I have been hunting for an answer to this for a long time, and although I've seen proposed solutions, none of them works.

I can see all packages ready for update with this command:

apt list --upgradable

Some of them are held back due to phased updates. I want to know which ones will be upgraded, and which ones held back.

All that I have so far is to issue this command (once for each package):

apt-cache policy [packagename]

If the output contains the string (phased …%) (one, two or three digits before the percentage sign), it means that the package is part of the phased updates. But it doesn't tell whether or not it will be installed on my machine right now.

How do I tell which of the pending packages would be installed right now, and which ones would be held back due to phased updates?

I'm running Ubuntu 22.04, in case that makes a difference.

Thank you

I need to install Lubuntu 20.04 on an old machine that I intend to give away to someone who needs it, maybe a charity. For this purpose, I want to make use of the OEM install.

When booting Ubuntu 20.04 from a Live USB, it presents several options on the boot page, including "OEM install (for manufacturers)". This allows me to install Ubuntu, tailor it (e.g. install updates), and then "Prepare for shipping to end user".

However, it's different for Lubuntu. It presents the same options as Ubuntu on the boot page (see the screenshot), but when I select "OEM install (for manufacturers)", it simply boots to a normal Lubuntu as if I'd selected the first option, "Start Lubuntu".

How do I get the OEM installation to work on Lubuntu, please?

On my fresh installation of Ubuntu 20.04 a couple of weeks ago, I kept having a problem with Ubuntu's default Gnome extension Desktop Icons, in addition to which it has badly limited functionality.

Unfortunately, it cannot be uninstalled the normal way.

So, I followed instructions (as advised in several places) to uninstall it as follows.

sudo rm --recursive /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions/desktop-icons@csoriano/   # After making a backup

With that gone, I was able to install the oddly-named but far superior Desktop Icons NG (DING) (by the same author), which works perfectly.

Unfortunately, I get the following error notification several times a day:

Can't install "desktop-icons@csoriano":
This is an extension enabled by your current mode, you can't install manually any update in that session.

I don't know how to stop this error repeating itself. I tried three things.

• Uninstall Desktop Icons NG (DING), and restore the deleted folder from above. That made no difference, and in any case it didn't restore the original Desktop Icons as you might think it would.
• Attempt to manually install Desktop Icons, but it refuses to install, giving the same error.
• Reinstall gnome-shell-extension-desktop-icons, which is how Desktop Icons is originally installed. After a reboot, this merely put me back to square 1. (I can't uninstall gnome-shell-extension-desktop-icons because it would remove ubuntu-desktop.)

I don't know what else to do.

I subsequently reinstalled Desktop Icons NG (DING), otherwise I have nothing on my desktop, but this error continues to notify me several times a day.

Here is my list of extensions.

$ gnome-extensions list
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]

I'm using standard Ubuntu 20.04 with Gnome 3.36.3

How can I stop these notifications, please?

EDIT

This question can be closed, because it's being looked at by the snap team.

gedit version 3.36.2 has a bug that causes me formatting problems (it affects many files of mine, so there's no easy workaround).

Curiously, the snap version doesn't have this problem. So, obviously, I want to use the snap version of gedit.

But.

The snap version of gedit won't allow me to save a file, whether it's a new file or an edited file. EDIT: It allows me to save files in some of my folders, but not all of them, e.g. ~/bin and ~/insurance.

EDIT: I can't even edit standard items such as ~/.bashrc and ~/.profile. And I can't edit system files, e.g. sudo -H gedit /etc/fstab.

I have followed the instructions to add the requisite permissions to the snap from Software. Several settings were already on, including "Access files in your home folder", so for good measure, I gave permission to everything. See the attached screenshot. I've even tried restarting the computer to see if that makes a difference, which of course it doesn't.

I've also tried installing in classic mode, but I receive a warning showing that it won't do so:

$ snap install --classic gedit
Warning: flag --classic ignored for strictly confined snap gedit

I should add that the files in question are all within subdirectories of my home folder (/home/paddy), and everything has read-write permission for my user.

I have been searching and searching, and I simply cannot find a solution to this.

How can I give the snap version of gedit permission to write files?

