://linuxg.net/ubuntu-13-04-touchpad-option-does-not-exist-error-fix/ and it provided a bit of information in the terminal (everything went fine up until dkms autoinstall):

freedom@flex15:/var/lib/dkms/psmouse$ sudo dkms autoinstall

Kernel preparation unnecessary for this kernel.  Skipping...

Building module:
cleaning build area....
make KERNELRELEASE=3.11.0-15-generic -C /lib/modules/3.11.0-15-generic/build M=/var/lib/dkms/psmouse/alps-1.3/build/src psmouse.ko....
cleaning build area....

DKMS: build completed.
Error! This module/version combo is already installed for kernel: 3.11.0-15-generic (x86_64)

Then running

sudo rmmod psmouse && modprobe psmouse

disables the touchpad functionality completely and returns

ERROR: could not insert 'psmouse': Operation not permitted

running

sudo modprobe psmouse && rmmod psmouse

returns basic touchpad functionality (movement, left/right click, no scrolling or multitouch) and outputs

libkmod: ERROR ../libkmod/libkmod-module.c:753 kmod_module_remove_module: could not remove 'psmouse': Operation not permitted
Error: could not remove module psmouse: Operation not permitted

All in all nothing has changed except dmesg, but not really:

freedom@flex15:/var/lib/dkms/psmouse$ dmesg | grep -i touch
[    1.422626] usb 2-1: Product: eGalaxTouch EXC7910-1026-13.00.00
[    8.683181] psmouse serio1: alps: Unknown ALPS touchpad: E7=73 03 0a, EC=88 b6 06
[    8.715623] input: eGalax Inc. eGalaxTouch EXC7910-1026-13.00.00 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb2/2-1/2-1:1.0/input/input5
[    8.715756] hid-multitouch 0003:0EEF:A111.0001: input,hiddev0,hidraw0: USB HID v2.10 Device [eGalax Inc. eGalaxTouch EXC7910-1026-13.00.00] on usb-0000:00:14.0-1/input0
[ 2653.427571] usb 2-1: Product: eGalaxTouch EXC7910-1026-13.00.00
[ 2653.429091] input: eGalax Inc. eGalaxTouch EXC7910-1026-13.00.00 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb2/2-1/2-1:1.0/input/input15
[ 2653.429267] hid-multitouch 0003:0EEF:A111.0002: input,hiddev0,hidraw0: USB HID v2.10 Device [eGalax Inc. eGalaxTouch EXC7910-1026-13.00.00] on usb-0000:00:14.0-1/input0

and I'm still searching for a solution. Thank you very much for the help so far.

My friends and I have Ubuntu One accounts that we use personally and we also have an account that we all share the login details for which we use for sharing music.

What would be amazing is if we could just sync our Music folder under our Home folder to the account we share and have our personal accounts sync to the Ubuntu One folder. That way we wouldn't need to log in to the Ubuntu One website and we could share music through the desktop client.

Is there any way to do this?

I flashed my Nexus 4 with Ubuntu Touch official 13.10 release. I wanted to flash it back to android and test the functionality on some things in android to make sure my phone hardware isn't a problem and then flash back to Ubuntu Touch. I've added a few dozen contacts already though so I'm wondering how I can back those up in some way that I don't have to manually add them again when I put Ubuntu Touch back on the phone.

I've searched online and seen this code for syncing contacts from Google:

adb shell sudo -u phablet -i syncevolution --configure --sync-property "[email protected]" --sync-property "password=XXXXXXX" Google_Contacts

and this code for downloading them from google address book:

adb shell sudo -u phablet -i syncevolution --sync one-way-from-server Google_Contacts addressbook

I was thinking maybe something like:

adb shell sudo -u phablet -i syncevolution --sync one-way-to-server Google_Contacts addressbook

might send the contacts from my Ubuntu phone to the google address book and then use the one-way-from-server code when I reinstall.

Would this be correct? Thanks.

I am running a Dell Inspiron 1501

I use Linux only. No Microsoft or Apple operating systems (or really anything closed-source). I've only been using Linux for a little over a year but I'm starting to gain a comfortable level of familiarity with the system and terminology.

I've been having some issues with Quantel Quetzal and Raring Ringtail, especially with older hardware, so I opted to install Ubuntu 12.04.3 Precise Pangolin on the Inspiron 1501. I checked my MD5 sum after downloading my ISO and all was good. I have in fact used this iso/dvd to install Precise Pangolin successfully on a few other systems (some of which are even older than this laptop).

Install goes fine. The wireless card doesn't work out of the box but this is a known issue which is fairly easy to fix. So, first thing I did was open up a terminal and run

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

which, part way through, crashed (I assume lightdm and possibly X) and took me to a black screen filled with white lines of text that were either errors or just the ouputs of commands. The reason I say that is because I was unable to gleam any useful information from the output on the screen. I did take a picture however and will post a link.

After that, every time I boot the system it goes right to that black screen posting all the error messages or output in white text. I never get a purple Ubuntu splash, so from what I can tell after reading this wiki article: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Troubleshooting/BlankScreen

That means that after the kernel is selected, it is unable to correctly implement the settings it needs. If the purple splash never shows, the frame buffer was never set correctly right? This leads me to believe that it could be a kernel issue? The wiki suggested to try and pinpoint the issue by rolling back kernels until I find one that works. Is this my best option? I think I'm going to give it a try anyways and will let everyone know if I am able to solve the issue this way.

I have since done a few reinstalls and some trouble-shooting including a couple hours scouring the net for anyone with any kind of similar issue. Most of the issues I could find involved getting a black screen after login and none of them said anything about any information output on this black screen.

My reinstalls have taught me that there is no issue updating, but as soon as I run

sudo apt-get upgrade

my system goes to the black screen and every time I boot it up it does the same thing. The only way to fix is by reinstall. I never get any ability to log in. After a hard power off to the laptop (because I cannot use ctrl+alt+del to reboot) when it boots again it goes to the grub boot menu and I can select between regular boot, recovery mode and the two memtest options. I never tried the memtest options but the other two both lead to the same black screen.

Some people having a black/blank screen issue claim to have fixed it by using 12.10 or 13.04 but I believe they were having a different issue where they got a black/blank screen after logging in. I think I will still give these images a try, but mostly figured I would just wait another day or two for 13.10.

Other things I figured I would try from the following three articles:

After logging in, there's a black screen and my cursor, nothing else! in Ubuntu 12.10

Black Screen on Login

After Upgrading to 12.04 I can't get to the login screen

include opening a terminal using ctrl+alt+f1 and trying a variety of reseting unity, x settings, lightdm (or switching to gdm); but I doubt this will work or that I will even be able to access a terminal. I'm pretty sure the whole system is stuck after it loads the last line on the black screen.

I will try these things and post more information when I have. Hopefully someone has an idea in the meantime and I will keep checking back trying to find a solution. Thank you.

Here are 3 different pictures of the error message. I had to take with my phone: http://ubuntuone.com/album/0TBBkxmVajJIQQtoN9mVdN