Bernard Decock's questions

I received an HP Elitebook Folio 9470m with Ubuntu Bionic Beaver installed on it. I installed the latest Ubuntu. After reinstalling the laptop and rebooting, the BIOS refused to boot: PXE-E61 Media Failure Check Cable - PXE-M0F Boot Device not Found Hard Disk Error 3F0. The harddrive is ok (tested with the BIOS itself), but the password of the BIOS is lost!

I observed that when a Live-usb_stick is present at power-up, that the computer is automatically booting from that stick! The idea is now to use a small usb-stick (4G) with a bootloader on it. The computer will call the bootloader (as it calls the live-usb-stick). The bootloader must then jump to the installed LM-partition on the hard drive. In this way the computer can be used again. Any ideas how to create such a bootloader?

I have an external usb-drive where some of the filenames contain a ":", e.g.. Screenshot-08-09-12 -08:10:45.png (Old screenshots). I can copy these files towards the hard-disc of my computer, but I cannot copy them back to the external hard-disc as there renamed automatically by the files-application. The cp command in the terminal returns an error with an illegal argument.

I'm using this drive on Ubuntu 20.10 as well on LinuxMint 20. How can I copy such a file back to the external hard-drive without being renamed?

I understand that the feature of renaming such kind of filenames has been implemented in order to deal with filesystems which are only supporting Microsoft-filenaming.

Filetype of the external disc : NTFS (Partitiontype : NTFS/exFAT/HPFS)

Fresh install of ubuntu 20.10. The LibreOffice-applications, Writer, Calc, Math, ... can be easily added to or removed from the dash. How can I add the LibreOffice StartCenter to the dash?

I opened Writer and closed the document => The StartCenter shows up. If I try to pin the StartCenter to the dash, it disappears as soon as I close LibreOffice.

Upgrade from Xubuntu 14.10 to 15.05 (Update history : 13.10 -> 14.04 -> 14.10 -> 15.04). The upgrading worked well. After rebooting the machine (Dell Inspiron 6000 - 10 years old) went automatically into sleep. Leaving sleep is easy but seems to be timed! (When you don't enter you password in a few seconds, it starts sleeping again). Once logged in, you can't power down the machine, it simply goes into sleep! The only way to go into powerdown is via "sudo shutdown now" command. Is there a way to fix this behaviour such that I become a normal powering up/down-behaviour? I already tries some of the xfce4-power management settings, but nothing seems to help (computer gives the logoin-screen again).

Some other oberservations. Even shutting down via the top-right button on the welcome-screen doens't succeed.

After entering the login-password, it takes more than a minute before the desktop is shown.

The output of dmesg:

[ 2030.004228] audit_printk_skb: 156 callbacks suppressed
[ 2030.004231] type=1400 audit(1389169706.701:71): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" parent=3598 profile="unconfined" name="/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf" pid=3602 comm="apparmor_parser"
[ 2030.004240] type=1400 audit(1389169706.701:72): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" parent=3598 profile="unconfined" name="/usr/sbin/cupsd" pid=3602 comm="apparmor_parser"
[ 2030.004904] type=1400 audit(1389169706.701:73): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" parent=3598 profile="unconfined" name="/usr/sbin/cupsd" pid=3602 comm="apparmor_parser"
[ 3090.435641] perf samples too long (2510 > 2500), lowering kernel.perf_event_max_sample_rate to 50000
[11285.003065] perf samples too long (5009 > 5000), lowering kernel.perf_event_max_sample_rate to 25000

And the output of uname -a:

Linux Bedc-Linux-ThinkPad-R500 3.11.0-15-generic #23-Ubuntu SMP Mon Dec 9 18:16:27 UTC 2013 i686 i686 i686 GNU/Linux

What is going on here?

After upgrading from Ubuntu 13.04 to 13.10, my clock was always one hour fast. I issued the command sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

Current default time zone: 'Europe/Brussels'
Local time is now:      Mon Dec 30 11:52:06 CET 2013.
Universal Time is now:  Mon Dec 30 10:52:06 UTC 2013.

The time is correct now, but I notice a double time-zone in the clock-applet. How can I remove the other one?

Note that cat /etc/timezone returns Europe/Brussels. The Copenhagen-entry isn't specified. However if one clicks on the clock-applet on the Brussels-value, the Brussels-value disappears and only the Copenhagen-entry is left. Now this entry appears in /etc/timezone.

Each time I start GIMP, GIMP is invoking a command to my EPSON Photoscanner. How can I disable this behavior? As the scanner isn't connected (most of the time), I always get a message that sending a command to the scanner failed. The program invoked is iscan, the standard program for using the Epson Photoscanner.

I'm using the OCR-utility of OCRFeeder. OCRFeeder is using the tesseract-engine. I have installed the several language-packs needed for tesseract. How can I set the language such that tesseract will use the right language-file for converting the scanned document into text?