I'm running Ubuntu 20.04 (a recent fresh installation) with Gnome 3.36.3 and gedit version 3.36.2.

Thank you

On Lubuntu's panel, I can add the "Directory Menu". When clicked, instead of opening an app, it shows a menu (which in turn can open an app). See the image:

EDIT for clarification

In the image, the desktop is blue. I have not clicked the menu icon (the blue bird on the far left), but instead the Directory Menu icon, where my cursor is showing. The menu below it (bin, binConf, …) belongs to that icon.

(The Directory Menu is added to the panel by going to Add/Remove Panel Items, and adding Directory Menu.)

I want to create my own menu icon (not for files, though). Having searched all over the place, I can find how to create new panel launchers, but not new panel menus.

How do I go about making such an entry for the Lubuntu panel?

History

• I have Ubuntu. Because of its extraordinarily slow speed (especially after upgrading to 16.04 from 14.04, almost as slow as Windows), I installed lubuntu-desktop and now use Lubuntu. The change has greatly speeded my computer.
• I am able to choose whether to boot into Ubuntu or Lubuntu each time I log in.
• After this change, in Lubuntu, the automatic suspend would not work because it asked for the password. I fixed this using the solution to Authentication required before suspend.

Problem

When I resume from automatic suspend, I am greeted with an unusual login screen, which has only three elements:

• The day and time
• The title "Light Display Manager"
• A prompt to enter a password without a user being displayed

When I enter my password, the prompt responds with, "Incorrect password". I have, of course, tried multiple times and typed my password carefully.

I cannot proceed from that screen, and even Ctrl+Alt+Delete doesn't work. I have to use REISUB. EDIT: I can also sign into a console (Ctrl+Alt+F1) and sudo reboot.

Extra notes

If I suspend manually, or if I use Ubuntu, the computer resumes properly with the correct login screen, accepting my password and allowing me to continue. Only the automatic suspend from Lubuntu gives this problem.

Question

How do I get the computer to resume correctly from automatic suspend when using Lubuntu?

I understand that the original version of Adobe's Flash is deprecated for security reasons, and that we should use Pepper Flash instead.

However, I cannot install Pepper Flash on Ubuntu 16.04. (I use Chromium, not Firefox.)

I have followed the instructions to add the repository ppa:skunk/pepper-flash, which worked, and continues to work, perfectly on 14.04.

But, on 16.04, when I reload the repositories, I get this error:

E: The repository 'http://ppa.launchpad.net/skunk/pepper-flash/ubuntu xenial Release' does not have a Release file.
N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.

Is this something that I have done incorrectly? How can I fix this?

This must have been answered before, but I simply cannot find the answer either here or elsewhere.

I edit a PHP file in gedit, which is all nicely coloured for syntax.

But when I want to print it, it prints only in black-and-white.

How can I print it in colour? I will accept an editor other than gedit if needed, because of bug 1313283.

I'd prefer a GUI option, please, partly because finding my printer's name for the command line is hard, and partly because I don't know how to set my printer's options from the command line (I think that its default mode is black-and-white).

I have discovered enscript, but unfortunately it doesn't have PHP highlighting.

EDIT

I am using Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit and gedit version 3.10.4.

Looking at answers to how to play WMV files on Ubuntu 14.04, it seems that the correct answer is to install ubuntu-restricted-extras. (At the moment, I get the same error as others, i.e. Segmentation fault (core dumped) with both VLC and Totem.)

However, when I want to install ubuntu-restricted-extras, APT wants to remove a number of other packages. I issue the following command.

sudo apt install ubuntu-restricted-extras

I get the following messages about removal.

The following packages will be REMOVED
  audacity frei0r-plugins gstreamer1.0-libav gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad
  handbrake-gtk libavcodec54 libavdevice53 libavfilter3 libavformat54
  libchromaprint-tools libmlt++3 libmlt6 libopencv-contrib2.4
  libopencv-highgui2.4 libopencv-legacy2.4 libopencv-objdetect2.4 melt
  openshot picard python-mlt simplescreenrecorder vlc vlc-nox
  vlc-plugin-notify vlc-plugin-samba

Why would it want to remove Audacity, Handbrake, Openshot, Simple Screen Recorder, VLC and others?

