memilanuk's questions

I made the mistake of trying to install the wrong version of a program using a downloaded .deb file. It hung up partways because of unresolvable dependencies, and I had to close the shell window to abort the process. Unfortunately, this left things in a sort of weird state where that bad version is still stuck in the list of packages to be downloaded and installed. I've tried variations on sudo apt-get autoclean and sudo apt-get clean and sudo apt-get autoremove, etc. all to no avail. I've tried running sudo dpkg --configure -a, but all that does is start the download/install process for the bad version again - which hangs again, and I have to go thru and clean out (via sudo rm various lock files and partial download folders - again.

How do I clean things up so that dkpg forgets what is in the queue completely?

So... have had a fully functional Ubuntu 14.04 system installed dual-boot with Win 7 on my Lenovo T530 ThinkPad for months... 12.10, 13.04 & 13.10 before that. Some hiccups with 14.04, but overall a stable system.

Until this morning.

The regular system update was grumbling about wine-compholio again as per usual. So I opened a terminal and manually ran "sudo apt-get update" followed by "sudo apt-get upgrade" with no problems. Then I rebooted the system, and now the gui startup hangs @ the "ubuntu" with the five status dots indefinitely.

I can get to a terminal via Ctrl+Alt+F1, and back via Ctrl+Alt+F7, but no idea where to go from there.

I can reboot into Win7 just fine, FWIW.

I really need to get to some work I have on my Linux desktop ASAP so any help would be greatly appreciated.

As per request, the last few lines from the boot log accessed via F12 during boot splash (bear with me; I am having to type these in by gand using my tablet):

* Stopping cold plug devices     [ OK ]
Starting VirtualBox kernel modules * Stopping log initial device creation     [ OK ]
* Starting save udev log and update rules     [ OK ]
* Stopping save udev log and update rules     [ OK ]
* Starting enable remaining boot-time encrypted block devices     [ OK ]

So, trying to get up to speed with LaTex in vim/gvim... problem is the beginners tutorial for vim-latexsuite assumes gvim and the gui menus. Okay, got gvim right here. Problem is, under Unity and the global app menu, the menus are truncated and don't show the keyboard shortcuts that they should for most entries, or in the case of the TeX-Suite menus, entries like '2: Article' are simply truncated to '2: '. Not helpful at all!

I know the menus themselves work - starting gvim using sudo gvim, which does not use the global app menu but the local menus, looks just fine - like gvim on any other platform or desktop, i.e. like it should.

How do I force that behaviour under Unity for a regular user (i.e. not using sudo)?

I've got a PDF document that I would like to be able to read... but for some reason a number of the embedded pictures and graphs don't display cleanly when opened in evince or okular on Ubuntu 13.04 (they display normally in Adobe Acrobat Reader on Windows 7). I've tried downloading and installing Adobe Acrobat Reader 9.5 and FoxIt Reader 1.1 in .deb format and get warnings about bad packaging format, etc. Even when I click thru to install anyway, the install process would hang up over and over again.

Are there any other viable options out there?

Just for reference, here is a download link for the offending file if anyone cares to test it on their machine (warning - 67+MB file):

EPRI Power System Dynamics Tutorial

I've Xubuntu 12.04 installed on my HP DV-4 laptop, and it was working fine with my previous wifi router - a Buffalo Air Station WHR-HP-G54.

I recently replaced the Air Station with a new Netgear WNDR-3800... basically gigabit ethernet ports, added multi-band 802.11n, etc.

Everything in the house has been reconnected to the new network - iPods, iPhone, Kindle Fire, Macbooks, even this HP DV-4 laptop - when it boots in Windows Vista 64.

When in Xubuntu 12.04, Network manager 'sees' the network(s), just as before... but cannot connect to them. It just sits there with the icon 'spinning' until it times out.

Regular 'wired' connection works fine... just can't seem to connect to the wifi network(s) - any of them.

Shouldn't be anything 'special' required; none of the other devices needed anything other than the new password to connect.

Ideas?

I've got squid-deb-proxy, avahi-tools, and squid-deb-proxy-client installed on a gateway VM running 12.04 Server, and squid-deb-proxy-client installed on two client VMs running Lubuntu and Xubuntu 12.04.

The service appears to be up and running according to htop, and I can see considerable activity when the clients update/upgrade, and I see activity in the log files... but I'm not seeing any cache being stored in /var/spool/squid3 - or anywhere else.

What should I be looking for to tell if its really working?

Specifically, if I have a small virtual LAN with multiple VMs of each different distro - say three CentOS VMs, two Debian VMs, and assorted Ubuntu VMs - can Squid safely cache the updates for each with out interfering with one another?

I'm aware of squid-deb-proxy for Ubuntu, but I'm looking for something a little more general purpose - I think.

I recently installed Eclipse from the Software Center in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, and then setup PyDev from there. The application itself seems to be working okay, but its launcher icon shows no carets or other indication that it is already running. Also, Eclipse does not show up when I hit 'alt+tab' to cycle between open applications. It does show up when I hit 'super+tab', though.

Any ideas?

Monte

In 11.10, when I installed a desktop app it had a check box in the Software Center entry for that app to install it to the Dock right away. Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn't, depending on how much I planned on using that app.

Now in 12.04 it seems to default to jamming a new icon into the Dock, without asking me and, so far as I can tell, no way to turn it off or revert to the 'old' behavior.

Am I missing something here? Is there an easy way to turn this 'off'?

I recently replaced the HDD in my laptop, and re-installed Windows & Ubuntu. Now I want to restore the various virtual machines I had set up on the old HDD, which is mounted in an external USB enclosure. I can read the HDD okay, and the 'bad' spots seemed to be in the Windows partition... but whenever I try to restore the VDI files the copy errors out. I've tried drag-n-drop in Nautilus, I've tried grsync, etc. Always bombs out on the VDI files. I've copied over multi-GB dvd iso images with no problem, but the VDI files always fail the checksums.

Any ideas?

TIA,

Monte

When booting from the server or alternative install CD, there are some choices tied to function keys (F4, F6, etc.) along the bottom of the screen. Some are relatively obvious, others... not so much so, or least it'd sure be nice to be able to read a description of what the intended usage is before committing to an install process only to find that I should have left well enough alone ;)

I can't seem to find a description of these options in the official documentation... anyone know where it might be squirreled away, or who I could get ahold of to find out?