Maybe a non-geek that knows of the existence of a firewall is already some kind of a nerd. If you have been a windows-user then it was rather easy to set up a firewall (I don't know if it was a good one!): enable a firewall with maximum protection. Then for each program that tried to make an internet-connection a notification was shown (allow or not allow). In this way without any prior knowledge of protocols and ports a user could set up a firewall that was suited to his needs. Is there any equivalent program in Ubuntu so that any user can set up a proper firewall?

Whenever I plug by digital camera in, a nice media-icon pops up. Great! !

When I right click on this icon, I can only open Rhythmbox or VLC-media-player. Both applications are rather senseless to be used here. When I want to download photos (be it by means of F-Spot, Shotwell or Picasa) I have to unmount the camera first. This seems to me rather illogical ? Why is the camera mounted if you have to unmount it to be used? How can I make that the digital camera is being mounted for the right applications? It looks strange to me that one has to unmount a device before one can use it!

Camera model : Canon PowerShot SX20 IS (new id has been added for this camera in libgphoto2 2.4.9. The packagemanager tells me that libgphoto2-2 is installed, version 2.4.8-0ubuntu2 => it looks like libgphoto2 can't read the camera? Anyway, the PTP/MTP- mode works fine)

uname -a
Linux Ubuntu-Bernard **2.6.32-24-generic #42-Ubuntu** SMP Fri Aug 20 14:24:04 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux

cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=10.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=lucid
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="**Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS**"

lsusb
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 04a9:31e4 **Canon, Inc.** 
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0b05:1706 ASUSTek Computer, Inc. WL-167G 802.11g Adapter [ralink]
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 050d:0234 Belkin Components F5U234 USB 2.0 4-Port Hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub


Type filesystem = **gphoto2**

KernelLoggings (plug-in/plug-out)
Sep 11 19:23:55 Ubuntu-Bernard kernel: [ 1370.156803] usb 1-2.1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 4
Sep 11 19:23:55 Ubuntu-Bernard kernel: [ 1370.282419] usb 1-2.1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Sep 11 19:31:59 Ubuntu-Bernard kernel: [ 1854.101144] usb 1-2.1: USB disconnect, address 4


Detailled Camera info
lsusb -v

Bus 001 Device 007: ID 04a9:31e4 Canon, Inc. 
Device Descriptor:
  bLength                18
  bDescriptorType         1
  bcdUSB               2.00
  bDeviceClass            0 (Defined at Interface level)
  bDeviceSubClass         0 
  bDeviceProtocol         0 
  bMaxPacketSize0        64
  idVendor           0x04a9 Canon, Inc.
  idProduct          0x31e4 
  bcdDevice            0.02
  iManufacturer           1 Canon Inc.
  iProduct                2 Canon Digital Camera
  iSerial                 3 E2F5E9B80A584FFDA901B46ECBC87410
  bNumConfigurations      1
  Configuration Descriptor:
    bLength                 9
    bDescriptorType         2
    wTotalLength           39
    bNumInterfaces          1
    bConfigurationValue     1
    iConfiguration          0 
    bmAttributes         0xc0
      Self Powered
    MaxPower                2mA
    Interface Descriptor:
      bLength                 9
      bDescriptorType         4
      bInterfaceNumber        0
      bAlternateSetting       0
      bNumEndpoints           3
          bInterfaceClass         6 Imaging
      bInterfaceSubClass      1 Still Image Capture
      bInterfaceProtocol      1 Picture Transfer Protocol (PIMA 15470)
      iInterface              0 
      Endpoint Descriptor:
        bLength                 7
        bDescriptorType         5
        bEndpointAddress     0x81  EP 1 IN
        bmAttributes            2
          Transfer Type            Bulk
          Synch Type               None
          Usage Type               Data
        wMaxPacketSize     0x0040  1x 64 bytes
        bInterval               0
      Endpoint Descriptor:
        bLength                 7
        bDescriptorType         5
        bEndpointAddress     0x02  EP 2 OUT
        bmAttributes            2
          Transfer Type            Bulk
          Synch Type               None
          Usage Type               Data
        wMaxPacketSize     0x0040  1x 64 bytes
        bInterval               0
      Endpoint Descriptor:
        bLength                 7
        bDescriptorType         5
        bEndpointAddress     0x83  EP 3 IN
        bmAttributes            3
          Transfer Type            Interrupt
          Synch Type               None
          Usage Type               Data
        wMaxPacketSize     0x0008  1x 8 bytes
        bInterval              32
Device Qualifier (for other device speed):
  bLength                10
  bDescriptorType         6
  bcdUSB               2.00
  bDeviceClass            0 (Defined at Interface level)
  bDeviceSubClass         0 
  bDeviceProtocol         0 
  bMaxPacketSize0        64
  bNumConfigurations      1
Device Status:     0x0001
  Self Powered