Or, better, is there a way to be able to view WMV videos without removing those packages?

In case it is of any relevance, I notice that I have ubuntu-restricted-addons installed.

I am using Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit.

Thank you.

EDIT

Lines from /var/log/syslog for running VLC and Totem follow. In both cases, only one line was written.

Running VLC:

Jun 10 20:19:15 Daisy kernel: [ 1087.866980] vlc[7336]: segfault at 977 ip 00007feef9cd553b sp 00007feec82eed70 error 4 in libvlccore.so.8.0.0[7feef9c9a000+f8000]

Running Totem:

Jun 10 20:27:11 Daisy kernel: [ 1563.645868] multiqueue0:src[9097]: segfault at 200000000 ip 00007f0fc01adf12 sp 00007f0fb77fc660 error 6 in libgstlibav.so[7f0fc0194000+35000]

After Suttleworth's bizarre decision to hard-code the whitelist for the systray, a developer created a patch to allow people to continue to use applications that use the systray with Ubuntu.

Unfortunately, the patch's creator is now too busy to maintain it. This means that since the latest updates earlier this month, the whitelist no longer works (again).

Canonical's "solution" was to instruct us to raise a bug report for each application that doesn't work, but of course those bug reports have been ignored.

So…

How can I re-enable the systray? Its absence is creating difficulties for me.

I am using Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit.

Answering the question by @GGleb

Command

gsettings list-recursively net.launchpad.indicator.systemtray

Results

net.launchpad.indicator.systemtray disable-indicator false
net.launchpad.indicator.systemtray started-the-first-time false
net.launchpad.indicator.systemtray static-x 0
net.launchpad.indicator.systemtray static-y 0
net.launchpad.indicator.systemtray tray-is-static false

I notice that tray-is-static toggles when I middle-click the icon.

If I mount a drive in /media or somewhere in my home folder, it automatically shows in both Nautilus (under Devices in its side bar) and on the Launcher.

However, if I mount the drive in ${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR}/mnt (that's /run/user/1000/mnt), neither Nautilus nor the Launcher shows it.

Is it possible to get Nautilus and the Launcher to automatically show those folders when mounted?

More information

It is not a single drive, but several different drives that are mounted only when needed, not permanently. Therefore, /etc/fstab would not be appropriate.

If there isn't a solution to this, I shall simply change the scripts to move the mount point to my home folder in ~/mnt.

I want to use find to find files in a set of folders restricted by wildcards, but where there are spaces in the path name.

From the command line, this is easy. The following examples all work.

find  te*/my\ files/more   -print
find  te*/'my files'/more  -print
find  te*/my' 'files/more  -print

These will find files in, for example, terminal/my files/more and tepid/my files/more.

However, I need this to be part of a script; what I need is something like this:

SEARCH='te*/my\ files/more'
find ${SEARCH} -print

Unfortunately, whatever I do, I don't seem to be able to mix wildcards and spaces in a find command within a script. The above example returns the following errors (note the unexpected doubling of the backslash):

find: ‘te*/my\\’: No such file or directory
find: ‘files/more’: No such file or directory

Trying to use quotes also fails.

SEARCH="te*/'my files'/more"
find ${SEARCH} -print

This returns the following errors, having ignored the meaning of the quotes:

find: ‘te*/'my’: No such file or directory
find: ‘files'/more’: No such file or directory

Here's one more example.

SEARCH='te*/my files/more'
find ${SEARCH} -print

As expected:

find: ‘te*/my’: No such file or directory
find: ‘files/more’: No such file or directory

Every variation that I've tried returns an error.

I have a workaround, which is potentially dangerous because it returns too many folders. I convert all spaces to a question mark (single-character wildcard) like this:

SEARCH='te*/my files/more'
SEARCH=${SEARCH// /?}       # Convert every space to a question mark.
find ${SEARCH} -print

This is the equivalent of:

find te*/my?files/more -print

This returns not only the correct folders but also terse/myxfiles/more, which it's not supposed to.

How can I achieve what I'm trying to do? Google has not helped me :(

Since recent updates in the past two or three days, many of my incoming emails have become unreadable in Gmail.

Specifically:

• This happens only in Chromium (in Gmail). If I open the affected emails in Firefox Gmail, I can read them OK.
• If I change the zoom, whether larger or smaller, I can read the email. But at 100%, I cannot.
• The problem started only a couple of days ago (yesterday, I think).
• Not all emails have this problem. I don't know what separates those that do from those that don't.
• The emails render perfectly on both Windows 7 (Chrome) and Lubuntu 14.04 (Chromium).

See the screen-shots:

100% (parts of letters, and entire letters, are missing):

90% (readable, though not entirely clear):

110% (also readable, though not entirely clear):

The letters are crystal clear on both Windows and Lubuntu.

Presumably, it is something to do with the fonts. But I don't know even where to begin fixing this readability problem.

Please help.

• I'm using Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit, fully updated

With 12.04, I was able to connect my Android phone without problem (using MTP) to my Ubuntu machine. Open Nautilus, there is my phone, and I can click through to the folders that I wanted.

However, ever since 14.04, it has been extremely unreliable. Open Nautilus, and sometimes (about a third of the time) my phone is there. When it isn't there, the only solution is to reboot Ubuntu. When it's there, clicking though to the phone's folders sometimes works, and sometimes results in an error. Even when it works, the phone will often disappear without warning halfway through browsing the folders.

I have installed mtpfs; I have also followed the how-to in the forum. I also tried replacing my USB cord in case it was faulty. No luck.

What can I do to diagnose and ultimately fix this, please?

EDIT:

The idVendor is 18d1 and the idProduct is 4ee1.

The default entry in /lib/udev/rules.d/69-libmtp.rules reads:

ATTR{idVendor}=="18d1", ATTR{idProduct}=="4ee1", SYMLINK+="libmtp-%k", MODE="660", GROUP="audio", ENV{ID_MTP_DEVICE}="1", ENV{ID_MEDIA_PLAYER}="1"

The entry in /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules reads:

ATTR{idVendor}=="18d1", ATTR{idProduct}=="4ee1", MODE=”0666"

The entry in /lib/udev/rules.d/69-mtp.rules reads:

ATTR{idVendor}=="18d1", ATTR{idProduct}=="4ee1", SYMLINK+="libmtp-%k", ENV{ID_MTP_DEVICE}="1", ENV{ID_MEDIA_PLAYER}="1"

I have noticed that my swap is not available. This could explain why my computer freezes every so often when I am using it heavily.

I installed 14.04 64-bit with an encrypted folder, which automatically encrypts my swap. This used to work perfectly in 12.04 64-bit.

The relevant lines from /etc/fstab are:

# swap was on /dev/sda6 during installation
#UUID=5e37c9cd-ba35-4907-8c77-556a308d1491  none  swap  sw  0  0
/dev/mapper/cryptswap1                      none  swap  sw  0  0

sudo blkid does not list the swap:

/dev/sda1: LABEL="PQSERVICE" UUID="FA3A29383A28F375" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sda2: LABEL="SYSTEM RESERVED" UUID="967CF34F7CF3291F" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sda3: LABEL="Daisy PC" UUID="36027B05027AC97F" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sda5: LABEL="DaisyHome" UUID="4ad946a8-3a8e-41b9-907c-258b2ad9544e" TYPE="ext4" 
/dev/sda7: LABEL="DaisyRoot" UUID="5cb3c1ff-fdd2-458b-9765-b9407d19b469" TYPE="ext4" 

System Monitor shows swap as being unavailable.

Gparted shows the swap partition as "unknown".

Disks shows the swap partition as "Linux Swap", but is unable to mount the partition.

I have been Googling, reading Ubuntu Forums and searching this forum, and have been unable to find anything that helps to re-enable the swap.

Can you help, please.

EDIT

The file /etc/crypttab confusingly has two lines:

cryptswap1 UUID=5e37c9cd-ba35-4907-8c77-556a308d1491 /dev/urandom swap,cipher=aes-cbc-essiv:sha256
cryptswap1 UUID=7426472f-9ec1-4e53-b8e1-930e3d6f73fc /dev/urandom swap,cipher=aes-cbc-essiv:sha256

Here is a list of the UUIDs on my system:

$ ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid/
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jun 20 08:48 36027B05027AC97F -> ../../sda3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jun 20 08:48 4ad946a8-3a8e-41b9-907c-258b2ad9544e -> ../../sda5
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jun 20 08:48 5cb3c1ff-fdd2-458b-9765-b9407d19b469 -> ../../sda7
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jun 20 08:48 967CF34F7CF3291F -> ../../sda2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jun 20 08:48 FA3A29383A28F375 -> ../../sda1

Now my problem is: How do I determine the UUID of /dev/sda6? Is this even possible on an encrypted swap? Finally, how do I fix /etc/crypttab?

Some applications place informational text over their icons in the Launcher.

For example, Thunderbird shows the unread message count, and Update Manager shows the number of updates available and a progress bar. The image shows these two examples:

I have created some Bash scripts that use yad (a Zenity fork), which adds an icon to the Launcher while running.

I would like to know how I can create my own information overlay within my script for those icons.

Reading AskUbuntu and on the forums, I am trying to find out what to do about a WebGL and Google MapsGL problem (described in a Google forum thread starting at post #5).

Specifically, Google's MapsGL works perfectly in Windows 7 (on this same machine with dual-boot), but on Ubuntu, the Photo Tour and 45 Degree Satellite View show grey blurry blobs (see screen-shot).

According to post #10, I may have better luck with an updated driver. I seem to have Mesa 8.0.2 installed, and see from the Mesa website that 8.0.3 is available.

I have added PPA ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates, but the only two items it provides for update are xdiagnose and xserver-xorg-video-intel. These aren't the Mesa drivers, are they?

So…

1. Would it help to update my Mesa drivers?
2. If so, how would I go about it?
3. If not, what can I do to fix the problem?

I would be happy to try it out as long as I could roll back the changes should they fail.

More information:

• Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit fully updated.
• Firefox 14.0.1 gives the error
• Chromium 18.0 will not run MapsGL at all (see post #2)
• EDIT: Chromium 20.0 does work if started as chromium-browser --ignore-gpu-blacklist. The latest Chromium is available from the PPA ppa:webapps/preview (thank you, mikewhatever — see his answer below).
• EDIT: Chromium has a setting that works the same way as --ignore-gpu-blacklist. Go to chrome://flags and enable setting Override software rendering list.

Thank you.

I loaded dconf-editor. There is no menu, but I did discover that you can press Ctrl+F and enter a search term.

However, I do not know what Ctrl+F actually searches. When I enter a term (e.g. panel or unity-greeter), I receive no results.

I have also tried gsettings at the command line, but with no luck whatever options I have tried; I must be doing it incorrectly.

How do I search for a specific key or value within dconf?

Back in 8.04 and 10.04, GIMP could easily open WMF files, letting me work on them.

In 11.04, there was a regression (still not fixed!), and this would not work.

But at least there was a workaround. You could convert WMF files to EPS and work on them.

wmf2eps --wmf-fontdir=/usr/share/fonts/type1/gsfonts -o outputfile.eps inputfile.wmf

However, now we have 12.04, and not even the workaround works any more; it is unable to convert the file. There is no error message; it just fails with error code 1.

Despite Inkscapes claims to be a plausible solution (workaround) Inkscape simply opened the WMF image as a completely empty image, with no error message.

I need to work on WMF files quite urgently. Does anyone know what I can do, whether work-around or (preferably) a fix?

I have the latest VirtualBox 4.0.8 (from the VirtualBox website), including the extension pack, running on Ubuntu Lucid 10.04. My user is a member of vboxusers.

The guest OS is Windows XP (32-bit).

Everything works -- except the USB. In the USB settings. I have set the default filter (to allow all USB devices). While the guest is running, I go to Devices > USB Devices and select the device (it's a simple USB stick formatted as FAT32).

Although the device is automatically unmounted from Ubuntu, Windows XP fails to see it (normally XP would have a little dialogue about installing a new device and then show the icon to safely remove a drive. It does not do this).

Any ideas how to solve this problem, so my guest Windows XP can see the USB stick?